I'm always a bit surprised by this, you would think the right would be fairly conservative about environmental issues. I guess it's because big business/oil has done such a good job of buying the politicians off.
Indeed. Things get particularly ludicrous when you hear people saying that Communism or something like it is the only way to avoid damaging the planet; there was no pollution like Communist pollution, and the Left was hostile to the first Earth Day -- it felt too much like Hitler.
I've heard the expression "watermelons" applied to a lot of this: people who are Green on the outside, Red on the inside.
In addition, there's a smugness high horsery which doesn't appeal to the kinds of folk who get swept up in these delusions. I notice the same problem with the anti-vax crowd, where a lot of the public has basically resorted to brushing them off and engaging in ritual defamation, instead of trying to be persuasive. The poor kids who grow up with anti-vax parents who will become less and less interested in vaccine the more people tell them they're dumb.
> ...he just seems to be fairly right leaning in his views.
I'm a Liberal Conservative. That is to say, I am interested in conserving Classical Liberalism: equal opportunity, free markets, free expression, personal sovereignty. For example, I see border protection as begrudging but necessary, and only because we have attractive social programmes. If the social programmes are not attractive then we can go back to 1918 (on that issue alone) when there was effectively no border. On social matters (consensual goings on in private bedrooms, the purchase of goods and services such as drugs and sex or guns and hair styling) I don't think the government should have a say. Ideally a society should have some voluntary social core though, since it seems societies without some level of social cohesion tend to collapse into nothing rather quickly.
I don't think there is much you can do once an issue has been associated with a particular political contingent.
Also if you think there isn't a smugness and high horsery from the other side then you are mistaken.