Republicans will have to shift on climate change to keep attracting votes, President Obama said Monday.
Obama, in an interview with Vice News, said that younger people will push for lawmakers to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that most scientists blame for warming the planet. Obama used a personal example, saying that his teenage daughters understand more about the effect of man-made climate change than he and his peers did at that age.
“I guarantee you that the Republican party will have to change its approach to climate change because voters will insist upon it,” Obama said. “The challenge on something like climate change is there comes a point of no return. You do have to make sure that we get at this thing quick enough and with enough force to be able to make a difference.”
For most voters, climate change still ranks low on a list of priorities, though there’s a partisan divide — Democrats often rank it a high-level concern while Republicans put climate change near the bottom. Many Republican lawmakers are skeptical of whether or how much impact humans have on climate change.
Polling shows, however, that there’s also a generational chasm. A January survey from the New York Times, Stanford University and nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future showed 66 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 thought global warming would be a “very serious” problem if left unaddressed, while 24 percent said it would be “somewhat serious.” Respondents over 65 years old, at 45 percent, were least likely to describe global warming as a “very serious” problem.
Obama partially blamed congressional “shills” for the fossil fuel industry for the slow churn on addressing climate change. But he also said it’s a difficult issue to tackle because reducing emissions involves a short-term sacrifice for voters that won’t be realized for years.
“They’re concerned about climate change, but they’re even more concerned about gas prices. You can’t fault somebody for being more concerned about paying the bills,” Obama said.
Obama slammed Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe for tossing a snowball while on the Senate floor last month in an attempt to disprove climate change, calling the episode “disturbing.” The Oklahoma Republican said that it was unusually cold for that late in February in an attempt to discredit scientists who said last year was the warmest year ever recorded.
“I ask the chair, you know what this is?” he said on the floor. “It’s a snowball, and that’s just from outside here, so it’s very, very cold out, very unseasonable.”
Obama said he hoped Republicans would change their tune.
“On climate change, there comes a point of no return,” he said.
