How House Republicans Won over Conservatives to Gain Consensus on a Climate Agenda

January 31, 2020

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Josh Siegel (Washington Examiner) House Republicans have convinced their most conservative members to support a forthcoming plan for the federal government to address climate change. Republicans have long been skeptical of federal efforts to curb climate change. But now, even conservative Republicans are embracing a “clean energy innovation” legislative agenda, primed for release this spring and advanced by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his top energy and climate lieutenants.

“Climate denial is a bad political strategy,” said Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a 37-year-old member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and an ally of President Trump. “At some point, you have to be for something to fix it.”

Republicans, alarmed by polling showing vulnerability among young and suburban voters, sidelined the most strident and skeptical conservative outside groups to recognize climate change as an urgent problem requiring a response to the liberal "Green New Deal," according to more than a dozen Republican representatives and others familiar with congressional GOP plans.

The major themes of the pending agenda are capturing carbon dioxide (through technology and planting trees), curbing plastic waste, exporting natural gas, and promoting “resilience” or adaptation to sea-level rise and other effects of climate change.

...

That stay-in-the-lines strategy meant rejecting carbon taxes and regulations in favor of repackaging support for tax subsidies and funding of new science and technologies into a low-risk (and to critics, low-reward) proposal for limiting climate change. It also meant clearing the way for using more fossil fuels, the biggest contributor to climate change.

...

Nonetheless, to longtime observers of climate politics, the unified Republican acceptance of a federal role in combating global warming represents a significant step that could open the door for bigger bipartisan action in the future.

...

McCarthy, who represents an agricultural district in California, recognized the politics were changing when House Republicans became the minority party in 2019.

He quickly tasked Graves (Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana) and the Republican staff of the climate committee, along with Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the GOP leader of the Energy and Commerce Committee, to develop a strategy for combating climate change.

The three led a Republican caucuswide meeting this month, attended by more than 100 members.

House Republican aides said there was little opposition to the plans in the meeting, during which 50 or so members spoke.

“It’s encouraging to see some of these ideas gaining momentum on Capitol Hill,” said Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, a Freedom Caucus member who was a skeptic of federal government action to combat climate change. Gosar said he now supported “commonsense solutions to combating our changing climate.”

The conference meeting was the culmination of individual interactions Graves said he held throughout the past year with members ranging from Freedom Caucus to the centrist Tuesday Group.

Separately, Walden engaged in a similar exercise, hosting two dozen Republican members of the energy committee in his office shortly after Democrats took control of the House. He said that all agreed, when polled, that climate change was a problem that requires a GOP-led response.

...

Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida, one of only two House Republicans who support a carbon tax, says he, too, has not been consulted by McCarthy, Graves, or Walden.

...

“These are Kevin McCarthy’s bills,” the Trump administration official said. "They are messaging bills and all about the next election, and that’s great. But the president has been pretty clear he cares about affordable energy, energy independence, and clean air and clean water. He is not particularly obsessed about climate change.” READ MORE

Are Republicans coming out of ‘the closet’ on climate change? (Washington Post)

CLIMATE CONSERVATIVES LOBBY FOR CARBON TAX: (Politico's Morning Energy)

What a Republican Climate-Change Agenda Might Look Like (National Review)

GOING OUT ON A LIMB: (Politico's Morning Energy)

A Trillion Trees: How One Idea Triumphed Over Trump’s Climate Denialism (New York Times)

House hearing confronts tree planting push (Politico's Morning Energy)

HOUSE DEMOCRATS AREN’T READY TO GO ALONG WITH 1 TRILLION TREES PLAN UNLESS GOP TOUCHES FOSSIL FUELS: (Washington Examiner)

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: CLIMATE CONSERVATIVES LOBBY FOR CARBON TAX: Conservative volunteers with the Citizens' Climate Lobby are on Capitol Hill today to lobby Republicans to support the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019, H.R. 763 (116). More than 90 volunteers from 30 states will meet more than 70 Republican congressional offices on the carbon tax and dividend bill. "With every meeting, they’re showing elected Republicans that climate change should be a bridge issue that we all work together on," said Mark Reynolds, the group's executive director. READ MORE

Excerpt from National Review: As concern over the issue surges among younger Republicans and sweeping Democratic proposals demand an answer from the right, GOP lawmakers have come forward with bills of their own to address the problem. The top Republican in the House, Kevin McCarthy, recently sat down with Axios’s Amy Harder to outline the biggest goals of a Republican climate-change agenda, namely:

• Carbon capture, with a focus on natural solutions such as more trees and improved soil-management (what President Trump called the “trillion trees initiative” in his State of the Union Address);

• Clean-energy innovation; and

• Conservation and recycling, with a focus on plastic waste.

