The Reality-Based Environment

The Reality-Based Environment
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted December 16, 2004.
The Bush solution to global warming is to declare it does not exist – whereas those of us in the reality-based community understand differently.
"The aide (a senior adviser to President Bush) said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." – Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004.
This is the quote that now has some noted bloggers identifying themselves as, "Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community."
Of all the problems that arise from having an administration that chooses not to believe in reality, the ones most likely to have irretrievably disastrous consequences are environmental.....