‘Moderate’ Rs Call for ‘Action’ on Climate (Crank Me-Too Amplifiers Up to Eleven)

Climatewire (subscription required) reports that Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) and at least nine other ‘moderate’ Republicans will introduce a Sense of Congress Resolution today on “conservative environmental stewardship.” The resolution includes the usual warnings about climate change adversely affecting extreme weather, public health, agriculture and tourism, federal and state budgets, and international peace and stability. It calls upon the House to work “constructively . . . to create and support economically viable, and broadly supported public and private solutions.”

As if that were not vague enough, the resolution also affirms that efforts to mitigate climate change “should not constrain the economy of the United States, especially in regards to global competitiveness.” Climatewire helpfully notes that two of the nine co-sponsors, Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey and Dave Reichert of Washington, were among the 8 Republicans who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the 111th Congress.

Two questions leap to mind. First, what sort of bipartisan “solutions” could Gibson et al. conceivably negotiate with the Obama administration? Are they saying that the Clean Power Plan, Heavy Truck Greenhouse Gas rule, Oil & Gas Methane Rule, and the President’s UN Pledge go too far, so now’s the time to work with Democrats to develop “solutions” that split the difference between Obama’s initiatives and the GOP policy of ‘inaction’? Of course not. For the President and the environmentalist base of the Democratic Party, the administration’s climate initiatives are legacy policies and not open for negotiation or compromise.

Second, just how do the co-sponsors propose to do something “meaningful” about climate change without constraining an economy in which carbon-based fuels supply 82% of annual energy consumption? If policymakers knew how to square that circle, climate change would not be the intensely controversial issue it has been for two-plus decades.

It’s hard to imagine House leadership or any committee of jurisdiction scheduling time to debate or mark up this latest Constructive Republican Alternative Proposal. Nonetheless, given the administration’s increasingly shrill anti-carbon campaign, the impending Papal visit to preach climate alarm to congressional skeptics, and the looming pitched battles over the Clean Power Plan and O’s climate treaty agenda, we should not be complacent when a group of GOP lawmakers decides to crank the Me Too amplifiers up to eleven.

Leadership should have upstaged and preempted the Tweedle Dums by sponsoring its own sense of Congress resolution on climate and energy policy. To encourage such an effort, CEI published a model Sensible Sense of Congress Resolution on Climate Change back in June. Perhaps the Me Too resolution will languish in obscurity after today’s unveiling. But if co-sponsors start piling on, congressional constitutionalists, free-marketers, and affordable energy advocates will need to pass their own resolution to marginalize that of the Tweedle Dums.

As explained in more detail in CEI’s model resolution, the fundamental points to be stressed are:

• Climate change is not a planetary emergency;
• Affordable, plentiful, and reliable fossil fuels make the climate safer and the environment more livable; and
• The national and global campaign to tax, regulate, and mandate mankind “beyond” fossil fuels is bound to be either an expensive exercise in futility or a humanitarian disaster.