The Republican Party Stands Alone in Climate Denial

A paper published in the journal Politics and Policy by Sondre Båtstrand at the University of Bergen in Norway compared the climate positions of conservative political parties around the world.  Båtstrand examined the platforms or manifestos of the conservative parties from the USA, UK, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Germany.  He found that the US Republican Party stands alone in its rejection of the need to tackle climate change and efforts to become the party of climate supervillains.

Republicans would be fringe in any other country
As Jonathan Chait wrote of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s proposals to eliminate all significant American national climate policies,

In any other democracy in the world, a Jeb Bush would be an isolated loon, operating outside the major parties, perhaps carrying on at conferences with fellow cranks, but having no prospects of seeing his vision carried out in government.  But the United States is different.  Here in America, ideas like Bush’s fit comfortably within one of the two major political parties.  Indeed, the greatest barrier to Bush claiming his party’s nomination is the quite possibly justified sense that he is too sober and moderate to suit the GOP.

So, what’s different about the United States?  One factor is the immensely profitable and politically influential fossil fuel industry.  However, Canada and Australia serve as useful analogues.  With Australian coal reserves and Canadian tar sands, fossil fuels account for a larger share of both countries’ economies.  Nevertheless, Båtstrand noted,

The [Republican] party seems to treat climate change as a non-issue ... this appears to be consistent with the U.S. national context as a country with large reserves of coal.

Båtstrand also found that the emphasis on free market ideology is relatively strong in the Republican Party platform.  However, the appropriate free market approach to climate change involves putting a price on the external costs of climate pollution.  In fact, that’s why the President George H. W. Bush administration invented cap and trade as a free market alternative to government regulation of pollutants.  So, free market ideology can’t explain the abnormal behavior of the Republican Party on climate change.

Fossil fuel funds + political polarization = climate denial

The answer may lie in a combination of fossil fuel industry influence, and increasing, record levels of political polarization.  As shown by the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham, the conservative ideology score of House Republicans is the highest it’s been in over 50 years.


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