Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson has waffled quite a bit on the climate change issue, finally settling this week on a pretty hilarious stance: there’s no real reason to spend government resources on trying to slow global warming because eventually, the earth will be enveloped by the white-hot heat of the expanding sun.
Hoo boy.
He’s not wrong, he’s just forgetting a few billion years of possible human habitation time between then and now.
The sun expanding as it grows into a red giant in its natural lifespan of a star is something that will eventually affect the earth and any of its unfortunate inhabitants, but scientists say that won’t happen for another five billion years. Considering that our planet is only about four and a half billion years old, and that humans have only inhabited the earth for about 200,000 years, another five billion years is a whole lot to work with.
In that time, scientists have hypothesized that humanity could discover how to efficiently explore space, eventually removing humanity from the earth completely, if need be.
But nah, let’s just listen to the guy who doesn’t want a dollar of taxes taken from Americans and put toward anything at all, much less measures to save the planet and humanity as a whole.
Because we’ll all die someday, right? What’s the use of trying to keep our species going at all? In fact, hell, I’m sure Gary would agree with just killing off the entire human population NOW to save us all some trouble.
See what happens when you say stupid, reductionist things like that? It’s funny, but it’s also incredibly stupid. But then again, we are talking about Gary Johnson here.
You can read more about Johnson’s climate change beliefs at Mother Jones.
