This week’s must listen: House Climate Solutions Caucus co-founder Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL-26) on All Things Considered
This week’s must read: okay, I wrote it ICYMI I make a plea to Ivanka Trump on climate change
In other news, Minnesota meteorologist and ecoright crusader Paul Douglas, whom republicEn.org featured earlier this year as an “En-fluential,” points to the scientific data as driving his views on climate change.
“It was the data that tipped me off actually, the weather tipped me off. We’ve always had extremes, but by the late ’90s, early 2000s, it became apparent that weather patterns had shifted so significantly, so far outside the realm of average, that we had entered a new regime, and I was seeing the symptoms of climate change,” Douglas said in a recent interview. Douglas intends to give President-elect Donald Trump “space to adapt his worldview” on climate change. “If in fact this becomes a rabid, climate change-denying administration, it will go against the grain of much of what the GOP has done in previous incarnations,” he said, citing the environmental accomplishments of Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt.
Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY-19), the lead sponsor and champion of the leading climate change resolution and member of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, expressed hope that in the wake of his retirement, others will assume the leadership mantle to work on the issue with the incoming administration. Gibson told E&E News that the election outcome has made it “all the more important that we reintroduce the resolution and we continue to build numbers, have the conversation and find common ground.” He identified Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL-26) as a good candidate to take the lead on the resolution in the next Congress. “I’m a firm believer that if we as conservatives can get in this space about managing and safeguarding precious resources, then our ideas can be in the marketplace of ideas,” he said.
Meanwhile Curbelo said in the interview above he will continue to push for a climate solutions agenda in the next Congress. “When it comes to climate change and specifically sea level rise, which is a direct consequence, we are the tip of the spear,” he said of his Florida district. “Most people in my district live near sea level and near the sea. So we cannot backtrack on any of this.”
Curbelo says he’s willing to take on Trump on this issue.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Reince Priebus, who has been tapped to serve as Trump’s White House chief of staff, clarified his boss’s comment to the New York Times that he’ll have an “open mind” on climate change. “As far as this issue on climate change — the only thing he was saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he’ll have an open mind about it but he has his default position, which most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he’ll have an open mind and listen to people. I think that’s what he’s saying.”
Only 29 days until we bid 2016 farewell! What are your climate predictions for 2017?