REAGAN’S SEC-STATE AFFIRMS CLIMATE FIGHT

Reagan Man Gone Solar Is Hint of a Thaw in U.S. Climate Debate

Alex Nussbaum, Mark Chediak and Zain Shauk Decedmber 1, 2014 (Bloomberg News)

“As Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz faced off against Muammar Qaddafi, the Soviet Union and Chinese communists…His latest cause, though, is one few fellow Republicans support: fighting climate change…Shultz, now a distinguished fellow at Stanford University, said the reality was driven home for him…[when] Gary Roughead, the U.S. Navy’s retired chief of naval operations…shared a time-lapse video of the Arctic ice cap shrinking over the last quarter-century…Opinion surveys show…[37 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of all Americans] believe there’s solid evidence the earth is warming…Republicans who buck the climate view within their party say they’re motivated by signs that the greenhouse effect is no longer an abstract threat…

“The concerns make for a natural alliance between national-security hawks concerned about energy independence and climate activists who want to reduce heat-trapping pollution from fossil fuels, Shultz said…In June, he joined Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican, in signing onto a bipartisan report that said a warmer climate could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses. Hank Paulson, George W. Bush’s former treasury secretary, was another signatory…Shultz, a former University of Chicago economics professor, supports a system to reduce emissions through a revenue neutral tax on fossil fuels that would recycle the money collected back to citizens in the form of a carbon dividend check…The consequences of not acting could affect more than just the environment, he said. It could involve national security as well, creating new political, health and social threats globally…” click here for more

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