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We’re Saved! Utah GOP Rep. John Curtis is making conservative case for ‘climate action’ – Rejects ‘climate denial’ – Wants GOP to join ‘the club of credibility’

https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/14/23681060/climate-change-gop-john-curtis

Republicans, led by Utah Congressman John Curtis, want to usher in a new era of climate policy. Is their effort poised to make a difference?

Excerpt:

The Republican congressman from Utah knows many in the crowd — some 2,500 strong, packed into Miami Beach’s New World Center in early March — remain apprehensive of his message, of his mere presence. But John Curtis is a politician, and at times even a showman, so he knows exactly what to do.

“Can we just enjoy this moment?” he asks the audience with a grin. “I’m a Republican, and I’m here to talk climate.” The audience erupts. It’s exactly the reception Curtis hoped to find at this year’s Aspen Ideas: Climate conference, where people from across the world have gathered to discuss how to save the planet. And, for at least a moment, they’re cheering for a conservative.

Curtis is having to answer skeptics on both sides while still keeping his balance. For the past several years, he’s sought to rebrand the “climate denial” party into something like the “climate realist” party, insisting that Republicans can actually do more for the planet than Democrats. It’s a risky gambit when the influence of the party’s climate skeptics remains very strong. Plus his party’s proposed climate solutions, critics argue, are just not bold enough at this critical moment. The New York Times has labeled this new Republican strategy “delay as the new denial,” contending that the party’s updated posture amounts to little more than a cosmetic change.

“All we were doing was telling people what we didn’t like,” he says. “We’re really good at saying, ‘We don’t like the Green New Deal. We don’t like this.’ But we really weren’t articulating what … we would do.” Curtis wasn’t ready to provide those answers yet, but his discomfort with the party’s mainstream stance caused him to start asking questions. He quickly discovered that even among conservative think tanks and oil executives, the verdict on climate change is absolutely clear: Of course the climate is changing. Of course man has influenced that change.

GOP climate skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, left, once held a snowball up on the senate floor to refute climate change.

 

Armed with that knowledge, Curtis found that because the rest of his party was so lacking in their contributions to the climate change dialogue, a simple admission of what he learned was enough to earn him a seat at the table to discuss solutions. That realization first occurred during a Provo town hall in 2019, when a local newspaper reporter asked him if man was influencing climate change. He said yes. “Next day, front page, top fold: ‘Curtis admits to climate change,’” he remembers with a chuckle. But in the following weeks and months, he noticed a more serious difference in his perception among folks in the climate space. “I was now in the club of credibility,” he says. “And that’s when it dawned on me the mistake Republicans are making by dodging this question.”

As a result, two years ago he invited a cadre of Republican lawmakers to the Grand America Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City to talk about climate policy. He figured maybe half a dozen would attend, but 24 Republican lawmakers — about 10 percent of congressional Republicans at the time — showed up from all over the country. Some said they’d only go if the press didn’t find out, but regardless, the turnout assured Curtis there was real interest among Republicans in finally having some answers on climate change. He founded the Conservative Climate Caucus in 2021 to facilitate those conversations. Today, it’s one of the largest caucuses in the House at 73 members. “There’s this pent-up desire to be good on this subject,” Curtis says. “To have answers. To respond to our critics.”

Marc Morano is one of the country’s best-known climate skeptics. Author of five books, including “Green Fraud” and “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” he’s also published the website and newsletter ClimateDepot.com since 2009 and served as communications director for Inhofe, of snowball notoriety. He considers himself conservative, so he’s followed the Republican evolution on climate change with great interest — and, increasingly, with great disappointment. “My advice, when you’re confronted with the non-problem of global warming, is to have the courage to do nothing,” he says. “I just thought it was complete capitulation,” he adds, referring to the Conservative Climate Caucus’ founding. “I would be all for a Republican climate conference if it actually took the correct (path). But no, this was a capitulation conference, where the members sat around, accepted the premise and came up with basically a Green New Deal-lite, where they weren’t going to challenge it.”
Few match Morano’s ferocity on pushing back against climate change, but Curtis is still fighting an uphill battle against a whole lot of people in his party who, though they may not say so as vocally and clearly as Morano, feel more or less the same way.
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Related Links: 

Watch: Morano on Newsmax TV: ‘We need Republican leadership to say, ‘Hell, no,’ to end this whole Net Zero climate scam once & for all’

Watch: Morano & James Taylor debate GOP climate activists at FreedomFest

NYC Debate w/ Morano & Quill Robinson about how the GOP should address the Socialist’s Green New Deal

NYC DEBATE NIGHT! In-Person climate/energy policy debate on Oct 26 – Morano vs. Quill Robinson on the GOP’s answer to the Green New Deal

The GOP’s Carbon Capture Dodge – The GOP’s ‘Expensive futility & greenwashing boondoggle’ – Steve Milloy: “However you slice it, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is an expensive futility and greenwashing boondoggle masquerading a policy alternative for managing the climate hysteria via technology.”

Horowitz: Republicans must stop accepting the premise of the carbon/climate fascism agendaDaniel Horowitz: “Republicans [should] finally stop accepting the pseudo-science and moral premise of the left’s climate agenda. If COVID didn’t teach them the lesson about industry experts and scientific consensus being used to fundamentally transform our lives, create monopolies, and centralize power, then nothing will. COVID should serve as the Great Reset of the two-decade GOP mistake of accepting climate fascism.” … Carbon capture is the perfect political issue, because it allows Republicans to feign triangulation with the greenies while enriching an industry that could never naturally thrive on its own without government mandates, marketing, subsidies, and regulatory capture. … The worst thing we could be doing now is validating the left’s premise about climate and carbon and pushing expensive ideas built upon those fallacies.” … 

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