Politics of Climate Change: 5 Articles That Describe Struggles in Washington

"Gridlock" and "stalemate" are among the words used to describe the situation regarding proposed climate change legislation in Washington D.C. The politics of climate change include the Democrats, who generally support battling global warming, while Republicans tend to downplay the threat overall.

Here are five articles that describe the struggles in the nation's capital over the politics of climate change:

1. A 2009 piece published on Grist.org sought to outline the "genesis of the climate change stalemate." It said most people with strong opinions on climate policy — other than a few scientists and economists who actually know what they are talking about — are responding less to objective reality than to their cultural values. The article added: "As a practical matter, this means that Americans are going to have a great deal of difficulty reaching a popular consensus on climate policy; because the issue is so technical, ill-informed public opinion is likely to be impervious to new scientific evidence. The stalemate can only be broken through policies that appeal to both sides."

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2. A 2011 Washington Post blog post described how Senate Leader Barbara Boxer, a Democratic climate change believer and Jim Inhofe, a Republican global warming skeptic, battled by putting out dueling video messages outlining their contrasting views on the topic in advance of United Nations climate talks held in Durban, South Africa.

3. A 2013 Washington Post blog suggested politics is poorly suited to respond to climate change. It states, "The main problem in dealing with climate change is not scientific uncertainty. It is the inability of political systems to deal with a certain type of risk and reward."

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4. A 2012 US News article questioned whether the controversy surrounding global warming might be "cooling down."

5. A 2009 Washington Post article stated that to a psychologist, global warming looks like it was designed to be ignored. Climate change "is a global problem, with no obvious villains and no one-step solutions, whose worst effects seem as if they'll befall somebody else at some other time. In short, if someone set out to draw up a problem that people would not care about, one expert on human behavior said, it would look exactly like climate change."

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