There is a shift taking place within the Republican Party on the issue of climate change. Rejecting sound science is out, and embracing faulty policy is in.

Last Wednesday’s GOP debate shed a sliver of light onto the climate stances from some of the conservative presidential hopefuls.

The rhetoric runs something like this: regardless of all implications of climate change, which we will not acknowledge, widespread government policies, such as cap and trade, will cripple the American economy and fail to make any significant change.

This new discourse panders to the economically-minded, rural, patriotic base the GOP is so reliant on. However, it perpetuates the myth that widespread action to mitigate the effects of climate change will hinder the economy, while business as usual will not.

Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Scott Walker (R-WI) were the only three candidates asked to speak on climate change, and each tread a similar line in their responses. But Rubio, who was asked first, summed it up best.

Rubio dispelled the accusation that he was a denier, a seemingly positive step, but followed by saying, “We’re not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate, because America is a lot of things, the greatest country in the world, absolutely. But America is not a planet.”

No, America is not a planet but, per capita, its CO2 emissions more than triple China’s and are over ten times as much as India’s. Historically, no country has emitted this much for this long and still, politicians insist that we have no power when it comes to altering the climate.

Furthermore, the U.S. does carry considerable clout in the global economy. James Hansen, a professor of climate science at Columbia University, recently proposed that if the U.S. and China were to create a carbon tax among themselves, other countries would have no choice but to comply.

More importantly, investing in renewable energy is already proving profitable.

2014 was the second consecutive year that the solar industry increased its number of jobs by over 20 percent, and there are now more people working in the solar industry domestically than in the coal industry. No, it will not be able to carry the economy on its own overnight, but renewable energy must be increasingly invested in over time, coupled with dramatic reductions of fossil fuel-emitting energies.

Lambasting progressive policy for its economic ramifications is conservative politics 101. It is important, however, to note that successful, Republican capitalists, such as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, adamantly warned of the impending economic crisis that climate change will bring about to American business.

Election season is a roller coaster of trends, with candidates from both sides clamoring to voice their claim the loudest at the right time. As it progresses, it will be interesting to see how GOP candidates continue to discuss climate change, and how the Democratic Party responds, and adjusts, to this shift in discourse.

Azor Cole is a senior public relations major and geography minor. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at azcole@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @azor_cole.

Published on September 24, 2015 at 12:10 am