While fundraising in the Seattle-area yesterday, President Obama claimed that the “wildfire that has burned nearly 400 square miles in the north-central part of Washington state, along with blazes in other Western areas, can be attributed to climate change.” Obama said of the wildfires,
“A lot of it has to do with drought, a lot of it has to do with changing precipitation patterns and a lot of that has to do with climate change.”
Meanwhile, at the 2014 Constitutional Convention of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC), AFL-CIO in Wenatchee, union members were bombarded with another climate change message. According to The Stand, the “reoccurring” theme of the conference was that union members should embrace, rather than reject, extreme climate change policies. The Stand,
Unions should not consider efforts to address climate change as a threat to their jobs. Instead, they should recognize the dire necessity for solutions and have a seat at the table to shape policies in ways that protect existing jobs and create new ones in emerging clean-energy industries.
During his opening speech, WSLC President Jeff Johnson matched Obama’s message of the day and linked natural disasters to climate change. The Stand,
“We know how income inequality threatens our prosperity, but climate disruption is also a clear and present danger to our prosperity,” said WSLC President Jeff Johnson in his opening speech, adding that in 2011 and 2012 extreme weather disasters linked to climate change had inflicted more than $188 billion in damages in the United States alone. “And the fact is that those who have done the least to cause climate change, working people and our children and grandchildren, will suffer the most from its impacts.”
This isn’t the first and it won’t be the last time the left attributed natural disasters to climate change. Interestingly, from a liberal strategic point-of-view, the way Johnson linked natural disasters to climate change is far more effective than Obama’s assertion. The Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think-tank, writes,
“… liberals and conservatives respond to fear-based appeals about climate change differently. Efforts, for example, to link current natural disasters to climate change motivate liberals and environmentalists, but alienate moderates and conservatives.
On a positive note, many studies show that framing climate solutions around technological and economic progress and solutions increases belief in global warming.”
All this to say that we can expect to see more of Johnson’s method of pushing the natural disaster-climate change link, and less of Obama’s, in the future. But given how well Obama’s line works with wealthy liberal donors, like California billionaire Tom Steyer, expect the President to ignore science and exploit fear-mongering for the rest of his time raising money, err, in office.
