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After on efforts to deal with climate change under Joe Biden, Donald Trump's return to the White House is swiftly swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction.
On his first day back, Trump , directing agencies to use any emergency powers available to boost oil and gas production, despite U.S. oil and gas production already being near record highs and leading the world. Biden's orders that had withdrawn large areas of the Arctic and the U.S. coasts . Among several targeting Biden's pro-climate policies, Trump also began the process of of the international Paris climate agreement鈥攁 repeat of a , which Biden reversed.
None of Trump's moves to as an important domestic and foreign policy issue should come as a surprise.
During his first term as president, 2017鈥2021, Trump for reducing power plant emissions, falsely claimed that , and promised to "" and boost the highly polluting energy source. He once declared that climate change was a .
Since being elected again in November, Trump has again chosen who .
But it's important to remember that while Donald Trump is singing from the Republican Party songbook when it comes to climate change, the music was written long before he came along.
Money, lies and lobbying
In 1979, the scientific consensus that climate change posed a significant threat to the environment, the economy and society as we had come to appreciate them began to emerge.
The Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate, commissioned by the U.S. National Research Council's climate research board, then that if carbon dioxide continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, there was "no reason to doubt that climate changes will result." Since then, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere , and .
The report also concluded that land use changes and the burning of fossil fuels, both of which could be subject to regulation, were behind climate change and that a "wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late."
But . Working behind the scenes since the 1950s, working for companies such as Exxon, Shell and Chevron had made their leaders well aware that the widespread use of their product was already causing climate change. And coinciding with the Ad Hoc Study Group's work in the late 1970s, oil companies started making to national and state-level candidates and politicians they viewed as friendly to the interests of the industry.
The oil industry also implemented a designed to cast doubt about climate science and, in many cases, about their own internal research. The strategy, , involved "emphasizing uncertainty" to cast doubt on the science and calling for "balanced" science .
This strategy was helped by the creation and financial backing of lobbying organizations such as the and the , both of which played central roles in and casting doubt on the scientific consensus about climate change.
By 1997, when 84 countries signed the to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, the oil industry had built an effective apparatus for actively discrediting climate science and opposing policies and actions that could help slow climate change. So even though President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1998, .
Partisan politics and the psychology of belonging
The Kyoto Protocol experience demonstrated that the lobbying and disinformation tactics used by oil companies to discredit climate science could, on their own, be highly effective. But they alone didn't shift climate change from a scientific question to an issue of partisan politics. Two additional ingredients for completing the transition were still absent.
The first of these came during the election campaign of 2000. At the time, the coverage of the major news networks converged on , which lean right, and blue states, which lean left.
This shift, though seemingly innocuous at the time, made politics even less about individual issues and .
Rather than asking people to construct their voting preferences based on a wide range of issues鈥攆rom abortion and gun rights to immigration and climate change鈥攙otes could be earned by reminding and reinforcing for voters which team they should be cheering for: Republicans or Democrats.
This shift also made it easier for the fossil fuel industry to keep climate change off state and federal policy agendas. Oil companies could , lobbying and disinformation on Republican-controlled states and swing states where it would make the biggest difference. It shouldn't surprise anyone, for example, that it was a red state senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who in February 2015 to "prove" that the planet was not warming.
The final ingredient had everything to do with human nature. Building on the analogy of a rivalry in sports, the red vs. blue state dynamic tapped into the psychological and social forces that shape our sense of belonging and identity.
Subtle but powerful social pressures within groups can make it harder for people to . Likewise, these within-group pressures lead to for members who are in alignment with the group's perspectives, up to and including placing .
Within-group pressures also create stronger feelings of among those who conform to the group's internal norms, such as which political positions to support. In turn, stronger feelings of belonging serve to further reinforce the norms.
Where to from here?
Opposing or supporting action on climate change has become part of millions of Americans' cultural identity.
However, doubling down on climate policies that are in lockstep with our own political leanings will serve only to .
A more effective solution would be to set aside political differences and invest in building coalitions across the political spectrum. That starts by focusing on shared values, such as keeping children healthy and communities safe. In the wake of devastating fires in my own city, Los Angeles, these shared values have risen to the top of the local political agenda regardless of who my neighbors and I voted for. It's clear to all of us that the consequences of climate change are very much in the here and now.
Natural disasters across the U.S. have also brought the risks of climate change home for many people across the country. This, in turn, has led to bipartisan action on climate change at the , and between government and the private sector.
The , a coalition of 24 governors from both parties who are working to advance efforts to slow climate change, is one such example. Another example is the many U.S. companies with ties to government that participate in the , which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industries that have proven , such as steel, transportation and shipping.
But, unfortunately for climate action, examples like these are still an exception rather than the norm. And this is a problem because the current climate challenge is much bigger than a single city, state or even country. The past year, 2024, was the hottest on record. Many parts of the world experienced extreme heat waves and storms.
However, every movement has to start somewhere. Continuing to chip away at the that separate Americans on climate change will require even more coalition building that sets an example by being ambitious, productive and .
With the new Trump administration poised to while , there's no better time for this work than the present.
Provided by The Conversation
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