I just got thru watching the new Frontline special on the politics of climate change - Hot Politics - and although its not necessarily one of my favorite Frontline ever - Tankman anyone? - it is definitely worth a watch.
One moment in particular was worth passing along. At the end, they included segments with a number of different politicians and policymakers, each of whom was asked to provide thoughts on why so little had been done over the past 25 years. They were all interesting, but the one from Newt Gingrich was by far the most striking.
Here's one excerpt:
People on the right know they're against regulation, and they're against taxation, and they're against bigger government, so they don't want to think about it because the only answers they ever see are things they hate. People on the left know the environment's important, but their answers are all regulation, taxation and litigation. So you're caught in this gridlock.
And here's an even shorter version:
Because the left insists on paying, and the right insists on avoidance
That's today's politics in a nutshell, isn't it? The right wants to avoid and ignore our problems, while the left insist on both solving them and paying for it. I see the problem with the former, but the later? Even Gingrich never quite made it clear what the problem was.
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