As it is wont to do, Fox & Friends spent Thursday morning breathlessly aghast, this time because of a two-day-old Bernie Sanders tweet about the horrific effects of climate change.
But fret not, Friends: A guest of the show reports that carbon-based fuels “actually improve the environment.”
Marc Morano, who founded the conservative news site ClimateDepot.com on the ideals of “climate realism,” which disputes the scientific consensus on fossil fuels contributing to climate change, laughed and called Sanders “silly” for writing that politicians today must “look at climate change as if it were a devastating military attack against the United States and the entire planet.”
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Co-host Brian Kilmeade prompted: “What does he plan on doing?”
“This is silly,” scoffed Morano, whose site is notably funded by a secretive channel called Donors Trust that backs a number of right-wing organizations that oppose environmental regulations. “We’re going to treat now carbon dioxide, a trace-essential gas… as somehow akin to the Nazi Party and a World War II initiative? Which is what they’re claiming—they want a mobilization like World War II. Here’s the bottom line: This has nothing to do with fighting an enemy.”
Kilmeade asked how Morano views movements from politicians like Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), who published a New York Times op-ed last month asking that the planet “cut carbon through innovation, not regulation.”
Morano responded: “Everyone’s for energy efficiency for a clean environment. Oddly, the more carbon-based fuels you can introduce into the developing world—Africa, South America, Asia—the cleaner the environment gets. You have less people burning dung in their huts, you have less people dumping sewage into the rivers because you get infrastructure.”
“So carbon-based fuels actually improve the environment,” he continued. “And beyond that, everyone wants efficiency, but you don’t ban energy that works and mandate energy that’s not ready for prime time.”
In fact, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and too much of it (which we have) will likely kill us.
“We’re adding too much to the atmosphere too quickly for many living things to adapt,” Slate explained in 2016. “If this were happening over millions or even hundreds of thousands of years as it has in the past, the Earth, and humans, could possibly cope. But the changes we are making are incredibly rapid, and that’s their danger; the rate at which we are heating the planet is unprecedented.”
A report from the National Climate Assessment, released last month by the federal government, concluded that we need to fight climate change aggressively—and soon—in order “to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”
