system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:. How did climate change become a partisan issue?
gpt
It was never just about climate change.

The Republican party has represented business interests for a very long time, and has a long history of opposing government intervention and regulation.

A large number of environmental issues have typically been solved by telling big businesses they have to spend more money cleaning up, or limiting what they can sell.  From DDT to acid rain to chlorofluorocarbons to nitrous oxide to carbon dioxide, environmentalists have been restricting the ability of businesses to dump whatever they like into the atmospere, and/or sell whatever they like to others.

It's not so much that climate change gradually *became* a partisan issue: it was born into a partisan issue which was already ongoing.