Tonight, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Action Fund, NextGen PAC, NRDC Action Fund and the Sierra Club endorsed President Biden and Vice President Harris for their historic leadership in tackling the climate crisis. Meanwhile, 2024 Republicans still refuse to acknowledge the urgency of climate change and have actively railed against efforts to combat the climate crisis — all while cozying up to Big Oil and Big Gas. 

President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is a historic investment in combating the climate crisis head-on and has led to the creation of over 100,000 green jobs. 

Bloomberg: “Between last August, when President Joe Biden’s  landmark climate bill became law, and the end of January, companies have announced more than 100,000 clean energy jobs in the US, according to an analysis released Monday by the nonprofit advocacy group Climate Power.”

CNBC: “The bill, which President Joe Biden signed into law in August, is the most aggressive climate investment ever taken by Congress and is expected to slash the country’s planet-warming carbon emissions by about 40% this decade and move the country toward a net-zero economy by 2050.”

Under Donald Trump’s leadership, his administration slashed critical environmental protections and regulations while he called climate change a “hoax.” 

New York Times: “Over four years, the Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals. In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 100 environmental rules officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump.”

Bloomberg: “The [Trump] administration’s fiscal year 2020 budget proposal would cut a fifth of the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s forensics efforts, which support its civil and criminal enforcement investigations.”

Politico: “Trump is once again seeking deep and unrealistic cuts to most federal agency budgets … The EPA’s budget would see a nearly 27 percent chop.”

Slate: “In Trump’s budget, which was also released today, the discretionary budget for the … [EPA] is cut by $2.8 billion.”

Washington Post: “Trump reiterated some of his frequently repeated falsehoods

and petty grievances. ‘The global warming hoax, it just never ends,’ he said. He mocked the concept of sea levels rising, disputing widely held science. ‘To which I say, great, we have more waterfront property,’ he said. ‘There was a big thing about global cooling — what will be next?’ he said. Trump said he was

more concerned about ‘nuclear warming’ than global warming.”

Rolling Stone: “Trump was in South Carolina to support House candidates

Katie Arrington and Russell Fry, as well as the Republican Party as a whole ahead of the midterms in November. He thusly spent plenty of time bashing Democratic policy initiatives. He dismissed the idea that climate change is anything to worry about. ‘The oceans are going to rise 1/100 th of an inch in the next 300 years and it’s going to kill everybody,’ he said sarcastically. ‘It’s going create more oceanfront property, that’s what it’s going to do.’”

Associated Press: “EPA said the previous rule imposed broad restrictions and requirements on when and how the agency conducts cost-benefit analyses, without explaining why the requirements were needed. The Trump rule was unnecessary to carry out provisions of the Clean Air Act, because EPA already conducts cost-benefits analyses for clean air rules, the agency said. The previous rule was part of a wave of deregulatory actions under President Donald Trump, who rolled back dozens of environmental rules he considered overly burdensome on businesses. Many of the regulations were designed to protect the environment and public health, but were viewed by the Trump administration as costly and unnecessary.”

Mike Pence has refused to acknowledge the urgency of climate change: downplaying the crisis last week as many Americans choked on wildfire smoke, spending decades in denial of climate change’s existence, and praising Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.

Alex Ward, Politico: “Pence says that there will be ‘modest’ temperature changes over the next century. The UN estimates that average Earth temperatures will rise by about 3 degrees above preindustrial levels by the first half of 2030, which could have severe consequences.”

Star Press: “When he was running for Congress in 2000, Mike Pence called global warming a myth created by environmentalists in their ‘latest Chicken Little attempt to raise taxes and grow centralized government power.’ ‘The chant is, “the sky is warming, the sky is warming.”’ He also asserted that the earth was actually cooler in 2000 than it was 50 years ago, and that greenhouse gases were real but mostly the result of volcanoes, hurricanes and underwater geologic displacements.”

Associated Press: “In television interviews the morning after Trump’s announcement, Vice President Mike Pence and Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House aide, defended Trump’s decision [to abandon the Paris Climate Accord] as a reassertion of America’s sovereignty. They both appeared on Fox News’ ‘Fox & Friends.’ Pence called Trump’s decision ‘refreshing.’”

Ron DeSantis’s climate efforts in Florida were characterized as “catastrophic,” and the League of Conservation Voters gave his environmental voting record in Congress a lousy two percent rating. 

The Guardian: “Ron DeSantis has been accused of a ‘catastrophic’ approach to the climate crisis after he launched his campaign for US president by saying he rejects the ‘politicization of the weather’ and questioning whether hurricanes hitting his home state of Florida have been worsened by climate change.”

