Climate change may not be a top concern for voters for the 2024 presidential election, but that hasn't stopped many Republicans from making misrepresentations about environmental and energy policy – a departure from the previous tactic of majority climate change denial, according to experts on environmental politics who spoke with
.

Discussions surrounding energy policy, particularly the debate between renewable energy and fossil fuels, are intrinsically tied to climate change, largely because fossil fuels are the primary contributor to climate change, according to the United Nations , responsible for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of carbon dioxide emissions.

In recent years, Republicans have been finding opportunities to criticize green energy, like in February 2021, when a severe winter storm caused widespread power outages in Texas, affecting more than 4.5 million people and killing hundreds. At the time, some Republican politicians used the crisis to spread misinformation about renewable energy, claiming that it was unreliable and the cause of the outages. However, a failure to adequately prepare power sources for winter conditions – particularly the state's natural gas infrastructure, which "represented 58 percent of all generating units experiencing unplanned outages, derates or failures to start" during the outage – is what caused the grid failure, according to a report by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released the following November.

While many Republicans previously rejected the scientific consensus that human-caused emissions exacerbated climate change, experts on environmental politics say the conversation has evolved to focus less on the science itself.

"There's been a real shift in the rhetoric in the past few years," according to Leah Aronowsky, a science historian at the Columbia Climate School, whose research has focused on the history of climate science and climate denialism. "We've seen this shift in rhetoric from denying the reality of climate change to maybe kind of questioning some of the major solutions that are on the table, like wind and solar energy in particular."

The impacts of climate change are intensifying across all regions of the U.S., according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment , a comprehensive analysis of the latest climate science compiled by 14 different federal agencies, published in November.

Despite this, climate change policies are not among the top priorities for Republican voters, according to January 2024 polling conducted by the Pew Research Center. While a majority of Americans (54%) perceive climate change as a serious threat , only 12% of Republicans and those who identify as Republican believe that addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress.

While outright denial of climate change is no longer as prevalent among some GOP voters as it once was, the policies necessary to transform the energy economy in the U.S. and globally to tackle climate change are still met with opposition from many of them – hence the shift in messaging, according to David Konisky, a professor of environmental politics at Indiana University's O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

"It's very difficult for Republicans to reconcile any interest in addressing climate change along with messaging and a commitment to maintain reliance on fossil fuels," Konisky told
.

Ultimately, the widespread opposition to climate policy reform is less about questioning the science of climate change and more about the perceived financial burden of addressing it, according to Aseem Prakash, a political science professor at the University of Washington and director of the Center for Environmental Politics.

The political divide between Democrats and Republicans on environmental issues emerged during the Reagan administration in the 1980s, according to Aronowsky. However, the political landscape surrounding climate change has evolved significantly in recent years, Prakash notes. For instance, Republicans rarely use the term "climate change" anymore – "it's become a trigger word," Prakash said – and instead frame the discussion around "renewable energy" and the perceived downsides of policies promoting it.

During a rally in South Carolina in September 2023, former President Donald Trump criticized offshore wind turbines, asserting that the "windmills are driving [whales] crazy" and are causing an increase in the number of dead whales washing ashore – one of many unfounded claims the former president has made about wind power. During a Republican fundraising dinner in 2019 , Trump also claimed that noise from the wind turbines causes cancer, and that they are a "graveyard for birds."

This rhetoric has also surfaced in local politics, according to experts. A protest against offshore wind turbines that took place in February 2023 in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, featured several local Republicans, including the mayors of New Jersey's Seaside Park and Point Pleasant Beach, and U.S. Rep. Chris Smith.

Despite these claims, there are "no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Many Republicans are also redefining their stance on oil, promoting domestic oil as cleaner and more environmentally sound than imported oil, although supporting evidence is lacking. Trump has pledged to increase U.S. oil production if elected for a second term, promising to "drill, baby, drill" to lower energy costs. However, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration in March showed that the United States "produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row" – 12.9 million barrels per day in 2023, during the Biden administration, surpassing the record set in 2019 of 12.3 million during the Trump administration.

Playing into those politics are gasoline prices, which have become a partial barometer of economic security, Matt Huber, a professor in Syracuse University's geography and environment department, told
. He also noted that that the oil and gas industry has history of funding research that contradicts climate science.

The current state of American politics includes significant financial support from the fossil fuel industry directed towards the Republican Party and its candidates, Konisky stated: "I believe this has become a deeply held belief for many within the Republican Party ... regardless of the future of energy in the United States, it must heavily rely on fossil fuels."

Donald Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, received $354,937 in funding from the oil and gas industry as of March 2023, according to Open Secrets , a research group that tracks political spending in the U.S. While the vice-presidential contender publicly addressed the country's "climate problem" as recently as 2020, he shifted his stance in 2023 after his Senate election, advocating for fracking and criticizing clean energy ever since, Politico reported.

Neither the Republican National Committee nor the Trump/Vance campaign responded to an
request for comment.

Other established Republican senators have received significantly more funding from oil companies than Vance. Utah Senator Mitt Romney has received nearly $8.7 million from the oil and gas industry. Texas Senator John Cornyn has received $5.1 million, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz has received over $5 million, according to Open Secrets.

Another explanation for the Republican departure from climate denial is that it's becoming an increasingly untenable position to assert that climate change is not real, Lise Van Susteren, a general and forensic psychiatrist who has researched how climate change has affected people's psychological health, told
.

The primary cause is that the consequences of climate change are now visible in local communities, she stated. These effects encompass intense wildfires , arid conditions , a more frequent occurrence of powerful hurricanes , and rising sea levels .