Editorial: Did Sen. Kaine start political climate change?

Republicans, broadly speaking, used to be a lot more environmentalist than they are now. Teddy Roosevelt, a great conservationist, expanded the national parks. Richard Nixon created the EPA. Even Ronald Reagan took action on acid rain.

Polarization has diluted red America’s green streak. Many Republicans refuse to accept the possibility that humans contribute to global warming. Others won’t say so out loud. But others are coming around. George Shultz, secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, made a good case for taking precautions in a recent op/ed column. Hedging your bets is a conservative thing to do.

The other day Virginia’s junior Democratic senator, Tim Kaine, scored a couple of small victories on the climate front. He introduced a budget amendment to create a contingency fund that would help the U.S. military cope with global warming.

As Kaine pointed out, Naval Station Norfolk is the largest naval facility in the world. “In this defense-heavy region, sea-level rise is occurring much faster than the historical rate,” Kaine said. It’s doing so for two reasons. On Virginia’s coast, sea-level rise caused by global warming is exacerbated by plate tectonics: The land in that area is slowly sinking.

Kaine’s amendment received solid support from Democrats on the Budget Committee. It also won support from five Republicans: Kelly Ayotte, Pat Toomey, Lindsey Graham, Bob Corker and Ron Johnson. The first four have acknowledged the reality of climate change. Johnson, however, has exchanged testy words on the subject with climatologist Michael Mann. “The science is far from settled,” he said just a couple of weeks ago.

Rhetoric like that plays well with the conservative base, but military leaders in Hampton Roads have to face the cold, wet facts. Kaine’s budget amendment should help them do so. What’s more, it got a prominent climate-change skeptic to change his position — at least implicitly. You don’t spend federal funds on imaginary problems.

The passage of Kaine’s proposal will help Hampton Roads, and it has helped make plain some of the true stakes in the debate over climate change. It’s one thing to deny climate change to a friendly crowd on the campaign trail. It’s something else entirely to deny it in front of an angry admiral who’s worried about the fate of his ports.

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