Porn-monitoring app enthusiast and Random House Speaker Mike Johnson has his pet causes. That includes targeting strip clubs for potential/failed shut downs and protecting Jan. 6 rioters at all costs, but climate change does not appear on that list of Johnson’s concerns.
Granted, Johnson’s father (Patrick) wishes that his son cared about environmental causes, but that wouldn’t work out with his far-right GOP leanings, so he actually (and allegedly) declined to help him with a desperate request. This had to do with a toxic dump that had experienced an explosion, spreading dangerous fallout for miles and posing detrimental health effects for surrounding residents in Louisiana. Those residents included Johnson’s family, and according to Patrick’s stepmother, Janis Gabriel, the pair went to Mike’s office to appeal to him about authorities potentially green lighting this “open burn.” According to The Guardian, that led to disappointment:
“His father and I went to him and said: ‘Mike you need to get involved in this, this is really important. Your family really lives at ground zero.’ We basically begged him to say something, to someone, somewhere … He just wasn’t interested. He had other things to do. He was never interested in environmental things.”
Gabriel continued to express amazement at how “[h]e basically shut us down” and “wouldn’t give five minutes of his time to the effort.” This alleged incident occurred only a few weeks before Johnson ascended from mere constitutional lawyer to member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and it goes hand in hand with how Johnson has denied climate change’s existence due to his strict adherence to “creationism.” Also conveniently, this stance is very pro-fossil fuel consumption, which surely wins him favor with the House GOP.
The Department of Veteran’s Affairs, however, has been enormously vocal about the hazards posed to human health and the environment by toxic burn pits. It’s a cause that Jon Stewart has championed while condemning congressional inaction on the subject. It’s also an example of a curious contradiction by members of the GOP, which is otherwise pro-military in almost every other way.
(Via The Guardian)