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3 things to know ahead of this year’s UN climate talks in Poland.

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Thousands of the world’s top officials have gathered in Katowice, Poland to negotiate over the nuts and bolts of global climate solutions. The 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (otherwise known for its jazzier name, COP 24) kicks off on December 3, and will continue over the following two weeks.

A lot is riding on the summit. This year marks the deadline set by the Paris climate agreement during COP 21 to hammer out a rulebook for critical commitments made by nearly every country in the world to slow down climate change and avoid hugely damaging natural, economic, and human costs.

According to the Nature Conservancy, “This COP is just as important as the one in Paris, but without the fanfare.”

We’ll always have Paris … but a lot has changed since that climate accord was signed in April 2016. The United States has turned away from its Paris agreement pledge. The United Kingdom is preoccupied by Brexit, making it less likely to be able to focus on environmental goals. And Brazil, which recently backtracked on its offer to host next year’s U.N. climate talks, is about to inaugurate a leader who wants to open up the Amazon rainforest to deforestation, and could eff up the planet for all of us.

So what are we to make of COP 24 against all this ruckus? Here are three signs that already hint to what we might expect from this year’s global climate talks.

Most U.S. politicians are sitting this one out.

Look, given his recent comments on his administration’s own climate report, no one expected President “I don’t believe it” Trump to high-tail it to COP 24. But few if any top Democrats, who recently said they plan to use their House majority to prioritize the issue of climate change, seem to be schlepping it to Poland this year. According to Axios, no Democratic senators will be attending COP 24. Even the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, will be sending staff in his place.

Last year, several big-name politicians, including California Governor Jerry Brown and Oregon Governor Katie Brown, attended COP 23 in Bonn, Germany — but they won’t be attending this year. What gives? According to congressional aids, it’s about timing: COP 24 is a being held nearly a month later in the year compared to 2017’s talks, and Congress is still in session.

Coal is going to be creeping on the conference.

COP 24 will be held in Katowice, a coal mining city that is among the most polluted in Europe. Poland’s coal habit is becoming more expensive and damaging to the environment, but the country is still struggling to part ways with it. Poland currently uses coal to meet a whopping 80 percent of its energy needs. One of Poland’s leading coal companies, Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa (JSW), was the first official sponsor of the climate talks. Several other coal companies have followed suit.

The Trump administration has not been shy about its own love affair with coal. This year, it’s planning to have its own coal convention as a side event to COP 24 touting the “long-term potential” for so-called “clean coal.” Pffft.

The recent flurry of climate reports might add real urgency to negotiations.

There has been a spate of major scientific reports in the run-up to COP 24, including this one and this one and this one. The most comprehensive of these is arguably the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which underscores just how far governments still have to go if they’re to reach the goal agreed upon in Paris — namely to try to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But the IPCC report found that even in a 1.5-degree scenario, there will likely be an increase in extreme weather conditions, resulting in a major uptick in hunger, poverty, mass migration, and resource-driven conflicts.

The reports just might be the scary kick-in-the-ass world leaders need to up their commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

Stay tuned for Grist’s on the ground coverage of the goings-on at COP 24.

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3 things to know ahead of this year’s UN climate talks in Poland.

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3 things to know ahead of this year’s U.N. climate talks in Poland.

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Thousands of the world’s top officials have gathered in Katowice, Poland to negotiate over the nuts and bolts of global climate solutions. The 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (otherwise known for its jazzier name, COP24) kicks off on December 3, and will continue over the following two weeks.

A lot is riding on the summit. This year marks the deadline set by the Paris climate agreement during COP21 to hammer out a rulebook for critical commitments made by nearly every country in the world to slow down climate change and avoid hugely damaging natural, economic, and human costs.

According to the Nature Conservancy, “This COP is just as important as the one in Paris, but without the fanfare.”

We’ll always have Paris … but a lot has changed since that climate accord was signed in April 2016. The United States has turned away from its Paris agreement pledge. The United Kingdom is preoccupied by Brexit, making it less likely to be able to focus on environmental goals. And Brazil, which recently backtracked on its offer to host next year’s U.N. climate talks, is about to inaugurate a leader who wants to open up the Amazon rainforest to deforestation, and could eff up the planet for all of us.

