Ask 15 Republicans about climate change, and you’ll get 20 different answers. GOP grapples with climate confusion

Ask 15 Republicans about climate change, and you’ll get 20 different answers.

In March, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told a national conservative radio program that the Earth is “cooling,” not warming.


Last week, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said global warming is real and hurting her state, acknowledging that “many believe” an international effort to reduce greenhouse gases is necessary.

And on Sunday, Republican leader John Boehner dismissed as “almost comical” the idea that carbon dioxide is “a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment,” arguing that it must be safe because humans “exhale” it and cows deposit it.

An EPA spokesman called Boehner’s comments “erroneous,” noting that whether a gas is a carcinogen doesn’t have anything to do with whether it causes global warming.

The GOP’s scattershot messaging on climate change threatens to distract from the party’s primary attack on the Democrats’ global warming plan: that the cap-and-trade system will dramatically raise prices on business and consumers.

“The debate should be starting right now, and it should be all about taxes coming from climate change,” said one former Republican Senate aide.

This week, 54 witnesses — including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and former Vice President Al Gore — will testify about climate change over three days of hearings before the Energy and Commerce Committee. Three weeks ago, committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Rep. Ed Markey released the outlines of a cap-and-trade bill that they hope to fast-track to a full House vote by the Memorial Day recess.

But as Democrats charge forward, Republicans have yet to produce an energy plan. Boehner told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he thinks the Republicans will produce a plan on climate change, but he offered no details about what it might be or when it might come. Boehner has tasked Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence’s American Energy Solutions working group with working out the details of the Republican alternative.

House Republicans are focusing on the costs of a cap-and-trade system, warning that the new regime would raise regulatory costs on businesses and increase energy prices, particularly for consumers in the Midwest.

In a briefing with reporters Tuesday, Pence called the Democrats’ proposal “a declaration of economic war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill.”

The ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), made similar points in his opening statement Tuesday.

“How many businesses have folded, or will fold, because of skyrocketing energy prices?” he asked. “How much higher must unemployment creep before we realize that we are sabotaging our way of life in the name of carbon dioxide?”

House Republican aides argue that there are so many lines of attack coming out of the party because there is so much to criticize.

“As House Republicans and the American Energy Solutions working group work through the process of building a taxpayer-friendly alternative to the president’s cap-and-tax policy, there will be plenty to criticize in the Democrats’ proposal,” said Mary Vought, press secretary for the House Republican Conference.

A tightly focused economic message could help Republicans persuade Democrats — particularly those from Rust Belt states hit hard by the recession — to vote against the bill.

But Republicans also fear that their economic arguments are getting lost in a hazy mix of conflicting and sometimes confused commentary.

“If you get bogged down in the debate to what degree this bill will actually diminish or lower human-created climate change, then you lose,” said Brian Darling, director of Senate Relations at The Heritage Foundation and a former Republican Senate staffer. “I would concentrate 100 percent on the tax debate.”

Traditionally, splits on climate change happen more along regional, rather than party, lines. And Democrats certainly have their own internal divisions, with Rust Belt lawmakers wary of the impact a cap-and-trade system could have on energy prices for already-strapped consumers and trade-sensitive manufacturing industries such as paper and steel.

Still, most Democrats agree some action should be taken on global warming — they just disagree about the timing, mechanics and other details.

Republicans are still divided over whether global warming is actually happening.

Nowhere were the differences of opinion more apparent than in Republican responses to last Friday’s proposed finding by the EPA that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. The announcement opened the door to new regulations on a huge swath of polluters, from auto manufacturers to power plants.

The highest ranking senators on the committees overseeing energy and environmental matters took radically different views on the proposed finding.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, called it the “beginning of a regulatory barrage.”

“The solution to this ‘glorious mess’ is not for Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation, which replaces one very bad approach with another. Congress should pass a simple, narrowly targeted bill that stops EPA in its tracks.”

But while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, slammed the administration for “acting on its own,” she stressed the need to address climate change.

“Addressing climate change is an important challenge that must be tackled, but it should be done through an open and deliberative process in Congress,” Murkowski said.

Experts from both sides of the climate change debate note that Republicans are trapped in a climate change triangle. Without congressional action, the White House can authorize the EPA to impose regulations. But efforts in Congress are being led by some of the chamber’s most liberal Democrats, including Waxman, Markey and California Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Outside the Capitol, business groups — a key Republican constituency — are fractured in their opposition to climate change legislation. The United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of business and environmental groups, backs a cap-and-trade system that includes “a significant portion” of free allowances to help its membership — which includes General Motors, Alcoa and Shell — adopt new, less-polluting technologies. But the Chamber of Commerce, the country’s most powerful business lobby, remains significantly more wary of the idea.

And Republican opinion leaders Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck deride global warming as a “scam” and a “hoax.” The Washington Post’s George Will frequently expresses skepticism about the severity of man-made global warming.

“If they come to the table, a lot of them see political suicide because of the effect of the principled punditry,” said one House Democratic aide. “A lot of the people that can unleash on them don’t think it’s a problem.”

This article tagged under: 2010

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