WASHINGTON—He’s 42. He knows more about Louisiana’s vanishing coastline than just about anyone. And, ladies and gentlemen, he’s a newly elected Republican, now packing his things for the big move to Washington.

Meet Garret Graves, the rarest of GOP birds — a science-affirming believer on climate issues, who secured a seat in Congress over the weekend in a runoff election following November’s U.S. mid-terms.

In yet another sign that U.S. politics are never quite as simple as advertised, Graves sailed to easy victory Saturday in his state’s sea-endangered 6th district, a waterlogged territory that extends from Baton Rouge to the outskirts of New Orleans and the bayous beyond.

His largest claim to fame: Graves’ oversaw the delivery of the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, an ambitious $50-billion project to batten down the state’s hatches against erosion and a projected sea-level rise of as much as two-thirds of a metre in the next 50 years. In a worst-case scenario, the Graves documents warned, the state could see a 1,000 per cent annual increase in flood- and storm-related damage by 2061.

It didn’t take long for Graves’ victory to awaken Democratic irony. Monday’s headline, courtesy of Wonkette: “Louisiana Accidentally Elects Republican Who Thinks Science Is Real.”

Mother Jones.com, in a deeper look at Graves’ embrace of climate science, questions how loudly he might express those views in Washington once he is sworn-in alongside his far more skeptical Republican colleagues in January. He counts among his campaign contributors heavy hitters from both sides of the climate wars in Washington — the denier-financier Koch Brothers and their environmental foes.

Graves himself spoke with uncommon clarity on the issue last week in a local radio interview, telling Louisiana’s WRKF that any attempt to “develop a national plan and not acknowledge that land is sinking, to not acknowledge we’ve measured sea rise in South Louisiana would be irresponsible and a dereliction of our duty . . . we have to acknowledge what’s projected moving forward.”

Such talk places him on the centrist margin of not just most Republicans, but also “blue-dog” Democrats like West Virginia’s gun-toting Sen. Joe Manchin, who won re-election four years ago with a TV ad that literally put a bullet through the Obama administration’s failed climate legislation.

Graves remains cautious on whether he can change the tone of the climate debate in Washington, arguing that the varying views of 535 lawmakers are too complex to summarize in a single sentence.

“You obviously have scores of different positions on how to properly balance economic and environmental policy and I’m looking forward to participating in those discussions and look forward to sharing some of the unique perspectives of south Louisiana,” he told WRKF.

But if nothing else, Mother Jones observed, “Graves will represent a kinder, fresher approach to climate issues than firebrands like Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), his former boss, who dismissed climate science as ‘ridiculous pseudo-science garbage.’ ”

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