Memo to Marco Rubio: Ignoring and denying reality does not negate said reality

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) dismissed the idea that the U.S. government could do anything to combat climate change Wednesday, the day after he gave the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union…. “The government can’t change the weather. I said that in the speech. We can pass a bunch of laws that will destroy our economy, but it isn’t going to change the weather,” Rubio said on Fox and Friends, as part of a series of interviews on the morning shows following his response Tuesday. “Because, for example, there are other countries that are polluting in the atmosphere much greater than we are at this point — China, India, all these countries that are still growing. They’re not going to stop doing what they’re doing…. “America is a country, it’s not a planet,” he continued. “So we can pass a bunch of laws or executive orders that will do nothing to change the climate or the weather but will devastate our economy. Devastate it!”

I’m not going to insult Rubio by calling him stupid; he’s anything but. That said, how someone so ostensibly intelligent can believe something so demonstrably wrong defies rational understanding. Being anti-science because it doesn’t mesh with the GOP’s pre-approved talking points doesn’t negate the validity of the ample scientific proof that global climate change is real. It’ real; ignoring said reality because it doesn’t support the dominant narrative doesn’t make it any less real.

It may be inconvenient for the GOP’s rabidly pro-business agenda to accept the truth about global climate change, so the simple solution to that problem is to deny it’s validity. Never mind that between 97-98% of 1,372 climate scientists surveyed agree that mankind’s irresponsibility is doing irreparable damage to the Earth’s climate. The result is more natural disasters of greater size and destructive capability. The melting of the polar ice caps, the rise in global CO2 levels, and the increasingly severity of adverse weather events should be enough to convince someone like Rubio that denying reality doesn’t render that empirical truth any less real. As Jonathan Chait breaks it down for Rubio, global climate change is actually a pretty simple concept:

1. The government has a bunch of rules that control how much coal, oil, and whatnot gets burned.
   

2. The more greenhouse gasses we burn, the warmer the climate gets. It’s science.
   

3. The warmer the climate gets, the more frequently we have extreme weather events. This is also science.

For someone who has leadership aspirations on a national level, Rubio’s refusal to recognize and accept that leadership means dealing with the world as it is, not as one would prefer it to be, is truly disturbing. Presiding over the continued demise of Earth’s climate and livability would seem to be something no aspiring leader would want to do. Rubio seems to believe that ignoring and denying global climate change will make the problem go away…or at the very least kick the can down the road. Ultimately, it will mean that America will be leading the parade when it comes to destroying the only planet we have.

Marco Rubio, for the sake of GOP propaganda and talking points, would fiddle while Rome burns. That makes me SO proud to be an American….