In 2011, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney staked out no fewer than four different positions on climate change, at one point telling a Pennsylvania voter, “We don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.” By mid-2018, Romney was calling for federal action to curb climate change. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) called climate change science “condescending elitism” in 2010. And in 2011, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), then-chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency, said climate change was not “man-made.” Now he says climate change is real and must be addressed, while not explicitly acknowledging its cause. That Republicans are publicly discussing ways to combat climate change is remarkable, considering that 49 of 54 Republican senators voted against attributing climate change to human activity just four years ago. What has changed is the politics of climate change, as the video above illustrates.

Source: Washington Post April 03, 2019 09:56 UTC