Republicans Are Dead To The Planet; They're Fine With Trump's "Policies"; Move On Without Them
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There is indeed a shift underway among Republicans on climate change, but its not toward good-faith solutions. Its a shift from snowball-wielding climate denial to a more insidious version that relies on complicity and delay.
Most GOP politicians might not be willing to call climate change a Chinese hoax, but theyre fine if Trump continues to do it. Theyre also fine with anything Trump does to worsen climate changewhether it be dismantling greenhouse gas regulations or refusing to sign an international accord stating warming is a problem in the Arctic. Theyre fine with keeping quiet in the face of major scientific reports, like the one released Monday saying that 1 million species now risk going extinct due to human activity. No wonder the CO2 Coalition, a group that falsely argues that carbon dioxide is good for humans, is expanding its presence on Capitol Hill: It sees a receptive audience.
Its not that good-faith Republicans dont exist on climate change. They do, and they always have. But theyre not growing at any meaningful rate. A recent study on the potential for climate policy reform found that the current actors in the conservative environmental movement are not strong enough to make serious inroads at a national level. Thats partly because Republican donors arent interested in funding climate policy groups. Given this macro-funding environment, the report reads, there is little hope that there will be a change in the funder community.
There is thus little hope that the Republican Party as a whole will propose serious climate change solutions in the near or even distant future. Given that theres little more than a decade left to implement those solutions, theres no reason to wait for them. If the increasingly dire reports, or the issues rising prominence among young voters, arent enough to sway Republicans, what will be? Its time to stop treating the Republican Party as a potential partner in solving the climate crisis, and start seeing it as the immovable obstacle its always been.
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https://newrepublic.com/article/153844/republicans-dead-planet-earth