So what are we to make of COP24 against all this ruckus? Here are three signs that already hint to what we might expect from this year’s global climate talks.

Most U.S. politicians are sitting this one out.

Look, given his recent comments on his administration’s own climate report, no one expected President “I don’t believe it” Trump to high-tail it to COP24. But few if any top Democrats, who recently said they plan to use their House majority to prioritize the issue of climate change, seem to be schlepping it to Poland this year. According to Axios, no Democratic senators will be attending COP24. Even the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, will be sending staff in his place.

Last year, several big-name politicians, including California Governor Jerry Brown and Oregon Governor Katie Brown, attended COP23 in Bonn, Germany — but they won’t be attending this year. What gives? According to congressional aids, it’s about timing: COP24 is a being held nearly a month later in the year compared to 2017’s talks, and Congress is still in session.

Coal is going to be creeping on the conference.

COP24 will be held in Katowice, a coal mining city that is among the most polluted in Europe. Poland’s coal habit is becoming more expensive and damaging to the environment, but the country is still struggling to part ways with it. Poland currently uses coal to meet a whopping 80 percent of its energy needs. One of Poland’s leading coal companies, Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa (JSW), was the first official sponsor of the climate talks. Several other coal companies have followed suit.

The Trump administration has not been shy about its own love affair with coal. This year, it’s planning to have its own coal convention as a side event to COP24 touting the “long-term potential” for so-called “clean coal.” Pffft.

The recent flurry of climate reports might add real urgency to negotiations.

There has been a spate of major scientific reports in the run-up to COP24, including this one and this one and this one. The most comprehensive of these is arguably the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which underscores just how far governments still have to go if they’re to reach the goal agreed upon in Paris — namely to try to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But the IPCC report found that even in a 1.5-degree scenario, there will likely be an increase in extreme weather conditions, resulting in a major uptick in hunger, poverty, mass migration, and resource-driven conflicts.

The reports just might be the scary kick-in-the-ass world leaders need to up their commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

Stay tuned for Grist’s on the ground coverage of the goings-on at COP24.

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3 things to know ahead of this year’s U.N. climate talks in Poland.

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Science returns to the House

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Democratic control of the House means science will get higher billing in the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which, despite its name, has been run by Republican science deniers since 2011.

Former Texas Rep. Ralph Hall was chair for two years before Lamar Smith (R-Texas) took over in 2013. Hall was like a warm-up for Smith’s reign, telling the National Journal in 2011,“I don’t think we can control what God controls” when it comes to climate and accusing scientists of manipulating their evidence. Smith took his chairmanship to new lengths, using subpoena power against scientists in an attempt to uncover a smoking gun in what he referred to as the “extreme climate agenda.”

The committee would have been in for major changes next year no matter what party controlled the House, because the 70-year-old Smith announced his plans to retire earlier this year.

There will be radical changes coming, according to Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat who is a ranking member of the committee and likely to become the next chair. A former chief psychiatric nurse, she would be the first House science committee chair with a STEM background since the 1990s, according to Washington Post reporter Sarah Kaplan.

Johnson has already laid out her priorities for the future of the committee should she become chair. They include “defending the scientific enterprise from political and ideological attacks, and challenging misguided or harmful Administration actions.” Another priority will be to acknowledge climate change is real “and working to understand the ways we can mitigate it.” And, lastly, she called to “Restore the credibility of the Science Committee as a place where science is respected and recognized as a crucial input to good policymaking.” Democrats would have the power to investigate the Environmental Protection Agency’s changes to its scientific advisory boards and its use of science in regulatory policy, for starters.

That agenda will be a sharp break from Smith’s priorities. Smith regularly called hearings to investigate a debunked “pause” in global warming, a myth manufactured by skeptics, and laid the rubric for the EPA’s radical science overhaul that would have effectively stripped scientific reports from being considered in rulemaking.

