There are many differences between Republicans and Democrats, but on climate the differences are especially stark. Donald Trump’s and the Republicans’ mantra, “drill baby drill,” reflects their commitment to the fossil fuel industry. They will continue to promote coal, oil and gas, and delay the transition to clean energy, even though the disease, death and destruction these fuels cause is becoming catastrophic and irreversible.
Here’s what’s weird: the Republican Party in the 1970s led the environmental movement; it now opposes it. Clean air and water legislation, the creation of an annual Earth Day, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency all happened under President Richard Nixon.
Yet today, 123 members in Congress including the Speaker of the House and the majority leader — all Republicans — are climate-deniers. They question the validity of the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is causing the planet to overheat. Trump, the head of the party, calls climate change a hoax.
In a rambling interview on X with Elon Musk, Trump made a number of weird and fact-free assertions about global warming, including that rising sea levels would create “more oceanfront property” and that there was no urgent need to cut carbon emissions. “You sort of can’t get away from it at this moment,” Trump said of fossil fuels. “I think we have, you know, perhaps hundreds of years left. Nobody really knows.”
Using a term with no apparent meaning, Trump said, “The one thing that I don’t understand is that people talk about global warming, or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” Overall, the former president doled out falsehoods and displayed the extent of his ignorance about climate change. Climate activist, Bill McKibben, labeled the interview “the dumbest climate conversation of all time.”
Trump has no actual climate mitigation policy agenda, and his “drill, baby, drill” slogan shows he is ignorant of the fact that the United States’ production of fossil fuels is currently at historic highs, making our country the largest producer of fossil fuels on the planet.
Why Republicans are courting the support of fossil fuel interests is clear. They have enormous financial and political power. Trump has committed his party to do all they can to prop up this polluting industry. At a fund-raising dinner held at Mar-a-Lago, with more than 20 executives, from companies including Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, Trump reportedly asked for $1 billion in campaign contributions, promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.
For oil and gas companies the biggest motivation to back Trump is to protect domestic subsidies and overseas oil income. These subsidies and special tax loopholes amount to more than $100 billion, and they could be eliminated if Democrats win in November. Those 123 Republican lawmakers who deny climate science have together received $52 million in lifetime campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry.
The views of these Republican members of Congress who are dismissive of climate science is at odds with the views of the American public. According to Yale Climate Communications, fewer than one in five people in the U.S. reject the findings of climate science. Following strings of record heat waves and a parade of wildfires, storms and other climate-fueled events, more than 50 percent of Americans surveyed in 2023 said they are “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change.
Anthony Leiserowitz, an expert in climate public opinion at Yale says, “This small minority of Americans … [is] having an undue influence on the public square, to the extent that most people don’t want to talk about climate change because they think half of the country doesn’t believe in it. There’s a culture of silence — climate has joined sex, religion and politics as the topics not to bring up at the Thanksgiving table.”
Add to this a flood of donations from the fossil fuel industry and the views of climate deniers gain more influence than they deserve, Leiserowitz contends.
At the Paris Climate Conference in 2016 nearly every nation on Earth agreed that we must work together to limit the increase in global average temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. For decades scientists have been warning that if we keep burning coal, oil and gas their emissions will overheat the planet with perilous consequences and enormous suffering to billions of people. That threshold has now been breached.
Temperatures over the last 12 months have all been over the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius. In recent weeks global temperatures have spiked to their highest levels in recorded history. The impacts have been devastating.
Already, the planet bears the scars of Trump’s first term. To promote the production and use of oil and gas, he rolled back over 100 environmental regulations. The damage done by the greenhouse gas pollution unleashed by his actions may prove to be one of the most profound legacies of his presidency.
If Republicans retake the White House and gain majorities in Congress there are extensive plans to dismantle federal climate policy. Project 2025 — a Republican manifesto authored by several Trump insiders — is a detailed vision to demolish the Environmental Protection Agency, eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and roll back our federal climate laws.
What happens in November — who wins the White House, which party controls the Congress — will literally determine what level of human suffering and environmental degradation is in store for our children and future generations.
Robert Taylor is a freelance journalist who specializes in environmental issues and previously worked as an economic analyst for Shell Oil company. He is a contributor to “The Global Climate Crisis, What to do about it,” Elsevier Publishers, 2024.