Thanks to Peter Oliver for his analysis of the inconsistencies between traditional conservative principles and contemporary Republicans’ denial of the existence or significance of climate change, and of the role of the burning of fossil fuels in driving it. (May 29, 2025.)
In one respect, though, I must take issue with Mr. Oliver. His piece gives credit to Republicans where absolutely none is due, in its implicit concession that Republicans actually believe in the truth of their assertions. The fact is, however, that few Republicans hold such beliefs. No one with ordinary intelligence and a modicum of common sense, if they pay more than the most superficial attention to public issues, can possibly believe that climate change is a hoax or a merely pseudo-scientific theory.
This has not always been the case. When concerns about climate issues first became a subject of broad public discussion, it was possible to maintain a good-faith skepticism of the immediacy and scope of the crisis. The scientific basis for the proposition that increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 must lead to a warming climate had by then been understood for over a hundred years. Until relatively recently, though, observational evidence confirming that proposition was still rather modest, and certainly less than compelling to many observers.
Notwithstanding that this was a scientific issue, opinion over how large was the threat of climate change quickly divided along ideological lines, with those who expressed serious concern being overwhelmingly on the left of the political spectrum. By the late1980s or early 1990s, however, the cumulative evidence showing that climate change was indeed a major threat had become overwhelming, so massive as to be irrefutable. Yet, Republicans adamantly refused to abandon their position that no crisis was coming.
So why do they purport to deny the evidence? The short answer is that they would rather allow a massive catastrophe to envelop the world than either (a) support the extensive governmental programs that would have to be undertaken to effectively meet the crisis, or (b) admit that that they have always been wrong about climate change, while the left has long been correct, even when the evidence in its favor was not very strong. In other words, unable to avoid the humiliation of being so obviously outdone by the left on a matter of nearly existential importance, and having made fealty to the mantra of small government more important than protecting the public good, Republicans have left themselves with no choice but to deny what they, and everyone else, knows to be the facts.
Some on the right have apparently decided that they will have more success in bringing others to their position by spouting their time-honored canard: that anyone who disagrees with them must be a “left-wing-radical-who-hates-America.” Others simply offer misleading or blatantly false information, which, of course, is often sufficient to convince a certain number of low-information citizens.
That so many of today’s Republicans have chosen these tactics demonstrates with crystal clarity the stunning cynicism, dishonesty and hypocrisy that so regrettably define the party now in control of this country.
Wies lives in Fayston.
