A much needed article by Oliver Milman appeared in The Guardian after the US Republican candidates debates called ”Republican activist says party ‘deserves to lose’ if it fails to address climate crisis.” The subtitle is “Benji Backer, executive chairman of conservative climate group, calls question on crisis in debate ‘historic’ but laments answers.”
A few paragraphs tell much of the story: “Republicans ‘deserve to lose’ electorally if they can’t show they care about the climate crisis, according to the head of a conservative climate organization that put forward a rare question on the issue to GOP candidates in Wednesday’s televised debate.
The Republican presidential hopefuls, minus Donald Trump, were asked at the Fox News debate what they would do to improve the party’s standing on climate policy by Alexander Diaz, a young conservative who is part of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a youth conservative group that pushes for action on the climate crisis.
Republican hopefuls shrug when asked about climate crisis during debate. Asked by the moderators for a show of hands over whether climate change is real, none of the candidates did so, with one, Vivek Ramaswamy, the far-right businessman, declaring that the ‘climate agenda is a hoax.” Two other candidates, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, accepted the well-established scientific reality of global heating but looked to shift the blame to other major carbon polluters, such as China, and even, in Scott’s case, to Africa, which is responsible for about 3% of the world’s emissions.
Benji Backer, founder and executive chairman of ACC, said the question on climate was ‘historic’ and highlighted the desire among young Republicans for their leaders to take the threat of global heating seriously.”
This stance is similar to the one in 2008 when I left the Republican Party citing this failure as one of my three key reasons in so doing. The party has more aggressively returned to this stance after varying degrees of acceptance in the intervening years due to more actions finally being taken with respect to renewable energy.
To me, there are many reasons not to vote Republican these days, but this issue, by itself, is one that Americans should heed. I agree with Mr. Backer that they must speak to this issue. The bus has left the station and we are seeing the byproduct of climate change now. My strong advice is do not vote for any candidate who promotes the hoax concept. There is an old saying about change – get people on the bus who see the need for change. Per Mr. Backer, the Republican candidates have a choice to make.
musingsofanoldfart 
This is my favorite argument addressing climate change.
To those who oppose the scientific community about the issue of climate change there are only two real questions addressing the subject.
1. IF CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX, AND WE DECIDE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT ANYWAY, WHAT’S THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO?
Well, we create new energy technologies, which by the way are already being pursued by oil companies because they know our supply of fossil fuels is inevitably limited. In turn these new breakthroughs will trickle down through economies and more and more jobs will be the result. Not only that pollution will be curbed, which is a good thing, even if it doesn’t affect our weather patterns. Will jobs be lost? Probably not, because as stated earlier, current giants of energy are globally moving towards the diversification of alternative resources. This is easily verifiable, by the way. Obviously, everything needed to correct the hoax is something we’ll eventually be forced to pursue, so why not speed up the process?
2. IF CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL, AND WE CHOOSE TO IGNORE THE CONSEQUENCES, WHAT’S THE WORST-CASE SCENARIO?
With global populations rising, our need for fossil fuels will climb as well as prices for the product since supply will diminish and demand will rise. This effectively increases our pollution output and speeds up climate change as predicted by the scientific community. In essence, humanity dies rather quickly and cockroaches take over.
Yes, the likelihood that Earth will go on and correct the dramatic upswing in our current weather cycle is possible, we just won’t be around when it does.
Daniel, thanks for your well thought out comment. To your point, I hear often ten and fifteen year old arguments by naysayers. Solar and wind jobs have grown dramatically as the cost of production have become on par or better. Coal jobs have fallen dramatically as well as building new coal plants that will be obsolete before finishing is an unwise investment.
I also like oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who said on “60 minutes” ten years ago, the future of energy in the plain states is wind. Natural gas will buy us time, but the wind blows across the plains. Five plains states now get over 1/3 of their electricity from wind, with Iowa leading the way with about 45%. And, oil rich Texas leads the country in volume of electricity from wind energy primarily because they built an infrastructure to harness and distribute the electricity. They also pay ranchers annual rent for each windmill.
As for those who cite long term climate trends, a climate scientist said several years ago, the earth is like a diabetic. We have just made the diabetes worse by feeding it sugar through fossil fuel use.
Good comment. Thanks again, Keith
Well said! You’ve put the situation into a nutshell and you are 100% spot on.
Thanks Jill.
This is most welcome, Keith. In two of my recent posts, I’ve described the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” which is being fed to all Republican presidential candidates, undoubtedly with funding to some. This is a plan to roll back the Biden administration’s huge investments in new technologies—and any regs that prevent fossil fuel cos. from freely polluting. The House Republicans are in sync, but the bill they passed will, fortunately, die in the Senate.
Voting for Democrats is now essential to save our democracy, our personal freedoms, and our planet.
This is not a partisan position; it’s our reality. The Republican Party is all in for fossil fuels.
Annie, I agree. This is short term thinking that benefits only the fossil fuel industry. The money these companies have spent to sell their message dwarfs money used to educate the public on the vagaries of climate change. What scares them most is renewable energy need not consist of large scale plants to be effective. Keith
This the existential threat to all of us. Rapid climate change – and the incredible negative impacts this produces in environmental effects – does not care which side of the aisle or what arguments people might favour. The less done now to directly reduce fossil fuel emissions will compel drastic changes in the future. And that won;t be under liberal democracy.
Agreed.
I hadn’t seen that particular article in The Guardian, but have read a number along the same lines, and they are right … we cannot afford a Republican in any elected position who believes that climate change is a ‘hoax’ or something to be downplayed, to take a backseat to profit. How much will they enjoy those profits when they have no water to drink or food to eat and cannot step outside for the air is unbreathable???
True, Jill. I was disappointed in Senator Marco Rubio when he ran for president in 2016. He set aside his earlier statements on doing something about climate change and ran on the traditional Republican stance. With this and other issues, he could have been the voice of future Republicans. Instead, he ceded that role to he who shall not be named.
Of course, naysaying former Speaker Newt Gingrich did a commercial around 2008 with Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying he was wrong about climate change. It was a real concern. Three years later when running for president, he changed his mind again saying he was wrong to say he was wrong. That fossil fuel money is some kind of aphrodisiac. Keith
I think that when loyalty to “Party” and the “party line” weigh more heavily than loyalty to the people of this nation, it’s well past time to re-evaluate the party. I had hoped that there were at least a few in the upper echelons of the GOP who still had values and integrity, who would attempt to shift the party in the post-Trump era, but apparently I was giving them more credit than they deserved.
Yep, the fossil fuel industry and the gun industry seem to literally OWN the members of the Republican Party. Sigh.
Jill, these senior folks are just as scared of Trump as their juniors. They let this Pandora out of the box thinking they could control him. They were wrong. It will now take a more concerted effort to put him away. I think many more than a few are hoping he is found guilty making their job easier. Keith