Climate change was not always the most politicized of issues.
Climate change has got to go
last 2025. Years of of politics around climate change have
become fiercely partisan,
you know, aligned much more closely around party lines than
than most other issues in American politics.
There's not an abundance of fossil fuels anymore.
They're going to be gone.
And then what are we going to do?
Climate change just isn't going to be a big issue
in the Republican primary because Republican primary voters don't care
about it.
We gave Republican voters a list of 20 issues,
and we said which three issues are the most important
to your vote this year?
And only 4% of Republicans chose climate change.
When you looked at Democrats,
over 30% of Democrats said that climate change was one
of their top issues,
which made it one of the most important issues to
Democrats.
But you still see Republican candidates who will question
the the the human or the American contribution to climate
change,
who will say that it's not clear how much human
activity is contributing or it's not clear what America can
do unilaterally when you have huge other players like China,
like India, And that's where you start to get into
the question of what to do about it.
The divide between the parties isn't necessarily closing and in
fact,
if anything, it may be widening.
So there wasn't a huge partisan divide on global warming
or on the environment.
Famous example is that president that started the Environmental Protection
Agency,
the EPA, Richard Nixon. Restoring nature to its natural state
is a cause beyond party and beyond factions.
The Nixon administration, the Reagan administration,
the first Bush administration, made some historic achievements in terms
of clean water,
clean air. But there's something that began to to flip.
So first, in the late 90s,
after the Kyoto Protocol, history was made yesterday in Kyoto,
because for the first time the industrialized nations of the
world
agreed to a binding and realistic framework
to deal with the enormous challenge of global warming.
Democrats tried to to get ratified really ran into a
lot of opposition from Republicans from fossil fuel industry.
I think I'm being unfair to the petroleum Institute in
my character.
I think we surely were opposed to the Kyoto Protocol.
But I do think that in many cases our scientists
tried to participate responsibly.
I think contributed to making Republicans particularly distrustful of efforts
to mitigate climate change.
No one's against the environment.
You never hear a candidate say I don't care about
the clean water or clean air or the severity of
storms or the realities of climate change.
I definitely think that some nuances required on the the
climate change issue.
I think we are less divided than people assume.
One big issue on campus is climate change and I
think it's conservatives,
you know, we have to tackle that issue and be
able to talk about it with students because if we
can't have that debate and dialogue,
it's hard for us to win any conversation.
The temperatures in our state and the fluctuation in weather,
not only in the United States but worldwide,
that greatly concerns me. We have to start doing more
right now or it's just going to get worse.
Back in 2010, only 57%
of Americans thought global warming was real and that it
was happening,
and now that number is a
74%. Similarly, in 2010, only
46% of Americans thought that global warming was caused by
humans,
and now that number is 61 percent.
69% of Americans want to take mitigating actions against climate
change,
but only 42% of Americans were personally willing to install
solar panels on their own home.
And only 34% of Americans were willing to pay an
extra $100 in taxes in order to pay for some
of these climate change solutions.
But when you ask people to make personal sacrifices or
to give something up themselves,
that's when the issue gets to visit.
Voters are going to drive the train on this as
well.
And if or when voters demand it,
of any kind of politician,
the the politics of this can easily change.
And the generational shift is unavoidable.
The The fact that so many younger voters prioritize climate
change
as a voting issue will have an influence that that
spills over into
into Republican politics sooner rather than later.