When will the GOP recognize climate change and agree to act?

[Sir Mohamed]

Recent reports showed that we're soon at the point of no return with climate change. Even the goals set in Paris may not be enough to prevent major impacts on the climate and the subsequent problems like many deaths from natural disasters, wars and new refugee crisis. The GOP is the only major political party in the West which refuses scientific consensus that climate change is real, let alone do something about this problem. Of course, there are few exceptions, and I applaud them, but they have nothing to decide.

How long will take until the GOP largely accepts climate change and determines that we ought to address the issue by action? How many disasters, droughts, hurricanes, wars over natural ressources and refugee crisis does it take for the GOP to realize that we're on the brink of a catastrophe? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? Trump won't be convinced, that much is certain, but luckily he won't last forever. But the future leaders? Will they change? And I haven't even talked about the lost job and innovation perspectives, when Europe and China are leading the effort towards a green future.

[Virginiá]

I would say in another 20-30 years, when it becomes harder to ignore, when renewable energy becomes more prevalent and has more sway, but more importantly, when a lot of the older Republicans are gone and replaced with younger voters and politicians who should be more open to addressing it. I wouldn't be surprised if they start acknowledging it widely (instead of denying + suppressing any mentions/info on it) but refuse to act for a variety of reasons until it really becomes impossible to refuse because of real effects on the people, which will cause them to punish lawmakers who don't work on it.

This may sound kind of petty, but I'm actually kind of worried that if climate change causes the kind of damage they are predicting, and Republicans quietly move to acknowledge it / support various fixes, that the people will not hold them to account for their shameless obstruction for generation(s). They have stymied any meaningful attempts to head off this disaster, and often at the behest of special interests and whackadoodle religious types who can't fathom the idea that man can alter God's climate. The entire party should be roasted for this and be held accountable, and people should never forget who stopped us from solving this before it became unmanageable: the fossil fuel industry and the Republican Party.

[BlueSwan]

Probably never when it comes to actually doing something. I bet they will go more or less straight from the outright climate change denial we see now to saying that "we can't do anything about it anyway". Infact the latter is more or less the position of many politicians on the right in Europe. They acknowledge that it is real, but either downplay the part humans play in it or claim that the proposed measures against it are inefficient and expensive, so we might as well do nothing.

[Hammy]

As long as they're the corporate party, never.

[IceSpear]

Never, obviously.

[Joe Kakistocracy]

Given that conservatives' entire ideology is driven by fear, you'd think policies to combat the ocean swallowing your house would be one of the key elements of their platform.

But that same platform is currently dominated by an alliance of corporate oligarchs and anti-science puritans, who haven't yet seen the long-term logic in that alternative strategy.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

You mean by rejoining the Paris Agreement, which is basically useless virtue signaling?

[Cassandra]

Probably never when it comes to actually doing something. I bet they will go more or less straight from the outright climate change denial we see now to saying that "we can't do anything about it anyway". Infact the latter is more or less the position of many politicians on the right in Europe. They acknowledge that it is real, but either downplay the part humans play in it or claim that the proposed measures against it are inefficient and expensive, so we might as well do nothing.

More or less this. We've already seen the narrative shift from "the climate isn't changing" to "yes the climate is changing, but that is a natural/'cyclical' phenomenon." The next phase, which is already being tested in some quarters, is "climate change is caused in part by industry, but in some places/ways it's actually a good thing and, anyway, there's nothing we can do about it."

But anyone who thinks the Republican Party will ever make talking directly about climate change a priority will be disappointed. Messaging around climate change is going to be filtered the prism of race as drought, flood, food shortages, and instability in the southern hemisphere create a massive flood of immigration towards the southern border.

The contemporary heightening of racial dog whistles and movement towards hard line border control policies is only a taste of what is to come. When immigration from Latin America and elsewhere actually begins to ramp up, as climate change makes millions of people desperate, I expect a shift towards more openly racist/fascist rhetoric of the superiority of White Americans (who, after all, chose well when they settled in the northern hemisphere) and the subsequent inferiority and inhumanity of the climate refugees, who can't be allowed across the border and "deserve whatever they get."

[here2view]

Never. How can they sell that to people living in coal country?

[Sir Mohamed]

Never. How can they sell that to people living in coal country?

Coal will sooner or later be gone anyway. The answer would be job training for jobs of the future, but that requires an evil government program the GOP opposes as communism.

[TheSaint250]

There has to be a new generation of leaders, and I don't mean that in some kind of "The future is ours" type thing.  It literally comes down to waiting until the younger generation that, you know, accepts basic facts in regards to the environment unlike the current leaders for the party platform. This article here shows that to an extent: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/young-republicans-are-slightly-more-liberal-on-climate-change/560312/

[KingSweden]

There has to be a new generation of leaders, and I don't mean that in some kind of "The future is ours" type thing.  It literally comes down to waiting until the younger generation that, you know, accepts basic facts in regards to the environment unlike the current leaders for the party platform. This article here shows that to an extent: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/young-republicans-are-slightly-more-liberal-on-climate-change/560312/

The Economist had something on this recently too

[OSR stands with Israel]

Look at the Australian Right Wing


Under Abbott they denied it , now they no longer do

[DINGO Joe]

When they're burning in Hell.  Hell, of course, being Appalachia.

[Calthrina950]

If the Republican Party was still like it was during the New Deal Era, or even like it was in the 1980s, then they would be fighting against climate change. There would be a substantial number of moderate and liberal Republicans who would be working towards it. I think Republicans would have been more prone to go for market-driven solutions, rather then government ones, but it still would have received some focus. Unfortunately, unless if a major realignment occurs (and I surely hope so), the majority will continue to view climate change as a hoax.

[PoliticalShelter]

Never, obviously.

As long as they're the corporate party, never.

The fact that you two are saying never almost certainly means they will probably change their position on Climate Change.

In fact you could easily make a case that the Republican Party will in the distant future become more draconian in fighting climate change than the Democrats, for similarish reasons that Joe Republic snarked about.

[Helsinkian]

As soon as Exxon-Mobil gives them the permission to do so.

[Anti-Bothsidesism]

When it's too late.

[Progressive Pessimist]

As long as they are the party of rural America (which may be indefinite), never. They managed to make it into a cultural issue and it's far too late to change course on that.