Trump is scaring Republicans away from saving planet Earth
His popularity has led his party members to deny climate change
After decades of refusing to acknowledge the link between human activity and a warming planet, most conservatives [in the US] no longer deny that climate change is real. Republican-led states have advanced proposals for developing renewable energy and are investing in clean fuel tech. Southern-state governors have embraced the green jobs boom created by US President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act by taking credit for it while cutting ribbons at new electric vehicle (EV) and battery manufacturing plants.
But as it becomes clear that Donald Trump will win the Republican presidential nomination, there has been a notable retrenchment in the commitment of many GOP clean-energy advocates. Republicans across the country are reversing course for fear of triggering Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change a “make-believe problem,” even suggesting that the concept was a “hoax” concocted by China.
In Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis broke with Tea Party-led climate deniers in 2016 and acknowledged that “humans contribute to what goes on around us,” the Republican-led legislature has sent him a bill that requires all references to “climate change” be deleted from state statutes. DeSantis is likely to sign it.
To DeSantis and Republican legislators, climate change may be menacing their state, but it’s someone else’s problem.
Republican House Speaker Paul Renner, who represents the Palm Coast area that was pummeled by Hurricanes Idalia and Ian, defended the retreat from use of the words “climate change,” claiming the bill’s intent is to keep energy cheap and reliable. For him, it’s fine to throw taxpayer money into fortifying homes and businesses against windstorms, floods and rising seas instead of focusing on policies that would help prevent the damage in the first place. “So if the climate’s changing, if that’s going to have negative consequences, [then] we put aside a bunch of money for flooding and resilience,” Renner said.
There is no ‘if.’ Earth’s climate has changed because of decades of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Property insurance rates in Florida have risen 57% between 2015 and 2023 and its residents already have wasted, as Renner says, “a bunch of money,” because people keep building and rebuilding in places prone to these natural disasters.
Maybe Renner is hoping to extract campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry—like Trump and DeSantis. The clean-energy backtracking is costing jobs. Trump has called for the elimination of the clean-energy tax credits contained in the Inflation Reduction Act and promised to slash incentives for EVs if he is elected. It’s become uncool for anyone who supports Trump to own an EV. So it’s no surprise that EV sales are far below expectations and that automakers have scaled back or delayed production.
The decline in EV sales led Rivian Automotive to indefinitely pause construction of a $5 billion production plant in Georgia. And in South Carolina, Albemarle suspended plans to break ground on a $1.3 billion plant to manufacture EV batteries.
This short-sighted thinking is going to hurt more than jobs. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina who lost his seat in 2010 because he campaigned on fixing the climate crisis, says precious time is being lost in the fight to adopt policies aimed at halting the damaging changes.
“The scientists are ringing in my ears saying, ‘Faster, Inglis faster.’ We don’t have time for to wait,’’ he told me. He founded an advocacy organization, republicEN.org, to work with conservative climate activists. “A majority of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, and an even larger majority of young Republicans, believe the science of climate change, and want to see our leaders put forward serious solutions,” George Behrakis, vice president of Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends said.
Despite being out of touch with most Americans, Trump has doubled down on his derision for climate change “because it excites some part of his base,” Inglis said. The result is a Republican Party stuck between advancing an optimistic marketdriven solution to the problem and angering the retribution-driven Trump.
With the loudest mouth on the planet spewing misinformation with his anticlean-energy narrative, it is no surprise that Trump’s followers are parroting him. Of course, that won’t matter when another hurricane blows through the US south this summer. But never mind talk of policies aimed at preventing the destruction these events bring. It’s all just a hoax we should ignore to ‘make America great again,’ as Trump’s slogan goes.