Climate Could Be an Electoral Time Bomb, Republican Strategists Fear

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

Climate Could Be an Electoral Time Bomb, Republican Strategists Fear

By Lisa Friedman
Aug. 2, 2019

WASHINGTON — When election time comes next year, Will Galloway, a student and Republican youth leader at Clemson University, will look for candidates who are strong on the mainstream conservative causes he cares about most, including gun rights and opposing abortion.

But there is another issue high on his list of urgent concerns that is not on his party’s agenda: climate change.

“Climate change isn’t going to discriminate between red states and blue states, so red-state actors have to start engaging on these issues,” said Mr. Galloway, 19, who is heading into his sophomore year and is chairman of the South Carolina Federation of College Republicans. “But we haven’t been. We’ve completely ceded them to the left.”

While Donald Trump has led the Republican Party far down the road of denying the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change, Mr. Galloway represents a concern among younger Republicans that has caught the attention of Republican strategists.

In conversations with 10 G.O.P. analysts, consultants and activists, all said they were acutely aware of the rising influence of young voters like Mr. Galloway, who have never lived through a colder-than-average month and identify climate change as a top priority. Those strategists said lawmakers were aware, too, but few were taking action.

“We’re definitely sending a message to younger voters that we don’t care about things that are very important to them,” said Douglas Heye, a former communications director at the Republican National Committee. “This spells certain doom in the long term if there isn’t a plan to admit reality and have legislative prescriptions for it.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/climate/climate-change-republicans.html

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. Others will not listen in the GOP...

Regarding Climate Change. From Trump on down, warming of the planet, the melting of ice sheets in the Arctic, extreme weather cycles, heat records, etc., is of no concern.

As many Climate Scientists have said, we are 10 years or more behind on this subject regarding action to slow the damage down.

[DBoon]

2. meaning we should have made Al Gore president

The candidate who clearly lead in vote totals.

As opposed to the one installed by the right wing SC.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

3. Exactly.....

The truth is often inconvenient sometimes.

[Brawndo]

4. His fellow repukes will find his lack of faith disturbing

[Bradical79]

5. Yeah, because electoral prospects are most important...

Fucking idiots. You recognize an exisential threat, but guns and abortion are the real issues that matter

[bronxiteforever]

11. +1

[pecosbob]

6. You must have missed the memo...you work for the one percent.

[hatrack]

7. And there's really only one question I have after reading this article . . .

Are Young Republicans concerned about this because they foresee a steadily worsening and chaotic climate in which whole nations destabilize, and in which it becomes increasingly difficult to do basic stuff like, say, grow crops?

Or are Young Republicans concerned about this because it might hurt their party's chances of winning elections in the future?

Judging by the quotes - from them and their older compatriots - it looks like it's about 10% the former and 90% the latter.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. July August 2020 likely to be hotter than July August 2019 (July 2019 hottest on record, full stop).

[bronxiteforever]

9. Climate change is accelerating and people know it

People generally want to believe that their future looks bright. That is no longer the case. The GOPers and the science denial petro lobby groups are on the wrong side of history. You can’t negotiate with scientific truths. There is no room for political common ground.
The GOP built its platform on science denial. They are desperate to cover their core beliefs up. Yet everyone of these idiots has left a record of their willful ignorance for prosperity to damn their memory.

[smirkymonkey]

10. I find it funny that two of the issues that are so important to so many republicans

are gun rights and abortion. They just seem like very incompatible issues if one is being completely honest with oneself.

[mountain grammy]

28. I know, right?

pro life for the unborn and pro death for everyone else.. guns and fossil fuels will accomplish much of that..

[malaise]

12. Let me tell you that I watched local Florida news at noon today

People were screaming about the sargassum seaweed all over the beaches - as fast as you clear it, more comes in with the waves. And it's all over the Caribbean, Tropical Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico as well.

[hatrack]

13. Well, they better get used to it . . . .

This didn't happen overnight, and like everything else, now has behind it the awful momentum of long-term climate and biological shifts that were centuries in the making. Now that it's utterly, undeniably visible, and worsening steadily, suddenly it's a "problem".

Too bad we didn't listen to James Hansen, and that was 31 years ago and counting.

