Pirate's Cove

Yeah, well, it might be a bit too late for that, Bill, since politics is what the whole climate crisis is about. But, the NY Times thinks they’re on to something

This Former G.O.P. Politician Wants to Take Politics Out of Climate Change

Bill Frist, the former Republican Senate majority leader, racked up a slew of notable medical successes during his years as one of the country’s top heart and lung surgeons.

He founded one of the country’s busiest transplant centers. One of his patients held the Guinness World Record for being the longest surviving single lung transplant recipient. And, in 1991, Mr. Frist performed lifesaving thoracic surgery on Gen. David Petraeus, then a lieutenant-colonel, when, during a training exercise, the military leader was accidentally shot in the chest.

But now, Mr. Frist, 74, advocates for the health of the biggest, most famous patient of all: the Earth.

In earnest writings, folksy videos recorded on his front porch in Tennessee, podcasts, speeches and congressional testimony, Mr. Frist has been highlighting the inseparability of planetary and human health.

“A healthier planet means healthier people,” Mr. Frist said. “The science shows it. Our experience shows it. Nobody can really argue against that.”

Sure, a good environment is a good thing. A warming planet is simply normal during an inter-glacial

This environmental advocacy puts Mr. Frist at odds with much of his own party and even his younger self. At his retirement from the Senate in 2007, the League of Conservation Voters gave Mr. Frist a lifetime rating of 7 percent for his legislative environmental record, which included voting for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “Things like the Arctic, I definitely would not have voted that way today,” Mr. Frist said.

Yeah yeah yeah, he just delved into politics, equating environmentalism with climate doom.

He said he’s aiming to “depolarize” the climate conversation.

How so?

In his writings, appearances and videos, Mr. Frist talks about the toll that pollution and extreme weather take on people’s health. About operating on lungs darkened by tobacco smoke and airborne particulates, and how pollution contributes to every coronary artery surgery he’s done. He comes across as straightforward and plain-spoken, like an old-fashioned kindly doctor. (snip)

He also said he’s received minimal pushback. This past May, he was interviewed onstage by former Vice President Al Gore, a fellow Tennessean whose office in Nashville happens to be down the hall from Mr. Frist’s, as part of Mr. Gore’s climate initiative. “It’s wonderful to have Bill Frist out there saying these things,” Mr. Gore said.

Mr. Frist said the key to his messaging, and bringing people together, is highlighting what they value most.

“It’s the health, hope and the healing of themselves, their loved ones and their kids,” he said, “Not 10 years from now, or 20 years, not 30 years from now, but today.”

So, doom today? Really, though, I missed the part how he plans to depolarize, depoliticize this. Again, it is all about hardcore authoritarian politics.