Hello, EcoRight! I hope this week’s update finds you well, warm, and ready to read all about our forward progress in getting our messages out loud and clear. ??
Spotlight on spokespeople: We are thrilled to see one of our newest members, Mary Anna Mancuso, featured in the Palm Beach Post with the op-ed No plan for climate action equals no Republican path to victory in Florida coastal congressional districts. “The environment is about the only issue that has allowed Republicans to earn enough votes from Millennials independents and moderates to prevail in close races,” she writes. “As long as candidates run under the GOP banner with zero plan to tackle climate change, congressional district’s like [Rep. Ted ] Deutch’s will remain as blue as the Gulf Stream lapping its way into our living rooms.”
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House GOP coalesce around framework: The Republican caucus has been meeting and talking about a climate change plan since late last year, and now there seems to be a framework for action. According to Amy Harder at Axios, “trees, plastics and favorable tax policy are at the core of House Republicans’ new push on climate change an effort to reassure voters they care about the problem after a decade of dismissing it.”
Part of that plan would include planting one trillion trees. “Trees are the kidneys of the Earth,” Rep. Bruce Westerman from Arkansas, a lead co-sponsor of the tree-planting bill, told the Washington Examiner. “There is no limit to how much carbon we can store in wood.”
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is at the heart of organizing the effort, with support from key lawmakers on the committees of jurisdiction. While there is no emissions reduction goal underpinning the policies they plan to put forth”It’s a mistake to set arbitrary targets like some folks are doing,” Rep. Garret Graves has saidthey will focus on three specific areas: carbon capture (that’s where the trees come in), clean energy innovation and funding, and conservation, with an emphasis on better cleaning up and recycling plastics.
Schwarzenegger calls GND “marketing tool”: In an interview with The Atlantic, outspoken Terminator and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the Green New Deal as a “marketing tool” and “bogus,” noting that “to me, the only thing that really matters is: How do we move forward with our goals? And this means that we stop increasing the amount of greenhouse gases and pollution that we put out there. The idea is to have the whole nation do that, and to have the whole world ” reducing emissions. Referring to himself as a “Ronald Reagan Republican, someone that is very, very good with protecting the economy, but also good at protecting the environment,” Schwarzenegger hailed California’s efforts on climate change.
“We in California have shown that it can be done, and we have shown how to do it. And therefore, if the nation really wants to be serious in reducing greenhouse gases by 25 percent like we did, all they have to do is copy us. That’s what states are supposed to do, to be the laboratory for the federal government, and just have the federal government copy very good ideas done by various states.”
Check out the full interview, which you can also listen to.
Crenshaw says “let’s err on the side of caution”: Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw said Republicans “can admit” that climate change is happening and encouraged even Americans divided on the cause to support “generally lowering emissions.”
“Let’s at least err on the side of caution,” he said.
The American people should know: there’s a 3rd option when it comes to addressing climate change. It’s not the absurd Green New Deal, & it’s not inaction. It’s innovation & it’ll decrease emissions without sacrificing our economy. Example: carbon capture, LNG, hydro & nuclear. https://t.co/p6MNhs3YKK
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) January 22, 2020
#progress
Braun inspired by Greta Thunberg: Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, who with pal Sen. Chris Coons from Delaware co-founded the Senate Climate Solutions Caucus told the Washington Post he is inspired by the Swedish teen who has become the face of youth activism on climate change. “She’s talking about an issue that she ought to be sincerely concerned about because if we don’t [act], we’ll pay a consequence for it. So yes, I admire her.” The interview walks through how the bipartisan gathering on climate came to be. “I think there have been a lot of Republicans in the closet on climate,” Braun said. “We as Republicans will have a void there if there’s no comment or view” about the issue.
This week’s must read: Liberals are spurning conservative solutions. That’s no way to save the planet (Newsweek) “What I don’t understand,” writes Todd Tanner, a lifelong hunter and angler, an outdoor writer and the president of Conservation Hawks “is how we can craft and pass bipartisan climate solutions without engaging large segments of the right-of-center base. It’s important for us to recognize that not every Republican politician has jumped on the Trump train, and that there are millions of ethical, conservative-leaning American citizensincluding many military and ex-military service members, hunters and anglers, evangelicals and morewho see the need for strong, substantive climate solutions but are unlikely to support the kind of liberal language and liberal policies that currently permeate the entire climate discussion in America.”
?Tick tock: The so-called Doomsday Clock, which since 1947 has indicated how close scientists believe the world is to the end of civilization, was set 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s come to midnight in its history. “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers nuclear war and climate change that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society’s ability to respond,” according to the scientists and reported by the Washington Examiner.
Did you miss our action? Earlier this week, Wen sent out this action highlighting the bipartisan efforts to phase out HFCs. If you haven’t acted yet, be sure to check it out.
That’s it from me. Catch you next week at the same great time, same great place!