A partisan issue? Even by the middle of the year 2016 was already clearly shaping up to be the third consecutive hottest year on record (with 2010 now bumped down to fourth place). If ever climate change was going to be a major presidential campaign issue, that would be it, you'd think. Instead, after receiving the Democrat nomination Clinton went from mentioning climate change in roughly
half her speeches to barely one fifth, and in all three presidential debates there was not a single question on the topic despite being the
fourth-most popular question submitted to the Open Debate Coalition.
When he was heading up the US team's negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, Al Gore helped to effectively neuter it to the extent that global carbon emissions are not only still increasing two decades later, but still
on an accelerating trajectory.
Given half a chance, most politicians and political parties would want to avoid mentioning climate change altogether. Even for politicians with voter bases generally favourable towards "action" on climate change, it's difficult to come to terms with the complexity and nuances of the issue, and even more uncomfortable to contemplate introducing regulation and/or taxation to deal with an issue which won't be noticeably worse at the end of a four- or eight-year term than at the beginning. That's why we've ended up with nonsense like targets and subsidies for biofuel crops despite environmental groups' objections, so gutless politicians could pretend to be 'doing something' whilst achieving nothing but handing out bucketloads of cash to powerful lobby groups. I would assume that it's similarly uncomfortable for politicians with more contrarian voter bases to try to insist that we just shouldn't worry about the environment or consequences for future generations or poorer tropical and sub-tropical countries, or to try to say with a straight face that the world's scientists don't even know what they're talking about. (Though I must admit that there's more than a little evidence to the contrary, that some on the right take a certain pride in those attitudes as if there were some kind of machismo in caring only for your own species, your own country, your own generation and your own limited understanding of reality.)
Climate change can become an
ideological issue, because some viewpoints like libertarianism and arbitrarily-small-government conservatism tend to be hostile towards regulation or taxation as a matter of principle. But it becomes a political
partisan issue only inasmuch as views such as those dominate the voter base of one party or another; it's highly unlikely that there is anywhere near as much outspoken contempt for climate science amongst the major right-wing parties of Europe as in America's Republican party, for example. On an issue like this, I suspect that political parties will usually be the
reflection of their voters' (and sponsors') sentiment, rather than the source or shapers of it.
om the left- and right-wings in countries all around the world, across several decades - were the ones who somehow created the scientific consensus.
But not everyone has the means, particularly those living in the poorer island nations.
