It is hard to ignore the race for the Republican nomination for the American President from here in Toronto. After South Carolina’s primary the fight appears to be among a blowhard billionaire, a God-spouting anti-science conservative, and a Florida rookie senator still trying to figure out for what he stands. Whomever emerges to be the Republican nominee, the three have proven to be the least science-aware candidates to run for the high office of President since George W. Bush. In fact Bush looks like a genius compared to these three. In a post COP21 world, where America must take the lead in carbon reduction if humanity is going to meet its target global warming limit of a 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) limit, that is not a good thing.

Let’s look at the three and some of the things they have said.

Donald Trump has described climate change as a “tax grab.” He has used Twitter to espouse his opinions on the subject describing global warming as “non-existent,” “mythical,” a “hoax,” and those are just the polite words used. When President Obama, before the COP21 Paris meetings, described climate change as one of the greatest threats the United States has ever had to face, Trump stated it was one of the “dumbest things” a President has ever said. Here’s the full quote, “I think one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics — in the history of politics as I know it, which is pretty good, was Obama’s statement that our No. 1 problem is global warming,”

Ted Cruz, who as Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, has demonstrated he has little grasp of scientific evidence, nor an understanding of geologic time. He ignores evidence with abandon or shapes different facts into an anti-science argument to pander to his religious and political constituency. Hence carbon dioxide isn’t a problem because the world has seen higher levels of it in the past (millions of years ago with a significantly different climate than today). Sea ice levels in the Arctic and Antarctic get mixed into a single bowl of misunderstanding. And saving the best for last he has stated, “It doesn’t matter that 97% of scientists agree about climate change, because 97% of scientists said the sun rotated around the earth in the 1600s.” So much for the emergence of the scientific method, experimentation, and validation checking that has began in the 17th century. And this from the guy who heads up a science committee.

Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, believes climate change is real. Or he doesn’t depending on the time of day. He once backed a cap-and-trade resolution as a Florida state legislator. But not now. For him any carbon reduction strategies whether a tax or cap are job destroying. He is fond of saying “I’m not a scientist” concomitant with any remarks he makes about global warming. It would be funny if he weren’t representing the state of Florida, probably the first area of the United States to feel the full impact of climate change in the coming decades. Rubio believes “our hands are tied.” Nothing can be done to reverse climate trends. In a February 1, 2016 article published in Mother Jones, the headline reads, “Florida is Sinking. Where is Marco Rubio?” Hard to tell where the senator is other than this one quote from a Republican presidential debate in which he states, “We’re not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate….We’re not going to destroy our economy the way our left-wing government wants us to do. America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely. But America is not a planet.”

On the Democratic side one can breathe a sigh of relief. Whether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders emerge as the nominee, science and evidence based reasoning will still have its place in the American political process.

I sat down this week to watch President Obama give the American State of the Union speech. In it he acknowledged the need for action on climate change.

Then I watched the Republican response and the spin that ensued on the Fox Network. There was Senator Marco Rubio, the future of the Republican Party, dismissing any notion of government action on the climate file.

Rubio told Fox News:

“The government can’t change the weather. I said that in the speech. We can pass a bunch of laws that will destroy our economy, but it isn’t going to change the weather.” He went on further to state, “America is a country, it’s not a planet…..So we can pass a bunch of laws or executive orders that will do nothing to change the climate or the weather but will devastate our economy. Devastate it!”

Rubio pointed to other countries in the blame game.

The United States, in his mind, is absolved from doing anything because India and China are growing and polluting even more than America.

What he doesn’t seem to know is that both those countries have implemented carbon cap and trade regulations to control emissions.

What he didn’t acknowledge is that although China emits more CO2 into the atmosphere than the United States, its footprint per capita is significantly less than America with a population four times greater.

And what he didn’t acknowledge or seem to know is that China is building renewable energy infrastructure at a pace that makes the American effort look pretty weak.

That’s because Rubio doesn’t live in a real world, like so many of his Republican colleagues.

He’s still not convinced that climate change is a real problem. In a recent interview this spokesperson for the GOP, and leading candidate to run for the presidency in 2016, stated that climate change was not a proven fact.

I quote, “I know people said there’s a significant scientific consensus on that issue, but I’ve actually seen reasonable debate on that principle.”

Reasonable debate? What the heck is he talking about….some blogger who is in the back pocket of big polluters?

You can listen to the “Great Latino Hope” of the Republican Party and his comments on Fox News and truly understand that once again, the GOP leadership is out-of-touch with planetary realities. Senator Rubio and his GOP brain trust are the proverbial ostriches, burying their heads in the sand and thinking that whatever peril exists is not part of their reality.

The President in his speech urged the Congress of the United States to pass a market-based solution for climate change.

What did he mean? A solution similar to the one that President George Bush was able to sign off on to deal with controlling pollutants causing acid rain, a cap and trade system.

Imagine, a Republican President in the last century having the vision to address a problem with  a solution that altered behaviour by rewarding emitters who reduced their pollution footprint and punishing those financially who didn’t.

The President also stated that the United States must go “all-in on clean energy.” This while his GOP opposition and some brain dead members of his own party were trying to railroad the licensing of three new coal-fired power plants prior to the State of the Union address. Let’s hope those licensing initiatives are now dead and buried.

The President also proposed a trust fund using oil and gas royalty revenues that the federal government collects with the plan to use the billions it would amass to get the United States off fossil fuels.

Even President George W. Bush, a Republican, acknowledged during his presidency that the United States needed to wean itself off fossil fuels. But I don’t see even this limited vision being part and parcel of Republican leadership these days.

Under the influence of the uninformed and the clueless, and with the Tea Party in its midst, the GOP has become the party of the stupid.

And the picture below is of the leading light who they have chosen to proclaim their message of willful ignorance.

Thus ends my rant!