Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumWhy Republicans Turned Against the Environment - Paul Krugman - New York Times
In 1990 Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act of 1970, among other things taking action against acid rain, urban smog and ozone.
The legislation was highly successful, greatly reducing pollution at far lower cost than business interest groups had predicted. I sometimes see people trying to use acid rain as an example of environmental alarmism hey, it was a big issue in the 1980s, but now hardly anyone talks about it. But the reason we dont talk about it is that policy largely solved the problem.
Whats really striking from todays perspective, however, is the fact that the 1990 legislation passed Congress with overwhelming, bipartisan majorities. Among those voting Yea was a first-term senator from Kentucky named Mitch McConnell.
That was then. This is now: The Inflation Reduction Act which, despite its name, is mainly a climate bill with a side helping of health reform didnt receive a single Republican vote. Now, the I.R.A. isnt a leftist plan to insert Big Government into everyones lives: It doesnt coerce Americans into going green; it relies on subsidies to promote low-emission technologies, probably creating many new jobs. So why the scorched-earth G.O.P. opposition?
The immediate answer is that the Republican Party has turned strongly anti-environmental over time. But why?
Surveys from the Pew Research Center show the widening partisan divide over environmental policy. In the 1990s self-identified Republicans and Democrats werent that different in their environmental views: Republicans were less likely than Democrats to say that we should do whatever it takes to protect the environment, more likely to say that environmental regulation hurts the economy, but the gaps were relatively modest.
Since then, however, these gaps have widened into chasms, and not in a symmetrical way: Democrats have become somewhat more supportive of environmental action, but Republicans have become much less supportive.
Most of the divergence is fairly recent, having taken place since around 2008. I cant help pointing out that Republican belief that environmental protection hurts the economy soared precisely during the period when revolutionary technological progress in renewable energy was making emissions reductions cheaper than ever before.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/opinion/republicans-environment-climate.html
Puppyjive
(502 posts)Unfortunately, the only way for republicans to understand climate change is when it is too late. Natural disasters are non partisan and becoming reality around the globe. Republicans have never been forward thinkers and cannot legislate based on science. They can't deny the disaster that arrives on their front porch.
onetexan
(13,042 posts)Its undereducated base doesn't believe in science.
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)[link:https://www.epa.gov/history|]
Rhiannon12866
(205,467 posts)This isn't even Nixon's Republican party, either...
hatrack
(59,587 posts)But he could sense the political winds when about 10% of America's population participated in some way in Earth Day in 1970 (as could Congress).
Rhiannon12866
(205,467 posts)I also remember hearing that he had a health care program.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)The Jungle 1
(4,552 posts)The fossil fuel industry donates massive amounts of money to repuke campaigns.
Until we get money out of politics we are screwed. Thank the SC.
George H W Bush signed the bill that ended acid rain. It was a market based system and it did woooo wor k wwww ( I can't say it). I do rub it in the face of my republican friends all the time. The same thing could be done for carbon. Republicans should love it because it is their plan! However repukes refuse to even discuss how successful the H W plan was. It was from back when republicans still had a soul.
A lot of people do not remember acid rain. One example, the car companies had to put plastic on the cars when shipping them to the dealers. The acid rain etched the paint!
I live in Pa and we have 5,500 miles of dead, orange streams. From coal mine runoff. The coal companies owned us for years. You owe your soul to the company store.
Sixteen tons.
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Merle Travis, recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford
It was legal slavery and not much has changed!!!! They still own us, the deception has just gotten deeper.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)That would be mostly fossil fuel companies.