On Saturday, the Canadian Conservative Party voted down a recent proposal for the party to become more green-friendly, rejecting stances such as “Canadian businesses classified as highly polluting need to take more responsibility” and “climate change is real.”
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was seen Friday urging his colleagues to be more open-minded, believing that the party’s failure to recognize the scientific consensus behind human-caused climate change would hurt their chances to challenge the Liberal Party coalition and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the next election. But the 54 to 46 percent vote is the latest affirmation of the enduring conservative trend to reject modern climate realities.
The Canadian decision is the latest development in a much larger problem. Conservatives across the globe are continuing to rally behind a scientifically debunked claim that climate change isn’t happening. In the United States, conservative politicians — none of whom are scientists themselves — discredit and question prominent and reliable climate change researchers. In Germany, right-wing party officials pass out scientifically inaccurate pamphlets at student activist rallies.
If conservatives don’t get up to speed soon, they risk slipping further into the irrelevance of their old ways.
The “debate” over climate change is a myth that conservative leaders must cease to perpetuate. Overwhelming scientific consensus affirms that the earth is warming at historic rates. Claims to the contrary are not a valid political opinion — they are an alternate reality that is incompatible with basic fact.
The conservative talking point that recognizes rising atmospheric CO2 but rejects strong human influence on that rise is also factually incorrect.
Groundbreaking studies on historic atmospheric carbon levels found that over the past 800,000 years, carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has never surpassed around 300 parts per million, even in Earth’s warmest periods. However, since 1950, CO2 levels have risen dramatically to over 400 ppm, levels never before reached in observable history.
What’s more is that we can directly link almost all of the additional carbon production to human activities like fossil fuel consumption. And this increase is having immediate impacts on our daily lives.
In recent years, those impacts have looked like rising temperatures year over year, with increasingly unreliable weather and climate models. Data collected over the past four decades shows that between 2013 and 2019, not a single day passed where global temperatures didn’t significantly surpass historical averages. And that’s old data — a child under 8 years old today has likely not experienced a day unaffected by climate change in their lifetime.
The time to deny humanity’s role in our warming earth is long over, and conservative leaders who continue to perpetuate the myth of a debate are lying to themselves and their constituents. This is different from a debate around which policies provide the best pathway forward. Countries like France, Germany, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. — with large populations that continue to subscribe to the anti-climate-change narrative — should put tax dollars to use by discussing action, not by trying to ignore extensive scientific evidence.
Not only is it bad form to oppose basic scientific fact — it’s also bad politics. While it should be clear that climate change is a problem, there is not a broad consensus on what policy will produce the best action. Politicians should be debating and working together to find the best solutions to this very real threat, not wasting time denying basic scientific fact.
In the United States, conservative climate positions detract from the right’s political credibility and inhibit its ability to push other policy priorities. Polls from recent years suggest that more than 52% of Republicans ages 18 to 38 thought the government needed to do more on climate change in 2019, signaling a shift in younger voter sentiments.
If the GOP loses the support of young voters over what should be easily acceptable facts, they will lose their ability to push for other conservative priorities like fiscal responsibility, states’ rights, and laissez-faire economics.
They will also forfeit influence over how climate action can be taken. Green energy and climate policy are not incompatible with conservative values. Energy independence, job creation, agricultural prosperity, and market-led innovation are all historic priorities of conservatives in the U.S. and abroad. If conservative leaders participate in conversations on climate change action, they can help shape policies that center these priorities and produce positive economic and social outcomes for their citizens.
But they can only do this by first recognizing climate change’s existence. Canadian Opposition Leader O’Toole is right; conservatives “cannot ignore the reality of climate change” if they want to remain politically relevant. Conservative leaders across the globe must leave the myth of a climate change debate behind or risk getting lost in the past themselves.
Image Credit: “Global Warming Censored” by Brett Tatman is licensed for use under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
