Seriously, the only qualifications to be a U.S. senator are you must “have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and … when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State …” (U.S. Const., Art. I, §3).
The Framers intentionally gave voters a lot of leeway to choose their representatives in Congress. This means stupid voters can elect stupid senators to represent them.
Herschel Walker isn’t a U.S. senator yet, but hopes to become one. He was a pretty good football player, but is a liar and has trouble keeping track of all his kids (in the sense of knowing how many he has). On science and environment, as with most public issues, he’s hopeless.
A case in point: His criticism of trees.
This weekend, Walker “reiterated his opposition to Democrats’ climate, health care and taxes bill.” It should be noted that not a single Republican in either chamber voted for that bill. But as far as I know, none argued that “too much money ‘is going to trees.'” (See story here.) He wants that money to go to hiring more cops, which we’ll need if people are going crazy in concrete canyons.
There are tree-huggers and, apparently, also tree-haters. I don’t know what Walker has against trees. I like them myself and wouldn’t vote for a tree-hater, other things being equal (which, of course, they never are).
“They’re not helping you out because a lot of money [is] going to trees,” Walker said. “Don’t we have enough trees around here?”
If you ask scientists who know what they’re talking about, no, we don’t have enough trees. Especially in carbon-emitting urban areas. “Experts say that planting trees can improve both climate change and health outcomes when planted in urban spaces,” The Hill said (story link above).
Paul Falkowski, a Rutgers professor in the Earth and planetary sciences and marine and coastal sciences, who knows more about trees and urban forestry than Herschel Walker does, says “if you were to plant millions of trees, which is what many countries want to do … we’d be removing a significant amount of carbon. Urban tree planting is very, very productive in the sense that it increases the trade, it increases the flux of moisture in the local environment, which decreases the temperature.”
To someone of Walker’s low intellect and impaired comprehension, this is gobbledygook, so it would be helpful if Professor Falkowski or someone else explained this in simple layman’s language such as, “trees make cities cooler and help reduce global warming.” Of course, even this won’t make an impression on a candidate who doesn’t give a damn about people living in cities (most of whom are Democrats) or believe climate change is real (despite highly unusual storms and flooding in Republican-voting rural communities).
I wouldn’t expect such a candidate to understand the intricacies of foreign policy and national defense, the causes and cures of inflation, or the relationship between guns and gun violence, either. I would vote for the candidate who does, or at least understands that stuff better than Walker does, which is basically everyone else.
The Hill says these aren’t “the first environmental remarks from Walker to spark conversation. The candidate previously claimed that ‘good air’ from the U.S. would float over to China if the U.S. took steps to combat climate change — and that the U.S. would be stuck cleaning China’s ‘bad air.'” That’s just plain stupid. (I mentioned above that Walker is a liar; one of the things he lied about is claiming to have college degrees he doesn’t have.)
The U.S. Senate, in theory, is supposed to be a deliberative body. These days that’s somewhat of a joke anyway, but why aggravate the problem by sending an idiot to the Senate? A majority of Georgia voters apparently agree; Walker is trailing in polls. However, the race is closer than it should be, because it isn’t just the candidate who’s stupid, there are a lot of stupid voters, too.
Photo above: An urban forest in Atlanta, Georgia; video below, Atlanta is known as “a city in a forest”