America’s Three Political Parties, and Where They Stand on Environmental Stewardship

It seems that there are three distinct political philosophies existing in the U.S. right now:

Progressives, who are calling for the decarbonization of our transportation and energy sectors, simply because this is what our scientists are begging us to do, so as to avert catastrophe.

Traditional Republicans, whose values include small government and personal accountability.  They tend to be skeptical of climate science, even though they may understand that rising levels of CO2 are responsible for global warming. They’re likely to dismiss progressives as alarmists whose main motivation is dismantling American capitalism.

Trumpists, who take all this one step further.  They reject everything that runs counter to what they’re told by the former president, including the outright rejection of the scientific disciplines that affect public policy, e.g., climate and epidemiology. They support their beliefs with the fact that there are web sites that assert that the planet is actually cooling, that the pandemic is a government-driven hoax, etc., and that there are “news” channels that broadcast this disinformation.

As suggested by the drawing above, it’s this last group that causes most of the trouble that those of us in the other two parties face.  For instance, if  Trumpists didn’t exist, there would be near-unanimous demand for common sense gun laws, and we would put an end to most of the mass shootings that are robbing us of our loved ones.  This is especially upsetting in the case of our small children, whose bodies are blasted to bits because weapons of war are universally available, even to those who may be criminally insane.