“The coal industry is an even larger part of the Australian economy than it is of the American, and it has an enormous amount of political power.”
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In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.
One thing you can say about nuclear power: the people who believe it is the silver bullet for America's energy problems never give up.
With nine degrees of warming, computer models project that Australia will look like a disaster movie. Habitats for most vertebrates will vanish. Water supply to the Murray-Darling Basin will fall by half, severely curtailing food production.
Americans don't pay much attention to environmental issues, because they aren't sexy. I mean, cleaning up coal plants and reining in outlaw frackers is hugely important work, but it doesn't get anybody's pulse racing.
