THE rIGHT'S ANTI-CAPITALIST FETISH:

Back in the woods of South Carolina's Lowcountry, at a factory spread across thousands of acres near the Cooper River, a company called Nucor is trying to solve one of the thornier challenges of climate change: making steel with the least greenhouse gas pollution possible.

Steel is a building block of modern society. It's in cars and trains and bridges. And producing it is a major driver of global warming, accounting for up to 9% of all the carbon dioxide emissions that humans generated in 2020. Recently, the steel industry's customers, including automakers, have been pushing for a greener product. So, Nucor's exploring its options. It wants to be the go-to company for low-carbon steel.

"We can continue to grow our business and take [market] share because we have something that differentiates us from our competition," Greg Murphy, an executive vice president at Nucor, says as a furnace at the plant thunders nearby, turning scrap metal into molten steel.

But Nucor's efforts to cut its planet-warming emissions put it at cross-purposes with some of South Carolina's political leaders. Republican politicians, including in the Palmetto State, are deeply skeptical of the actions that companies like Nucor are taking to manage the risks and opportunities from climate change. They say investors who reward those sorts of corporate initiatives are focused on advancing "woke" policies instead of making money.

Tweet   @brothersjudd