Climate change has become subject to party politics, with Republicans taking a stubbornly harsh stance. Photo Courtesy of Vox.com
While the 1980s are known for iconic movies, shoulder pads, neon colors, and big hair, the decade was also a time of rare partisan agreement on the issue of climate change. It seems hard to believe, given today’s politically charged atmosphere, but in the 1980s, both Republicans and Democrats believed climate change to be an impending challenge facing our country. For one, the House Committee for Science, Research, and Technology used to be a bipartisan committee with one of its Republican members, former Rhode Island Congresswoman, Claudine Schneider, championing a climate change bill in Congress. And actions, such as the signing of the Clean Air Act amendments — which changed the way the country regulated pollutants — by former President George W. Bush, as well as recently declassified documents from his tenure recognizing the climate crisis as a serious concern, reveal that Republicans once authored aggressive climate change policy.
By the mid-90s, however, money interests from the coal, oil, and fracking states single-handedly reshaped Republicans’ viewpoint: action on climate change, Republicans believed, was bad for business. When former President Bush took off, he rejected the Kyoto Protocol and the international agreement on global warming. And so began the decades-long rift between the parties and the rise of one of the country’s most divisive issues. Democrats sounding their clarion call set to the soundtrack of an apocalyptic REM song and Republicans doubling-down, continuing to deny the very existence of climate change.
Now, however, faced with the reality of relentless natural disasters and ever-rising temperatures in red states, Republicans have adopted a new strategy: they admit the existence of climate change, but deny that humans are the cause. Florida Senator Marco Rubio explained the latest Republican walk back in an early October interview with CNN. He said, “Humanity and its behavior, scientists say, is contributing to that [climate change], … I can’t tell you what percentage is contributing, and many scientists would debate the percentage is contributable to man versus normal fluctuations, but there’s a rise in sea level. Temperatures are warmer in the waters than they were 50, 80, 100 years ago — that’s measurable.” After decades of denial, the new Republican platform is that climate change is a thing, but even though those crazy liberal scientists say it’s caused by humans, there’s no proof; simply put, human contribution to climate change isn’t fact because it’s not quantifiable.
Given the general party-wide distrust of intellectuals and academics, this Republican sleight of hand shift in rhetoric merely exchanges one type of reasoning for another; it doesn’t change their position or reveal any type of great moral awakening. For scientists, this stance has been disproved for decades. Contrary to Senator Rubio’s comments, there is no disagreement among climatologists: human beings are responsible for most or all of global warming. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reports with 95% confidence that humans have caused “most likely all or more than all of recent global temperature rise,” basically, the science equivalent of a sure thing. In the face of such scientific certainty, Republicans’ vocal distrust of science perpetuates their false narrative. It’s not, and never has been, about science; it’s about the bottom line. The adage “follow the money,” brings to mind an old joke — “If climate were a bank, Republicans would have already saved it.” The party of fossil fuels may be trying to redirect the conversation, but they can’t change the truth — we unequivocally know what, who, and how much.
With fashion, trends repeat themselves every 20-30 years. Currently, puffy sleeves and converse high tops are back in style; perhaps then, our political parties can channel their 80s and early 90s counterparts to agree not only on the existence of climate change but also its cause, and reserve disagreement to questions of how to save both the planet and businesses. While mullets and high-waisted pants will likely be fashionable again in a few years, if Republicans dial back the denial rhetoric, focus on scientific facts, and help hammer out solutions now, climate change partisanship won’t follow its current trends.
