Learning that new House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t believe humans have caused a climate emergency is about as shocking as learning that water is wet. He is an avowed MAGA Republican who may or may not believe Noah had dinosaurs on the Ark. Still, it represents a serious blow in the climate fight that most Americans support, at a moment when we can’t afford to waste time playing politics. Just ask taxpayers, who are seeing insurance rates skyrocket to cover the cost of protecting against climate-fueled disasters.

It is now a fact about the United States, the wealthiest nation on Earth as well as one of its biggest greenhouse-gas polluters, that a person who has suggested climate change is being caused by “natural cycles” is second in the line of succession to be president. Johnson’s ascension from little-known representative from Louisiana risks even more deeply entrenching in American politics the false idea of established climate science as a matter of opinion or debate. Few other countries are so divided on this issue. It wouldn’t matter, except that the U.S. should be leading the fight for change. Instead, it risks sinking deeper into paralysis at a time when it’s already moving far too slowly to avoid the worst impacts of planetary heating.

Johnson’s first act in his new gig was passing a bill gutting billions of dollars from President Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. The aim, one Republican said, was saving taxpayers “huge amounts of money.” But disasters supercharged by global warming cost American taxpayers many billions of dollars more each year – $67 billion so far in 2023 – and are crushing the insurance industry. Unabated climate change could cost the U.S. economy $14.5 trillion by 2050, a Deloitte report has estimated.

Oddly, at no point in the weeks of GOP intramural mud-wrestling over the speakership did the subject of climate arise as an issue of any particular importance. Maybe this is partly because the GOP knows that, like its stances on abortion and the outcome of the 2020 election, its position on climate is politically unpopular.

A solid majority of Americans see climate change as a critical issue that must be addressed now, polls repeatedly show. Though the IRA as a whole hasn’t polled too well lately, its specific climate provisions are actually pretty popular. More than half of adults support its tax benefits for solar, wind and heat pumps, according to a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

The trouble is that the Republican voters who keep people like Johnson in office tend to disagree, overwhelmingly. A large and growing majority of Republicans don’t see climate change as a major issue and don’t think the government should spend money to do anything about it. Little wonder, then, that even former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who did at least occasionally nod to the reality of climate change by proposing tree-planting campaigns and such, nonetheless pushed to gut environmental regulations and the IRA’s climate investments. Both Johnson and McCarthy, like most Republicans, have enjoyed healthy financial support from the fossil-fuel industry.

Practically speaking, then, swapping McCarthy for Johnson won’t make much difference to climate policy, especially with Biden in the White House and Democrats only narrowly holding the Senate. But the optics of replacing a major political leader who occasionally took half-hearted stabs at climate solutions with someone who doesn’t believe such solutions are necessary at all is a huge step backward. It’s another ratcheting of partisan division on an issue for which the country should be united, if it’s to have any hope at all of meeting its goals of cutting emissions to zero by 2050 and avoiding more than 1.5 Celsius of warming above pre-industrial averages.

Decades of propaganda, political rhetoric and shoddy education have left too many Americans with the mistaken belief climate change is controversial or up for debate. But there have recently been glimmers of hope the country is finally breaking out of this grim era. Young Republicans seem far more concerned about climate change, and more interested in solutions, than older ones. Climate-education standards are improving even in conservative states.

With Republicans fighting each other like hyenas over an antelope carcass, Johnson’s stint in the speaker job might be even briefer than McCarthy’s 270 days. We can only hope his influence on climate politics is similarly fleeting – and that his eventual replacement won’t be even worse.

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