Citing an essay by D.R. Tucker, Peter Sinclair asks: What if American conservatives had followed their British counterparts and not allowed partisan animus against Al Gore to distract them from the scientific evidence on climate change?
Imagine if Reagan had delivered speeches similar to Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 and 1990 speeches on combating climate change, suggesting that this was a cause beyond the threshold of partisan politics, and that the threat of a warming planet imperiled conservatives and progressives equally. What if Reagan had heeded Dr. James Hansen’s June 1988 call for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and encouraged members of his party to seek alternate energy routes?
Would conservatives have dismissed “Ronaldus Magnus” as a crank, or would they have listened to his words?
Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol to phase out CFCs because he recognized that all the libertarian ideology in the world doesn’t mean much when the world is being damaged. For all the controversies about Reagan’s environmental record, it’s clear that with regard to the dangers of CFCs, he recognized that scientific facts were more important than political theories.