23% of US Congress Members Are Climate Change Deniers – And They’re All Republican

A new report has found that nearly a quarter of elected federal officials in the US think climate change is a hoax, and all of them belong to the Republican Party.

“We’ve had freezing periods in the 1970s. They said it was going to be a new cooling period. And now it gets warmer and gets colder, and that’s called Mother Nature. But the idea that hurricanes or wildfires were caused just in the last few years is just fallacy.”

You’d be forgiven to think this is the statement of a conspiracy theorist YouTuber. But no, these are the actual words of a Congressman in the US. Steve Scalise, an elected official and the majority leader in the House of Representatives, doesn’t believe climate change is real – despite temperatures reaching record levels and people dying from extreme heat.

In fact, he is one of the 123 federal politicians – 23 in the Senate and 100 in the House – who deny the existence of climate change in the US, making up 23% of the 535 members of Congress.

Each of these 123 lawmakers is a Republican, and they have collectively received over $52M in lifetime campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. Scalise, who has received more than $2.5M in anti-climate money, is only second on this list to Texas Senator Ted Cruz ($5M).

“Of course the climate is changing,” Cruz said in 2018. “The climate has been changing from the dawn of time. The climate will change as long as we have a planet Earth.”

This is one of the many statements analysed by the Center for American Progress (CAP) in the new study, which defines climate deniers as those who say the climate crisis is not real or not primarily caused by humans, or claim that climate science is not settled, extreme weather events are unrelated to climate change, or that its impacts are beneficial for planetary health.

Most climate change deniers in Congress also reject 2020 election results

Last year was already the hottest year on record. Scientists predict there’s a 66% chance 2024 will surpass that. July 2023 witnessed the highest average global temperatures ever recorded, while July 2024 had the hottest day ever – a record that was broken again one day later.

And when it comes to the US, the world’s largest economy experiences a billion-dollar extreme weather event every three weeks. The report actually found a downward trend in climate denial among Congress members, going from 150 in the 116th Congress, to 139 in the 117th, and now 123 in the 118th Congress, but this has still had a tangible effect on the US’s climate mitigation efforts.

Take the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the Biden-Harris administration in 2022. It is the country’s largest investment in climate action, and has so far driven $361B in new investments to boost the economy. It has already led to the announcement of 300,000 new jobs, and is projected to create 1.5 million new jobs by 2030.

But all Republican members of the 117th Congress voted against the IRA, while all Democrats who were present voted in favour. Since it was passed, there have been over 30 attempts to repeal the IRA, which have the potential to put US climate action in danger.

Of the 123 climate deniers in the current Congress, 18 are newly elected representatives, aligning with previous research revealing that about a third of incoming freshmen after previous elections were climate deniers. And of the incumbents, four have newly denied climate science – though on the other hand, 13 have since made public statements accepting the science behind the crisis.

Kat So, who authored the CAP report, said tactics have widened from outright denial to other forms of obstruction – and three Congress members are now characterised as obstructionists. One of them is Florida Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, who previously was a denier but has recently described climate change as being “more of a religion”.

Other tactics include redirecting responsibility for addressing climate change – like deferring the US’s emissions reduction actions until other countries act first – portraying climate activism as alarmism, or spreading misinformation.

Conspiracy theories and examples of misinformation aren’t strictly related to climate change, as CAP found that 90 of the climate deniers (73% of the total) in Congress have also publicly denied the legitimacy of the results of the 2020 presidential election, when Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Fossil fuel industry a major influence on US climate denial

Big Oil is a major contributor to the large presence of climate denial in the federal government. The fossil fuel lobby is vast and notoriously influential, “spreading misinformation and manipulating democratic systems” to obstruct climate policy. Fossil fuels are the largest driver of climate change, and the scientific consensus is that they need to be phased out if the world is to meet its environmental goals.

This industry spent $124.4M in federal lobbying efforts in 2022, but this is a mere fraction of the $400B it made in profits that year. The US is the leading oil and gas producer, and despite climate policies like the IRA, Biden has continued to grant licences to new exploration projects.

While Cruz is the climate denier with the largest amount of career donations from fossil fuel interests, Senator John Cornyn and 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney have received even greater sums ($5.1M and $9.8M, respectively) – crucially, though, they don’t deny the existence of the climate crisis.

Similarly, Kevin McCarthy, a California Representative and former Speaker of the House, has received $3.6M in anti-climate donations as well. But he doesn’t deny climate change either. But the current Speaker, Mike Johnson, does reject climate science, and received $103,450 in oil and gas donations in the 2022 cycle alone.

“Many members of Congress continue to spread climate misinformation that closely mirrors talking points from their industry trade groups donors,” said So. “Research on the anti-climate movement reveals how the fossil fuel industry, conservative think tanks, and corporate interests have engaged in coordinated efforts to obstruct climate action through their lobbying efforts.”

These efforts have been successful, despite the fact that fossil fuel pollution contributes to the premature deaths of 350,000 Americans every year. “The fossil fuel industry continues to use its exorbitant profits to exert its influence on federal environmental policy in the form of contributions to elected officials and on public relations campaigns,” So added.

The findings come at a time when the US election race is a toss-up between incumbent vice-president Kamala Harris, who played a key role in the IRA but has reversed her anti-fracking stance, and Trump, who rolled back over 100 climate policies when he was president and has promised to “drill, baby, drill” if reelected in November.

Public figures like Trump play an “outsized role” in influencing climate beliefs, according to a February 2024 study, which found that 15% of American citizens are climate deniers. It is remarkable that a higher share of lawmakers think the climate crisis is not real, and notable that this comes in 2024, dubbed a year of climate elections.

“Publicly elected officials and the fossil fuel industry must be held accountable for their statements on climate change and deceptive obstructionist tactics such as greenwashing and spreading misinformation,” said So. “Climate action cannot afford to be delayed any further.”