Happy Monday! Well, not so happy here… due to poor Las Vegas marathon course management, a bunch of us were redirected off course and yada yada yada, I only got 17 miles in before crossing the “finish” line. So mission fail, but luckily there is good reading to keep me distracted today.
Crossing Party Lines for Climate Action (UI Argonaut): Read about the bipartisan event featuring our own Rep. Bob Inglis and his friend from across the aisle, former Rep. Brian Baird as they convened at the University of Idaho College of Law to discuss bipartisanship, climate action, and commonsense solutions. “Climate change is real and we must do something about it,” Bob said. “There’s a way to get there, and we think it’s through a carbon tax that’s revenue neutral.”
“We’re going to need an incentive like a carbon tax which will help drive and reward technology,” Baird said. “We’re going to need personal behavior change, international agreements, economic structures and we have to fund the hell out of innovation.”
From the article: “Baird and Inglis are old friends and share a history of working together in the house Baird chaired the subcommittee on Energy and Environment, part of the Science and Technology committee, while Inglis served as the ranking republican. Inglis emphasized ‘coming together to find a solution.'”
Climate talk isn’t on the Thanksgiving menu for most people (Morning Consult): With Thanksgiving fast approaching, we think about this a lot at republicEn.org. And we are here to help, if you need it. “While only about 1 in 5 adults expect to have a climate change discussion this holiday, 42 percent said in a new Morning Consult poll that they are now more likely to start a conversation with friends or family compared to a year ago,” this article reads. “And almost half of adults (48 percent) said they have started a conversation about the issue with friends or family in the past year, according to the Nov. 6-8 poll of 2,187 U.S. adults, which had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.”
And a quote from our guy Alex Bozmoski: “Alex Bozmoski, managing director of the George Mason-affiliated free market climate group RepublicEn.org, said he is “ecstatic” that 38 percent of GOP adults specifically reported starting these conversations. For people who have yet to see climate solutions that fit their worldview, it is a “bummer problem to talk about, because in a political context, it feels like capitulation,” Bozmoski said. “You need to have a solution set that you’d like before the issue really is something you want to discuss.”
And finally: Republicans can’t exploit the left’s climate extremism without a better idea (The Hill): In this op-ed by former Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo, he writes that “Republicans would be right to assume that the left’s job-killing, price-raising, government-growing “solutions” for climate change are out of step with the American mainstream. But they would be wrong to assume that it will be easy to exploit this vulnerability in the general election. Why? Because if Republicans are still ignoring climate change entirely, voters will see them as more extreme than Democrats.”
What news is on your radar today?