The first thing to say here is that Republican lawmakers’ now-explicit interest in climate-change policy is unequivocally good. Policy and legislation are better served by competing visions of action, not the permanent partisan stalemate that has characterized the debate to date. But Republicans might be missing an opportunity here all the same. So-called “natural” climate solutions such as planting trees and improving soil-management have uncertain long-term benefits to the climate.

...

Instead of offering watered-down versions of environmental proposals popular on the left, they could build a truly Republican climate-change agenda centered on innovation, nuclear power, natural gas, carbon capture, and large-scale agriculture.

Start with innovation: Republicans should demonstrate a commitment to it beyond “basic science,” backing carbon capture, nuclear energy, renewables, and other clean-energy technologies. And, by all accounts, they appear ready to do just that. They have reliably rejected President Trump’s proposals to slash clean-energy RD&D (research, design, and development) funding from the budgets of the Department of Energy and other federal agencies. In just the past two years, they have co-sponsored, introduced, and/or helped pass policies to accelerate demonstration and deployment of nuclear-energy and carbon-capture technologies, including the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (NELA), the USE IT Act, and the Section 45Q tax credit for carbon removal.

Importantly, these initiatives span the breadth of the “innovation pipeline,” from early-stage research to commercial deployment. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: GOING OUT ON A LIMB: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's carbon capture and tree planting bills were supposed to offer a Republican answer to questions about climate change, but instead they were immediately rejected by conservative groups. "Unfortunately, Republican Leader McCarthy did not heed that warning and has made the same mistake that many of his predecessors have made — you can never out-Democrat a Democrat. His costly proposal is a slippery slope to a slightly less intrusive Green New Deal," said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance. David McIntosh, president of the influential Club for Growth, said his group would not "endorse any candidate that supports the liberal environmental policies being pushed" by McCarthy.

ME thought bubble: The idea that these are "liberal environmental policies" would come as a shock to liberal environmentalists, who point out the lack of carbon reduction goals and support for fossil fuels that is at the heart of McCarthy's bills. But it's probably exactly the kind of message McCarthy has spoken of needing to deliver to the moderate suburban and young voters who abandoned his party in the mid-term elections. Maybe these critics are doing McCarthy a favor?

Proponents of the bills said conservatives should love them. "I think the more people understand what we're doing here, the more likely they are to be supportive," said Rep. Greg Walden, ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Climate Crisis Committee ranking member Garret Graves described himself as "not even remotely surprised" by the critical statements from conservative groups. "Anybody who is beating up on what we said today, then we have not properly communicated to them," he said. "There's nothing that is not fully aligned with conservative ideology with what we announced — there's nothing."

Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said GOP environmental policy had been the subject of "countless member meetings" with "vibrant" participation among lawmakers. "The participation of Members across the ideological spectrum and representing every region of the country — including coal country — at today's event represent just how widespread the support is for House Republicans to reclaim the leadership position on the environment," he said. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: CAN'T SEE THE HEARING FOR THE TREES: The House Natural Resources Committee will examine two bills today with two markedly different approaches to tackling climate change. One bill, H.R. 5435 (116), from Chairman Raúl Grijalva would require net-zero emissions from the nation's public lands and oceans by 2040, and another bill, H.R. 5859 (116), from Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) gives the legislative backing to plant 1 trillion trees by 2050.

While Democrats and environmentalists say they support the concept of planting massive numbers of trees, they fear the bill is Republicans' way to seek political cover on an issue that's a growing concern for voters. Today's hearing will provide them with a chance to highlight the differences between the two parties’ plans to fight climate change, Pro's Anthony Adragna reports this morning.

"By all means, let's plant the trees. Let's start there," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a senior member of the Natural Resources Committee. "But one of these days we have to be able to talk about things that transition us away from fossil fuels to clean energy. We can't just continue to skirt around the edges."

The bill from Westerman, a Yale-educated forester, was unveiled earlier this month as part of a moderate package of Republican bills to combat climate change — earning a mixed reception within Republican circles. The measure incentivizes the use of wood products, but it does not require any specific level of emissions reductions, in line with a Republican emphasis on avoiding new regulations on fossil fuel production or consumption. Westerman said he began crafting it following publication of a July 2019 study in Science that found planting a trillion trees could significantly curb carbon dioxide emissions. "If we can't agree about trees, I don't know what we could agree about," he told POLITICO.

But among the concerns Democrats and environmentalists have raised about the bill are its provisions placing limits on judicial review in forest management cases; defining biomass as carbon neutral — a divisive position in the environmental community — and failing to consider factors like log transportation and building demolition when calculating the carbon lifecycle potential of national forests, Anthony reports. Ahead of today's hearing, more than 95 conservation and climate groups called on lawmakers on the committee to oppose Westerman's bill, arguing it "presents a false solution for addressing the climate crisis by misallocating resources to focus on industrial logging rather than on urgently needed steep reductions of fossil fuel emissions." READ MORE