With that in mind, ThinkProgress wanted to revisit our climate and energy [Democratic] candidate chart, where we help voters understand where candidates stand.
We have updated the Democratic candidates, now whittled to only Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, by breaking out Atlantic and Gulf offshore drilling and including new data on fossil fuel donations, and we added a few lines that reflect some of Trump’s more aggressive energy and climate positions.
The Republican candidate has been remarkably mum on climate issues — perhaps because, as he has repeatedly Tweeted, Trump believes climate change is a hoax. (He also may or may not believe that the hoax is perpetrated by the Chinese.)
But, by and large, from what Trump has said, we can infer that he would not support the Clean Power Plan. He would attempt to dismantle the EPA. He thinks the electricity from wind is “terrible.”
Of course, taken in the aggregate, Trump’s positions are pretty much in line with much of his party. While polls show that the majority of Republican voters favor carbon reductions, the mere idea of climate change is largely met with ridicule by Republican leaders.
None of the remaining Republican candidates accept the scientific consensus that humans are contributing to global warming that, left unchecked, will be devastating for life as we know it, raising sea levels, disrupting weather patterns, and triggering increased drought and flooding.
It will also be terrible for the economy.
But in recent months, there appears to have been some thawing (no pun intended) on the fringes of the Republican party. Eleven Republican House representatives sided with the pope and signed a resolution to act on climate last fall. Then, this winter, one Democratic and one Republican representative launched the bipartisan House Climate Caucus. As pundits are widely predicting a renewed self-evaluation by the Republican party following the impressive outsider juggernaut Trump has become, it’s worth considering the idea that, perhaps, the party’s divergence from science and technology will soften in years to come. Ironically, this would be a return to form. Former President George H. W. Bush’s administration considered climate change an urgent and important issue — and one that offered an opportunity for the United States to lead.
Read more at This One Chart Shows How Crazy Trump’s Climate Positions Are
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