DURHAM -- As the entry and exit polls keep rolling in from the primaries, one fact is clear: It's political suicide for Republican candidates to discuss climate change or any role of people in it. At Wednesday's debate in Arizona, there was no mention of the environment or climate at all.
It's not an especially hot topic for Democrats, either. President Barack Obama mentioned climate change only once in his recent State of the Union address, lamenting that progress was stymied by partisan gridlock.
Bipartisan progress on the environment used to be common. Republican President Richard Nixon and a Democrat-controlled Congress worked together to create the Environmental Protection Agency and pass the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, saving millions of American lives. A similar alliance during the Reagan administration ratified the Montreal Protocol to phase out ozone-destroying chemicals, which were also potent greenhouse gases. Ditto for the Framework Convention in 1992 during George H.W. Bush's administration, making the United States the first industrialized nation to ratify a climate change treaty.
Some Republican candidates have taken strong environmental positions in the past. As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney promised to place public health above dirty power plants and supported and signed cap-and-trade legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As recently as June he told New Hampshire voters, "I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that."
Not so many years ago, Newt Gingrich co-sponsored a bill in the House of Representatives stating that climate change was "resulting from human activities." In his famous sofa ad with Nancy Pelosi, he said, "our country must take action to address climate change." As recently as 2007, he opined in his book "Contract with the Earth" that "the high priority of the environment must be affirmed."
With the primary season heating up, however, the green in Republican seems to have faded to brown. In October, Romney said, "we don't know what's causing climate change on this planet." Gingrich, who now wants to "replace" the EPA, stated recently, "I actually don't know whether global warming is occurring." And some tea partyers around the country are fighting local initiatives to combat climate change through increased energy efficiency and reduced traffic congestion.
Have views evolved because climate change science has become less certain? Not at all. As two scientists who study the earth for a living, we'd point to one fact among many for anyone unsure about the reality of climate change: The North Pole is melting before our eyes. Summer ice is only half the size it used to be just a few decades ago and is much thinner, down to a few feet thick in many places. All this in less than a human lifetime.
If the scientific evidence is strong, there must be another reason why candidates no longer acknowledge climate change. Could it be the loss of a political center and increasing stridency on both sides of the aisle? Such a change is unfortunate because climate change needs careful consideration, without partisan politics.
People who see the evidence for climate change as compelling can use it as motivation to reduce carbon emissions and promote efficiency and green technologies. People more skeptical of the evidence can be motivated by national security, balance of trade and global competition to save energy and reduce oil imports. George W. Bush said as much in 2008: "America has to change its habits. It has to get off oil." And given nonpartisan data showing that coal pollution kills tens of thousands of people each year, everyone can support phasing out the oldest, most polluting coal plants.
Pick your reason for promoting green technologies and energy efficiency: Save money. Save jobs. Save lives. Save the planet.
And while we're at it, save the North Pole. That's one exit pole no one wants to see.
Rob Jackson and Bill Chameides are a professor and the dean, respectively, in Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.
