Are Republican environmentalists? There are some — and they’re worth listening to

(Photo: Yahoo News/AP)

A recent study found that even among conservative parties in other developed countries, the Republican Party stands alone in doubting the threat, or even the existence, of human-driven climate change.

Sondre Båtstrand, a political scientist at the University of Bergen in Norway, examined the manifestos of conservative parties from nine countries — the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Germany — and found that the other parties or platforms supported climate measures.

“Even though other conservative parties might share skepticism towards concrete political measures, the Republican Party is the only [one] to openly question climate science and to criticize political opponents for taking climate change seriously,” Båtstrand, whose findings were first published in the Politics and Policy journal on Aug. 12, said in an email to Yahoo News.

Most conservative Republicans doubt or deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change, but there is a movement within the party arguing that conservative values and the power of the free market can ultimately solve the crisis.

“Conservatives are the ones who will deliver the answer to climate change in the dynamism of the free enterprise system,” former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) said to Yahoo News. “It’s doubly surprising that the free-enterprise party in America isn’t the first one to raise its hand and say, ‘Yes we believe in conservation, and, yes, we believe in the power of free enterprise to solve the problem.’”

At least 97 percent of active climate scientists say that climate-warming trends are the result of human activity.

Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, explained that scientists know with great confidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by about 40 percent over the past 150 years.

AP