The former Wall Street Journal writer Bret Stephens has a column today to kick off his new digs at the New York Times that meanders into climate change territory and has raised some hackles. In the piece, he talks about how public opinion on climate change is soft, which some folks have complained doesn’t capture public opinion accurately. Both are true in my view and miss the point. As the Storify thread of tweets below talks about, Republican elites and the fossil fuel industry have poisoned the well so that many Republicans think climate change is a hoax. So, public opinion is soft. Stephens goes on to write about scientific uncertainty, but that’s really irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is the extreme politicization of this issue in a decade which has made bipartisan action on this topic unlikely for the foreseeable future. That leads me to conclude something intemperate in tweet 22!
Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.
- Josh Busbyhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jbusby
- Josh Busbyhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jbusby
- Josh Busbyhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jbusby
- Josh Busbyhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jbusby
- Josh Busbyhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jbusby
- Josh Busbyhttps://www.duckofminerva.com/author/jbusby
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