Irma Won't "Wake Up" Climate Change-Denying Republicans. Their Whole Ideology Is on the Line.

An infrared image taken on Sept. 7, 2017, by Suomi NPP, a weather satellite operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Irma Won't "Wake Up" Climate Change-Denying Republicans. Their Whole Ideology Is on the Line.

Some have speculated that seeing the reality of climate change hit so close to home this summer — Houston underwater, Los Angeles licked by flames, and now southern states getting battered by Irma — might be some kind of wake-up call for climate change-denying Republicans. Nope.

As one of the most powerful storms ever recorded bore down on the continental United States, with much of Florida under evacuation order, President Donald Trump was focused on a matter of grave urgency.

He gathered his cabinet at Camp David and said there was no time to waste. With Hurricane Irma set to potentially devastate huge swaths of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, now was the time, he said, to rush through massive ... tax cuts.

Yes, that's right. He wasn't focused on getting massive aid to those most affected. He wasn't focused on massive change to our energy and transit systems to lower greenhouse gas emissions so that Irma-like storms do not become a thrice-annual occurrence. His mind was on massive changes to the tax code -- which, despite Trump's claims that he is driven by a desire to give the middle class relief, would in fact hand corporations the biggest tax cut in decades and the very wealthy a sizable break as well.

Some have speculated that seeing the reality of climate change hit so close to home this summer -- Houston underwater, Los Angeles licked by flames, and now southern states getting battered by Irma -- might be some kind of wake-up call for climate change-denying Republicans.

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