Don’t bother waiting for conservatives to come around on climate change

Heather Hurlburt and Elena Souris's report on conservatives and climate change was highlighted in a Vox article.

Is there any hope of that changing? Is there any hope that a movement toward real climate policy could take root in the Republican Party? That they could come up with something more serious than the farcical recent Green Real Deal?

That is a subject of intense interest at the moment, not least among the lonely souls within the Republican Party attempting to build such a movement.

Happily, this week brought us a study of those very questions, from the New Models of Policy Change program (at the think tank New America) and Invest America, a cross-partisan political consultancy. It is a close examination of the state of conservative environmentalism in the US: its groups, initiatives, funders, and prospects. It was authored by New America’s Heather Hurlburt and Elena Souris and Invest America’s Kahlil Byrd, a conservative policy entrepreneur who has access to key players.

It is written for, and about, conservative environmentalists, so it strives to keep a positive tone and offer constructive suggestions on how to engage on climate policy. But it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to find a grim tale. The state of the climate right is ... not good.