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The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things that occur naturally on Earth including the interaction of all living species on the planet. One would think that protecting the environment from the harmful aspects of human activity on the biophysical environment would be an issue that transcends politics simply because any harm affects Republicans’ and Democrats’ constituents equally. However, protecting the environment is anathema to Republicans who will go to any length to subvert attempts to preserve the natural environment, but that was not always one of their primary reasons for spending millions of dollars to serve in Congress solely to block environmental protections.

It is likely that besides taxes and social programs, there is nothing Republicans hate more than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) because they monitor and seek to ameliorate the environmental damage from burning fossil fuels that are responsible for, among other things, anthropogenic climate change. Many Americans, and more likely the majority of conservatives, are unaware that Republicans were not always opposed to protecting the environment, or rabid to abolish the EPA.

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In fact, it was Republican president Richard Nixon who, in 1970, informed Congress he was creating the EPA and the NOAA to combat environmental degradation caused by human beings. Within a year both agencies were operational and began their tasks without Republican interference or opposition until about 1991 when Republicans did an about face and shifted their stance from protecting the environment to waging an ever-escalating war against any and every effort to protect Americans from environmental damage.

According to a new study in the journal Social Science Research, Republicans transformed from an “environmental leader to an environmental retrograde” in about 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. One of three sociologists who conducted the study, Aaron McCright, asserts that “The conservative movement replaced the ‘Red Scare’ with a new ‘Green Scare’ and became increasingly hostile to environmental protection.” The highlights of the study concluded; there was no political divergence on environmental concern from 1974 to 1991, in 1992 Republicans drove political polarization on the environment, and that polarization is driven by decreasing anti-environmentalism by conservative elites consistent with “party sorting theory.” The study also found that the election of Democrat Bill Clinton and Al Gore who had just published an environmental issue book, Earth in the Balance, “made environmental issues salient in a very political way.”

The study’s authors also cited the rise of global environmentalism they say “generated a heightened level of anti-environmental activity by the conservative movement and Congressional Republicans” who began labeling environmentalism and climate science “socialism” conservatives saw as a threat “leading them to replace anti-communism with anti-environmentalism.” Any American who has been conscious over the past five years in particular have heard Republicans, religious fanatics, and conservatives label environmentalists warning of the damage from climate change as part of a socialist plot to destroy America. The study also notes, quite correctly, that the right is unwilling to compromise, or even address environmental issues causing climate change, because it is “psychologically authoritarian, closed-minded, and prone to black-and-white thinking;” exactly like religious fundamentalism. It led the study’s authors to conclude that “the situation does not bode well for our nation’s ability to deal with the wide range of environmental problems from local toxics to global climate change we currently face.”

What the study did not address was the Republicans anti-environmentalism due to their devotion to the fossil fuel industry that in the GOP’s closed-minds means the industry can do no wrong and are under assault from “socialists” concerned about the damage of carbon emissions. It is likely why despite a new study reporting that building the Canadian KeystoneXL pipeline across America will put more carbon emissions in the atmosphere driving climate change than previously reported by the oil industry that conducted the State Department’s impact report. Republicans still lie and claim the project is safe and will be a job-creation bonanza. Their religious devotion to the fossil fuel industry, and opposition to the EPA, is so ardent that in June congressional Republicans threatened to shutdown the government in October if the EPA goes ahead with its plan to enforce regulations to reduce carbon emissions by 30% to combat climate change. In fact, the President’s EPA rules were cited by Republicans as one reason to file a lawsuit against him, and the House GOP voted to withhold EPA funding unless the carbon emissions are eliminated forthwith.

In yet another study just released, the prestigious scientific journal Nature reported that burning fossil fuels has resulted in a massive increase in the levels of toxic mercury in the world’s oceans that, combined with unprecedented ocean warming, means the fish and marine mammals contain at least three times more mercury than 150 years ago, but warn it could be more; much more. Medical experts have long been warning people to either drastically limit or avoid eating some fish because toxic mercury levels accumulate and cause reproductive and neurological problems.

Republicans care as little about the environment as they do the American people who are suffering the ill-effects of polluted water, air, and climate change, and it is true they are as obsessed with demonizing climate science and environmentalism as Joe McCarthy pursued the “communist threat to America.” Republicans always need a cause célèbre to demonize as an existential threat to America whether it was communism, environmentalists, climate science, or an African American man as President. The fact that they chose a real threat like climate change and environmental degradation as their new “communist” threat to America after being an environmental leader speaks volumes to their “political polarization” to oppose policies to protect the welfare of the people for no other reason than Democrats support environmental protections. Of course, a steady stream of campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry does nothing to dissuade the Republican religious fervor against protecting the environment or addressing climate change they claim is non-existent.

It is reasonable to believe that besides big campaign funding from the fossil fuel industry, part and parcel of their war against environmentalism is their desperate need for a cause to rally against as a threat to America whether it was the former Soviet Union, the so-called socialists in the environmental movement, child refugees fleeing violence in Central America, or an African American man as President; especially since he sees the very real threat of climate change that to Republicans is an evil socialist plot to destroy America. Something their opposition to addressing environmental deterioration and climate change will eventually bring about.