It's Comical To Say John Boehner Knows What He's Talking About

Sadly, the Minority Leader of House Republicans is not the first to relate global warming to cow farts, although when Crazy Dana Rohrabacher did it I believe he used dinosaur flatulence as the example instead.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That's my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you've got more carbon dioxide.

This is just comically wrong, and we can all laugh about it, but this is dangerous to our future and our economy. As Joe Romm notes, "Anti-science conservatives are now the cement shoes on the American people, pulling us down into the ocean hot, acidic dead zone." If you want to know why we haven't progressed on renewable energy or fuel-efficient cars or green technologies, look no further. Here are some real-world consequences.

China’s leaders are investing $12.6 million every hour to green their economy. Other countries are equally energetic in their embrace of alternative energy technologies; they are setting targets and investing billions of dollars to spur the development of entirely new markets in wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, energy efficiency, high-speed rail, and other clean and innovative solutions to global warming.

The United States, too, is poised to transform its economy to create millions of new jobs and help create a cleaner, safer planet by investing in a green, renewable-energy based economy. The Obama administration wants to unleash the ingenuity of our private sector to rein in pollution and put millions of Americans back to work. Yet China is spending twice as much as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spends to lay the foundations for a green energy economy, despite the U.S. economy being 1.5 times as large as China’s. And across Europe and Asia, other governments have diversified their energy portfolios and encouraged entrepreneurs to start and expand clean and renewable energy companies.

As venture capitalist John Doerr recently pointed out in his testimony before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, “If you list today’s top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, American companies hold only 6 spots. That fact should worry us all.”

Read that whole thing. We're simply falling behind the rest of the world in the industry that will lead the 21st century. And know-nothing, status-quo obstructionist conservatives are the reason why. Clinging to the dirty industries of the past only makes us a fossil. I think the Obama Administration and most Democrats know this and want to fix it, but time is running out and anti-science troglodytes like John Boehner aren't helping. He says that his party has a plan but that plan merely is to obstruct any progress.

...Just to show you the sense of urgency here, one company wants to bury emissions under the ocean. And people are listening to them.