Sept. 27, 2023
The GOP as a party has been as comfortable with the term “climate change” as they are with “Democratic socialism.” Can that last?
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New Yorker cartoon By Maddie Dai, Aug. 23, 2023
I set out to conduct an experiment: Will Republicans evolve on climate change in the run up to the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and the subsequent primaries, and then once a GOP candidate emerges enroute to the Nov. 2024 elections.
My hypothesis is a curious yes. The experiment is likely to make it curiouser and curiouser, though it’s complicated. The variables are daunting.
The candidates and Congress count
The positions of individual candidates must be considered. There are a good dozen candidates, eight in the GOP’s first debate Aug. 23, seven in the second Sept. 27. The position of prohibitive favorite Donald Trump, of course, needs to be taken into account. He hasn’t debated, though he left elephant tracks to lead people to his go fund me mug shot. The position, if any, of the GOP as a party is worth gauging. Hard to know how to gauge that since the party doesn’t do platforms.
One might divine it from how GOP members of Congress vote on climate change issues. By far the most meaningful climate change action to emerge from Congress has been the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that passed in Congress in Aug. 2022. Not a single House GOP member or Senate GOP member voted for it. It would seem case closed at that point.
A year may matter
But some seismic climate events have transpired in just the past year. Heat waves, floods, wildfires ravaging Maui and disappearing 350 miles of coral reef off the coast of Florida. Is the GOP that tone deaf and heat resistant?
The GOP media mouthpieces who purport to be journalists and who speak directly to the GOP base must be factored in. Then there’s the base itself.
Lots to control for. The timing I’ve chosen for the experiment pulsates with promise. GOP candidates have now held two debates. The third is Nov. 8. The first hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee faced off against the counter-programming spectacle of former Fox News bulldog Tucker Carlson interviewing Trump.
Polling to ponder
I would have given odds that neither the first debate nor the Carlson-Trump exchange would likely have broached climate change at all. I would have been wrong.
Because of the vote in Congress on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the singular message on climate change during the Trump administration, it’s easy to write off the GOP for any prospective voters who care about climate change. Is it really that easy?
In a recent series on Where the Republican Candidates Stand on Climate Change, the New York Times concluded: “In a shift from past election cycles, many of the Republican candidates acknowledge that climate change is real. But even as heat waves, floods, wildfires and other weather-related disasters become more frequent and severe, few acknowledge the seriousness of climate change, and most of them reject transitioning the United States from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”
Though climate change is no longer a one denial fits all issue for GOP pols, voters of mostly the Republican base who turn out for the Iowa GOP caucuses and subsequent primaries, show little sign of caring about the issue. Sure, they’re living through, being displaced by, and mobilizing with neighbors to fend off one devastating consequence after another from sea to warming sea and from Maui to the majestic coral reef off Florida.
A recent series, Climate change in Iowa, published by the Iowa State Ag Decision Maker website concluded: Essentially, we are experiencing what the rest of the planet is experiencing. Wet areas are getting wetter, and dry areas are getting drier.” A followup study on The impact of climate change on world agriculture this summer warned: “Changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures, and more extreme weather events will negatively impact the world’s ability to produce food.” It went on: “At the same time, demand for food will grow due to an increasing world population and rising incomes in the developing world. Meeting this challenge will depend on agriculture’s ability to adapt to a changing climate while developing and adopting the technologies needed to meet the increase in food demand.”
Are you listening Iowa, where I went to college, and will you heed the warnings when you host the first GOP caucuses in January?
Seems not. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, revealed that Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided on extreme weather, with partisans split on climate change contributing to more disasters, and on their weather becoming more extreme.
This when nearly 150 Americans, including me in Chicago, have been under heat alerts this summer. This when a majority of Iowa's likely GOP caucusgoers believe Trump won in 2020, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll. Those surveyed, in answering, “How likely GOP caucusgoers feel about 7 issues, from abortion to criticizing Trump,” didn’t even include climate change.
Of the public’s list of the top problems facing the nation in 2023, climate change ranks 11th behind inflation, health care, the ability of the parties to work together, drug addiction, gun violence, violent crime, federal deficit, moral values, illegal immigration, and public schools, with climate change reflecting the widest disparity between Democrats and Republicans, according to Pew Research.
The Hill, the non-partisan daily politics site based in DC, handicapped the following issues as likelier to surface in the debates than the energy and environment: The economy and taxes, abortion, Ukraine and defense policy, border security and immigration, and budget and entitlement. Not to mention the mugshotster himself-Trump.
What do the debates tell us?
Though I postulated that neither the first debate nor Trump’s mano-a-mano puff interview would shed much light on how GOP candidates will address climate change during the campaigns, the Fox News hosts pulled a fast one.
In the night’s second round of questions, the hosts said: “More than a thousand people are still unaccounted for in Maui after the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century. Hawaii’s Governor and White House officials said that climate change amplified the cost of human error. And a tropical storm hit California for the first time in 84 years. The ocean hit 101 degrees off the coast of Florida and in the last month, the heat wave in the Southwest broke records nearly 50 years old.”
