Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

OTHER VOICES:

The walrus and the politicians

Let’s consider the walrus crisis.

They’re piling up in Alaska. About 35,000 walruses have formed what looks to be a humongous brown ball along the northern coast. A mass of critters, some weighing 4,000 pounds, are pressed shoulder to shoulder — or flipper to flipper.

Normally, they’d be sitting on chunks of ice, periodically flopping into the water to hunt for snails and clams. But the ice has melted away, and now they’re stuck on land.

On the plus side, walruses are gregarious creatures who like to snuggle. The situation is, therefore, less dire than it would be if you had 35,000 extremely large human beings squashed together on a beach, competing for food. But they’re nervous.

“A Russian friend of mine said he saw a rabbit — or a tiny lemming — come near and it caused a stampede,” said Margaret Williams of the World Wildlife Fund. “Then the little calves get squished. It’s just so unnatural for them to be so close to one another.”

I believe we all would rather see the baby walruses in happier circumstances. Also, this is obviously the sign of worse times to come: melting ice, higher sea levels, warmer oceans, screwed-up weather patterns.

How should we react? Several options:

A) Adopt a walrus family! If every town pitches in, we’ll have this solved in a minute. They can eat 6,000 clams in a single meal, so we’ll have to be sure to stock up.

B) Take this as a signal to get really serious about global warming.

C) Let’s not get carried away. But maybe we could try to cut back on forest fires. Forest fires definitely make things hotter.

The last one is a somewhat snarky adaptation of the climate-change portion of an energy plan recently unveiled by Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, one of the Republican Party’s many presidential hopefuls. Louisiana does not suffer from a walrus problem. However, part of the state is sinking into the sea at a rather rapid rate, and you’d think he’d have some strong feelings about global warming.

No sirree. Jindal thinks climate change is just a “Trojan horse” for leftists who want to mess with freedom of choice. But there is, you know, the forest fire idea.

You’d think the people in charge of the states where climate change was wreaking the most havoc would be in the forefront of the battle to push it back. But no.

In Alaska, entire towns are beginning to disappear under the rising seas. Roads are buckling as the permafrost starts to melt. Polar bears, which used to like to hang out on those ice floes themselves, are land bound, hungry and on the prowl.

Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, has been forthright about the terrible impact climate change has had while slightly dodgy about exactly what he wants to do to about it. His opponent, Dan (“the jury’s out”) Sullivan isn’t sure exactly what the heck is going on. He assured one Alaska newspaper “there is no concrete scientific consensus on the extent to which humans contribute to climate change.”

Actually, there’s a pretty good consensus. A vast majority of climate scientists say human beings are causing all or part of the changes in climate that are making life miserable for the walrus and destroying the bayou country in Louisiana.

Also, causing the drains in Miami Beach to back up with saltwater, sending the ocean running down the streets. Florida has its own Republican presidential hopeful in Sen. Marco Rubio.

“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he told ABC News.

(Jeb Bush is from Florida, too. For the record, Bush’s opinion on global warming is that it “may be real.”)

There was a time when Republicans were leaders in the fight to slow climate change — particularly for the concept called “cap and trade,” which had a marketplace-friendly tilt. Among the co-sponsors of a cap-and-trade bill in 2007 was Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. Murkowski is now an independent, having lost her party’s nomination in 2010 to a Tea Party favorite who complains about “climate-change alarmists.”

These days, it takes courage for a Republican to acknowledge human beings have anything to do with climate change at all.

“If you felt that was a big problem, you would think everybody in the world would be interested in going down this path, but I don’t see any evidence of it so far,” said the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, helpfully.

Pressed on the issue during a recent interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer, the man who hopes to become majority leader of the Senate next year said staunchly: “I’m not a scientist.”

Also on the record as not being a scientist: Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, and Rubio. Florida is absolutely awash in backed-up ocean water and elected officials who are not scientists. Louisiana has a rapidly receding coastline and a governor who’s afraid of the energy industry. Alaska has drowning villages and a political establishment in denial.

We are the walrus.

Gail Collins is a columnist for The New York Times.

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