The Republican antipathy toward the issue of climate change is a curiously contradictory thing. President Trump has called climate change a hoax. Texas senator Ted Cruz has called it a "pseudo-scientific theory." Many other Republicans, as climate-change deniers, repeat variations of the dismissive mantra: "The weather is always changing."
Yet this position runs counter to at least three cornerstones of traditional conservative philosophy. First, conservatives believe that the spending of federal tax dollars is an apostasy. Second, conservatives believe that promoting growing businesses is the foundational basis for building a strong economy. And third, conservative politicians live by a three-word commandment shared by their liberal counterparts: jobs, jobs, jobs.
Start with the concern about spending. When climate scientists like NASA's James Hansen began warning in the 1980s that global warming would lead to more, and more intense, natural disasters – hurricanes, floods, tornados, droughts, wildfires – it barely made the news.
But in the 1980s, the impacts of global warming were still relatively minimal – the annual number of natural disasters was low and so was the cost of disaster recovery. Yet as global temperatures rose steadily, so did the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the number of disasters costing a billion dollars or more averaged a little more than three per year during the 1980s. In the last five years, the yearly average of billion-dollar disasters (in inflation-adjusted dollars) has been 23. Of greater concern to spending-averse Republicans should have been the skyrocketing costs of disaster relief. According to NOAA, the annual cost of disaster relief was $22 billion in the 1980s. By 2024, the annual cost, again in inflation-adjusted dollars, was $182.7 billion. Most of the money spent was in the form of federal tax dollars, expenditures covered largely through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
A sensible way of reducing those ballooning costs would have been to address the root cause – global warming – with measures, recommended by climate scientists like Hansen, to lessen the impact of major disasters. Instead, Republicans resisted all mitigating measures; if you think climate change is just a pseudo-scientific theory, why spend money to do anything about it, despite the chance to save billions in taxpayer dollars?
Next, consider Republican disregard for the bedrock conservative principle of being pro-business. For a prime case study, focus on Senator Cruz's home state of Texas. Clean energy is, of course, at the core of climate-change mitigation, and, as nowhere else in the country, the clean energy business in Texas is booming. Texas currently ranks first in the nation in the growth of wind energy generation over the last 10 years and second in the growth of solar energy generation. Importantly, it ranks second in the nation in the growth of battery storage – a whopping 89-fold increase in the last 10 years. The state ranks third in the growth of electrical vehicle registrations.
You might think that pro-business Republicans would be staunch supporters of a business sector seeing such a robust upsurge, both in terms of investment and resultant jobs. Nope. Texas is historically an oil state, and Texas Republicans see clean energy as a threat to their fossil-fuel pals. Instead of supporting the booming clean energy business, the Republican-controlled state legislature has considered or enacted measures to suppress the boom. Governor Greg Abbott and the two U.S. Senators (Cruz and John Cronyn) are all climate change skeptics.
At the national level, the climate-change-friendly electric vehicle industry is also booming. According to Cox Automotive, almost 300,000 EVs were sold in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2025, an 11.4% increase over the previous year. According to statista.com, the EV market is forecast to grow at an annual rate exceeding 12% over the next four years. U.S. automakers have so far invested roughly $500 billion dollars in the development and manufacture of EVs, and that investment is starting to pay off big time. What's more, much (not all) of the U.S. EV production is U.S.-based, generating U.S. jobs. General Motors, for example, has seven U.S. factories, employing more than 6,000 people, devoted exclusively to the assembly of EVs or the manufacture of electric fuel cells.
What's a pro-business Republican not to like about that? Plenty, apparently. Trump and his Republican colleagues seem to believe that the U.S. auto industry's future success is in gas-powered vehicles, despite the fact that, according to cleantechnica.com, gas-powered vehicle sales in the U.S. declined 16% between 2018 and 2024. Nevertheless, generous tax credits that have helped drive the increase in EV sales disappear in Trump's giant tax bill. That's obviously going to put a big hurt on EV sales, and reduced sales invariably mean reduced jobs. Many if not most of those jobs are in Republican districts.
At least Republicans have figured out a way of alleviating the burden of costly disaster relief. Simple – reduce spending by not spending, by slashing the FEMA budget. Perhaps they think this is promoting self-reliance, another tenet of conservative orthodoxy. Toughen up and learn to fend for yourselves, you miserable disaster victims. Ironically, most victims live in Republican-dominated areas – Florida, Texas, Louisiana.
Many of the impacts forecast by climate-change scientists in the 1980s have materialized – ahead of schedule. Yet in their persistent denials of this reality, Republicans are shaking their own foundations. By climbing aboard the climate-change bandwagon, they could be taking steps to reduce the overall federal cost of disaster recovery. Less spending! They could be promoting growing opportunities in the booming business of clean energy. Pro business! But no – contradiction is the name of their climate-change game.
Oliver lives in Warren.
