Quote of the Day: Bernie Sanders on global warming deniers

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, this is what the independent Vermont senator said at a Senate hearing on Tuesday:

It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s. During that period of Nazism and fascism's growth -- a real danger to the United States and democratic countries around the world -- there were people in this country and in the British parliament who said "don't worry! Hitler's not real! It'll disappear!"

Well, we know how that turned out, don't we?

Sanders is being accused of hyperbole, of course, and worse, but to those of who live in reality and understand that, in EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's words, "[t]he science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming," his words ring true.

Given the possibility, and indeed likelihood, if nothing or not enough is done to curb climate change, of massive global catastrophe, including the deaths of millions and millions of people as the seas rise, freakish and destructive weather becomes more common, and civil society collapses in some of the most unstable parts of the planet, those who deny global warming, or who are euphemistically called "skeptics," are nothing more than enablers of future genocide.

Obviously, there is a qualitative difference between Hitler and the Nazis on the one hand and global warming on the other. But the denying, the refusal not just to do anything about but even to recognize the great danger that threatens us, is common to both situations.

And we will pay for it again, and on an even greater scale.