I don’t have an informed opinion about the replacement of Jim Jones with Tom Donilon as National Security Adviser. But I do think something in the following clip is newsworthy.
…Jones, former commandant of the Marine Corps, was committed to the inter-agency process he oversaw and to the structure of the National Security Staff he helped create. This was deliberate on Jones’s part: he believed the policy-making process was so “20th century” (in his words) and was committed to the new process he helped create, one that elevated issues like cybersecurity and climate change to the spectrum of issues that the National Security Staff wrestled with on a daily basis.
Jones elevated climate change to an issue the national security staff wrestles with on a daily basis. As Cynthia Tucker notes:
One of the greatest crises of our time is climate change, which threatens to create food shortages (as the Russians learned this summer), change geography, eradicate entire eco-systems and even wipe out cities and towns in coastal areas…
…But we’ve reached the odd and depressing point in American politics where not a single Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate supports aggressive action to mitigate climate change. The last science literate, Delaware Congressman Mike Castle, was defeated by tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell.
The blog Think Progress did a survey of GOP Senate candidates, and it found that even those who had previously supported policies that would curb carbon emissions have backed away, fearing a backlash from their know-nothing constituents.Many others have simply chosen to be ignorant anti-science flat-earthers. Alaska’s Joe Miller, who defeated incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary, is an example of the latter category. He told an Alaska newspaper, “We haven’t heard there’s man-made global warming.”
How do you think the national security team of a Republican administration would treat the issue of climate change?