New York Times Opinion: “Rather than encouraging homes and businesses to switch to renewable energy or requiring any retreat from the growing risks of climate-fueled devastation, he has taken steps to protect the oil and gas industry spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Last year he signed off on a bill that prevents local governments from trying to force the state’s powerful utilities to switch to cleaner energy sources. And he recently prohibited the state’s nearly $180 billion pension fund from taking environmental, social and governance metrics into account when making investment decisions.”

WGCU: “Before DeSantis was Florida’s governor, he was a three-term congressman representing the Sunshine State in Washington D.C. His positive environmental voting record on Capitol Hill was a mere 2 percent, according the League of Conservation Voters, which is in line with the GOP in general.”

Tim Scott has cozied up to the oil and gas industries for years, pocketing large contributions. He not only asked Trump to break from the Paris Climate Accord but also criticized President Biden and Democrats for LEADING the charge to combat the climate crisis. 

Post and Courier: “The two highest profile congressional champions of drilling for oil off of South Carolina collectively have taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign money from the industry in the past few years. … From 2011 to 2016, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., received $491,076 from oil and natural gas companies, individuals tied to the industry and related political action committees, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.”

Scott: “The problem is Democrats have abandoned common sense. We got the first taste of this administration’s radical environmental agenda when President Biden announced last summer that global warming was our country’s biggest national security threat. And on the day Russia began his invasion of Ukraine, former Secretary of State and Biden’s climate czar John Kerry said that the climate implications of Putin’s invasion were just as important as the Ukrainians losing their lives in the fight to protect their national sovereignty. The shocking comments betrayed the new ideological radicalism that’s become mainstream on the Left.”

The State: “Tim Scott wants Trump to dump Paris climate deal”

Not only has Nikki Haley spent years as a mouthpiece for Big Oil and Big Gas, but she also supported Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.

Washington Post: “Haley said Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord ‘because it wasn’t possible to meet the conditions’ of the pact agreed to under President Obama.”

McClatchy: “South Carolina’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, has become a leading voice calling for the Obama administration to allow offshore drilling in the Atlantic.”

Post and Courier: “During her two gubernatorial campaigns, Haley received 88 contributions from the oil and gas industry worth a combined $118,331, according to data compiled by the Montana-based National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Chris Christie had the audacity to say climate change was “not a crisis” when he was pressed for an explanation of his stance. 

HuffPost: “When asked by Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ on Tuesday whether he believes climate change is occurring and man-made, the New Jersey governor replied, ‘The climate has been changing forever and it will always change and man will always contribute to it. It’s not a crisis.’ … Scarborough pointed out that recent years have been uncharacteristically hot, shattering temperature records, but Christie was skeptical. ‘I don’t buy that, Joe. … I don’t see any evidence that it’s a crisis,’ Christie said. When asked what scientific data he was relying on for evidence, Christie pointed not to specific studies or charts but to his own intuition. ‘That’s my feeling,’ he said. ‘I didn’t say I was relying on any scientist.’”

Asa Hutchinson has a yearslong record of opposing actions to tackle climate change. 

Arkansas Business: “Elected in 2014, Governor Asa Hutchinson has said climate change is happening and believes the science: ‘Clearly, there’s dramatic things happening. I believe the science. Let’s continue to gather data and follow the science.’ But while he believes in the science, he doesn’t support government action to blunt the disastrous impacts.”

Reuters: “The governors of five Republican states are ready to fight Democratic President-elect Joe Biden if he tries to require the power sector to slash greenhouse gas emissions… ‘Our power companies have voluntarily embraced sources of alternative energy without heavy-handed regulation from

government,’ Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said in a statement.”

Vivek Ramaswamy has REPEATEDLY railed against efforts to tackle the climate crisis — and has EVEN said climate change would be “helpful” for plant growth. 

Ramaswamy: “The climate change provisions in the ‘infrastructure’ bill are just a form of corporate welfare. Say what you will about lobbyists – at least they’re earning their fees.”

Ramaswamy: “The Earth’s surface area is covered with more plant life

today than 50 years ago – because, yes, carbon is plant food and surface temperatures are a little higher. More facts that you’ll never hear from the Church of Climate Change.”

And on the same day many Virginians choked on wildfire smoke, a Virginia board voted to adopt Glenn Youngkin’s plan to roll back a key climate initiative. 

Associated Press: “Virginia regulators advance Youngkin plan to leave climate initiative he calls ineffective”

“Virginia spent years under Democratic administrations moving toward participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which environmental advocates say is a proven tool to help reduce pollution and address climate change.”