For years, the youth-led American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a group of conservative environmentalists, has advocated for market-based climate solutions and sought to make climate a front and center issue for Republican candidates. Their work is being put to the test this year, and is relevant now in New Hampshire, Hoplamazian reports.
“New Hampshire has become a stage for the group’s 501(c)(4) arm to inject questions about how conservative candidates would handle climate change into the circuit of largely climate-free stump speeches and coffee chats saturating New Hampshire ahead of the first-in-the-nation Republican primary,” Hoplamazian writes.
Part of ACC’s argument is that if the Republican Party has any shot at winning over younger voters, they have to address climate change, which as the group’s president Chris Barnard pointed out in a December conversation with former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is a “top three issue for young people.”
As ACC’s Northeast division leader Brian Martinez put it in this piece for NHPR:
“Candidates don’t need to be ‘the climate candidate,’ but they need to realize that if they’re going to win young people, they’re going to need to come to the table on climate. And if they don’t do that, then they’re going to lose almost half of the voting block for 2024.”
Read more here.