[malaise]

15. Isn't that the truth

We were warned

[pecosbob]

18. It rolled into my favorite beach in Freeport Texas in 2000...haven't been back since then

The same year my wife passed. But ten years before that it was tar balls washing up from leaking oil rigs. Before that it was the local oysters becoming inedible due to heavy metal contamination. Before that it was my childhood neighborhood sinking under Galveston Bay from subsidence due to the refineries pumping out all the groundwater for their processes.

Spent the first forty years of my life within a stone's throw of the ocean. Served in the Navy. Once was blessed to witness a porpoise pod in the Pacific that numbered in the tens of thousands. Now I live in the Mojave.

I really need to go smoke some pot.

[malaise]

19. I can see why

Humans don't deserve this once beautiful planet.

[Pluvious]

31. I hear you mon

I've said this before, humans are such a dysfunctional species.

We'd behave a whole lot different if we lived lives of a 1000 years or more.

It's hard to avoid despair over what a mess we're leaving our descendants to deal with.

[Disaffected]

33. The earth has cancer

and humans are the cells - some more malignant than others. Eventually, as is the case with most untreated cancers, we will kill the host. There will possibly be a resurrection later but it will likely take millenia.

[Poiuyt]

34. What are the predictions for red tide this year?

[Zambero]

14. Then stop fearing for your political hides and do something about it!

When it doubt, doing the right thing invariably works best. It's telling indeed that these "strategists" feel the need to weigh the future habitability of the planet against political blowback, lest they offend those who strive to maximize profits regardless of immediate and future impacts.

[GeorgeGist]

16. Let 'em burn.

Willfully ignorant MFs.

[Calculating]

17. Republicans have backed themselves into a corner on climate change

It's basically become a matter of party identity and tribalism rather than the scientific/policy problem it should be. They view climate change as 'one of those democrat issues' rather than from an impartial scientific perspective. If there was an issue such as toxic water poisoning their children they would listen to the scientists saying we should do something, but with climate it's always a 'democrat wealth redistribution hoax'.

[trev]

23. "an impartial scientific perspective"

RWers have been eschewing science since 1925. It has become impossible for them to be impartial.

[Saviolo]

20. Very soon, environmental collapse will not be a political issue.

I've said it before.

It will be a crisis everywhere. It's already a crisis. We're seeing 100-year storms every couple of years. Massive wildfires beyond anything we've seen. Droughts, rising sea levels, melting ice caps, temperatures rising, crops failing. Drastic measures need to be taken, and quickly. This isn't an abstraction, the entire west coast was on fire last year. This has nothing to do with your chosen candidate, has nothing to do with a political party or platform, this is an actual crisis.

[Doitnow]

21. Since when are they're R's who are more concerned about climate change ----and a whole host of other

things besides the almighty dollar. Anything they talk about now is TOO LATE to clean up their names.

[VOX]

22. When the Ayn-Randian assholes figure out a way to privatize this issue, they'll be all in on it.

Because the free market fixes absolutely everything.

But I’m expecting this to actually occur in the nationalist United States.

[bucolic_frolic]

24. How do they brainwash these people?

More people facing more guns and a hostile climate is not a very appealing political message. DUH! He shouldn't be worried. He should question his beliefs.

[lagomorph777]

25. Well, if he has enough guns, maybe that kid can shoot climate change and make it go away.

[BamaRefugee]

26. The only thing that will make Rethuglicans do something about climate change is when it gets TOO HOT

to hold their guns.

[NBachers]

27. Don't worry, when it's too late to deny, they'll blame Democrats & declare themselves the heroes.

Their vicious cult will lap it up and hate the libruls even more.

[barbtries]

29. which would be worse than the time bomb

it represents to the entire planet and all the life upon it.

i really hope enough people are paying attention to recognize that and vote them out. we'll need huge, massive turnout to defeat the corrupt and feckless republicans with all their unethical ways to win.

[SCVDem]

30. Dear Millenials

I know student loan debt is a large bill, but do you pay your own electric bill?

Do you run the a/c or buy food and gas?

When your apt is 100 degrees you will wonder about why abortion and the 2nd were even important to you. They do not affect your quality of life.

Try to sleep without the air con.

The heat kills! Do not support climage change deniers or pols who want more oil and coal.

I'll be dead while you bake.

Good luck with your purity of purpose.

[Gore1FL]

32. So is sexism, racism, feudalism...

Practically every GOP policy is a long-term "Electoral Time Bomb."

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

35. Kick