At some point in the 1980s or 1990s, environmental issues became hopelessly and depressingly politicized. By "politicized," I mean it stopped being acceptable to talk about environmental issues in, for instance, a high-school setting, in the same way that evolution was made into a controversial subject to talk about in many school settings. I'm not sure when I would pinpoint that this politicization really sunk in, but I'd be interested in what those who were around at that point might have to say. By the Republican revolution of 1994 -- around the time I first became aware of something called "politics" -- this seems to have already definitively taken place.
But in the past of couple years, while it has remained fairly partisan, climate change has been rapidly depoliticizing as an issue. Even with a former Democratic vice president as its standard-bearer, it's now acceptable for companies, organizations, and institutions that would never consider taking what they see to be a political stance on an environmental issue -- or any other issue not directly concerning their core business -- to take a stance on climate change.
In my role as a grassroots organizer with a student environmental organization, it has only recently become possible to approach a wide variety of potential coalition partners for the very first time. My organization could never have approached a typical university president to register the school's public opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- but we can and do approach hundreds to work on climate change.
This is phenomenally important in repositioning the environmental movement beyond its role in the '90s as a "special interest." It's an immense boon to anyone trying to figure out how to spark the political moment that could result in good clean-energy legislation getting to the president's desk, and the society-wide coalition that will succeed in getting her or him to sign it.
I'd measure the completion of this depoliticization process to be when primary and secondary schools start including climate change -- and then carbon reductions and clean energy -- in their curricula, assemblies, and more. I'm not talking about when high schools stop teaching kids that there's a scientific climate debate -- I mean when they take the only step a responsible educator could take and ask students to consider this: Now that we have a problem, what are the solutions to this problem?
Obviously, we're not there yet.