It just goes to show, no matter the issue, the Cult of Climastrology will find a way to insert their dogma into the mix, including the Sore Loser Symphony
The electoral college is thwarting our ability to battle global warming
Who (you might ask) is David Brearley?
Brearley plays a critical, and entirely accidental, role in climate change because of his position as the chair of the Committee on Postponed Parts within the Constitutional Convention of 1787. While drafting the U.S. Constitution, the convention left several “sticky questions†to Brearley’s Committee, such as the manner by which U.S. presidents would be elected. Brearley and the Committee were stuck between two difficult choices: election by the U.S. Congress or election by the voting public. The committee opted for a middle ground solution – an electoral college that would vote on behalf of the citizens, but which would be populated based on the number of congressional seats assigned to each State in the Union.
It is this solution, brilliant at the time, that leads us to Brearley’s legacy on climate change. Because over the course of the last 200 plus years, the electoral college, which provides for stronger voting power per person in more rural and less populated states, has elected four U.S. presidents who clearly lost the popular vote (1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016). Two of those elections have occurred during the period in which we have known about the causes and impacts of carbon dioxide emissions and climate change and in both cases, the impacts of those elections have very likely had profound impacts on our actions to address the challenge.
We are then treated to a whine about George Bush winning over Gore (the same Bush who had a smaller carbon footprint than Gore), and how he refused to engage in Warmist policy, moving on to
In contrast, Al Gore went on to fame and a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to raise awareness of climate change. We cannot, of course, rewrite history to see how a Gore presidency would have helped to curb our current climate crisis. It is possible that President Gore would have struggled to pass meaningful initiatives against a reluctant Congress for example, but it seems safe to assume that a Gore administration would have constituted a stronger response to the threat of climate change.
He lost. Get over it. Furthermore, if Gore really cares, why is his carbon footprint so huge? And why does he lie so much?
Which brings us to November, 2016. Once again, the electoral college system has elected a U.S. president in opposition to the popular vote in the form of Donald Trump. Hindsight in four years will tell us of the legacy of the Trump administration on climate change, but, despite a recent pledge to keep an “open mind†on the subject, the statements and commitments from the administration to date provide strong reasons for anticipating which way he’ll go.
It’s the same silly argument from people who fail to understand the Constitution nor the way the system of a federal republic was set up, while bringing ‘climate change’ into the mix. Eric Worrell notes
Both candidates knew the rules. Nobody would have given Trump any quarter if he won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college. Trump campaigned to win, under the rules of the system as it stood. Hillary made plenty of mistakes – she reportedly derided her husband Bill Clinton, when he warned her she needed to spend more time chasing rural voters, rural voters who ultimately swung their support behind Donald Trump.
Who knows what would have happened with a different system. What we do know is that, if we went with a popular vote system and Hillary lost, Warmists and Progressives as a whole would find a way to whine. It’s what they do.
