There is an interesting article in The Hill by republican Sherwood Boehlert, which is well worth reading. Boehlert starts by going over an interesting history of past republican presidential actions concerning environmental issues: Theodore Roosevelt, considered one of the founders of the green movement, was a republican, after all. And all of these are true:
Richard Nixon gave us the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency. George H.W. Bush achieved a large-scale cap-and-trade program to address emissions that cause acid rain, and signed into law the Production Tax Credit for wind energy, which has been crucial to growing our clean energy economy – but will expire at the end of this year without significant Republican support.
Unfortunately, as it happens, those days are over. The anti-environmentalist movement, born largely out of the backlash against communism, started to dominate the Republican party in the 1980’s. There is a convulted story to how this happened.
In the beginning, a handful of prominent scientists with an axe to grind with communists, including the late Fred Seitz, a former head of the National Academy of Sciences, found reason to speak out and cast doubt on the findings of their colleagues, even though they had no publications or expertise in the fields they were disputing. After all, if you don’t ask your doctor about solid state physics, why would you go to solid state physicist like Seitz to ask about health risks of smoking? Nonetheless, their names gave credence to the anti-sciene movement, as it evolved over time. What started with Seitz’ collaboration with the tobacco industry to fund research casting doubt on harmful effects of smoking later lead to other scientists, including Fred Singer, another physicist, disputing hazards of loss of the atmosphere’s ozone layer loss including skin cancer caused by the sun’s UV rays, and the health effect of tobacco (this time second hand smoke). As Seitz, Singer, and a few others, disparaged their own colleagues about hazardous effects of environmental factors, they found themselves in an alliance with conservative personalities and organizations such as Milton Friedman, who were opposed to environmental regulations on ideological grounds, since they were against all government regulations of any kind. These scientists founded the George Marshall institute, once an organization against the influence of communism, but since the end of cold war, a mouthpiece for polluting industries. Unsurprisingly, this institute has been at the forefront of climate science denialism. The relationship between politicians on the Right and the anti-environmentalist movement became cozier over the years, of course, as the political Right in the US moved further along the path of ideological purity. This history is chronicled niced in the following book.
To top it off, we then had the Religious Right added to the mix, and we ended up with insanities like this.
But back to Boehlert’s article:
As Republicans ponder how to broaden our appeal to Hispanics, women, and young voters, party leaders and strategists would be wise to take note of a recent Zogby Analytics poll, which found that these demographic groups are among those most concerned with confronting climate change. According to the poll, 75 percent of Hispanics, 65 percent of women, and 65 percent of voters between 25 and 34 years old are concerned that climate change is adding to the severity of recent extreme weather like Hurricane Sandy…
There is nothing wrong with having a vigorous debate over the proper policy prescriptions for addressing climate change, toxic emissions, and other environmental concerns. But members of our party must stop sticking their heads in the sand and denying that these problems even exist, or worse, disparaging the scientists who conduct research on them.
Boehlert sounds like a very reasonable person, precisely the type of “moderate” that Michael Shermer might want to reach out to. There is just one problem: he is no longer in office. The new chairman of the Science Panel at the US House of Representatives, Lamar Smith, is a climate science denier. And therein lies in the problem: in the current political climate on the Right, people like Smith have much better chances of winning out than those like Boehlert. And they are not so interested in winning over the demographic Boehlert names (even though they may pay lip service to that goal)-after all, why work to win votes when you can simply rig the system to work in your favor?
