Excuse Me Mr. Pruitt, Please Spare Me the Sensitivity Training

By Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page

13 September 17

xcuse me Mr. Pruitt, please spare me the sensitivity training.

Leadership is about seeing the big picture as well as the crisis. Talking about climate change around these hurricanes isn't insensitive, it's intelligent.

My heart goes out to those who are suffering. We are all indebted to the public officials, first responders, and average citizens who are reaching out to their fellow Americans in a time of great need. But these storms (and the fires in the West) will not be the last natural disaster exacerbated by climate change. We are at the dawn of a new and ever more dangerous era.

But there was Mr. Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (let the name of that department sink in for a moment) telling CNN “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.” He added, “to use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to this people in Florida.”

He can tell that to the Republican mayor of Miami - a city that may be unsustainable with rising sea waters. Tomás Regalado told the Miami Herald "This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the E.P.A. and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change,” Mr. Regalado does not have the luxury of denying reality. “If this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is. This is a truly, truly poster child for what is to come.”

Do you think this will finally change the minds of any of our elected officials who have denied or diminished the threat of climate change in the past?