To drive home both the gravity of the issue and the potential voting base that cares most about it, they introduced a young man, Alexander Diaz from Young America’s Foundation, who did their bidding:
“Polls consistently show that young people’s number one issue is climate change. How will you as both President of the United States and leader of the Republican Party calm their fears that the Republican Party doesn’t care about climate change?”
Zing.
The hosts then asked for a show of hands. Do you believe human behavior is causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do.
Double zing.
The zingers fizzle
Not so fast. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took charge. “Look, we’re not school children. Let’s have the debate.” He launched his talking point offensive: “One of the reasons our country’s decline is because of the way the corporate media treats Republicans versus Democrats. Biden was on the beach while those people were suffering. He was asked about it and he said, ‘No comment.’ Are you kidding me? As somebody that’s handled disasters in Florida, you got to be activated. You’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be present. You’ve got to be helping people who are doing this.”
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy tried to steal the ball so he could stake out the one position most closely aligned with Trump. “Can we stop filibustering and answer the question?” That forced DSantis’ hand. He didn’t raise it, he said, meaning he apparently doesn’t believe human behavior is causing climate change. Ramaswamy didn’t see it that way: “I think it was a hand raise for him and my hands are in my pockets because the climate change agenda is a hoax.” A hoax bought and paid for by the “anti-carbon agenda.”
From there, the issue descended into bluster and bickering that would characterize the rest of the debate.
A few candidates did manage to signal the nuances that might leave the GOP in free fall on climate change in the era of visibly cataclysmic eruptions that young people seem to have the distance lenses to see.
A field of drearies: Build nothing and they will come
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley ventured that climate change is real. The way to change the environment is to “start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions.” All President Biden’s green subsidies do is put money in China’s pocket by favoring electric vehicles using batteries made in China.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott also sounded the China climate change alarm without falling into the trap of using the term climate change. “If we want the environment to be better and we all do, the best thing to do is to bring our jobs home from China.”
That’s as far as the first debate got on climate change. The second debate didn't venture there at all.
Fortunately, The New York Times’ series, Where the Republican Candidates Stand on Climate Change, filled in some of the blanks on other candidates, for the little that will be worth in assessing what a Republican presidency might mean for addressing the ravages of climate change.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has supported carbon-capture as governor, which means he’s pushed harder to address climate change than most Republicans by actively identifying carbon neutrality as a goal.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said: “When you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts.” A visionary, I tell you.
In response to questions from The Times, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson acknowledged that climate change is real and that human activities are “a contributing factor.” He said he would lift restrictions on pipelines and drilling — as well as nuclear power, which is carbon-free — and withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which he said hurt “America’s ability to allow for economic growth.” He didn’t make it into the second debate.
Former Vice President Mike Pence claims “radical environmentalists” are exaggerating the effects of climate change and rejects the scientific consensus that the United States (like the world) must reach net-zero emissions by 2050, calling it “completely unfeasible.” His energy plan instructs federal agencies to “break down barriers to exploration, extraction and production of any source of domestic energy” — including renewable sources but also coal, oil and gas. The plan rejects both mandates and any government incentives for companies or consumers to choose renewables in the energy market. After all, he was Trump’s guy, supported Trump’s environmental policies, which he says didn’t have negative effects on the nation’s progress in reducing emissions.
Two candidates who didn’t make it into the debates are the most willing in the GOP to acknowledge the importance of prioritizing climate change.
Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd acknowledges the gravity of climate change. In a 2021 essay on his website, he wrote that rising temperatures worsen hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts; threaten water supplies; and, by reducing crop yields and restricting animal habitats, have economic consequences, such as making food more expensive. He voted against many climate measures in the House, where he had a 13 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, an advocacy group that assesses lawmakers’ record on the environment.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who’s suspended his presidential campaign, has pursued significant emission reductions in Miami. In acknowledging that climate change is a serious threat — one that is already hurting his city, he wrote in 2019 in a New York Times opinion essay with the former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon, that “climate change is not a distant threat for Miami; it’s a daily presence in people’s lives.”
Back full circus
Which brings us back full circus (sic) to GOP trendsetter Trump who has mocked climate science, much like he rejected any science on covid, and who champions the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet. Trump has given no indication that his approach would be different in a second term and Carlson didn’t broach the subject with him.
He passed on the second debate too, this time to travel to Michigan to court the vote of striking autoworkers. Unless Trump chooses to ridicule climate change by making the automakers’ plea that the investment in fuel efficient electric cars is what’s holding down workers, Trump isn’t likely to want to or need to address climate change any time soon.
However, climate change is not out of sight, out of mind for the GOP.
Climate Power, an environmental advocacy group, is airing a Spanish-language ad set to run before, during and after the GOP 2nd presidential debate. The ads air on Univision in Phoenix, Tucson, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., all markets with significant Latino populations. The ad harkens back to the first GOP debate and asks, “Cuál es su plan climático?” — “What’s their climate plan?” A 2021 Pew Research survey found that more than 80% of Hispanic respondents said global climate change is a top or significant issue, while 67% of non-Hispanic respondents see it that way, according to The Hill.
They can hide but can they run
The GOP can hide away from climate change for now, but can they run without it?
Who knows, the GOP may be stirring up so much spit and vinegar on shutting down the federal government and pretending that Trump isn’t their nominee that they’ll lose sight of the youth and Hispanic voters whom they so sorely need.
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