There are many differences between Republicans and Democrats, but on climate the differences are especially stark. The Trump and Republican Party mantra, “drill, baby, drill,” reflects their commitment to the fossil fuel industry. They will continue to promote coal, oil and gas, and delay the transition to clean energy, even though the disease, death, and destruction these fuels cause is becoming catastrophic and irreversible.
Here's what’s weird: The Republican Party in the 1970s led the environmental movement; it now opposes it. Clean air and water legislation, the creation of an annual Earth Day, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency all happened under President Nixon. Yet today 123 members in Congress including the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader — all Republicans — are climate deniers. They question the validity of the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is causing the planet to overheat. The head of the party, Donald Trump, calls climate change a hoax.
In a rambling interview on X with Elon Musk, Donald Trump made a number of weird and fact-free assertions about global warming, including that rising sea levels would create “more oceanfront property” and that there was no urgent need to cut carbon emissions. “You sort of can’t get away from it at this moment,” Trump said of fossil fuels. “I think we have, you know, perhaps hundreds of years left. Nobody really knows.”