House Republicans are making climate change a part of their agenda after years of being labeled as naysayers on environmentalist policies.
The climate issue is typically championed by the left, but some congressional Republicans are carving out conservative solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions, including expansions of nuclear and hydroelectric power.
Democrats often balk at those solutions. They reject nuclear power because of its toxic waste and hydroelectric energy because of its impact on ecosystems.
Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, one of 17 members on the House Republican-led task force on energy, climate and conservation, said they are offering smart government solutions rather than big government solutions.
“My colleagues on the left are interested in bigger government,” Mr. Johnson told The Washington Times. “We’ve seen that has not been an effective way to combat carbon. Europe is not meeting its carbon goals even though they’re overwhelmingly using big government solutions.”
Usually cautious about the climate change issue, Republicans have been more likely to mock the far-left Green New Deal than promote alternatives.
Yet some Republicans say they have proposals to transition the economy to clean energy while enhancing U.S. competitiveness.
Last year, Republicans launched the Conservative Climate Caucus, a group of more than 60 lawmakers from every House committee. The founder is Rep. John R. Curtis of Utah.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee also proposed a package of clean energy solutions that would promote the development of carbon capture technology and update the licensing process for renewable hydropower projects.
Though technological and financial failures have plagued carbon capture, governments around the world are giving it another look. President Biden and top Democratic lawmakers agreed to a higher tax credit for industrial carbon capture projects as part of their $1.75 trillion social welfare and climate bill, which ultimately died in the Senate.
One of the other Republican proposals was an Energy Department program to reduce methane emissions from flaring and venting during oil and natural gas drilling.
The Securing Cleaner American Energy plan was promoted as an alternative to the Green New Deal, which would give the U.S. economy a dramatic and rapid environmentalist makeover.
“Our plan is a much better agenda to protect the environment, jobs, and our national security than their unworkable pie-in-the-sky mandates that will halt economic opportunities for millions of Americans,” the committee’s Republicans said in a statement.
John Tures, a political science professor at LaGrange College, said the increased severity of natural disasters is awakening the public to the impact of climate change and pressuring Republicans to respond.
“The public is starting to recognize that things are just not normal when it comes to the climate,” Mr. Tures said. “The storms, floods and natural disasters are becoming unnatural, and that’s gotten some Republicans to realize business as usual can’t go on. This will start costing people.”
Democrats don’t trust the Republicans’ climate agenda.
Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who is one of the most liberal members of Congress, said it’s hard to take the Republicans’ newly minted initiatives seriously because of past defiance of acting on climate change.
“In the past, they have rebuked climate change,” Ms. DeLauro said in an interview. “They don’t believe in it, so it sounds as if it doesn’t square with trying to move forward to address the energy and climate crisis.”
Republicans are far from marching in lockstep on climate change, and many recoil from the more extreme elements of the liberal agenda.
In a September tweet, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, said climate change and “climate justice” were contrived.
“No amount of taxes that anyone can pay is going to change the climate, and that is just the truth,” she said. “That’s not made up like climate change and climate justice.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, last week called global climate change a “fairy tale” that served as a membership requirement for the Democratic Party.
Former Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who is now executive director of the conservative climate change advocacy group RepublicEN, said the entire party needs to take climate seriously if it wants to win elections.
“When Republicans lost control of the House, it dawned on Kevin McCarthy that he would never be speaker without winning suburban districts, and you can’t win suburban districts with a retro-position on climate change,” Mr. Inglis said.
Aside from suburban voters, climate change is a winning issue among young conservatives who are pushing for more federal action on environmental protections.
“It’s a totally generational issue,” said Benji Backer, the 23-year-old founder of the environmental advocacy group American Conservation Coalition. “We don’t really care about the politics of it. We have our conservative beliefs. We have our liberal beliefs depending on who we are as young people. We just want to do something about climate change.”
A 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that younger Republicans broke from their party on prioritizing climate change.
Americans ages 18 to 39 who affiliated with the Republican Party said the federal government wasn’t doing enough to mitigate climate change. They were more likely than older Republicans to acknowledge that human activity exacerbated climate change.
About 29% of younger conservatives, compared with 16% of Republicans from the baby boom generation, said humans were worsening the situation.
The survey of 10,957 U.S. adults was conducted from April 29 to May 5. It had an error margin of 1.4%.
• Mica Soellner can be reached at msoellner@washingtontimes.com.
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