Jon Huntsman on why climate change denial is a losing
strategy:
“TO waste, to destroy our natural resources,
to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its
usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very
prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and
developed.”
These words were spoken by one of the nation’s most passionate
conservationists: Republican President Teddy Roosevelt. I admire him for his
pragmatism and individualism — foundational traits of the Republican Party. We
must summon these qualities and apply them immediately and stoutly to the issue
of climate change.
Leading up to the elections of 2008, Republican leaders at all
levels were working innovatively across party and ideological divides to
address environmental issues, including climate change. They included names
like Huckabee, Pawlenty, Schwarzenegger and McCain. I was re-elected with
almost 80 percent of the vote in bright red Utah as an environmentally
forward-leaning Republican.
But there has been a shift among
Republicans on climate change. Last fall, 50 percent said there was solid
evidence of rising temperatures on earth, according to the Pew Research Center.
But that is down from 2006, when 59 percent of Republicans held that view.
Perhaps some of this shift has to do with the economic collapse
and a resulting change in concerns and priorities. At the same time, many party
leaders may have felt the need to run for cover because of growing pressure
from the Tea Party. (Among Tea Party Republicans, 41 percent told Pew last fall
that global warming was not happening; another 28 percent said not enough was
known.) Others in the party have simply moved away from the spirit of Teddy
Roosevelt. What’s been lost is any Republican creative thinking on the issue.
So obtuse has become the party’s dialogue on climate change that
it’s now been reduced to believing or not believing, as if it were a religious
mantra.
This approach reached a new low last month during a North
Carolina congressional debate at which all the Republican candidates chuckled
at a question on climate change — as if they had been asked about their belief
in the Tooth Fairy. Is climate change a fact, they were asked. All four
answered no. This is a shortsighted strategy that is wrong for the party, wrong
for the country and wrong for the next generation. It simply kicks a big
problem farther down the field. And it’s a problem we — as solution-seeking
Republicans — have the opportunity to solve.
Click here for the full op-ed in the New York
Times.