Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:10 pm
Let’s forget for a minute a Carly Fiorina who pretends to be a job creator when she is the woman who fired 18,000 people while running Hewlett-Packard. Let’s look at her stance on global warming, which is as meaningless a stance as her stance on job creation. It’s no wonder Fiorina’s numbers are rising among Republicans. They love this sort of thing.
So let’s look at some dirt – I mean “clean coal” – on Fiorina: Back in May, at the start of her campaign, Carly Fiorina was asked by Katie Couric if she thought global warming was a serious issue.
Fiorina answered that “I think it’s an issue. I think we ought to be focusing our time, energy and resources on innovations. We need to keep it in perspective.” Pressed by Couric, she said that far more dangerous is “The fact our government is a vast, bloated, unaccountable, corrupt bureaucracy.”
Couric: What’s your position on global warming?
Fiorina: Well, you know I think we have to read all of the fine print, so every one of the scientists who tell us that climate change is real and being caused by man-made activity, also tell us that a single nation acting alone can make no difference at all. So when I see a state like California destroy lives and livelihoods with environmental regulations that will make no difference at all to climate change, when I see the Obama administration take that same regulation and apply it nationally – it will make no differ at all, and yet we’re destroying peoples’ lives and livelihoods. I wonder why are we doing this. Why are we doing this when it won’t have any impact, so I think the answer to this problem is innovation not regulation. But I must say it angers me when liberals say I’m prepared for you to lose your job in the name of sending a signal to whom? China? In fact, China is delighted that we are not spending any time or energy figuring out clean coal because they’re going to go do it.”
Couric: So ideally what should be done, what could be done to attack this issue?
Fiorina: Well I think we have to focus on innovation. You have to focus on innovation. So we have to focus on how to make coal cleaner. Look, coal provides half the energy in this nation still, not to mention around the world, so to say we’re going to basically outlaw coal, which is what this innovation has done, is so self-defeating. It destroys jobs, it destroys communities, it’s not helping us and it’s not helping global warming so let’s get on with innovation about how to make sure that we actually have clean coal technology. The Chinese will do it if we don’t.”
Fiorina insisted we have to tell people the truth about the science. The only problem is that she said this after telling Americans a whole bunch of lies about the science.
It is, for example, far from the truth to say that the United States is the only country combating global warming. Many countries are engaged in the war to save our planet, and some of them are doing much more than Americans are (Germany, Brazil, Denmark, and China come to mind). To say efforts in California have no meaning is a complete fabrication.
And China and clean coal? Actually, as CBCNews told us last year, China “has the highest installed wind-energy capacity and is among the leading producers of solar panels.” Sorry, Carly.
Fiorina is saying that since we can’t do anything, we shouldn’t do anything at all. She wants to absolutely nothing about global warming but chase the chimera of “clean coal” when, as Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s Global Warming and Energy Program, said over a decade ago, “There is no such thing as clean coal and there never will be. It’s an oxymoron.”
We didn’t have clean coal then. We don’t have clean coal now. We’re never going to have clean coal because coal is dirty. And Republicans won’t let us even attack the emissions, so basically, when Fiorina talks about innovation, what Fiorina is really talking about is maintenance of the status quo: let’s keep polluting.
As Heather Taylor-Miesle, the Director, NRDC Action Fund wrote at Huffington Post in 2012, when she looked at the record of what Fiorina calls “innovation” with regards clean coal,
“I see politicians who want to ensure that coal never has to get cleaner…Senator Inhofe gets his way, mercury at these power plants would spew forth into our families and our environment, without limits, forever.” Without regulation requiring change – regulations Fiorina and other Republicans vehemently oppose – there will be no change.
And that’s what Fiorina wants, a solution based on a false premise: We can’t do anything anyway, so let’s party like it’s 1999.
If lying about the Obama administration’s approach to coal wasn’t enough, Fiorina then went on to attack wind turbines as being responsible for killing millions of birds, and solar energy, which “requires water” and how there isn’t water in a lot of regions. In fact, solar requires very little water. And to use Fiorina’s logic, we should do away with coal power, because even by the most pessimistic estimates, coal uses more water than any other energy source, including solar. And, you know, some regions just don’t have water.
Basically, Fiorina embraces the Republican approach to all our world’s problems: We can’t do anything about the things we need to do something about, so let’s invent a some problems do a bunch of stuff about things that we don’t really need to worry about.
Couric is to be lauded for talking about global warming as a done deal repeatedly throughout the interview. However, to fail to challenge Fiorina on even basic facts is inexcusable.
Asked by Katie Couric if she thinks global warming is a serious issue, Carly Fiorina showed why she was fired by Hewlett-Packard: a complete lack of mastery of the facts. Or rather, the embrace of a bunch of talking points that have no relationship at all to the truth. Of course, you won’t find the media pointing out her firing. They prefer to cite her time there as valuable experience.
Go figure the mainstream media’s take from this interview is that Couric was sexist when she asked Fiorina about running for vice president, you know, because she’s a woman. Where was the outrage over Fiorina’s lies about the environment and our ability to do anything about global warming?
The problem with Fiorina is that she comes across as reasonable. But no matter how soft-spoken and reasonable-sounding is her approach to questions, if you compare her to Donald Trump, you see that she is working from the same knowledge base. That is, no knowledge at all, but rather wishful thinking. Like the House of Representatives, a lot of talk and no action.
“I think it is frankly ridiculous for the Obama administration to call ISIS a strategic distraction, and then go on to say that climate change is the single most pressing national security issue of our time,” Fiorina lamented.
ISIL is a strategic distraction compared to having breathable air, drinkable water, and eatable food. And let’s not even mention – forget that, let’s mention the paradox of the anti-big government Fiorina wanting a government big enough to police the world while ignoring the basic necessities of life for all the billions on this planet.
That sort of short-sighted thinking is what gets people fired. Robert Cihra, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners analyzed her firing by saying that, “The Street had lost all faith in her and the market’s hope is that anyone will be better.”
To use Donald Trump’s language, Fiorina was a disaster. And that should be the epithet to any talk of a Carly Fiorina presidency: “Anyone will be better.”
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