I wrote a year ago about how Smith and his committee had become a polarizing force in the scientific world:

A change in House rules gave Smith new subpoena powers in 2015, unusual for the House science committee, and he has since issued 24 subpoenas, more than any other chair in the House during that time, with some going beyond the committee’s traditional jurisdiction over federal science research. Smith has convened a number of hearings to attack climate scientists, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Paris climate deal, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He helped to popularize the myth that global warming had paused, holding a hearing during which he demanded NOAA documents and redactions on its study refuting the idea.

Eighteen candidates with STEM backgrounds also won seats Tuesday, some of whom will bolster the House’s new ranks of science advocates.

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Science returns to the House

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5 things I learned from watching political ads that actually mention climate

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Politicians usually like to play it safe with their campaign ads: American flags, factories, Labrador retrievers, and kids in suspenders. The environment doesn’t typically (if ever) make an appearance minus a pretty backdrop for an American flag.

But this year is different. A burst of political advertisements about the changing climate has hit television screens across the country. Could it be a sign that some politicians might soon stop avoiding climate change like the plague (and starting talking about it like… well, an actual plague)?

The New York Times tracked down those ads — there are more than a dozen out there. And I spent the day watching them all so you don’t have to. The following takeaways are NOT endorsements. Nothin’ like tearing apart some political ads on a Friday afternoon.

Story continues below

Say “jobs,” not “climate change”

Renewables. Are. Big. Clean energy seems like the safest way for politicians to talk about climate change without coming on too strong or like too much of an environmentalist, heaven forbid. Take Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s ad, titled “The Ocean State.” In the 30ish-second ad, the Democrat touts her state’s clean energy credentials. “We’re now the only state with an offshore wind farm,” she says, standing on a boat (with — you guessed it — an American flag flying in the background). She never mentions the words “climate change,” instead taking the tried-and-true approach of linking the project to potential economic growth.

Green is the new extreme sport

Democratic Congressperson Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico’s 1st District took a less traditional approach in her ad for governor. She climbed 265 feet to the top of a wind turbine to prove she’ll go the extra mile (or foot) for renewable energy. Did she impress viewers, or just give them vertigo? We’ll find out on November 6.

The environment = anti-Trump ammo

Other politicians used climate change as fodder to slam President Trump in their ads, doubling down on partisan politics. Sean Casten, a scientist running in Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, tore into the president’s history of climate skepticism. “This facility is on the leading edge of clean energy,” Casten says, standing in front of some expensive-looking monitors. “Donald Trump doesn’t think we need it because he thinks climate change is a hoax.”

It makes for pretty, pretty policy

Steve Sisolak, Nevada’s Democratic candidate for governor, has a “bold environmental vision” for his state. His ad starts in front of a sad-looking lagoon, but quickly transitions to Instagram-worthy drone footage of solar farms. He says he wants to protect Nevada’s national monuments, like Golden Butte, and ends with a pledge to uphold the Paris agreement and the Clean Power Plan.

Climate is at least bipartisan-curious

OK, so there weren’t a horde of Republicans releasing ads in favor of reducing emissions. But at least one Republican representative, Carlos Curbelo of Florida’s 26th District, was down to bring climate change up in his ads — maybe not too surprising for a guy whose district is at sea-level. Curbelo is one of the founding members of the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan effort to get politicians in Congress to act on climate change. He also appears on our Grist 50 list, though he somehow neglected to mention that in his campaign video.

“I just call ‘em like I see him,” Curbelo says in his T.V. spot, which seems to take place entirely on a basketball court for some reason. “The right didn’t do enough for our environment.” The ad also features a 2018 quote from the National Wildlife Federation, which calls him a leader on climate change. Watch Curbelo make an astounding number of basketball metaphors here:

Are politicians ready to stop swerving climate change in their campaigns? A dozen or so ads isn’t a seismic shift in the way politicians approach this issue. But it’s a start!

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5 things I learned from watching political ads that actually mention climate

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Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke didn’t debate climate change. Will it come up next time?

Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke faced off on Friday, September 21, in the most high-profile Senate debate of the election season so far. As you might expect, it did not include a single mention of climate change.

Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, and O’Rourke, the Democratic congressman who’s challenging him, have starkly different views on the issue, but voters are not hearing enough about those views. Climate change poses huge threats in Texas, including extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and coastal flooding. The Houston area is still recovering from last year’s record-breaking Hurricane Harvey, which multiple scientific studies found was made worse by climate change. Long known as an oil and gas powerhouse, Texas now has a big stake in the clean energy economy, leading the nation in wind power and coming in fifth in solar power.

But the debate’s moderators — NBC 5 political reporter Julie Fine and Dallas Morning News political writer Gromer Jeffers — didn’t ask any questions about climate change or related energy issues. That was a squandered opportunity.

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“I’m disappointed,” Texas resident Sarah Beasley told ThinkProgress, explaining that she had wanted to hear from the candidates on global warming. Nearly 4 in 10 registered voters surveyed earlier this year said a candidate’s position on global warming would be very important when they decide who to vote for in 2018 congressional elections.

Unfortunately, the Cruz-O’Rourke debate was not an outlier. Of 12 debates in competitive Senate and gubernatorial races that Media Matters has analyzed so far this election season, only one included a question about climate change. That’s actually worse than what we saw in the 2016 election season, when Media Matters found that less than a quarter of the debates we analyzed in competitive Senate and governor races featured a climate question.

The Minnesota governor’s race provided the sole debate we’ve analyzed so far this year that did address climate change. The moderator, Minnesota Public Radio political editor Mike Mulcahy, asked both candidates — Republican Jeff Johnson and Democrat Tim Walz — for their views on climate change.

The resulting exchange, which went on for more than five minutes, was both substantive and informative. Johnson said that “there is quite a disparate opinion on how much” humans contribute to climate change. (If he was talking about the opinion of climate scientists, that’s not true.) He also argued that policies to fight climate change could “cost people a lot of money and hurt people” and might not “make any difference.”

In contrast, Walz said, “We can make a difference. We have to make a difference.” He pointed out that shifting to clean energy can lead to a stronger economy and job growth. The debate made the candidates’ differing views on climate change crystal clear.

Attention, debate moderators: We need more exchanges like that. Ask candidates to make clear whether they consider climate change to be a serious problem, and what they propose to do about it. Better yet: Ask how they will respond to climate change’s local, state, and regional impacts, which differ around the country.

Dozens more debates will happen over the next six weeks in the lead-up to Election Day, giving the journalists and others who will act as moderators plenty of opportunities to ask candidates about climate change — arguably the most pressing issue of our time. Media Matters will be updating a scorecard with details about upcoming debates and contact info for moderators, and after debates happen, we’ll report on whether moderators brought climate change up.

Voters deserve to hear candidates publicly state their views, and the rest of the electorate does too. If there’s a debate coming up in your state, let the moderators know that you expect climate change to be on the agenda. In Texas, there are two more chances to get it right: Cruz and O’Rourke will meet again at debates on September 30 and October 16. Houston’s ABC13 is asking citizens to submit questions for the next debate. Have any suggestions?

Lisa Hymas is director of the climate and energy program at Media Matters for America. She was previously a senior editor at Grist.

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Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke didn’t debate climate change. Will it come up next time?

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House Democrats call on the FBI to investigate Scott Pruitt

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt already faces at least 12 federal inquiries from the EPA’s Inspector General, Government Accountability Office, and House Oversight committee.

Could a criminal probe be next?

Six House Democrats led by Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, sent a letter on Friday to the FBI and Department of Justice requesting a criminal investigation into Pruitt. “At the very least, we know that federal ethics laws bar public officials from using their position or staff for private gain,” they write in the letter. “Administrator Pruitt has certainly done just that. Further, his actions related to his wife’s employment and the quid-pro-quo condo situation with industry lobbyists may have crossed a line into criminal conduct punishable by fines or even by time in prison.”

The letter cites recent revelations about how Pruitt used his position to find a job for his wife and his staff to obtain a “well below market value” rental in a Capitol Hill townhouse owned by an energy lobbyist. There have been additional stories this week about how Pruitt directed an aide to hunt for a used Trump hotel mattress and his security detail to find him a certain lotion only available at Ritz-Carlton hotels, presumably inspired by the time he spoke to the National Mining Association at the hotel in April of last year.

