The League of Conservation Voters launched a major television ad campaign this week criticizing Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson for denying the proven science of climate change. Johnson has accepted more than a hundred thousand dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry while voting to let them spew unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into our air.
Johnson responded with inflammatory rhetoric before he even saw the ad:
“The League of Conservation voters is not an organization with a balanced approach to a cleaner environment,” states the email from the Johnson campaign. “They are an extreme left group on an environmental jihad.”
The email, which also solicited donations from supporters, denounced what Johnson said was an “unholy alliance” between LCV and the Obama campaign that gives the green group “unlimited resources and campaign expertise.”
Johnson's email did net him one rather odd response to the LCV's ad, from Salon's Lindsay Abrams:
"Though Johnson’s rhetoric may have been ill-advised, the ad also resorts to name-calling. The senator, it declares, is “climate change denier.”'
Senator Johnson has said, “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change. It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination… It's far more likely that it's sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time.”
But "climate change denier" is name calling? What else should we call it?
