On the September 3 edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News chief meteorologist and managing editor of the climate unit Ginger Zee explained how the Republican Party, which once acknowledged climate science, has increasingly embraced climate denial rhetoric while obstructing and even rolling back efforts to address global warming.
The segment alluded to the role of right-wing media in politicizing the issue, showing a clip of Rush Limbaugh attacking climate science from the 1990s — a period Zee pinpoints as the beginning of political division on the issue — with the late conservative radio host claiming: “I can produce as many scientists who say there is not global warming as they can produce scientists who say there is.”
While Limbaugh was an early adopter of climate denial and polluted the airwaves for decades with climate misinformation, the right-wing media ecosystem that he once fronted continues to push climate denial and run cover for a party with no viable plan to address the climate crisis.
In just the past couple of months:
- Fox News' Greg Gutfeld claimed there are benefits to climate change and the weather has “changed for the better” over the last 20 years because “people don't live in frozen areas. They live in warm areas.” [Fox News, The Five, 9/6/23]
- Denying the link between warming and Hurricane Idalia, Fox host Jeanine Pirro made a bizarre claim that human-made climate change can’t exist because hurricanes were recorded in the 1400s. [Fox News, The Five, 8/31/23]
- Fox News host Jesse Watters called climate change “a pyramid scheme” on the heels of calling it a “psyop” to raise taxes and make people anxious. [Fox News, The Five, 8/31/23, 8/8/23]
- Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy called climate change mitigation efforts “anti-human” as Hurricane Idalia inundated the Southeast. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/31/23]
- Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk attacked the conservative student group Young America’s Foundation for asking candidates about climate change at the first Republican presidential debate: “I'd tell him to go make your bed, stop doing weed, and actually reconnect with reality. What a false premise question from a conservative youth organization.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 8/24/23]
- During the July heat wave that impacted 90 million Americans, Glenn Beck railed against “climate hysteria.” [BlazeTV, The Glenn Beck Program, 7/26/23]
- The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh dismissed the role of climate change and suggested that the extreme heat is normal for summer: “This is when the media, as it does every year, claims that the hot weather is a sign of our impending planetary doom.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 7/18/23]
- Fox Business host Charles Payne compared climate change activism to human sacrifice. [Fox News, Hannity, 7/13/23]
The This Week segment noted that this type of doubling down on climate denial by right-wing media and illustrated by GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who claimed “the climate change agenda is a hoax” during the first Republican presidential primary debate on August 23, could alienate the party’s younger base. Zee reported: “Now, a new generation of Republicans are trying to gain momentum, arguing that the party can no longer be associated with climate denial.”
Frank Luntz, the architect behind the Republican messaging campaign to cast doubt on climate science in the early 2000s, concluded: “Make no mistake. For voters under age 30, the environment is one of their top two or three issues. It may not matter to some in their 60s and 70s, but it absolutely matters to that first and second-time voter, and that's where Democrats have the advantage.”