In May, Pruitt confirmed in a Senate budget hearing that he has set up a legal defense fund to potentially address the expanding number of investigations into his behavior. Although the fund would be useful if he faced a criminal investigation, ethics experts see it as potentially another ethical minefield, because federal law says he cannot accept donations from donors whose business interests involve the EPA.

Read the letter from the House Democrats.

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House Democrats call on the FBI to investigate Scott Pruitt

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College Republicans have a climate change plan, even if their representatives don’t

The chasm between congressional Republicans and Democrats on green issues is widening, according to the annual scorecard released this week by the League of Conservation Voters. The advocacy group evaluated how each member of Congress voted on environmental legislation in 2017. Senate Republicans had an average all-time low score of 1 percent — “meaning they voted against the environment and public health” 99 percent of the time. Their party members in the House didn’t do much better, going green only 5 percent of the time, on average. Democrats, on the other hand, netted an average mark of 94 percent in the House and 93 percent in the Senate on the scorecard.

But not all American conservatives feel the same way about the environment as the ones sitting in Congress. Take college Republicans, for instance.

On Wednesday, a coalition of Republican, Democrat, and environmental groups from public and private colleges and universities across the United States unveiled a plan to tackle climate change. It’s the first time college Republicans have publicly backed a national climate policy. The Students for Carbon Dividends (S4CD) is a group of 33 student-led clubs that aim to harness the power of their academic institutions to shine a national spotlight on the climate.

“S4CD makes clear to our fellow young Republicans that we no longer need to choose between party orthodoxy and the mounting risks facing our planet,” says Kiera O’Brien, vice president of S4CD and a sophomore at Harvard University.

A growing number of Republicans embrace the scientific consensus on human-made warming, and many of them support market-based methods of curbing pollution and expanding renewable energy. Millennials, especially, are broadly concerned about climate change. A new poll from the nonprofit Alliance for Market Solutions found that roughly three out of four millennials agree humans should curb climate change — and a surprising 51 percent of young conservatives are concerned about the issue.

S4CD’s platform centers on a carbon-dividends tax pioneered by the Climate Leadership Council, an international policy institute whose founding members include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. The tax is known in conservative circles as the Baker-Shultz Plan — named after former Secretaries of State, James Baker and George Shultz.

It would put a rising price on fossil fuels in order to limit consumption and decrease pollution. The money generated by the tax goes back to Americans through an annual carbon dividend: for an average family of four, that would come in the form of a yearly $2,000 check. The plan also includes a “border adjustment” — penalties on incoming products from foreign countries that haven’t adopted a similar tax plan.

By championing this carbon-tax plan and reminding the Republican Party of its conservationist roots, college Republicans hope to get lawmakers in Congress to go a little greener. But to move their elected officials, S4CD will also have to contend with the fossil fuel industry. Oil companies and a range of well-funded lobbying groups have spent decades and billions of dollars fighting climate change legislation. And they have tremendous sway over many conservative politicians, including the current head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt.

Alex Posner, a senior at Yale University and founding president of S4CD, thinks those industry attitudes toward climate policy are starting to shift. “We’re in kind of a unique moment: What makes most sense for business — a clear predictable price on carbon — is also the policy that almost all economists agree is the most effective way to drive emissions reductions,” he says. “There’s this synergy of interests that’s rare in the climate space.”

It might sound like an uphill battle for a group of adolescents to get congressional Republicans mobilized in the fight against climate change. But, according to Posner, most elected officials have yet to feel the true power of the students involved in the coalition. After all, many of them haven’t had a chance to vote.

“We haven’t had much say over political positions in the past or present,” Posner says. “Our goal is to have a say over the political positions of the future.”

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College Republicans have a climate change plan, even if their representatives don’t

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Pretending to care about climate change has never been so easy for House Republicans

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Matt Gaetz, a freshman congressman from Florida, would like to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. Known for attacking the FBI’s Russia probe and inviting a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, the House Republican earlier last year introduced a one-sentence bill to terminate the EPA. He’s also heralded Trump’s “strong leadership” for the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. So it came as a surprise in November when the House Climate Solutions Caucus welcomed him as a member.

