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I do want to make a couple of points first before I answer this.

Ron DeSantis, the current governor of Florida, has actually implemented strong environmental protection policies and restricted drilling in large swaths of land in Florida. He also stated recently that he wants one billion to restore the Everglades. The GOP legislature will likely approve his plan

Republican Charlie Baker, current Governor of MA, just signed legislation directing 2.4 billion to environmental initiatives.

Climate denialism is not a core value of the Republican Party, we have governors and other legislatures advocating for conservation.

I do want to highlight 3 points that reflect segments of the Republican Party and the reasoning behind it.

1. Most republicans don’t deny climate change. They deny the causes of climate change. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro accurately reflects what most republicans think. Climate change is happening. It doesn’t matter what the US does since even if the US reduced its carbon footprint to zero, the difference in the world would be negligible if China or India does not change its policies. China, India, Indonesia, with their large populations play a much larger role than the United States.

The second point being, is that climate change has been happening throughout the history of the world, man does play a role but there’s nothing we can do about it and it’s not worth sacrificing small luxuries just so we can delay the inevitable for a couple of years.

The third point is that there’s a very small minority that really does not believe in climate change and thinks it’s all liberal hysteria. They say this because in the 1970s there were numerous scientific essays written in journals that talked about cities being underwater, that never ended up occurring so they use these examples to ignore real examples.

In the 1970s Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

These claims by reputable scientists and in reputable magazines have played a role in current skepticism. I do want to say again, these people are in the minority. Don’t listen to 2-3 outliers on cable news making outlandish statements and think that the GOP’s core value is denying climate change. It isn’t.