Dodos, Passenger Pigeons, Quaggas And Republican Environmentalists
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Decades ago, Republican environmentalists existed within a size-able range and habitat. Both Presidents Nixon and Reagan pleaded to keep support for environmental values nonpartisan. My favorite, oft-used factoid on environmental unity is from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) 1980 Congressional Scorecard. LCV, which compiles an annual performance scorecard rating House and Senate members for "good" and "bad" environmental votes, rated a young Georgia Congressman, Newt Gingrich, 15 points higher than another young Congressman from neighboring Tennessee, Al Gore.
A good example of the GOP's willful fall from green is the Central New York state district represented by Sherwood Boehlert from 1983 to 2007. He championed acid rain legislation and funding for public transportation. Boehlert's lifetime LCV score is 79 percent — a height no Republican comes close to today. His somewhat re-shaped district is now served by Republican Claudia Tenney, who scored 6 percent last year.
Perusing LCV's invaluable data over the years, Democrats generally scored higher than 50 percent, while average Republicans settled in at about 35 percent. Senators and representatives from both parties in the South and West (excluding the Pacific Coast states) generally scored lower than their counterparts in the northeast and Great Lakes regions.
Name your catalyst – 9/11, the 2008 economic crash, or the relentless drumbeat of corporate and ideological greenwashing— but, by the time the 21st Century came along, the two parties developed mirror-image environmental brands. Democrats' LCV numbers were frequently above 90 percent, and with few exceptions, Republicans plummeted to between 10 percent and zero. With the 2016 elections, those numbers not only ossified but took hold in the White House and key Cabinet positions.
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https://www.ehn.org/republican-environmentalists-were-a-thing-2615535787.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
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