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Most USA Republicans favour action on climate change

Trump supporters don’t like his climate policies, Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists, 20 JANUARY 2017 Dana Nuccitelli   Recent surveys jointly conducted by Yale University and George Mason University found that a majority of Republicans (including a plurality of conservative Republicans) support US participation in international climate agreements like the Paris accords. They support regulating or taxing carbon pollution. And they want the United States to get much more of its energy from renewables, and less from fossil fuels.

Yet they also voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, who pledged to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement (though he has since waffled), and to kill the Clean Power Plan and its carbon pollution regulations. And he seems to strongly prefer coal to wind and solar energy, which he has inaccurately described as “not working on large-scale” and “very, very expensive.”………

Republican support for climate-change mitigation policies is broad but shallow. They would prefer that the government take action to curb carbon pollution, but for most, the issue won’t impact their votes.

However, the fossil fuel industry is a major Republican Party donor. Which means that for many Republican politicians, the incentives are thus quite clear—if they obstruct climate policies, they’re rewarded with campaign donations, and they’re not penalized at the ballot box by conservative voters who only mildly disapprove of their actions.

Donald Trump didn’t receive particularly substantial fossil fuel funding during his presidential campaign, which may help explain his wobbly stance on climate change. He simply doesn’t seem to have put much thought into the subject or consider it a high priority, quite like most of his supporters. But many of his nominees to powerful government positions like Scott Pruitt have benefited from oil industry donations, and Trump even nominated the chief executive officer of the world’s largest oil company to be his Secretary of State.

It’s in those key government roles where the rubber meets the road. If Trump’s nominees are approved, the fossil fuel industry will have powerful allies in his administration, and if they do enough damage to America’s efforts to curb carbon pollution, Trump and the GOP may eventually pay the electoral price…….http://thebulletin.org/trump-supporters-don%E2%80%99t-his-climate-policies10411#.WINK_ptkX2s.twitter

January 23, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, politics, USA