There's no question that the global warming fear mongering of the past have hurt the credibility of the current arguments. Incidents of recent studies manipulating data to conform to the expected results did more damage. My stance has always been that even if you don't believe climate change is a real problem, you should be in favor of keeping the atmosphere and water as clean as possible. Beside, it's daggum hot enough in Georgia as it is. I don't w to do anything that might make it hotter.
The true believers need to be more pragmatic as well. Tightening environmental standards in reasonably clean countries does nothing at this point but drive more growth to the least eco friendly countries.