Harrowing storms may move climate debate, if not GOP leaders

For years, climate change activists have faced a wrenching dilemma: how to persuade people to care about a grave but seemingly far-off problem and win their support for policies that might pinch them immediately in utility bills and at the pump.

But that calculus may be changing at a time when climatic chaos feels like a daily event rather than an airy abstraction, and storms powered by warming ocean waters wreak havoc on the mainland United States. Americans have spent weeks riveted by television footage of wrecked neighborhoods, displaced families, flattened Caribbean islands and submerged cities from Houston to Jacksonville.

“The conversation is shifting,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-hawaii. “Because even if you don’t believe liberals, even if you don’t believe scientists, you can believe your own eyes.”

Despite consensus among scientists, not everyone is convinced that terrifying weather means climate change is an urgent threat. There is virtually no prospect of large-scale federal action on the issue in the near future, and President Donald Trump has made a top priority of unraveling the Obama administration’s environmental policies, including the Paris climate accord. Republicans, who control the White House and Congress, remain broadly skeptical of climate science and rely heavily on the electoral support of oiland coal-producing states.

But an array of political leaders — including some members of Trump’s party, along with emboldened Democrats and environmental activists — see the underlying dynamics of climate politics bending, as drastic weather events throw up practical challenges for red and blue states alike. Schatz, one of the Democrats’ most assertive spokesmen on global warming, said there were already “pockets of opportunity” to work with Republicans on measures to reinforce