Van Jones: Republicans Want to Kill Children; We Need to Challenge Them on Their Sanity

Joe Schoffstall
MRCTV
4/26/2012

On April 19, 2012, President Obama’s former Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, appeared on the YouTube based show The Point and delivered a message saying Republicans who attack the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) want to kill children and their sanity must be challenged.

Jones says, “Anybody who says they are willing to kill American children, put them into the ground, poison our children for a job, we need to challenge them and their sanity.”

The full transcript is at MRCTV.

And speaking of warfare evidently that is how the President sees the upcoming election, rather than as a contest of ideals, values and vision, as evidenced in his recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Ready for the Fight: Rolling Stone Interview with Barack Obama.

There’s just so much in the interview with which we could take issue, but here is one small example:

James Hansen, NASA’s leading climate scientist, has said this about the Keystone pipeline: that if the pipeline goes through and we burn tar sands in Canada, it’s “game over” for the planet. What’s your reaction to that statement?

James Hansen is a scientist who has done an enormous amount not only to understand climate change, but also to help publicize the issue. I have the utmost respect for scientists. But it’s important to understand that Canada is going to be moving forward with tar sands, regardless of what we do. That’s their national policy, they’re pursuing it. With respect to Keystone, my goal has been to have an honest process, and I have adamantly objected to Congress trying to circumvent a process that was well-established not just under Democratic administrations, but also under Republican administrations.

The reason that Keystone got so much attention is not because that particular pipeline is a make-or-break issue for climate change, but because those who have looked at the science of climate change are scared and concerned about a general lack of sufficient movement to deal with the problem. Frankly, I’m deeply concerned that internationally, we have not made as much progress as we need to make. Within the constraints of this Congress, we’ve tried to do a whole range of things, administratively, that are making a difference – doubling fuel-efficiency standards on cars is going to take a whole lot of carbon out of our atmosphere. We’re going to continue to push on energy efficiency, and renewable energy standards, and the promotion of green energy. But there is no doubt that we have a lot more work to do.

Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people’s number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices. In that environment, it’s been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science. I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way. That there’s a way to do it that is entirely compatible with strong economic growth and job creation – that taking steps, for example, to retrofit buildings all across America with existing technologies will reduce our power usage by 15 or 20 percent. That’s an achievable goal, and we should be getting started now. [emphasis CAJ]

Where to begin…?

Read the whole thing.

Update: We remembered this from the interview:

Do you read Paul Krugman?

I read all of the New York Times columnists. Krugman’s obviously one of the smartest economic reporters out there, but I also read some of the conservative columnists, just to get a sense of where those arguments are going. There are a handful of blogs, Andrew Sullivan’s on the Daily Beast being an example, that combine thoughtful analysis with a sampling of lots of essays that are out there. The New Yorker and The Atlantic still do terrific work. Every once in a while, I sneak in a novel or a nonfiction book.

Then we remembered this from the University of Common Sense on Facebook:

Genius!!! Oh, wait…

We verified the quote at Business Insider.

Update 2Green Activists Boot Jesse Watters From Festival After He Confronts Commie Van Jones (Video)

Comments are closed.

Categories