Climate Change Wasn't Always a Partisan Issue

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More than 5 million homes across Florida remained without power following Hurricane Irma, which made landfall over the weekend. President Donald Trump is expected to visit the state on Thursday.

Since Hurricane Harvey struck Texas weeks ago, the national conversation has focused on where to draw the line and where to draw connections between such extreme weather events and climate change.

Yesterday, Republican Miami Mayor Tomas Regelado told The Takeaway that it's time for state and federal governments to get serious about climate change. 

"Definitely there is an element of climate change of what we are seeing here in Miami," he said. "We believe, I believe that we cannot just wait for Tallahassee or Washington to acknowledge what is going on and we need to start a conversation."

But when you turn to Congress, it's much harder to find a Republican who agrees with him on the issue. More than half of the 117th Congress have denied the realities of climate change. That’s according to a survey of their voting records and personal testimonies conducted by VICE’s Motherboard earlier this year.

But it hasn’t always been that way.

Bob Inglis is a former Congressman from South Carolina who served from 1993 to 1999 and again from 2005 to 2011. He’s now the executive director of RepublicEN, a community of conservatives engaging on climate change. Here, he examines the historical relationship between Republicans and climate change. 

This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich.