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The largest environmental group in the United States reacted with shock when Joe Manchin, a conservative Democratic senator, convened last week a meeting on climate change with Republican legislators.
“Just as there’s no negotiating with arsonists on how much of a building they can burn, there’s no negotiating with a party of climate deniers on climate action,” said the Sierra Club.
Recognizing their bad reputation for climate change among concerned citizens, a group of Republicans formed the Conservative Climate Caucus.
But the group Has work to do if it is to change voter perceptions about the party’s commitment to environmental issues.
Recent years have seen the GOP resisting government action on global climate change. It opposes limits on emissions, phaseout of coal power generation, as well as participation by the US in the Paris Climate Agreement.
Surveyed by the New York Times in January, not a single Republican senator said they would support the climate measures put forward in President Joe Biden’s stalled Make it better bill.
The League of Conservation Voters gives lawmakers a score based on whether they voted pro-environmentally on certain legislation. In 2021, the average score of Republican lawmakers was 14.21 from a possible 100.
John Curtis, a Utah congressman, is the chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus. He said that he created the group to show Republicans care about climate change and offer policies to combat it. “Republicans do care about our Earth and our planet, and we want to be good stewards,” said Curtis. “In my opinion we have not been vocal enough.”
Both Democrats and Republicans agree that renewable energy storage and generation should be a priority. Their critical Climate policy: Differences is over the GOP’s insistence that US fossil fuels should continue to play a role in the world’s energy mix.
Curtis stated that he believes US natural gas could have lower greenhouse gas emissions than its Russian counterpart. “Do you want to lower greenhouse gas emissions?” Curtis asked. “If you do, you have to admit there’s a role for US fossil fuels.”
One of the Republicans at Manchin’s meeting this week, North Dakota senator Kevin Cramer, told Fox News that European allies were “begging” for US energy in an effort to wean themselves Russian gasBecause of the war in Ukraine. He told MSNBC that replacing Venezuelan oil with US supplies, or Russian natural gas with US liquefied natural gas, would “[bring] down greenhouse gas emissions”.
The GOP climate caucus did not release any policy proposals. However, it stated that climate action must be based upon free-market innovation and must include China. China is the largest obstacle to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. “With innovative technologies, fossil fuels can and should be a major part of the global solution,” it said in a statement.
After polling that showed that many voters, including Republicans, are more concerned about climate changes, the 73-member caucus has been created.
Yale University conducted a September 2021 poll of registered voters and found that 60% of moderate Republicans believed the US should reduce its greenhouse gases emissions, regardless of what other countries do. This was 14 percentage points more than six months prior. A third of conservative Republicans agreed.
Pew Research’s survey of more that 10,000 adults revealed that 64% of respondents said they were moderate Republicans and preferred to develop renewable energy sources over expanding oil. Only 33% of conservative Republicans disagreed.
Philip Rossetti, a senior fellow at the free-market R Street think-tank, said that while the “most extreme” candidates from both parties dominated the media, winning Congress would require convincing moderate voters.
“For Republicans to win suburban moms, they need to have reasonable responses to key issues like climate change and prove that they can govern,” said Rossetti.
“2018 and 2020 show that [Donald] Trump’s rhetoric hurt Republican credibility with these voters, and winning them back means presenting solutions to an array of contentious issues, climate included.”
Andrew Hoffman, a professor from the University of Michigan, wrote a paper about the so-called “Second Law” a decade ago. Culture war around climate scienceThe following article, which outlines the gap between scientific consensus (and social consensus) among Republican voters.
Hoffman stated that polarisation was declining as more Republican legislators and voters believe in climate change, and are willing to work with scientists to prove it. “In particular, if you look at what the young Republicans are doing — they care about climate change,” Hoffman said.
Curtis stated that many Republican lawmakers had to be convinced climate change could be a conservative matter. “I think a lot of them felt like they had to check their conservative credentials at the door when talking about climate,” Curtis said. “And I think now they’ve realised they don’t need to do that and it emboldens them to be more comfortable talking about it.”
Several members of this caucus were previously opposed to the scientific consensus that global cooling is occurring and is caused primarily by humans.
In 2018, Michael McCaul, a member of the caucus and the top Republican on the House’s foreign affairs committee, said climate change had “gotten completely politicised”, and questioned whether global warming was “a normal earth cycle” or “man-made”. His office declined to comment on whether he had changed his position.
Debbie Lesko, another member of the caucus and a congresswoman for Arizona, said in 2018 that while “some” global warming was “possibly” human-caused, “certainly not the majority of it”.
“I think it just goes through cycles and it has a lot to do with the sun,” said Lesko. “So no, I’m not a global warming proponent.” Lesko’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether her position had changed.
Bruce Westerman (the Republican congressman for Arkansas), was her fellow caucus member and suggested that Arkansas would see climate change if it were to happen. “I did a little research and found out the number of forest fires in Arkansas has actually decreased over the past 20 years,” Westerman told a Congressional hearing.
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“You would think even though it’s a more moderate or temperate climate, if climate change was causing more fires we would see a lot more of them than what’s in the baseline.”
Westerman’s spokesperson said the congressman had “always been an advocate for science-based conservation and responsible stewardship of our natural resources”, and that without “proactive conservation efforts”, “catastrophic wildfires, natural disasters, skyrocketing emissions from leading polluters like China, and other natural and man-made disasters will continue to impact our global environment”.
Curtis stated that some members of his caucus have changed their views on climate changes since they joined and engaged more with the topic.
“I think it’s important to understand one of the successes of the caucus is that we take people where they are . . . I’ve had a lot of success saying: ‘Look, I’ll take you where you are, and I’ll move you along a continuum.”
