"The great moral fight of our age"

Thanks to dogged efforts this month by leaders of “Race to Replace” — yet another inspired project of Middlebury’s Sunday Night Group — several hundred college students at University of Vermont and Middlebury are newly registered to vote.  Whether from Vermont or out-of-state, these newly enfranchised young folks must now ask: how should I vote?
If they care about climate change (and a host of recent polls puts this concern at the very top among young voters), the answer couldn’t be easier: vote against the Republican Party.  For in Vermont and around the country this fall, we are witnessing a historic moment in the American political tradition — a major party that is taking pride in being anti-science.  In doing so, the party is risking its political future.
To illustrate, let’s start with Paul Beaudry, the Vermont Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. House of  Representatives.  Beaudry isn’t just casually anti-science, he’s a leading spokesperson.  For years, he used his perch as the host of WDEV’s True North to pound home the idea that global warming is a hoax.  On Aug. 13, during a pre-primary interview with Vermont Public Radio, he stated, “Global warming, manmade global warming in my opinion is nothing but a lie.” A lone voice for Vermont’s Republican leaders?  Hardly.  On the same show, John Mitchell, another GOP primary candidate for the House seat, declared that climate change science “is not a viable scientific process.”
This would be amusing if it were nothing more than Vermont’s quirky politics at work. In fact, Beaudry is part of a large chorus of House Republican candidates who dismiss the science of global warming.  As recently documented at GetEnergySmartNow.com: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has called global warming a “fraud” and a “modern rain dance.” Candidate Ed Martin (R-Mo.) devotes part of his website to bashing “global warming hucksters.” Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) considers global warming a “farce.”
In the Senate races, it looks no better.  Check out these recent whoppers from GOP candidates (thanks to Brad Johnson at The Daily Grist): Ron Johnson (Wis.) believes that global warming is “just sunspot activity.” Sharron Angle (Nev.) does not “buy into the whole ... man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left.” Pat Toomey (Pa.) believes that there is “much debate in the scientific community as to the precise sources of global warming.”
Might science have a better chance in the high-tech state of California?  Think again.  Even former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, contending for Barbara Boxer’s senate seat, has gone anti-science. Despite having once run a company that, according to Climate Counts, was an advocate for public policy that addresses climate change, Fiorina is now “not sure” that climate change is real, and she supports Proposition 23, the oil-company effort to overturn California’s climate policy. There’s more of the same from California’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who recently declared that she would “probably” veto a global-warming law if she were California governor today.
I find this all to be terribly sad.  At its best, the Grand Old Party has been truly grand.  For 150 years, great American leaders carved the modern foundations of our republic while wearing the GOP mantle. What distinguished Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and others was the courage to stand up for what was right, to embrace and lead the moral crusades of their day.
The current Republican leadership, faced with the great moral fight of our age, has extinguished courage. It’s true that the elections next month may bring them temporary gains; they may even succeed in convincing some voters that global warming is a hoax.  But when they study the election data, I am sure that they will note an unmistakable trend: the hundreds-of-thousands of new young voters, from Vermont and around the country, will have none of it.
As these voters grow to dominate the political landscape, this could mean the end of the Republican Party as we have come to know it. Indeed the GOP leadership should ponder a menacing historical comparison — how the Whig Party disintegrated as the anti-slavery movement crested in the 1850s. Unless they reject Beaudry and his ilk for a new generation of pro-science candidates, the same fate might well await the current GOP.
What then? Maybe the Sunday Night Group is already working to start a new political party! It’s not hard to make the case that this is exactly what our nation needs.

Jon Isham is an Associate Professor of Economics.