In their debate the other day (see video clip, below), Loudoun County Board Chair Phyllis Randall challenged her Trump-loving, right-wing Republican opponent, John Whitbeck, to simply say “yes” or “no” whether or not he agreed that man-made climate change is real. In fact, as we know, there is now “no doubt left” regarding the scientific consensus on this subject, with a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – “authored by 104 climate scientists from 36 countries and reflecting findings in 6,981 studies” – finding dire impacts to the oceans, to permafrost, etc. already occurring due to humans pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, year after year.
Yet, despite the massive and overwhelming evidence for a severe, human-caused climate crisis, Trump Republicans like John Whitbeck continue to deny and/or minimize what’s going on. For instance, in June 2017, Whitbeck – then Chairman of the Virginia GOP – authored an appalling, error-ridden op-ed that for some crazy reason was published by the Roanoke Times. According to Whitbeck, Trump’s announcement that he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord was actually a “bold and much needed step” (WTF?!?). In Whitbeck’s view, believe it or not, we all owe his hero Trump “a great deal of gratitude for his forward thinking” in pulling America out of this treaty, which Whitbeck falsely claims was “a terrible deal for our country, especially Virginia.” Whitbeck then proceeds to spew out lie after lie about…everything, basically, while heaping praise on fracking and on “cheap, abundant natural gas.” Whitbeck also claims, falsely yet again, that climate models are “highly-suspect” (apparently Whitbeck’s a scientist now, having given up on his budding career in anti-Semitic stand-up “comedy,” it seems).
Of course, Whitbeck’s the same guy who for many years has been a politically ambitious, in-your-face, hard-right, hard-core partisan Republican operative, but is now attempting to – yet again dishonestly – reinvent himself as some sort of “moderate” for this year’s Loudoun County Board Chair election. For a sampling of what Whitbeck was up to all those years, see below. Note the similarity in themes to Prince William County Board Chair far-right Republican candidate John Gray’s tweets, by the way.
Now, with the election just over three weeks away, we all need to make sure voters know that Loudoun County believes in science and rejects John Whitbeck’s radical, anti-science, Trump-style agenda. Because the bottom line is that if you reject or deny science, in this case climate science, you should be automatically disqualified from holding public office of any kind…let alone a powerful position like Chairman of the Board of a major county like Loudoun. Instead, everyone needs to vote to reelect current Loudoun County Board Chair Phyllis Randall!
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