After a decade of disputing the existence of climate change, many leading U.S. Republicans are shifting their posture amid deadly heat waves, devastating drought and ferocious wildfires that have bludgeoned their districts and unnerved their constituents back home.
Members of Congress who long insisted that the climate is changing due to natural cycles have notably adjusted that view, with many now acknowledging the solid science that emissions from burning oil, gas and coal have raised Earth’s temperature.
But their growing acceptance of the reality of climate change has not translated into support for the one strategy that scientists said in a major United Nations report this month is imperative to avert an even more harrowing future: stop burning fossil fuels.