CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Scientists have warned that extreme weather events like the rapidly intensifying hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico are the direct result of climate change, which will only get worse unless we urgently reduce global heat-trapping gases that are warming our planet.
While the political perception of the climate crisis is that it’s mostly a liberal issue, a young Republican has been steadily recruiting a growing number of conservatives to be a part of the solution.
“The climate crisis is absolutely not a hoax,” climate activist Benji Backer declared to Local 10′s Environmental Advocate and anchor Louis Aguirre. “We have a real problem on our hands with carbon emissions, obviously increasing substantially year over year.”
The 26-year-old underscores the recent back-to-back major hurricanes as a cue from nature that humanity needs to pay attention.
“The planet is trying to tell us that we don’t have as much time as we think in terms of solving this challenge and that we have to start taking action now,” Backer explained. “At the same time we have to do it in a way that benefits humanity.”
For Backer, being a conservative and a passionate environmentalist is not mutually exclusive.
“It’s not anti-conservative to be pro-environment. It’s actually, you know, the most conservative thing you can be is a conservationist and a lover of nature,” he said. “And the party has to get back to its rich legacy.”
Backer points to history in reaffirming that some of the most consequential environmental U.S. presidents were Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
“Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, created the National Park as we know it. Richard Nixon created the EPA, Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, NOAA, the first climate assessment. He did all of that during his time as president,” he explained.
But over the past three decades, climate change has made the politics of caring about our natural world increasingly more polarizing.
Just this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a controversial bill that largely removed the term “climate change” from much of the state law and public education curriculum.
“It used to be that in the 1990s, over 80% of Americans self-identified as environmentalists. Today that number is 39%,” Backer reflected. “So the question isn’t, ‘Oh, how did conservatives just start hating the environment?’ It’s ‘how did this issue become so tribal?’”
According to a 2023 Yale Climate Communication Study, 52% of registered Republicans believe that global warming is happening. In that same study, 59% of Republicans surveyed said they were in support of regulating CO2 as a pollutant.
Backer is now on a mission to fix the political divide on climate.
“Because of policies like the Green New Deal, there’s a lot of fear within conservative communities that the only policies possible around climate change, are the ones that are going to negatively impact their lives,” he explained.
That’s why the Wisconsin-born nature lover felt compelled to give a voice to other conservatives who, like himself, felt left out of the climate conversation.
“It was the 2016 presidential election, I tweeted out, ‘Hey, I’m going to start an organization to get conservatives active on the environment and climate change,’” he reflected.
That’s how the American Conservation Coalition was born.
Over the past seven years, Backer has been traveling the country, speaking to audiences everywhere, and in 2019 he even testified before Congress. Backer has seen his movement grow to nearly 55,000 members, spanning 220 chapters.
“It’s an amazing success story, and it’s a testament to young people across the country that don’t see this issue as a partisan issue,” Backer said.
His travels recently brought him to South Florida, where our cameras captured him during an appearance at Books & Books in Coral Gables.
Backer was promoting the latest milestone, a new book, “The Conservative Environmentalist.”
“When you only have one side at the table on something as important and paramount as climate, energy, the environment every single person loses, because you’re only getting half of the country represented,” he told the audience.
The intimate conversation was moderated by former Miami GOP Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
“I think everyone in South Florida is an environmentalist, they just don’t know it yet,” she said.
The numbers don’t lie. According to Pew Research Center, 52% of millennial and younger Republicans think, “The federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change.”
“Republicans are losing voters everywhere on the topic of the environment,” Backer warned. “If the environment’s your number one topic as a young person, people prefer the Democratic Party on the environment and climate change, not because they have done such a great job, but because they actually talk about it and they at least have a plan for it.”
Backer believes GOP leadership needs to also have a plan that embraces conservative principles to find common ground and address climate change head-on. But, he emphasizes that the interests of all Americans and the economy must be protected.
“We have an opportunity to solve this…my generation is going to clean up the pieces of this mess, and we’re not going to do it through fear,” he said. “We’re going to do it through optimism and the belief that we can solve this challenge through a lot of great business ideas, there’s so many different cool things that can happen in our fight against climate change that actually make people’s lives better, and my generation needs to be inspired by that.”
“The Conservative Environmentalist” is now available in bookstores and online.