Rush Limbaugh Called The Climate Summit Anti-Capitalist. Here's Why He's Wrong.

Climate change denialist and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves on Tuesday to decry world leaders gathering in Paris this week to address the growing threat of our warming world.

Limbaugh, a longtime antagonist to well-established climate science, said he's given evidence "for 25 years" that liberalism and its associated focus on the environment is actually "an attack on capitalism."

"Every one of you who support whatever is involved in climate change and limiting American and other Western nations' use of energy, you ought to be celebrating that, you're anti-capitalists," he told the audience of "The Rush Limbaugh Show." "Oil is the fuel of the engine of freedom."

He continued his rant against climate action with the popular denialist stumping point that "there isn't any warming, and certainly no warming that can be laid at the feet of human beings."

"We're not warming, there hasn't been any in 20 years," he said. "And the temperature record that says [it] has probably been faked."

Most of the world, which considers climate change among the greatest plights of our time, can laugh off Limbaugh's comments as pure falsity without any grounding in science. The UN's leading scientists have unequivocally linked climate change to human action and the burning of fossil fuels, and the planet last year suffered from the hottest year ever recorded. We're on track to top that milestone again in 2015.

But Americans are largely unconcerned with the issue, and among the 10 leading candidates for the Republican nomination for president, there's near-universal denial that this is a major problem.

To put the record straight, let's look at why Limbaugh's assertions are patently false on several fronts:

— Addressing climate change won't hurt the economy significantly, but ignoring it will. Recent reports have put the cost of unchecked climate change in the hundreds of trillions over the next two centuries. Many of the world's largest metropolises could very well be underwater as sea levels rise, and crops may be unable to grow in newly formed dust bowls (among other, equally horrifying effects).

A report published by the White House in 2014 found that simply delaying action may save costs now, but over the long run, the effects could cost the U.S. economy $150 billion a year.

— On the flip side, investing in renewable energy is actually a smart choice that creates jobs (jobs, jobs, jobs, GOPers!). The green energy field added more than a million jobs worldwide between 2013 and 2014 -- an 18 percent gain in a single year. The cost of renewables has fallen drastically over the past few years and is getting far closer toward parity with oil and natural gas.

— And as for the claims that the temperature record has been faked? NASA, NOAA, the World Meteorological Organization, the European Environment Centre and the Japan Meteorological Agency all agree that it's real. 

Sorry, Rush.

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