Republicans use Israel-Hamas war to drum up fake climate controversy
A Fox news segment on the war between Israel and Hamas inexplicably brings up climate change. Source: Fox News
The latest Fox News outrage cycle shows how the GOP regularly uses global conflict to advocate against climate action—a trend which experts say actually harms the global fight against terror.
by EMILY ATKIN AND ARIELLE SAMUELSON
Here’s something to remember about the people and institutions committed to delaying climate action: They never let a crisis go to waste.
That’s become clear in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas, and subsequent deadly air strikes in Gaza by Israel, which conservative politicians and right-wing media are now using as an opportunity to attack President Joe Biden for being concerned about climate change.
A compilation of headlines and tweets about Biden official John Kirby’s recent comments on climate change, which were prompted by a Fox News reporter’s question.
While tempting to ignore, this latest right-wing outrage cycle is a useful window into the disingenuous ways conservatives use fear of global terrorism to turn public opinion against climate policy.
So today, we’re going to talk about the common Republican tactic of pitting climate concerns against terrorism concerns—and why doing so is not only factually wrong, but actively harmful to the fight against terrorism.
Manufacturing a fake climate controversy
This latest climate outrage cycle started on Monday, during a Fox News interview with White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
In that interview, Fox anchor Martha MacCallum asked Kirby if, in the wake of Israel’s declaration of war against Hamas, President Biden stood by previous comments calling climate change the greatest existential threat to humanity, and calling climate change “more frightening than a nuclear war.”
Kirby said that yes, Biden did stand by the comments, and noted that climate change “actually threatens and is capable of wiping out all human life on Earth over time."
Kirby added: “I don’t know how more existential you can get than that, but that doesn’t mean that we walk away from our obligations or our national security interests.”
Conservative media outlets and politicians quickly pounced on these comments, and acted if Kirby had made them out of nowhere, without MacCallum’s prompting.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, for instance, aired a segment in which she omitted the question that preceded Kirby’s statement. She then complained that “Even during war … they go to their point of major fanaticism, which is climate change.” She did not mention that actually, Fox News was the one who brought up climate change during war.
On another Fox News segment, Republican Senator Tom Cotton did the same thing, saying that “John Kirby is talking about climate change at a time when Hamas has cut off the heads of babies in Israel." He did not mention that Kirby was only talking about climate change because Fox News specifically asked him to.
According to the right-wing outlet Gateway Pundit, “The world is inching toward nuclear war and the Biden Regime is obsessing over non-existent climate change.”
But Biden is not actually obsessing over climate change during a global crisis. Republicans are—because that’s what Republicans do.
No matter the conflict, Republicans blame climate change
This is not the first time Republicans have used the threat of terrorism to attack climate concerns at home. In fact, it’s a talking point that spans back decades, said Marcus King, an environment and international affairs professor at Georgetown University, and senior fellow at the Center for Climate & Security.
“When we went into Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003, this issue was surfaced by the Republicans,” he said. According to King, Republicans said that investment in green jobs would detract from the war in terror. “It was this false dichotomy of saying what’s more important to focus on.”
The GOP leaned on that false dichotomy again in 2014, after the Pentagon released a report that said climate change posed immediate risks to national security. In response, Republican Senator James Inhofe told The New York Times that President Obama should be focusing on ISIS instead. “It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the president and his administration would focus on climate change when there are other, legitimate threats in the world.”
Republicans criticized former President Obama again after the wave of deadly ISIL terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, saying he shouldn’t have been focusing so much on global warming.
President Biden’s climate policies have also been attacked during the war in Ukraine, with conservatives claiming that his expansion of renewable energy supports President Vladimir Putin’s agenda.
According to King, Republicans do this “to paint Democratic administrations as soft on security,” and to inflame their base’s existing negative beliefs about the impacts of climate policy.
So it’s not surprising that this pattern repeated itself on Monday, when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy went after President Biden’s climate policies in a press conference about the war in Israel and Gaza.
“[Biden] believes the number one threat to America is climate change,” McCarthy said. “That is not true. The number one threat killing Americans is terrorism.”
But here’s the problem with McCarthy’s comments, and the entire manufactured Republican outrage cycle: Terrorism is not the number one threat to Americans.
The number one threat is, in fact, climate change.