Freshman Republican Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York is preparing to take on a more high-profile role at the forefront of the GOP attempt to shift its positioning on addressing climate change.
Garbarino, 37, recently became co-chairman of the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group started in 2016 to collaborate to address global warming. The caucus, the ranks of which once included more than 100 members, has struggled to regain its footing after it suffered huge losses of Republican members in the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans in the group, many of them relatively centrist, lost their seats to Democrats in left-leaning swing districts.
Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, an original co-founder of the caucus, remains the Democratic co-chairman.
“The caucus was very depleted and needed leadership, so I was happy to step up,” said Garbarino, in an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner detailing his new role.
Garbarino is motivated by both his age, with polls showing young Republicans are increasingly concerned about climate change, and his district along the south shore of Long Island, which was devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and is vulnerable to extreme weather worsened by global warming.
Seeking to elevate the profile of the group and his role in it, Garbarino traveled to a major United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, this month as part of a delegation led by the Climate Solutions Foundation, a bipartisan nonprofit group that funded the trip.
His delegation also included Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and business leaders from companies including Exelon, an electric utility, Amazon, and SAP, a software company.
Garbarino was not the only sitting Republican lawmaker present in Glasgow. But his appearance at the conference, along with a separate GOP delegation led by Rep. John Curtis of Utah, was notable because Republicans have historically not been present in international climate negotiations. And when they were, they were there to protest, not to be cooperative.
“Republicans going there and getting educated on these climate issues will allow us to have a seat at the table when we discuss how to reduce emissions,” Garbarino said. Garbarino has wasted little time in carving out an independent streak in the mold of Rep. Peter King, his district’s long-time representative before retiring in 2020.
Garbarino was one of 13 House Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden this month. A Long Island man was arrested this week after making a death threat toward Garbarino because he voted for the bill, which he viewed as a noncontroversial measure to build roads, bridges, ports, and power lines.
“I never thought I would get death threats over paving roads and clean water projects,” Garbarino said.
Garbarino noted the bill contains record funding to address climate “resilience,” federal money directed to protect against floods, reduce damage from wildfires, and even relocate communities away from vulnerable places. The legislation also contains funding to commercialize a host of clean energy technologies, including long-duration energy storage, advanced nuclear reactors, carbon capture, and direct air capture.
But like all other Republicans, Garbarino is opposed to the larger Democratic social and climate spending bill that includes even more funding, $555 billion, to support clean energy, mostly tax credits.
Garbarino said he is still educating himself on policy. For now, he is aligned chiefly with mainstream Republican ideas such as supporting private sector innovation of clean energy technologies while opposing more expansive regulations and taxes.
Former Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who co-founded the Climate Solutions Caucus with Deutch, said expecting Garbarino to lead on specific policies is not essential right now.
Curbelo is co-chairperson with former Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana of the Climate Solutions Foundation, the group that sponsored Garbarino’s trip to Glasgow.
Curbelo and his successor as GOP climate caucus co-chairman, former Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida, both introduced carbon tax bills while in Congress, a more muscular climate policy that Republicans almost universally oppose. Curbelo lost his South Florida seat in 2018 in the most Democratic-leaning district held by a GOP member at the time. Rooney retired last year.
“The foundation’s work and also my personal preference is to support those members who want to address climate in a bipartisan way,” Curbelo told the Washington Examiner. “There is no expectation that he supports certain policies. Like others, he is learning about all the different policy options.”
After Rooney’s retirement, Curbelo and Landrieu met with Garbarino this spring to recruit him to lead the caucus, attracted by the characteristics of his district and status as a millennial Republican.
“He reacted the way you’d expect any young Republican to react, which is, ‘Yeah, I want to help solve this problem. I want to contribute,’” Curbelo said.
Garbarino said, “It’s tough to start out with a tax to get Republicans on board” as he seeks to restore the caucus’s GOP ranks. But he said he was surprised to learn in Glasgow how many U.S. companies are supportive of carbon pricing. United Airlines and Johnson Controls, an HVAC company, are among businesses he met with there that broached him on backing carbon pricing.
It’s clear he is at least flirting with the idea. Unlike most other Republicans, Garbarino acknowledged emissions from fossil fuels need to decline to achieve the goals of the Paris climate agreement. He noted the importance of the oil and gas industry curbing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
“There is a big agreement on going after methane,” he said. “That is low-hanging fruit. There are some bad actors out there abusing this.”
Garbarino also said he is supportive of Biden setting a target to reduce U.S. emissions in half by 2030.
“We set a goal just recently, and we now need to work toward meeting that goal,” Garbarino said, adding he wants to make sure the target is “achievable” in a way that business can help meet.
“I want to get as many Republicans in Congress as educated as possible on these issues so next time there is a Republican administration, there is support for climate-friendly policies,” Garbarino added.
He admitted the Republican Party is lagging Big Business in its level of support for climate policies. Unlike most Republicans, industry groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute support carbon pricing and regulating methane.
In his role as co-chairman of the climate caucus, Garbarino held a recruitment event in September where he and officials from the Chamber, Microsoft, and oil and gas companies Chevron and Exxon Mobil, among others, encouraged Republicans to support climate policies.
“The government is behind business on this,” Garbarino said. “Republicans always hear the argument that addressing climate is bad for business. Now, business is actually doing it and making money doing it, and successfully doing it.”
