Last week, Pope Francis and Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the White House. The Pope praised President Obama’s new regulations to reduce carbon dioxide pollution from power plants as an important step toward combatting climate change.
His Holiness described the efforts to control greenhouse gas pollution as a moral imperative.
“Climate change is a problem we can no longer be left to future generations,” Pope Francis said. “When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of our history. We still have the time to make the change needed.”
The next day, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the White House to make a major announcement about his country’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Presidents Xi and Obama released a joint statement saying that China would impose a “cap and trade” program by 2017 that would impose fees on factories and utilities that burn fossil fuels, with the goal of encouraging more solar, wind and clean energy.
President Obama said that the joint Chinese and American efforts to reduce greenhouse gases should influence other countries to commit to action during the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris on November 30th.
“When the two world’s largest economies, energy consumers and carbon emitters come together like this, then there is no reason for other countries – either developed or developing – to not do so as well,” Obama said. ”And so this is another step toward the global agreement that the world needs to reach in two months.”
For years, Chinese opposition to regulating greenhouse gases had been a major argument that Republicans had used against the United States imposing limits on its own industries. But now that argument is history, and the tide seems to be turning among Republican voters.
A new survey released on Monday by three prominent Republican pollsters found that 54 percent of self-described conservative Republicans now believe that climate change is real and that man-made pollution is at least partly to blame.
The study, funded by North Carolina businessman Jay Faison, found that 72 percent of Republican voters favor the acceleration of the development of clean energy. But only 10 percent of Republican voters said they support federal regulations to reduce greenhouse gases.
That suggests a huge gap still remains. Republicans increasingly acknowledge that there is a problem, and agree the world should move beyond coal and oil. But they do not accept that government regulation may be the only way to make that change.
Mike Tidwell, founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said the Pope’s recent encyclical on climate change and visit to Washington D.C. – as well as the Chinese announcement – are dramatically changing the tone of the political conversation about global warming, among both Democrats and Republicans.
“I think in terms of Republicans who have been skeptical or who have flat-out denied the reality of climate change, being able to point to a Pope – especially for the Catholic Republicans, makes a big difference,” Tidwell said. “They can say, ‘I may not agree with him on all of the details, but nonetheless our Pope, our one and only universal moral leader, has called on all of us to act on this issue. I think that is going to help give cover to more conservatives in this country – and more conservative legislators – to actually embrace real policy solutions promoting clean energy. I think that this is a game-changer.”
The game isn’t changed yet. For example, the front runners for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, apparently do not listen to the Pope, President Xi of China or 97 percent of scientists because they still reject man-made global warming.
But this political game could change, too, if the Republican candidates catch up with the shift among Republican voters.
