The Republican Party is the only major right-of-center party in the world that refuses to acknowledge the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and rising global temperatures. The major cause of this is one liberals are well aware of: The party’s climate stance is controlled by a combination of fossil-fuel interests and active cranks dissembling about the science. But there is a secondary cause of the GOP’s inability to confront reality that is less understood. Many leading conservatives do understand climate science, yet refuse to frontally challenge their party’s denialism.

The non-cranks of the right will admit that global warming is real, and usually concede as well that some policy solution other than allowing the free dumping of carbon pollution into the atmosphere is needed. But their main energies are reserved for attacking excesses of the left. This solution goes too far, that solution…