Gaetz may have said two years ago that global warming could also be naturally caused, but when asked recently about his views, he explained, “I think history will judge very harshly those who are climate deniers.” Yet even now, having admitted humans play a significant role in climate change, he stops short of backing action that science shows is needed to contain the process. And that includes policies favored by some Republicans, like a revenue-neutral tax on carbon pollution, which he says “will merely export our pollution to other countries.”

It turns out, despite its name, the Climate Solutions Caucus is a hospitable place for many members who, like Gaetz, do not seem especially concerned about global warming. The two-year-old caucus has expanded to 70 members, half of whom are Republican — and many of them have brought controversial records and a questionable commitment to advancing legislation in Congress that would protect the environment.

Its critics charge the caucus has expanded its size at the expense of its credibility, providing Republicans who have been actively hostile to government programs a low-stakes opportunity to “greenwash” their climate credentials without backing meaningful action — just in time for midterm elections. In fact, many members may be vulnerable in the 2018 cycle; 24 of the 35 Republican members’ districts will be competitive races, according to an analysis of The Cook Political Report. Republicans in these races could benefit from distancing themselves from Trump’s climate change denial.

“They are finding an easy action to get a green badge or a line on their resumes,” says Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club.

Before the 2016 election, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, an independent advocacy group, found two Florida congressman — Democrat Ted Deutch and Republican Carlos Curbelo — and persuaded them to form a bipartisan caucus focused on global warming. The group had worked since 2014 to find a willing Republican partner. (The idea grew out of the group’s attempt to form such a caucus among Florida representatives.) Unlike congressional caucuses that draw their members mostly or entirely from one party, Climate Solutions follows a “Noah’s Ark” model in which a Democrat could only join if a Republican does too. As the caucus gained traction, they’ve met a few times, occasionally circulating a letter for lawmakers to sign onto (with limited success), and held their first public meeting in 2017 on the coastal impacts of climate change.

A half-dozen Democrats and Republicans were members at the beginning, but it’s expanded faster as the midterm election draws near. Republicans in more moderate districts will have to defend seats where the president has historically low approval ratings. Today, a long list of Democrats are waiting to join the caucus, but all Republicans are welcome. New members aren’t subscribing to any particular set of principles — other than (hopefully) the view that climate change is not a hoax — given the deliberately vague mission of the caucus to educate members of Congress on climate risk and explore policy options around climate change. Meanwhile, Citizens’ Climate Lobby continues to play a role in getting Republicans on board, by lobbying members and finding supporters for action in their districts.

Consider the changes that caucus founder Curbelo has seen since he arrived in the House in 2015. He’s a moderate Republican representing a competitive district in Miami, one of the parts of the country most threatened by sea-level rise (another GOP Miami representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is a member of the caucus and the GOP mayor of Miami is vocal on climate). Curbelo told Yale Environment 360 in late January that expanding the tent on climate change is significant progress on the issue, compared to when “maybe two or three Republicans” were talking about it in 2015.

When Florida’s Matt Gaetz joined the caucus, RL Miller, head of the Climate Hawks Vote super PAC that seeks to elect climate activists to Congress, took notice. “I started taking a very hard look, realizing not only were they not producing anything in the way of a bill beyond press releases,” Miller says. “Their voting patterns were really no different from voting patterns of Republicans outside the caucus.” She has taken to calling Climate Solutions the “Peacock Caucus,” for providing cover to Republicans who face competitive election cycles but don’t intend to do anything on climate.

After Trump’s announcement he would exit the Paris climate agreement, Miller says at least four Republicans applauded his move, while just six of the 22 Republican members actively condemned it. Gaetz was a Trump supporter; Representative Claudia Tenney, a New York Republican, called it a “good sign of leadership” in an interview with Syracuse.com; and Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado followed Trump’s lead by arguing for a “renegotiated climate treaty, ratified by the United States Senate, to continue our nation’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” There were other bills the House passed in 2017 that took aim at federal climate initiatives, and caucus members generally voted along party lines. One prohibits the government’s use of the social cost of carbon for calculating the benefits of climate regulation, another prevents EPA regulation of methane emissions on public lands, and a third prevents the EPA from using certain air pollution public health data in scientific studies. Some members, including Virginia’s Barbara Comstock, voted for all of them.

