Global warming is treated as the expression of an identity rather than a discussion about a physical reality in American politics. Most of the left acts as though the issue as a way to affirm their identity as
forward-thinking progressive science-believing people rather than an issue to actually be addressed. For evidence of this, consider that people with a college education actually believed/supported/shared on the internet things like
Solar Freaking Roadways. And yet still no political discussion whatsoever about nuclear power when pretty much every engineer I know agrees that's really the answer. Part of this goes back to the 60s and 70s where environmentalism became associated with radical left counterculture movements, and if you want right to support environmental policies, some effort needs to be made to break that association.
On the right, climate change has been used as a way of motivating people against a perceived tool of the progressive elite to undercut them. Policies that penalize carbon usage do predominately punish rural and industrial workers rather than knowledge economy workers and the sort of people who are anti-immigrant more or less overlap with the losers from carbon restrictions. Of course, that it is actually true matters little to people, though with the way the left acts about it, it's hard to blame them.
