From COVID-19 to climate change, the Republican Party continues to deny basic science

You would have to live in a cave in the Sawtooths not to see how Idaho’s Republican legislators have refused to apply common sense and good judgment to their work as they trampled on the Idaho Constitution this session and limited the people’s right of initiative.

Their disrespect for science is even more mind-boggling as evidenced by a lawsuit brought by two Democratic legislators at the outset of this year’s legislative session claiming the Statehouse is unsafe because coronavirus precautions were being ignored.

House Speaker Scott Bedke’s recent decision to shut down the legislative session because of a COVID-19 outbreak, a “pause” as he calls it, is nothing more than an admission that Republican legislators ignored the precautions public health officials issued. Had they heeded the concerns expressed by their Democratic members, there would be no need for the so-called “pause.”

Bedke’s warning two weeks ago that the Legislature may have to recess made U.S. News and World Report, yet another in a string of branding exercises in which Idaho’s public officials cast the state as the land of right-wing politics. So much for that iconic potato gracing our license plate as Idaho’s brand.

As a result of the carelessness of many Republican legislators refusing to wear masks and making it a partisan issue, the people’s business went on hold. The only silver lining here is the possibility of saving Idaho from dangerous and irresponsible legislation some of the same legislators cooked up this session

Voters who simply identify as Republicans don’t get much smarter when it comes to protecting themselves from COVID-19. A recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll found that 41 percent of GOP voters would choose not to be vaccinated, even if a shot were offered to them.

Without question, the most damaging aspect of the dumpster fire Trump left for his Republican brethren is their continuing denial of basic science as it explains climate change and calls for action to reverse its impact on the planet. Trump made a mockery of climate change and brought his party faithful along for the ride. Even more damaging were his four years of reversing environmental successes of recent years and throwing more carbon dioxide into the air.

The chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy, George Leonard, summed it up in typical understated terms to avoid provoking a political reaction when he commented recently, “…it’s fair to say that the last four years were pretty rough for the environment and they were certainly rough for the ocean.”

It should come as no surprise from the distance that separates the two parties here in Idaho on the science of mask wearing alone that Republicans and Democrats on the national level would be deeply divided over whether climate change should be a top priority of the Biden administration and Congress this year. According to FactTank, a platform of the Pew Research Center that provides context for policy issues and analysis of data, the gulf between Democrat and Republican thinking on climate change is considerable.

In January, Pew’s latest poll on the climate change issue found 78% of Democrats and ndependents who lean Democratic said climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. Only 21% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican claimed climate change should be a top priority.

It’s hard to believe, especially in the dry and water-deficient West with wildfires and smoke choking our once-idyllic summers that Republicans still reject science and hold on to Trump’s denial of all things scientific.

Yet, there are places to go in the West where earth’s creatures seem to be acknowledging climate change and doing something about it even if it is hardly the long-term solution.

Great white sharks since 2014 have been migrating northward from Southern California and Mexico to Central California in the waters off Monterey. Kyle Van Houtan, the chief scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, reports in a news story on NPR that water temperatures have risen as much as 10 degrees above average, so sharks simply follow the waters they’re adapted to, and when the ocean warms, they move north. On the East Coast, lobsters are moving north, accounting for the few lobsters found in fishermen’s traps.

The Biden administration has a laser-focus on Trump’s environmental rollbacks including the reversal of Trump’s 2017 order abolishing requirements that the social cost of carbon be taken into consideration when developing new regulations. The executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Kathleen Rest, summed it up best when she applauded Biden’s executive orders for seeking “…to reverse policies that fly in the face of science, harm public health and degrade the environment.”

It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that something is going very wrong with our planet and if we do not adjust our lifestyles, crack down on environmental degradation and pass legislation at the federal, state and local level to combat rising temperatures, we are handing off to our children and grandchildren an uninhabitable earth.

Even fish are smart enough to adjust their behaviors when threatened by a warming climate. It’s reminiscent of another time in our history when the Know-Nothing Party sprang into action to fight Irish immigration. Know-Nothing works well for the new Republican Party that apparently “knows nothing” about science or worse yet, refuses to believe in the basic science that applies to pandemics and climate change.

It’s difficult to see how a major political party attracts new voters and expands its base beyond the “know-nothings” who showed up at Trump rallies and failed to produce the majority needed to capture the presidency and both houses of Congress. As for their grasp of science and climate change, Republicans should leave their partisan dream world and follow the fish. As for the voters, they have plenty of options elsewhere on the ballot.