Anti-climate science Republican activism

Texas leads attack on efforts to deal

with climate change

The NYT writes:

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is shaping laws, running influence campaigns and taking legal action in a bid to promote fossil fuels.

When a lawsuit was filed to block the nation’s first major offshore wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, it appeared to be a straightforward clash between those who earn their living from the sea and others who would install turbines and underwater cables that could interfere with the harvesting of squid, fluke and other fish.

The fishing companies challenging federal permits for the Vineyard Wind project were from the Bay State as well as Rhode Island and New York, and a video made by the opponents featured a bearded fisherman with a distinct New England accent.

But the financial muscle behind the fight originated thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean, in dusty oil country. The group bankrolling the lawsuit filed last year was the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an Austin-based nonprofit organization backed by oil and gas companies and Republican donors.

With influence campaigns, legal action and model legislation, the group is promoting fossil fuels and trying to stall the American economy’s transition toward renewable energy. It is upfront about its opposition to Vineyard Wind and other renewable energy projects, making no apologies for its advocacy work.

Once more, the evidence shows that radical right authoritarian Republican elites are hell bent on continuing to pollute and profit from it. The anti-climate science money is coming from coal, oil, natural gas, chemical and other giants. Those powerful influence buying machines don’t care how bad climate change can get, how many species go extinct or how many people die. Money talks and everything else, including human survival, walks.

For context, 72% of Americans believed in 2021 that climate change is real.

That is more evidence that the radical right does not care about public opinion, which is more evidence that the radical right is authoritarian, not democratic. However, some evidence indicates that anti-climate change from the radical right is convincing Americans that what they do has no influence on the climate:

Fewer Americans think their actions influence climate change than they did three years ago, an AP-NORC poll out Monday found.

The poll also found that Americans are less concerned about how climate change may impact them personally than they were in 2019, with 35% of U.S. adults saying they "extremely" or "very" concerned about the impact of climate change, compared with 44% in 2019.

• 52% of Americans say their actions have an effect on climate change, compared to two-thirds saying the same in 2019.

• A majority of Americans, 71%, believe that climate change is occurring and among those who believe climate change is happening, a majority say that it is caused either entirely or mostly by human activity.

• Of those who say climate change is happening, 70% say it is necessary for individuals to make lifestyle changes to combat climate change.

That suggests that the radical right’s massive anti-climate science lies and propaganda campaign is working. Bummer.