The past few weeks have seen several newly-elected Republican lawmakers emerge from the woodwork and acknowledge the growing risks that climate change pose to their constituents, as well as the planet more broadly. First, we had Louisiana Congressman-elect Garret Graves, the former director of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
"I'm not going to get into a prolonged discussion over climate science," he said. "It was my job for over two years. I enjoy talking about it, but I'm not going to get into the anthropogenic versus biogenic causes of climate change right now. I'll just say this: We have measured sea rise in south Louisiana. For us to stick our heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening is idiotic, and it puts the lives of 2 million people who live in south Louisiana in jeopardy."
We also had New York Rep. Chris Gibson, who stated his intention to introduce a resolution in the House geared towards helping his colleagues “recognize the reality” of climate change:
"My district has been hit with three 500-year floods in the last several years, so either you believe that we had a one in over 100 million probability that occurred, or you believe as I do that there's a new normal, and we have changing weather patterns, and we have climate change. This is the science," said the two-term lawmaker who was reelected in November.
"I hope that my party—that we will come to be comfortable with this, because we have to operate in the realm of knowledge and science, and I still think we can bring forward conservative solutions to this, absolutely, but we have to recognize the reality," Gibson said. "So I will be bringing forward a bill, a resolution that states as such, with really the intent of rallying us, to harken us to our best sense, our ability to overcome hard challenges."
I’m not pointing to these two lawmakers as the beginning of some imminent sea-change in Republican or mainstream conservative views about climate change. They remain far outside of the mainstream of Republican politics.
But it is useful to note that the Republican position wasn’t always this hostile to legislative action around climate change.
In 2008, conservative icon and former Republican house majority leader Newt Gingrich and then Democratic house majority leader Nancy Pelosi sat on a couch together as part of the "We Can Solve It" global warming ad campaign sponsored by former Vice President Al Gore. That same year, John McCain included a cap-and-trade plan in his presidential platform. A number of prominent Republican congressmen entertained the idea of a watered-down cap-and-trade plan as late as 2010. Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham and other Republicans were given ample opportunity to influence the bill, but ultimately decided that it was too politically risky to continue their support.
Much has changed in the past six years or so. Climate change denialism has become de-rigeur, as exemplified by the much-ballyhooed “I’m not a scientist” response now common among prominent Republicans. I don’t need to run through a laundry list of how much Republican mainstream opinion has shifted on global warming, or even lament this sea change. But I do want to point out that climate change denial results in negative policy outcomes for Republicans and conservatives in the United States more generally.
Note that both Gibson and Graves begin to stray into brainstorming about potential conservative-leaning solutions to climate change later in their interviews. The discussion has suddenly shifted from whether or not climate change is man-made or even occurring at all to a debate about policy differences around potential remedies. In other words, by not agreeing to sit at the table, Republicans have largely taken themselves out of the public debate.
This blanket opposition and denialism around climate change has mirrored a broader Republican strategy of opposing President Obama over the past six years. And it has been a pretty successful political tactic on the whole (other than the rather significant caveat that President Obama was reelected). It has stunted Obama’s ambitious legislative agenda, while leading to a complete Republican takeover of Congress. But this blanket opposition has come at a significant cost in terms of favourable policy outcomes. Vox’s Matthew Yglesias made this point recently:
Back during George W. Bush's administration, the Supreme Court had ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration got around this by refusing to open the email in which the EPA stated that carbon dioxide is a pollutant (really). As soon as Obama became president, it was obvious that this particular strategy was dead. Either Congress would pass a new legislative framework for dealing with carbon-dioxide emissions, or else the email would be opened and the existing regulatory framework would proceed. Climate legislation would have reduced carbon-dioxide emissions by pricing them, which would have created a pool of revenue. Some of that revenue could be used to reduce taxes or advance other GOP priorities.
But Republicans preferred to keep their fingerprints off any kind of action, even if that meant a policy outcome they liked less.
Complete Congressional opposition to any market-friendly emissions-trading regime ultimately led the administration to begin issuing an onslaught of environmental regulations that address everything from emissions at existing power plants to ozone depletion. The implications of this regulatory agenda can’t be overstated, as The New York Times’ Coral Davenport makes clear:
President Obama could leave office with the most aggressive, far-reaching environmental legacy of any occupant of the White House. Yet it is very possible that not a single major environmental law will have passed during his two terms in Washington.
This environmental legacy will have been achieved in a manner that is anathema to most Republicans and conservatives in general. But because they refused to come to the table to draft up a cap-and-trade system or some other market-based mechanism for lowering emissions, they’re been stuck with a series of policy outcomes that are heavily regulatory in nature and don’t take advantage of the private sector’s innovation and free market principles, which Republicans hold so dear.
