In the US Republican primary debate, moderators ask for a show of hands of how many candidates believe in human-caused climate change. Not a single candidate raises their hand.

It’s honestly like someone comes up to you and tells you that you have to win class president for the local kindergarten.

You’d love to talk about stuff like human rights or healthcare but you know that if you want to win the election you need to promise them longer naps and candy every Monday.

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Remember how Governor Wallace said, "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"?

What most people don't know is that decades later, he went to a lot of work to try to undo the damage he caused and advocate for civil rights. The problem was, the damage had been done a lot of it. Very real people have had their lives injured. He egged on voters into bigotry longer than they needed to be.

I can't help but feel that the last 10 years or so, we've been watching the same thing. All of this is going to age like milk. Future (and even current) generations suffering (or who will soon suffer) the effects of the climate crisis, are going to universally find moments like tonight universally outrageous.

History won't be written by baby Boomers. It's going to be written by the gen alpha kids who will be the adults when we're old and gone.

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It won't be written by anyone if we can't pry these greedy scumbags from power.

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- Time to start building the guillotines.
  
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I can’t help but feel that the last 10 years or so

This climate denialism has been going on much longer than that. For as long as there's been profit in damaging the environment, there's denialism about that damage. In many ways our whole capitalistic western culture is and has always been environmental denialism ... it's the cultural air we've been breathing since we were all born.

And yes ... completely agree with you ... our, and our parents' generation are going to age like fine milk ... we're going to look toddlers that had technology and the ability to great things right in our hands but instead shat our pants and broke everything we touched because of stupidity we had not yet grown out of, because a better parent should not have given us this technology yet until we'd grown up more.

My personal take on this is that all the generations of modernity will be lumped together in this way as the period in which humanity's reach truly exceeded its grasp. Modern warfare, Fascism, Nuclear weapons, modern capitalism, the internet and mass-(dis-)information. Collectively, we'll look pretty foolish and dumb when looking back, like a people that didn't know how to actually think about what we were doing collectively.

It'll also be interesting to think about our cultural thinking process struggled to keep up with our technological progress. The comical image I have in my mind is a toddler quickly going from grabbing a swallowable piece of Lego, to a knife, to an electric saw to a lightsaber before the babysitter realises that they really need to intervene. And so that toddler will grow up without a left foot always wondering how in the hell the world let them have a lightsaber as a 2 year old.

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- To a capitalist, a forest has no value until it’s cut down.
  
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- Direct climate change has been a past couple of decades issue, but damaging nature for profit has existed for as long as we have had the tools to do so.
  
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I wonder if they have any sense of how history will judge them and if it hunts them at night. They are probably to mutch involved in their daily power struggles but I would like to think that their time of reflection will come. Not every politician can be such an ignorant narcist like the orange clown, right?

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I find it to be outrageous now, no need for future generations looking back to fulfill that prophecy. What's most outrageous is that I'm pretty sure they all know the truth, it's just politically unfashionable for them to admit it.

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- In general I try not to attribute something to malice if it is better explained by stupidity.
  
  These clowns are stretching my faith in that
  
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He egged on voter longer than they needed to be? How long did they need to be egged on?

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Don't bury the lede! One outright called it a hoax.

“I’m the only candidate on stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this,” Ramaswamy said, though he caught some shade. “Climate change is a hoax … The reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”

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I don't understand how such pure evil became mainstream for 30-40% of the US population.

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- Because accepting the truth means accepting that unless we take radical, almost certainly financially painful action, we're all fucked. It's easier to pretend that everything is ok. At least until we start starving.
  
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- Admitting being wrong is weak and unmanly.
  
  These are the same people who buy massive trucks and hang "balls" on them to out-manly the next guy.
  
  These are the same people who beat their sons when they see them "crying like a woman".
  
  These are people who would rather see their children's friends shot at school than admit that maybe they have an unhealthy relationship with guns.
  
  Toxic masculine stupidity.
  
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- Because 30-40% of the US population have the IQ of broccoli.
  
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- Have you heard what they preach in church? It's long been a poison from backing slavery using the Bible to more race issues and turning people against their families and pushing people to vote certain ways.
  
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- Society is leaving them behind for good reason and they're lashing out
  
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- money and disinformation campaigns that support getting money
  
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Wtf? I thought his stance last week was that climate change was real, but it can only be solved by unfettered capitalism?

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- I'm thankful this is my first exposure to him. The cheers he got were somewhat horrifying though.
  
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If he isn't bought and paid for by the fossil fuel lobbies, then he admits to being a complete idiot.

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I love how this is the first post on any social media that I've seen about this "debate." Willful stupidity is going to kill us all

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Just like Oceangate...

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To be fair, Desantis immediately interrupted and said they weren’t going to raise their hands “like children”. No candidate would raise their hand after a comment like that. All their specific answers were certainly not climate friendly, but they are at least a little bit more nuanced than the title implies

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Desantis didn’t have an issue raising his hand when the question was whether they would support Trump should he receive the nomination.

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- “Pick me daddy trump! Did you see how fast I raised my hand?”
  
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- Desantis didn’t have an issue raising his hand
  
  I didn’t watch. Was it akin to a Bellamy salute?
  
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- He had probably already gotten his bit out of the way and didn’t know what to do hahaha
  
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That's not nuance, that's an excuse.

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- That definitely still demonstrates a ride or die mentality. If one sleaseball can sway the room in such a way where than budging against it would lead to ridicule, that still shows the sort of internal pressure there is to tow the party line no matter what
  
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- it's definitely still nuance lol
  
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And the dude on the far right of the stage started to, but then quickly lowered it when he saw there would be no vote.

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At least we seem to be progressing past the point we were at when Senator James Inhofe literally carried a snowball into the Senate as irrefutable proof that climate change isn't real

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But then some of them did on later questions, so... take that for what you will.

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"How dare you request common human behavior from us!"

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Brawndo, has what plants crave!

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I would 100% vote for President Camacho over any of these ass hats

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Because corporations and the media mouthpieces they fund know more about climate change than, you know, the scientists who actually study it.

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American politics is such a god damn nightmare. It's not going to end well there.

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Things are not well. You think it can get worse but we are still maybe 5 years away from realizing it was over 7 years ago.

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"I reject your reality and substitute it with my own!" -Vivek Ramaswamy, probably

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American politics isn't confined to America. Vote for Republicans so their climate plans can kill us all here in the Philippines with typhoons.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duJKvDndclQ&t=74s

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There's hope apparently

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