Republicans launched a new caucus Friday to represent a free-market alternative to the progressive “Green New Deal.”
The bicameral Roosevelt Conservation Caucus, introduced at the Conservative Political Action Conference, will focus on Republican values of conservation and environmental protection. It will address and “counteract centralized big government solutions” with market-based solutions to environmental issues, according to a letter sent earlier this week announcing the caucus to members of Congress obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Cory Gardner of Colorado founded the caucus in the upper chamber, while Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Brian Mast of Florida will lead the caucus in the lower chamber.
Although the idea of the caucus predates the Democratic announcement of the Green New Deal, it underscores the GOP’s belief in a “free market and American innovation as compared to the Green New Deal,” a Senate GOP aide said.
The caucus will not focus on climate change, as the Green New Deal does, but instead will be concerned with returning to the conservation and environmental stewardship principles of Theodore Roosevelt. That would mean focusing on public lands issues such as conserving wildlife and ensuring against environmental degradation of rivers, streams, and animal habitats.
But the letter also references “energy independence,” a nod to oil and natural gas exports, as well as keeping U.S. leadership in the area of advanced technologies and renewable energy.
Although the letter does not make reference to climate change, Graham has voiced support for a carbon tax in previous years, but has been quiet more recently. A carbon tax is sometimes promoted as a Republican free-market way to achieve greenhouse gas reductions required to address the problem of global warming.
The conservative value of environmental protection has been “increasingly hijacked” by belief in big-government solutions and “radical environmentalism,” the letter from Graham and Gardner reads. The letter was sent on Feb. 27 to invite members to join.
“We believe the path forward must continue to adhere to conservative solutions which are driven by a commitment to innovation, competitive markers, and entrepreneurialism,” the letter says.
Conservative environmental groups ConservAmerica and the American Conservation Coalition applauded the announcement Friday night at CPAC. Both groups worked together with the lawmakers in the formation of the new caucus.
“The concept of a Republican conservation caucus has percolated for several years,” said ConservAmerica chairwoman Nan Hayworth. However, she said it took two well-known conservation-minded Republican businessmen, Andrew Sabin and Trammell S. Crow, and the American Conservation Coalition to make it happen with the lawmakers.
Sabin, of Sabin Metals, a precious metal refining company, said he wants to the combat the popular perception that Republicans don’t care about the environment. He said the caucus will provide a space where Republican members “can discuss innovative solutions to problems free from partisan attacks.”
Crow, founder of the largest environmental expo in the country called EarthX, said his ability to hold the expo each April in the hear of “deep-red” Texas is proof that conservatives do care about the environment.