When it comes to proactive policy with Republican support, the caucus has done virtually nothing. Critics and supporters of the caucus have wondered when they will see a carbon pricing bill — a cost applied to carbon pollution to encourage reducing greenhouse gas emissions — that could draw any Republican cosponsors. During the debate on tax reform, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney tweeted an op-ed by conservative economists that called on Republicans to pass a carbon tax as part of their bill — an option no one took. Two Democrats have introduced their own versions of a price on carbon that have attracted no Republican cosponsors. In November, caucus member Connecticut Representative John Larson also introduced his own carbon pricing bill backed by 16 other Democrats but no Republican fellow caucus members. Curbelo has expressed support for a revenue-neutral price on carbon, though it’s unclear whether he will introduce a bill.

Curbelo’s office declined an interview, but a spokesperson pointed to the Yale Environment 360 interview in which he didn’t mention the chances of a carbon pricing bill coming in 2018. Curbelo didn’t make such a bill seem likely this year, suggesting that the caucus instead should move to the “blocking and tackling phase where we try to take on anti-climate legislation.”

One of the few bills that has garnered any Republican support was one last May that created a bipartisan commission to study possible policies to address climate change — hardly a move towards cutting carbon emissions.

At least one congressman has used his membership to defend his stance on climate change as he campaigns for reelection in a district Hillary Clinton won in 2016. The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, gives Representative Steve Knight, a Republican from California, a zero percent lifetime rating for his votes on environmental and energy issues. In 2015, he backed a bill to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which limits emissions from power plants. But a spokesperson for Knight pointed to his membership in the caucus to counter his Democratic opponents’ charges that he is a “climate change denier.”

“Most people, and probably every scientist, would conclude based on that piece of evidence that he is not a climate change denier,” the spokesperson emailed Mother Jones.

In January, the caucus gained arguably its most powerful addition yet, former Energy and Commerce Chair Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican. Upton, who has served in Congress for more than three decades, grew more conservative on energy with the Tea Party wave, and once challenged the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. More recently, he’s supported drilling in the Arctic and opposed the Clean Power Plan. Even so, he represents a new trend among Republicans that involves moderating their rhetoric on climate change, without coming any closer to actions addressing it as a real problem. Blunt climate denial, like the president’s, has become increasingly unpopular and out of fashion.

For some Democrats, having new willing partners after years of stalled talk is “really encouraging,” says caucus member Representative Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, who recently introduced a revenue-neutral carbon tax that only Democrats supported. “It could provide some cover for Republicans in toss-up seats but that’s a fair price to have Republicans willing to be publicly identified with addressing climate change. I don’t think we should be cynical about every one of them.”

When asked why he joined the caucus, New York Republican Representative Lee Zeldin, in an emailed comment, talked about natural resources but not climate change specifically. All Americans, “should have access to clean air and clean water,” he wrote, and he will continue “to protect our natural treasures” through the Climate Solutions Caucus. Freshman Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said in an email via his spokesperson that humans are a contributing factor to climate change. “[L]eaders on both sides of the aisle must take serious and reasonable steps to combat climate change,” he wrote in response to why he joined the caucus. “This isn’t about party. That’s the kind of thinking we need. And it’s that pragmatism that pushed me to join the Climate Solutions Caucus on my first day in office. Fitzpatrick is one of the Republican members who has been committed to the issue, cosponsoring a nonbinding resolution promoting climate action. Citizens’ Climate Lobby named him the 2017 recipient of its Climate Leadership Award.

Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a conservative group that advocates for climate solutions, suggests that the wide range of ideologies actually improve the chance the caucus can advance legislation. “Like many caucuses it would be most effective if it can find common ground between people who are very far apart on a lot of things,” says Lehrer. “It’s obviously yet to produce anything major, but a caucus that is ideologically homogeneous is probably not going to do much good. A very diverse one has a better chance to produce something that could be a breakthrough eventually.”

