The Republican Party Platform Doesn’t Mention Climate Change Once

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Every Monday, in Climate on the Ballot, we pass along a topic to help you integrate climate into your newsroom’s campaign reporting. Consider sharing this newsletter with your colleagues on the politics beat. Vea la versión en español de “El clima en la boleta.”

This Week: Climate and the GOP

The effects of climate change are everywhere this summer — except in the pages of the 2024 Republican Party platform. The 16-page document doesn’t mention climate change once. Instead, GOP leaders vow: “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL and we will become Energy Independent, and even Dominant again.” The platform ignores the fact that the US is already the world’s top oil and fossil gas producer.

While climate change isn’t addressed, the platform does call for “terminating the Socialist Green New Deal” — which was never passed — and scrapping tailpipe emissions rules enacted by the Biden administration to spur on the auto industry’s electric vehicle transition: “Republicans will revive the U.S. Auto Industry by reversing harmful Regulations, canceling Biden’s Electric Vehicle and other Mandates, and preventing the importation of Chinese vehicles.”

The platform’s worldview was echoed by many GOP messengers during last week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. But it’s not in line with the scientific reality of climate change, nor with public opinion. A clear majority of Americans (56%) say they are “concerned” or “alarmed” by climate change, and about four in ten registered voters (37%) are “pro-climate voters” who say candidates’ stances on climate change will be “very important” to their vote this fall, according to the Yale Program on Climate Communication. The GOP platform’s lack of detail on climate offers journalists the opportunity to ask Republican candidates to fill in the blanks.

Reporting Ideas

• Get candidates on the record about their basic understanding of climate change. Does the platform align with candidates’ understanding of climate change and positions they’ve previously taken? How does the GOP platform compare to Republican voters’ understanding of and worries about climate change?

• Talk to voters. Ask voters whether global warming is an important issue for them. Will it affect their choices in November? Have they studied the Democrats’ alternate proposals and actions taken under Biden?

• Talk to candidates about what ‘energy dominance’ means to them. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says worldwide demand for oil, coal, and gas is set to peak by 2030, undercutting the rationale for redoubled investments in fossil fuel production. How do candidates square “DRILL BABY DRILL” with what IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol has described as the “unstoppable” transition to clean energy? How will it affect America’s competitiveness in the global economy?

• Talk to economists about tariffs on Chinese vehicles and products. Chinese EVs already face higher tariff levels than any other imports, but the GOP platform says the party wants to eliminate them from the US market, by “preventing the importation of Chinese vehicles.” How will this limit consumer choice, slow the green energy transition, and affect income inequality?

• Ask candidates about the economic cost of repealing the Inflation Reduction Act. Many Republican-leaning states are already seeing large investments and job creation due to the IRA. According to White House estimates, “some $337 billion in investments for large solar, wind, and storage projects” are likely to go to red states over the next six years. Do candidates in those states support repealing the IRA?

Take Inspiration

• In a month that saw millions of Americans sweltering (and dying) in extreme heat waves, “climate change isn’t a problem” at the Republican National Convention, writes Lisa Friedman at The New York Times.

• Some Republicans want to rethink their party’s approach to climate change, but far-right conservatives aren’t interested, reports Inside Climate News’s Kristoffer Tigue. One vocal opponent of climate action is Trump’s VP pick, Ohio senator J.D. Vance.

• Milwaukee’s WUWM interviewed Benji Backer, a Wisconsin native and founder and executive chairman of the American Conservation Coalition, which hopes to advance climate policy in the Republican Party. “There is no mention of climate change denial,” he said of the GOP platform. “I know that’s a low bar. But that is progress compared to the last few years.”

• “Republicans have no new ideas about energy,” writes Jeva Lange at HeatMap News, in a piece comparing the party’s platform to their 2016/2020 platform.

Spotlight Piece

Bill McKibben weighs in on the GOP platform and the party’s lack of a climate plan in his Crucial Years blog. “In some ways, the most apt comparison of GOP policy is not with the Democrats,” he writes, “it’s with the rest of the world. Like, all the world.” McKibben points to a recent Washington Post story about how the Taliban is attempting to tackle climate change. “I am no fan of the Taliban,” says McKibben. “But on climate change they’re striving to be part of the normal world.”

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