If a successful business gets flooded, and becomes completely submerged in water, does it make a profit?
During Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was asked whether or not he would be in favor of acting on climate change, as an insurance policy against its potential effects. The answer he gave, however, was an anachronism—a belief that belongs decades in the past, if it belongs anywhere at all.
Rubio decided to use the question as an opportunity to show his love for laissez-faire economics, bashing the government’s laws that purportedly repress businesses. He claimed that the current “left-wing government” has only put forth proposals “that would make it harder to do business in America.” This denunciation of environmental regulation, given in front of 10 other candidates and hundreds of well-educated people in the audience, was surprisingly met with applause.
While it’s true that tougher governmental regulation would cost businesses money, Rubio and his cohorts’ stubborn belief in the unimportance of climate change to the nation goes against a goal many of them brought up in the course of the debate: to leave the world a better place for their children.
Sure, maybe completely nixing governmental regulations on emissions and pollution will help the candidates’ children become rich (as if they would have had a hard time to begin with). However, it will be difficult for their children to enjoy their wealth when their cities and vacation homes become inhospitable because of rising tides and increasingly violent weather systems.
This argument against government regulation was a surprising statement, especially from a Floridian—recent climate models show that nearly 1 million homes on the coast of Florida would be underwater in the year 2100 if current conditions get worse.
What was also amazing was that not a single candidate—the field included graduates of Harvard, Yale, Duke and other great universities—challenged the belief that climate change doesn’t need to be addressed with government action. Can such well-educated people really believe that such a grave danger is negligible? Or are they so afraid of straying from party lines that they continue to deny the existence and importance of climate change?
Rubio also tried to downplay America’s role in contributing to climate change. He focused on the fact that China has surpassed the U.S. from a carbon emissions standpoint—we’re still second and lead the rest of the world by a large margin, and have the highest emissions per capita of any nation—and brought his argument to a logical conclusion by astutely pointing out that “America is not a planet.” This mindset of “this is a global issue, not an American issue” was what prevented us from adopting the Kyoto Protocol, which would have been a huge step in the right direction, and other major environmental reforms.
What many Republicans and other climate change deniers fail to understand is that it’s exactly this narrow-minded viewpoint that has greatly contributed to the increasingly pertinent—and decreasingly controversial in almost every nation except the U.S.—situation developing worldwide.
Politicians like to trumpet the U.S. as the greatest country in the world, and use our power to intervene in international affairs in order to suit our interests. If we are truly the greatest nation in the world, it’s our responsibility to mitigate—or at least stop being a huge contributor to—the effects of climate change.
The question posed to Rubio was a valid one: “Why not take out an insurance policy, in case the science is right?” There should be no “in case” in this question; the fact that there are still people who deny the science is a bad omen for the future of our planet. If politicians, who millions of people look to for guidance and wisdom, choose to continue to deny climate change, the world may very well be doomed.
If we all really care if our children lead better lives than we do, we need action, and that starts with our leaders. It’s time we start putting our money where our mouth is, instead of back into our own pockets. It may be the difficult thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do.
Sebastian is a freshman majoring in environmental studies, history and journalism. What do you think of his thoughts? Do the sentiments of Republican presidential candidates, like Marco Rubio, on climate change trouble you? Is this just an overreaction? Did you have other thoughts on the debate? Please send all thoughts and comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
