Many Conservative Republicans Believe Climate Change Is a Real Threat

A majority of Republicans — including 54 percent of self-described conservative Republicans — believe the world’s climate is changing and that mankind plays some role in the change, according to a new survey conducted by three prominent Republican pollsters.

The results echo a number of other recent surveys concluding that despite the talk of many of the party’s candidates, a significant number of Republicans and independent voters are inclined to support candidates who would back some form of climate action.  It may also point to a problem facing Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination:  the activists who crowd town hall meetings and Republican presidential caucuses and primaries might not reflect the broader attitude of even the Republican electorate.

The survey was commissioned by Jay Faison, a North Carolina businessman who calls himself a conservative Republican and has announced that he intends to spend $10 million on efforts to lobby Republicans to embrace the issue of climate change.  He has spent $165 million to start a nonprofit foundation, ClearPath, aimed at promoting climate change and clean energy policies that could appeal to conservatives.

In an interview Monday, Mr. Faison said he has recently spoken by phone to “most” of the Republican candidates, as they have sought his financial contributions to their campaigns.

“There’s a shortlist of guys who can give at that level, and I’m on it,” he said.

Mr. Faison hired three prominent Republican pollsters to conduct the survey:  Whit Ayres, who works for the presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida; Glen Bolger, a three-time winner of the American Association of Political Consultants’ “Republican Pollster of the Year;” and Kristen Soltis Anderson, author of “The Selfie Vote:  Where Millennials are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up).”

“At the moment some of the louder voices in the party are dominating this debate,” said Ms. Anderson in an interview.  “But as we move out of the entertainment phase of the campaign and look at more of the policy platforms, there’s a way for Republicans to talk about this that depoliticizes climate.”

On the campaign trail, the leading Republican presidential contenders question or deny human-caused climate change.  In an interview on CNN last week, Donald J. Trump said, “I don’t believe in climate change.”  In an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle this month, Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who, along with Mr. Trump, is at the top of many recent polls said, “There is no overwhelming science that the things that are going on are man-caused and not naturally caused.”

While such statements sit well with many conservative activists, the new survey found that 73 percent of all voters and 56 percent of Republicans do believe the climate is changing.  Fewer than a third of Republicans think the climate is changing because of purely natural cycles, and only 9 percent think the climate is not changing at all, the survey found.  It also found that 72 percent of Republicans support accelerating the development of renewable energy sources.

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