Specific treaties or protocols must be judged on their merits. They do not command automatic support. Nevertheless, conservatives tend to be skeptical of international agreements that commit signatories to action. They consider them threats to American sovereignty. The other day, Del. Scott Lingamfelter, a candidate for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor, warned that United Nations’ efforts, supported by the Obama administration, to combat “so-called global warming” assault the rights of Virginians. Republicans who rail against one-world policies are not noted for proposing homegrown plans to address the reality of climate change.

The Republican anti-response to the threat of climate change highlights the degree to which a once-proud political party is trapped in an ideological double-bind, captive to the tea-party extremism which helped them in the 2010 election, and which now dominates their primary process. Only the most extreme views — on climate, on health care, on gun control, on anything — can pass muster with their anti-reality core constituency.

While the GOP has always been ready to indulge a strain of anti-intellectual populism when it was politically expedient, its doctrinal rejection of climatological expertise is both scientifically and politically foolish. Scientifically — because the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists are in absolute agreement on the factuality and human origins of the accelerating greenhouse effect; politically — because a significant majority of the American people are in agreement that climate change poses a genuine threat that warrants robust and meaningful government action.

Warren Senders

South Dakota in 2050 will have longer growing seasons, milder winters and more extreme weather events if national weather experts are correct in analyzing the effects of greenhouse gases on climate warming.

What will warming bring to the state? Growing seasons will stretch longer. There will be fewer subzero-degree days in the winter and snow won’t stick around as long. Storms will be more extreme, dumping significant amounts of snow and rain but unleashing precipitation less often.

South Dakota’s not alone. The whole planet is finding out that climate change is an abstraction no longer, but a radically disruptive fact. If the weather’s too unpredictable, agriculture becomes impossible, and even the most robust infrastructure can be damaged or destroyed by extreme storms. Once-fertile land turns arid and unproductive under drought conditions, while rising sea levels may simply wipe some island nations off the map completely.

Although the accelerating climate crisis is irrevocably altering lives all over the planet, in the offices of Senate and Congressional Republicans, it’s making no impact at all. These plush chambers aren’t just air-conditioned against the heat — thanks to fossil-fuel corporations, they’re also cash-conditioned against the facts. Anti-science conservatives may come from different parts of the country, but ultimately they all represent the same state of denial. In a time of planetary emergency, South Dakota — and the world — deserves better.

Warren Senders