The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has
published new research showing a decided split in Republican views about climate change and whether carbon dioxide emissions should be regulated as a pollutant. But, with their cognitive dissonance banner flying high, 56 percent of Republicans say they favor such curbs, while only 44 percent say they accept the scientific evidence that human-caused climate change is happening. Say what?
It seems that 56 percent saying they think CO2 should be regulated only do so in theory. When it comes down to an actual effort to do so, many fewer are on board. Only 44 percent back the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rules on restricting emissions from electricity-generating plants:
For this study, we combined the results from six of our nationally-representative surveys over the past three years, which provided enough data for an in-depth analysis of the diversity of views about global warming within the Republican party.
We find that solid majorities of self-identified moderate and liberal Republicans – who comprise 30% of the party – think global warming is happening (62% and 68% respectively). By contrast, 38% of conservative Republicans think global warming is happening. At the extreme, Tea Party Republicans (17% of the party) are the most dismissive—only 29% think global warming is happening. […]
In contrast to the current goal of Republican leaders in Congress to block EPA regulations on carbon dioxide, half of all Republicans (56%) support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, including conservatives (54%). Moderate and liberal Republicans are particularly likely to support the policy (74% and 71% respectively), while only 36% of Tea Party Republicans support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
While the attitudes of rank-and-file Republicans show that they aren't all numbskulls when it comes to climate change, the split is a lot different when GOP leaders in the House and Senate
are taken into account. Sixty-eight percent of that leadership, including 62 percent of the Republican members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, deny that climate change is real, according to Climate Progress. Hard to know how many actually do think climate change is happening and are just taking an oppositional stance to make their campaign contributors happy and how many are truly dunces.
How this will play out when it comes to policy-making isn't hard to figure out. The final rule on new power-plant emissions is slated for implementation in June around the same time the Republicans plan to put up a major fight to block the imposition of these quite modest regulations. As usual, they will have a few fossil-fuel state Democrats to help them out.