Freshly formed snowball in hand, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma took the Senate floor last week. He was there to discuss the “hysteria on global warming,” he said, citing the snowball and a frigid winter in Washington, D.C. as evidence that the climate isn’t changing.
The senator was roundly criticized for being out of touch with the science of global warming—which involves fiercer winter storms. His prop threw the Republican Party’s views on climate change into sharp relief. While top Democratic leaders including President Barack Obama consider it a dire threat, much of the GOP still denies that the planet is warming or that it’s caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
With just 10 months until the first 2016 presidential primary in New Hampshire, candidate names and campaign donations are already pouring in. Most political pundits count about 20 potential Republican contenders at the moment—a list that includes current and former governors, congressmen and a surgeon.
Many of them share Inhofe’s view that the world is not warming, or if it is, that humans aren’t contributing to climate change. Deep-pocketed fossil fuel companies and advocacy groups are squaring up to spread around billions of dollars in campaign contributions.
There are serious ramifications for global warming in the 2016 presidential election. The next president could move to reverse Obama’s initiatives to fight climate change and adapt to it, while resisting scientists’ urgent calls to drastically and quickly slash greenhouse gas emissions.
Former Secretary of State and former Senator Hillary Clinton, the early Democratic frontrunner, has called global warming the “most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face.” At the same time, some environmentalists have criticized her support for increased natural gas production.
Here’s InsideClimate News’ review of the climate positions of the top 11 GOP presidential contenders:
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