“Conservative Climate Caucus”: Heroes? or the Worst of the Worst?

Good luck to these guys trying to explain themselves to their grandchildren.

Above, “Conservative Climate Caucus” member, Michigan Rep Time Walberg says God will fix climate change if it’s a problem.
Rep Walberg raised his profile recently, when, speaking to a group of “fellow Christians” in Uganda, he praised a recently enacted “kill the gays” law.

So yeah, we’re talking about those kind of guys.

Wall Street Journal:

John Curtis leads a rather unusual climate coalition.

The 63-year-old Republican congressman from Utah founded the Conservative Climate Caucus in the House of Representatives three years ago. Since then, the caucus’s main mission has been to get its members comfortable with thinking and talking about climate—regardless of where they are on the issue.

One member, Rep. Paul Gosar (R., Ariz.), famously boycotted a speech by the pope in 2015, after it became clear His Holiness would devote the bulk of the talk to climate change. Another was lambasted by environmentalists for telling constituents in 2017 that if climate change was a problem, God “can take care of it.” (The legislator, Timothy Walberg of Michigan, says his views were misrepresented and that he believes people need to take action.)

None of the caucus’s members voted for the Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Many have lobbied fiercely against parts of it. Two members have scored zero on the left-leaning League of Conservation Voters’ tally of how frequently lawmakers have supported environmentally friendly legislation. The average score for the 80-plus members of the caucus hovers a bit above 8%.

Curtis, whose own score is 6%, is unfazed. The slim, amiable Mormon, a leading contender for the Senate seat being vacated by Mitt Romney, is known for his flashy sock collection and chatty videos on social media—including a post with Arnold Schwarzenegger and a series during last year’s House leadership battle titled “Friends don’t let friends become Speaker.”

“Part of our success is that we don’t judge people on where they’re at on this issue,” he says. “It doesn’t matter to me if they struggle with climate. It doesn’t matter to me if they don’t like the science. All that matters to me is that they’ll come and listen…. I have found that the more they come, the more they talk about this, the more comfortable they get with it.”  

New Republic:

Every few months, a major publication will publish a story profiling Republicans who are reportedly “evolving” on climate change—meaning shifting from hard-core climate denial to an acknowledgment of objective reality. Sometimes, these pieces will report that these Republicans support a carbon tax. Others look at GOP tree-planting plans. This quarter’s version—running in both Politico and the The Wall Street Journal—focuses on another familiar topic: a caucus with the word “climate” in its name. That the House’s three-year old, 82-member Conservative Climate Caucus has virtually nothing to show for itself doesn’t much matter. There are Republicans who are saying the word “climate”; apparently, that’s newsworthy enough.

Curtis is also now running for Senate, hoping to replace Mitt Romney. Curtis enjoyed a 42-point margin in his last election; a statewide seat will be more competitive and could involve winning over some more moderate voters. It wouldn’t be surprising, therefore, if one of his comms staffers were going around pitching puff pieces about his alleged environmentalism. But the genesis of this coverage is beside the point.

Politico credits Curtis with leading a “small but growing number of Republicans advocating action.” There’s a bit of a tension, this piece suggests, between their “innovation”-focused approach to climate issues—an “emerging Republican climate strategy”—and Donald Trump’s steadfast rejection of climate science. Yet these Republicans aren’t breaking ranks with Trump. They’re not reaching across the aisle to vote for climate policy and, in many cases, are in fact leading the charge against attempts to reduce emissions through both legislation and executive action.

What are members of the purportedly “growing Republican movement to engage on climate issues,” per the Journal, up to? Conservative Climate Caucus member Bill Huizenga is plotting to strike down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently finalized climate disclosure rules using the Congressional Review Act. He’s also taken $348,800 from PACs linked to energy and natural resource interests since first coming to Congress in 2008. North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry—another caucus member—similarly announced a pair of hearings to probe “this disastrous rule,” as he called it. Since his first run for Congress in 2004, McHenry has accepted $616,750 from PACs linked to the energy and natural resources sector.

There are a few reasons why Republicans might claim to care about the climate crisis. For the small minority of politicians who happen to represent the tiny sliver of congressional districts that are actually competitive, it might be a way to win over voters who care about the issue. It can help them line up lucrative gigs after their tenure on the Hill, whether on speaker circuits or in lobby shops. Republicans Bob Inglis and Carlos Curbelo—forerunners of the Republicans-who-care-about-the-climate grift—are still regularly quoted as experts on the subject. A caucus with “climate” in the name, moreover, can also be a convenient soapbox for Republicans who take money from the fossil fuel corporations to spew that industry’s talking points. Oil and gas companies have long talked up their green bona fides, and having Republicans champion their chosen set of “solutions” is likely a good deal more strategic than asking them to drone on about climate change being a hoax. The fact that these solutions—carbon taxes that won’t pass, carbon offsets that aren’t real, and industry methane initiatives that aren’t binding—aren’t solutions tends to get lost in the ensuing good press.

Fossil fuel interests and their beneficiaries in the Republican Party, in other words, have long known that they can court liberal readers by saying the words “climate change.” Reporters should know better than to take them seriously.