If members of the caucus were to vote together alongside Democrats in the House, they could certainly block some of the worst deregulatory bills and budget cuts coming out of Congress. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, several caucus members have voted in ways that contradict the caucus’s mission: In December, the Senate version of a federal tax bill included opening up 1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Eight Republican caucus members signed a letter asking the Senate to protect the wildlife refuge. But when the House voted on the budget bill, all but six of the 31 Republican caucus members, including Curbelo, voted for it anyway.

Even Deutch acknowledges there are members of the caucus who have been “rightly criticized by the environmental community.” But he adds, “The goals of the caucus don’t change when members act in ways that are inconsistent with what we are trying to do. It’s not for the caucus to have to defend the actions of individual members.”

There was one show of strength last year where Republican members played a key role in blocking an amendment that would have removed a requirement for the Department of Defense to study the threats posed by climate change. Last July, 46 House Republicans, including all but two of the 24 Republican members of the Climate Solutions Caucus, sided with Democrats to stop the amendment.

Sierra Club’s Pierce says the formation of the caucus is a “baby step” toward climate solutions. But she says caucus members haven’t taken enough actions to back up their words. “We just want to encourage them to take off the training wheels and actually ride the bike,” she says.

There’s one more argument for Republicans to advance climate legislation now — if Democrats retake Congress, especially by large margins, they would have the opportunity to debate more liberal climate policies. Lehrer thinks a price on carbon is inevitable, and conservatives won’t always be in the driver’s seat. “I think in the long term it’s actually close to inevitable that it will pass one way or another,” he says. “It will be imposed in a way conservatives like me will not like — by Democrats — or it will be done in a way that forwards conservative goals. I like the latter.”

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Pretending to care about climate change has never been so easy for House Republicans

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La Niña is here, so 2017 won’t be the warmest year on record.

Kathleen Hartnett White, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, stammered through her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

When Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, a Democrat, asked if she believes climate change is real, she wavered but settled on the right answer: “I am uncertain. No, I’m not. I jumped ahead. Climate change is of course real.”

That’s a surprise. Hartnett White, a former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, has a long history of challenging climate science and promoting fossil fuels. Notably, she has said that carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant.

But that’s not to say she’s made peace with established science. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, quizzed Hartnett White over how much excess heat in the atmosphere is absorbed by oceans. “I believe there are differences of opinions on that,” she said, “that there’s not one right answer.” For the record, the number is about 90 percent.

Then things got bizarre. Appearing frustrated with equivocating answers, Whitehouse pressed her on basic laws of nature, like whether heat makes water expand. “I do not have any kind of expertise or even much layman study of the ocean dynamics and the climate-change issues,” she said.

Watch below, if you dare:

After the hearing, Whitehouse tweeted, “I don’t even know where to begin … she outright rejects basic science.”

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La Niña is here, so 2017 won’t be the warmest year on record.

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The coal industry is still declining, so Trump is considering a bailout.

According to a new study from the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, the current presidential administration has collected fewer civil penalties and filed fewer environmental enforcement suits against polluting companies than the Obama, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations did at the same point in office.

The analysis assesses agreements made in the Environmental Protection Agency’s civil enforcement cases. For abuses under laws like the Clean Air Act, the Trump administration has collected just $12 million in civil penalties, a drop of 60 percent from the average of the other administrations. Trump’s EPA has lodged 26 environmental lawsuits compared to 31, 34, and 45 by Bush, Obama, and Clinton, respectively.

The marked decrease in enforcement likely has to do with the EPA’s deregulatory agenda. Since confirmed, administrator Scott Pruitt has systematically tried to knock out key environmental regulations, especially those created during Obama’s tenure.

The Project notes that its assessment is only of a six-month period, so future enforcement could catch Trump up to his predecessors. Or he’ll continue to look the other way.

“I’ve seen the pendulum swing,” said Bruce Buckheit, who worked in EPA enforcement under Clinton and then Bush, “but never as far as what appears to be going on today.”

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The coal industry is still declining, so Trump is considering a bailout.

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