The New House Speaker Doesn’t Believe in Climate Change

In 2016, the yr new Republican Speaker of the Home Mike Johnson was first elected to Congress, there was main flooding throughout Louisiana in what was then referred to as the worst pure catastrophe since Superstorm Sandy. Whereas a lot of the excessive water was in southeastern Louisiana, there was additionally flooding on the Pink River in Shreveport, within the northwest a part of the state — the world Johnson represents.

There are structural the explanation why the flooding occurred: years of built-up silt in riverbeds that make water ranges increased, and the industrial and residential improvement of previously industrial city waterfronts like Shreveport’s.

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However these small modifications are solely compounded by the largest distinction in Louisiana and elsewhere throughout the nation, the place rivers are cresting increased and extra usually as a result of record-breaking storms: local weather change. 

Johnson, who’s now third in line to the Presidency, merely doesn’t consider in local weather change. 

And Black Individuals, who’re on the frontlines of the local weather disaster, have essentially the most to lose from additional delays to the form of complete local weather laws the nation wants, and Johnson is bound to dam — together with in majority-Black Shreveport.

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“The local weather is altering, however the query is, is it being attributable to pure cycles over the span of the Earth’s historical past? Or is it altering as a result of we drive S.U.V.s? I don’t consider within the latter. I don’t suppose that’s the first driver,” Johnson stated at a 2017 city corridor. In the meantime, the oil and fuel business contributes essentially the most cash to Johnson’s political campaigns.

When the Inexperienced New Deal was launched in Congress by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019, Johnson referred to as the plan “a thinly veiled try to implement the insurance policies that may usher in a brand new socialist society in America.”

Which, even when that will really be the case, doesn’t bode for the way forward for local weather coverage in the USA whereas he’s in a position to set Congress’s agenda. 

A former oil city within the northwestern a part of the state, Shreveport is the place Johnson was born, and is the principle inhabitants middle of his largely rural district. The crimson line map for Shreveport from the Thirties doesn’t embody most of the present waterfront neighborhoods, as they have been industrial on the time, however the few residential areas that did contact the river have been all redlined. 

One space that sits simply above the confluence of the Pink River and a tributary, contains the word, “the part is in what is called the river bottoms” — in different phrases, low-lying, flood-prone land. 

As we speak, census data present that space, in addition to practically all the metropolis’s waterfront neighborhoods, are predominantly Black.

When heavy rains from Hurricane Harvey as soon as once more despatched the Pink River over its banks in 2017, Johnson instructed The Each day Advertiser, “The scope of this catastrophe, they’re saying now, will likely be probably unprecedented.’’ 

It’s a phrase that will get thrown round quite a bit in response to pure disasters, unprecedented, and for good cause.

It’s not only a matter of opinion however of established local weather science that we have now already entered into an “uncharted” part of local weather change, and we’re right here because of human-related carbon emissions. However in case you can join all the unprecedented floods to a typical trigger (or refuse to take action), then there’s no necessity for a systemic resolution. 

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Within the case of Harvey flooding, the fiscally conservative Johnson instructed The Each day Advertiser that the federal government ought to have restricted roles, “however amongst these restricted roles is a catastrophe precisely like this,” and that federal cash ought to be made out there to communities like Shreveport. 

However what in regards to the ongoing catastrophe of the local weather disaster?

In 2020, Lousisana’s then-governor, John Bel Edwards, famous that “The 2016 floods have been a devastating reminder that Louisiana’s historic method to managing flood threat not works.” On the time, Bel Edwards was asserting $6.6 million in federal funding for flood-protection initiatives in Shreveport and the encompassing Caddo Parish. 

However the first piece of laws the Republican-dominated Congress handed underneath Johnson’s management scaled again federal efforts to scale back carbon emissions and struggle local weather change.

In Johnson’s first week on the job, Republican-backed laws slashed $5.5. billion from climate-related applications within the Inflation Discount Act. The cuts focused power effectivity incentives for home equipment and assist for greener constructing codes and chopped funding for the Power Division’s power effectivity and renewable power workplace.

“Home Republicans electing a champion of the fossil gas business who rejects local weather science and led efforts to undermine our democracy in working to overturn the 2020 election ought to shock nobody,” Sierra Membership Govt Director Ben Jealous stated in a press release. “It ought to concern us all that somebody with such excessive views and so beholden to the fossil gas business has such energy and affect throughout a time when daring motion is extra essential than ever.”