President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes $369 billion U.S. dollars for reducing carbon emissions -- the main cause of global warming -- to roughly 40 percent by 2030. It took a long time to get to the president's desk for signing and the Senate voted along party lines. The climate change issue has been a battle between Republicans and Democrats for the last 25 years.
Why?
In 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which was supported by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. The legislation regulated the emissions of hazardous air pollutants. Soon after, a bipartisan Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which regulated water quality standards. President Richard Nixon -- a Republican -- proposed the creation of a new federal agency to oversee the new legislation of both the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. Congress -- which at that time was controlled by the Democrats -- agreed with the president, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was born.
This bipartisan legislation led to dramatic improvements in air and water quality.
But eventually, and unfortunately, politics would invade the issue of climate change. This happened during the 1997 Kyoto Conference, where various representatives from different nations met in Kyoto, Japan, to come up with a plan for reducing carbon-based emissions, which was the main cause of global warming. The result was a treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol.
President Bill Clinton -- a Democrat -- signed the Kyoto Protocol. However, he was not able to convince the Senate -- which was Republican-controlled -- to approve the treaty, even though other world nations signed and approved it.
After President George W. Bush -- a Republican -- took office in 2001, he -- without any consideration or discussion -- rejected the Kyoto Protocol, saying it would weaken America's economy.
Shortly after the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol by then-President George W. Bush, a group of Republican lawmakers began to take aggressive action against the scientific evidence of climate change, saying that the evidence of climate change was inconclusive or -- even worse -- flat-out incorrect. The claims made by Republican lawmakers against the scientific evidence was backed-up by industry lobbyists and conservative talk-show hosts.
Now, battle lines were drawn between the two parties on the issue of climate change.
This had an effect on public opinion over time as the issue of climate change became more and more politicized. Before the 1997 Kyoto Conference, the two political parties differed only slightly in their views on climate change and global warming. After 2001, Democrats and Republicans -- in both Congress and the general population -- began to diverge. Democrats became more accepting of the scientific evidence of global warming, and Republicans flat-out rejected the scientific evidence.
In 2015, an international treaty on climate change, known as the Paris Climate Accords, was adopted in Paris, France, by 196 nations -- including the United States. The purpose of the treaty is to reduce world-wide carbon-based emissions. The president at the time -- a Democrat -- was Barack Obama.
[August 31, 2016] President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to formally commit their nations to last year's Paris climate change agreement in the coming days, a move that would increase pressure on other nations to follow suit and serve as an implicit rebuke to the deal's skeptics inside the U.S.
Two sources briefed on the possible announcement told POLITICO that U.S. and Chinese officials are laying plans for Obama and Xi to officially join the agreement this weekend during the president's trip to China for the G-20 summit in Hangzhou.
The move would put the weight of the world's top two carbon dioxide polluters behind the pact, and comes as Republicans including Donald Trump continue to pillory the international agreement. Obama has made leading an international charge to fight climate change a top priority of his final years in office.
On November 4, 2020, the United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords under the administration of then-President Donald Trump -- a Republican. The United States is the second largest emitter of carbon-based emissions after China.
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