To hear GOP presidential front-runner Rick Perry and some tea party-backed lawmakers tell it, the Republican position on global warming is that it’s a problem that doesn’t even exist.
That wasn’t always the case. And if prominent Republican elder statesmen have their way, it won’t continue to be.
Between 2005 and 2010, prominent moderate Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John Warner of Virginia (now retired) were among Washington’s leading voices in the call to fight climate change, and authored cap-and-trade bills aimed at addressing the problem.
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But quietly, many acknowledge a deepening GOP schism over the issue, as many moderates grow increasingly disturbed by their party’s denial of proven science. A number of influential Republicans who have left the battlefield of electoral politics are now taking action in an effort to change the GOP’s stance.
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Working with (Former Senator John)Warner on the Pew climate-change project is George Shultz, President Reagan’s secretary of State, who helped advise George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and who remains an influential Republican voice. Last year, Shultz, who now serves as a distinguished fellow at Stanford University, cochaired the “No on Prop. 23” campaign in California, which successfully defended California’s pioneering climate-change cap-and-trade law against an oil-industry-led effort to overturn it.“My own opinion is that this problem is very real,” Shultz told National Journal. “I recognize there’s a lot of people pooh-poohing it. Whether they like the science or not, there’s a huge problem coming at us. There’s a huge melt coming in the Arctic regions. There’s melting taking place.” Of Republicans like Perry who deny climate science, he said, “They’re entitled to their opinion, but they’re not entitled to the facts.”
When two major oil companies, Tesoro and Valero, bankrolled last year’s campaign to overturn California’s cap-and-trade law, Shultz said his response was, “We’re not just going to beat these guys, we’re going to beat the hell out of them. We conducted a vigorous campaign. It was a lot of fun.”
Sounds like something Teddy Roosevelt might have said.
