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There is broad scientific consensus that pollution from human society is driving long-term changes in our climate. Those changes are already happening — more frequent and hotter heat waves, longer and drier droughts, more intense wildfires, among other extreme weather events. But President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and many Republicans increasingly downplay the threat it poses to human health and nature.
The partisan divide on climate action has only grown wider over the last decade, according to the Pew Research Center . Most Americans actually agree that global heating is a problem and that it’s going to worsen within their lifetimes without more action from governments, corporations, and society in general. Environmental protection wasn’t always so politically divisive.
“The environmental movement historically is very much a Republican movement,” said Francisca Martinez, deputy chief of staff at the University of Southern California’s Schwarzenegger Institute . She pointed to how former Governor Ronald Reagan established the California Air Resources Board, which regulates air pollution, in 1967. “This was long, long before much of the country was really thinking about regulating air pollution and emissions,” Martinez said.
President Richard Nixon signed the federal Clean Air Act into law in 1970 and was instrumental in establishing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger helped California become a leader in rooftop solar by signing the Million Solar Roofs Initiative into law in 2006. That same year, Schwarzenegger also signed into law California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act .
These are just a few examples, but there’s a long history of bipartisan support for environmental protection, said Martinez. “It's not a new thing for a Republican leader to come in and lead on climate, and I think that's been lost throughout the years,” said Martinez. Under his previous administration, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protection rules and attempted to repeal dozens of others.
He’s said he will gut the EPA, which is in charge of enforcing clean air, water and pollution regulations, among other things. Martinez said a big reason for the increasing partisan divide on climate action has been disinformation and lobbying from the oil and gas industry influencing politics over decades — something that is now well-documented . But Martinez said there's a broader communication problem too.
“If you are having issues paying your groceries, paying for gas, you're not going to be prioritizing something like climate change,” she said. “I come from first-generation everything. I come from an immigrant family that struggled to make ends meet in my childhood, so I can relate to that.
” But in reality, there’s a lot of common ground no matter people’s political beliefs or lived experiences. “When you talk about [climate change] through the lens of air pollution..
.Nobody wants to breathe dirty air,” Martinez said. “When you talk about access to clean water, that's different.
I think that resonates with more people.” Craig Preston would agree. The Costa Mesa resident is a lifelong Republican and chair of the Conservative Outreach Action Team for the nonpartisan, volunteer-run Citizens' Climate Lobby chapter in Orange County.
“If we think more long term, then I think we're more aware of how an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and so we're willing to put some money and effort into preventing harms,” Preston said. “But if we're more short-term focused, if I'm living paycheck to paycheck, then people are just not able to really think long term because they're just trying to feed their kids today,” Preston continued. “So then the discussion is more focused on the economics and even the short term benefits of moving to a clean energy economy.
” For example, he said how solar panels or highly-efficient appliances such as heat pumps and induction stoves can help people save money. He talks about how solar and wind power has gotten cheaper than fossil fuel power . “I often bring an induction stovetop to my meetings, do a demonstration on how to boil water in 30 seconds, and then say, who wants to take it home and try it out for two weeks?” Preston said.
“Just make it fun for people to move to an electrification economy.” He said he also emphasizes the resilience of cleaner technologies to cross partisan divides. For example, he shared an anecdote of two friends who recently experienced the devastating flooding in Asheville, North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene.
Attribution studies found the rainfall was 10% heavier as a result of human-caused climate change. One friend had a diesel backup generator and was stranded for 11 days, during which the generator ran out of fuel. The other friend had solar and battery storage and was able to support neighbors since their power stayed on.
“Just an example of the resiliency we need, because climate change is here” Preston said. “We recognize market forces and clean energy are something people aren't opposed to, and so going into a clean energy future is good for their grandchildren, good for their children, good for themselves.” Buena Park resident Dominic Bendinelli grew up in a Republican household and led his college’s Republican student group.
But since Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, he said he feels like “a Republican in exile.” “I feel like the party has moved away from me, rather than me moving from the party,” he said. He’d grown up spending time outdoors and has long had a love of nature, but he didn’t learn much about climate change until a biology course in college.
He said the science denial that has taken over the mainstream Republican party has been “devastating” — and a reason for that feeling of exile. His work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has only solidified that feeling. “Scientists are not this giant organized group of people who are all driven to do one thing,” Bendinelli said.
“They're my co-workers, they don't have hidden agendas, they don't care about politics really at all, generally. A lot of scientists tend to just focus on their own work, really passionate and smart people who dedicate their lives to studying things. And I hope that we as a country can get back to trusting those kinds of people.
” Particularly as a young person — he’s 29 — Bendinelli said addressing climate change feels more personal. “I absolutely feel like my life will be greatly impacted by climate change and that's not even to mention the life of any future children I may have,” he said. “I think we somehow need to build that coalition of leaders from both sides to really start seeing some strong movement in this country.
” Bendinelli said he’s not hopeful for that to happen under a Trump Administration. He’s especially concerned about Trump’s proposals to dismantle the EPA and repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act, which has primarily benefited clean energy projects in red states and generated hundreds of thousands of jobs . “When you can really get down to people's concerns.
..that's when we can come together because we tend to have the same concerns.
..we just maybe don't have the same solutions,” Bendinelli said.
He says those concerns include things like the economy and quality of life and that climate action can be a part of addressing those concerns, for example, by helping people save on electric bills through efficient appliances, bringing good-paying jobs, and protecting the natural spaces we all love. “People across the country,” he said, “if given a very clear choice of ‘would you like to protect the environment around you, or would you like to destroy it’..
. that would be a really easy decision.” Elizabeth Fenner grew up in Westchester in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 80s, when smog pollution was at some of its worst.
She remembers playing in an AYSO soccer game one day and afterwards she and her teammates all came off the field coughing. “We just didn't know the damage that smog was doing to us,” Fenner said. “I grew up with stinging eyes.
..there was that thick blanket of smog that we all just lived in.
” Fenner, who now lives in West Adams and works as a library aide, identifies as conservative and a climate advocate. She doesn’t support Trump, but is a registered Republican. “I grew up in a liberal environment with conservative parents,” Fenner said.
“So I just had this thing of, what's the real story here? It's something in between.” She said she hopes Democrats and Republicans can find some common ground when it comes to climate action, but she doesn’t think it’ll happen anytime soon. “The two parties have been at each other's throats for decades now — ‘if you're going to do one thing, I'm going to do the absolute opposite,’” Fenner said.
“But one thing I think is that a Democratic supermajority does not create heaven on Earth here in California.” She said that’s why she hopes people with different political views can approach each other with “humility and curiosity.” “The impasse is that anyone that doesn't know me well and finds out I'm conservative and registered Republican believes I'm a Trump-voting conservative, and that I want to ban books, and that I am against transgender rights, that I'm ‘drill baby drill,’” Fenner said.
“I'm not okay with that,” Fenner continued, “but my values are towards incremental change, small government, jobs and the economy. I think we can work with that..
..but let's work together towards solutions.
”.
