How are climate change, Winston Churchill and pay-go related?

I promise you’ll understand.

Recently a growing number of conservative states have been seeking billions in taxpayer funding to “adapt” to the growing impacts of climate change.

For example, solid-red Texas is getting nearly $2 billion to build a massive 27-mile sea wall along the Gulf of Mexico to protect Houston and Galveston from larger hurricanes and rising seas.

Florida just dedicated $350 million for its communities to “adapt” to sea level rise, while Miami is looking at $300 million for new drainage pumps.

Meanwhile, Utah is seeking ways to stop the rapid evaporation of the Great Salt Lake that some of its legislators say will result in an “environmental nuclear bomb” cratering the economy of one of the fastest-growing regions on the continent.

But none of these states and communities are taking steps to address the cause of the problems they are spending billions to fight: the emissions from fossil fuels driving atmospheric warming, resulting in rising seas, bigger hurricanes pushing higher surges and record droughts.

In fact, their GOP congressional delegations continue fighting federal regulations aimed at reducing those emissions — the only way to slow and reduce the impacts.

All of that led me to one of Churchill’s famous political aphorisms. It was aimed at a policy that would spend money on a problem but not solve it. He said it was “like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.