It Doesn't Matter What Burns, Floods Or Bakes: Republicans And Republicans Voters Will Not Change

[hatrack]

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Environmental scientists and policy experts around the country agree that the massive wildfires are just the latest indicator that climate change has thrust the U.S., and the world, into a dangerous new era. But it’s far from certain that the growing recognition of that threat can break the stalemate over climate policy in Washington. The accumulating evidence about climate change’s destructive power represents an irresistible force for action. But it’s colliding with an immovable object: the unbreakable resistance to any response among both Republican voters and elected officials.

EDIT

Just as many Republican voters have cheered GOP attacks on public-health experts during the coronavirus crisis, portraying them as “elites” who look down on and want to control ordinary people, they have embraced similar accusations against climate scientists. “Climate change is an issue … where most people don’t know that much … and in those circumstances—especially for an abstract, seemingly far away, invisible problem like climate change—they look to their leaders to help guide them through that incredibly complicated landscape,” Leiserowitz told me. “Republicans who began talking about climate change as if it was a ‘hoax’ had an incredible impact on other Republicans.” Many environmentalists have hoped that more and more exposure to the furious effects of weather disruption might soften resistance among Republican voters and leaders to acting on climate change. But in dramatic polling last year from the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post, even Republican voters who acknowledge that their communities are facing more extreme weather overwhelmingly reject the notion that climate change is significantly contributing to those events.

Detailed results provided to me by Kaiser underscore an astonishing gap between the parties. Among people who agree that their communities are experiencing either more hot days, more floods, or more droughts, at least three-fourths of Democrats say climate change is a “major factor” in those events; but at least seven in 10 Republicans in each case say it is only a minor factor, or does not contribute at all. Slightly more than seven in 10 Democrats living in places experiencing more wildfires consider climate change a major factor in causing them; three-fourths of Republicans see climate as little or none of the cause. Even after this summer’s searing events, an Economist/YouGov poll released yesterday found that although three-fourths of Biden supporters said “the severity of recent hurricanes and Western wildfires is most likely the result of global climate change,” fewer than one in five Trump voters agreed.

Those contrasts offer very little reason for optimism that even if Biden wins, any meaningful numbers of congressional or state-level Republicans will feel pressure to support measures to reduce carbon emissions. Among other reasons for pessimism: In both presidential and Senate elections, Republicans are more and more reliant on the states that produce the most fossil fuels, which tend to be the same states with large populations of non-college-educated, Christian, and rural white voters drawn to Trump’s message of racial and cultural backlash.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/california-wildfires-and-politics-climate-change/616380/

[Thomas Hurt]

1. The end timers amongst them probably see their impending eternal life in this devastation...

and welcome it.

[Pantagruel]

2. Deniers won't admit reality

They'd rather drown or burn than believe the "Libs" were right. Never underestimate the stupidity of the American electorate.

[Boomer]

3. They won't even wear masks

Given that so many people resist a simple and fairly minor inconvenience like wearing a mask to reduce the risk of actually dying or preventing other people from dying, I have no faith that Americans would make serious sacrifices for a benefit they'll never see during their lifetimes.

No matter how many drastic changes we might make right now, there's some 50-60 years of escalating climate change already baked in. People won't see any positive reinforcement for their actions -- instead, the climate will continue to worsen despite everyone's efforts (assuming we made any, which we haven't). Human psychology just can't cope with that kind of cognitive dissonance.