You’d think that the people in charge of the states where climate change was wreaking the most havoc would be in the forefront of the battle to push it back. But no.

In Alaska, entire towns are beginning to disappear under the rising seas. Roads are buckling as the permafrost starts to melt. Polar bears, which used to like to hang out on those ice floes themselves, are land bound, hungry and on the prowl.

Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat, has been forthright about the terrible impact climate change has had, while slightly dodgy about exactly what he wants to do to about it. His opponent, Dan (“the jury’s out”) Sullivan isn’t sure exactly what the heck is going on. He assured one Alaska newspaper that “there is no concrete scientific consensus on the extent to which humans contribute to climate change.”

Actually, there’s a pretty good consensus. A vast, vast majority of climate scientists say that human beings are causing all or part of the changes in climate that are making life miserable for the walrus and destroying the bayou country in Louisiana.

Also, causing the drains in Miami Beach to back up with saltwater, sending the ocean running down the streets. Florida has its own Republican presidential hopeful in Senator Marco Rubio. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he told ABC News.

(Jeb Bush is from Florida, too. For the record, Bush’s opinion on global warming is that it “may be real.”)

There was a time when Republicans were leaders in the fight to slow climate change — particularly for the concept called “cap and trade,” which had a marketplace-friendly tilt. Among the co-sponsors of a cap-and-trade bill in 2007 was Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska. Murkoswki had to run for re-election as an independent in 2010, having lost her party’s nomination to a Tea Party favorite who complains about “climate-change alarmists.”