Some Disturbing Statements about the Environment from the Republican National Convention

A list of the most egregious environmental stances that will guide Republican politicians

By Meiling Bedard

July 21, 2016

Power Plant

Power plant | Photograph courtesy of iStock/Sasha Radosavljevic

Thousands of politicians, media, and spectators descended on Cleveland, Ohio, this week to attend the 2016 Republican National Convention. The raucous affair opened with Republican senator John Barrasso of Wyoming mocking the Democratic platform for its admittance of climate change and its positions on climate justice. But that was just the beginning of the convention’s assault on climate progress and change. The convention also sponsored and released the Republican Party’s 2016 platform, which is rife with anti-environment policies. We’ve picked the five most egregious environmental stances declared at the convention that will guide Republican politicians for the upcoming year.

PUBLIC LAND: There are two prongs to the Republican’s 2016 platform in dismantling the protection of public land—make public lands open to ranching and logging and transfer land held in trust of the federal government to states. The platform puts 640 million acres of public land— which is now largely protected from human development, logging and domesticated animals—at huge risk from massive ecological destruction and environmental degradation.

CLIMATE DENIAL: The environmental victory of the Paris agreement would no longer involve the United States if Republicans get their way. The agreement isn’t the only one discounted by the new party platform, which also rejects the Kyoto Protocol and would remove U.S. involvement in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The dismissal of these three agreements would remove the U.S. from climate-forward pacts that are the future of slowing climate change.

ENDANGERING SPECIES: Republicans are taking aim at the Endangered Species Act. The party’s newest position would challenge the basis of the act and change the rules for classifying an animal as “endangered.” Under the platform, Republicans want to make it so that the human interest and reward for leaving species unprotected would play a role in the decision. The guidebook also singles out three species: the gray wolf, the lesser prairie chicken, and the sage grouse. Despite the act’s role in helping to revive and sustain the animals’ populations, the platform says the species are no longer in “actual danger.”

CARBON CATASTROPHE: Along with taking away the EPA’s power to regulate carbon dioxide, the platform fully supports the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline and the use of so-called clean coal. The Republican Party would even go farther than instating Keystone XL and intends “to finish that pipeline and others as part of our commitment to North American energy security.”