Jan Brewer

Gov. Jan Brewer is pulling Arizona out of the coalition of Western states and Canadian provinces trying to make some regional progress in limiting greenhouse gases. J.D. Hayworth is taking on John McCain in the Republican Senate primary (make your own gasbag jokes). For awhile, I worried Arizona might be denied what I call "The Full Kook," where the Kookocracy implements its most cherished and dangerous proposals, rather than being the crazy aunt in the attic down at the Capitol whose ravings are muted by the adult in the governor's chair. Now I'm more hopeful. Why? Because the Full Kook is the only way I can see that Arizona might save itself. For decades, the creeping growth of the Kookocracy has slowly been damaging every part of the state's social and economic health. But still, the Kooks kept control of the Legislature because most eligible voters stay home. Only the Full Kook might shake most Arizonans out of their torpor — and we'll see if there's what Saint Janet called the "sensible center" majority — or if the Big Sort has turned Arizona into the nation's largest insane asylum.

Brewer is falling into line with the successful reactionary effort to halt any measures to address climate change — or even to accept its scientific legitimacy. Even the New York Times has strangely bought into this. The deniers of established science are "skeptics." What next in the flagship of the liberal media: "Evolution skeptics"?  Thus the big snowstorm in the East is a sign that "global warming is a hoax," when in fact it is confirmation of the destabilizing weather patterns we were told to expect from climate change. In Seattle, we just had our warmest January on record. (Stephen Colbert has a great retort for the deniers, in media most Americans can understand). No matter. The strategy is to keep arguing and prevent action. In D.C., any meaningful action to limit emissions is dead, another casualty of the Hoover/Carter/Obama malaise. What is barely reported is how much money Exxon/Mobil and other corporate giants are pouring into not only lobbying against action, but to prop up the elaborate propaganda machine of the "skeptics." Nor is there ongoing, serious discussion of the costs of inaction, whether because of what's coming from climate change or because we're abrogating opportunities to create new industries to help slow or reverse its effects.

So Arizona needn't worry. America will remain paralyzed. Reality will not, and the costs, destabilization and even national security perils from climate change will continue to creep forward. Brewer doesn't even hear the contradiction in her statement, when she withdraws from the Western Climate Initiative — hardly perfect but a start among serious leaders — and wants to avoid California emission standards, but also wants green-tech jobs. Sorry, the two work together. This is why Germany is solar-power central. And notice that China is working furiously to corner the technology and manufacture of renewable energy. In the U.S., the best shot at ameliorating the effects of climate change are happening in the smart states, not the cheap states. Even if ASU makes some research breakthroughs, Arizona lacks the economic capacity to exploit most of them.