Every morning the New York Times sends subscribers a newsletter called “The Morning.” September 12’s lead item, by David Leonhardt, discussed why he thinks the Electoral College may be getting less friendly to Republicans. Whether that’s so is an interesting question, but it’s not what most caught my eye.

Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash

What most caught my eye was his statement that “the Republican Party denies climate change.” Nope, sorry. The Republican Party’s platform, last revised in 2016 and re-embraced in 2020, mentions climate change 7 times. Here they are, each in context:

First: “Government should not play favorites among energy producers. The taxpayers will not soon forget the current Administration’s subsidies to companies that went bankrupt without producing a kilowatt of energy. The same Administration now requires the Department of Defense, operating with slashed budgets during a time of expanding conflict, to use its scarce resources to generate 25 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2025. Climate change [there are the words] is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it.”

Second: “Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. We will enforce that standard throughout the executive branch, among civil servants and presidential appointees alike. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [there are the words again] is a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy. We will evaluate its recommendations accordingly. We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, which represent only the personal commitments of their signatories; no such agreement can be binding upon the United States until it is submitted to and ratified by the Senate.”

Third: “We demand an immediate halt to U.S. funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change [there they are again] (UNFCCC) in accordance with the 1994 Foreign Relations Authorization Act. That law prohibits Washington from giving any money to ‘any affiliated organization of the United Nations’ which grants Palestinians membership as a state. There is no ambiguity in that language. It would be illegal for the President to follow through on his intention to provide millions in funding for the UNFCCC and hundreds of millions for its Green Climate Fund.”

Fourth: “We intend to restore the treaty system specified by the Constitution: The president negotiates agreements, submits them to the Senate, with ratification requiring two-thirds of the senators present and voting. This was good enough for George Washington but is too restrictive for the current chief executive, who presumes to bind this country to bilateral and multilateral agreements of his devising. His media admirers portray his personal commitments — whether on climate change [those words again], Iranian weapons, or other matters — as done deals. They are not, and a new Republican executive will work with the Congress to reestablish constitutional order in America’s foreign relations. All international executive agreements and political arrangements entered into by the current Administration must be deemed null and void as mere expressions of the current president’s preferences. Those which are in the national interest but would traditionally have been made by treaty must be abrogated, renegotiated as treaties, and transmitted to the Senate for its advice and consent as required by the Constitution. The United States will withdraw from all agreements and arrangements failing those standards.”

Fifth: “The Environmental Protection Agency has rewritten laws to advance the Democrats’ climate change [there are the words] agenda. The Department of Health and Human Services has ignored the enacted text of the Affordable Care Act to do whatever it wants in healthcare. Both the Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board have scrapped decades of labor law to implement the agenda of big labor. The Dodd-Frank law, the Democrats’ legislative Godzilla, is crushing small and community banks and other lenders. The Federal Communications Commission is imperiling the freedom of the internet. We support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibits commercial banks from engaging in high-risk investment.”

Sixth: “In the face of these [military] threats, the first order of business for a Republican president and Congress will be to restore our nation’s military might. Republicans continue to support American military superiority which has been the cornerstone of a strategy that seeks to deter aggression or defeat those who threaten our vital national security interests. We must rebuild troop numbers and readiness and confirm their mission: Protecting the nation, not nation building. The United States should meet the Reagan model of “peace through strength” by a force that is capable of meeting any and all threats to our vital national security. We will no longer tolerate a President whose rules of engagement put our own troops in harm’s way or commanders who tell their soldiers that their first duty is to fight [here come those words again] climate change.”

Seventh: “To those who stand in the darkness of tyranny, America has always been a beacon of hope, and so it must remain. Radical Islamic terrorism poses an existential threat to personal freedom and peace around the world. We oppose its brutal assault on all human beings, all of whom have inherent dignity. The Republican Party stands united with all victims of terrorism and will fight at home and abroad to destroy terrorist organizations and protect the lives and fundamental liberties of all people. Republicans have led the way in promoting initiatives that have protected and rescued millions of the world’s most vulnerable and persecuted. Standing up for repressed religious groups, prisoners of conscience, women trafficked into sexual slavery, and those suffering from disease or starvation is not just consistent with American values. It advances important security and economic interests as well. A Republican administration will never say, as Hillary Clinton did as Secretary of State in 2009, that raising human rights concerns ‘can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global [here it comes—the last mention of those words] climate change crisis, and the security crisis.'”

That’s it. Nowhere does the Republican Party deny climate change. It clearly opposes the Democrats’ climate change agenda, but it doesn’t deny climate change. Journalists who persist in saying it does are either lying, too lazy to check, or stupid.