The 100,000-member strong Citizens’ Climate Lobby wants to turn global warming into an issue that unites Republicans and Democrats rather than driving them apart.
That’s the message the bipartisan grassroots coalition will be bringing on Tuesday as it descends on Capitol Hill to deliver the first big lobbying push on climate change since the midterm elections.
“We hope to find ways to continue to get Republicans to work to have this become a bridge issue and not a wedge issue in the House and Senate,” James Tolbert, the climate lobby’s conservative caucus outreach director, told the Washington Examiner.
The group intends to push that message in a series of 400 meetings with lawmakers and staff. The group’s main goal is for Congress to pass a carbon tax bill, which they argue will address climate change without harming the economy.
Meanwhile, conservative tax hawks like Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, have been leading a campaign to counter the push, urging the GOP to resist such a policy as harmful to the economy.
One principal way to advance the policy is to grow the House’s Climate Solutions Caucus, Tolbert said. The caucus lost some members in the midterms, but it still retains 20 Republicans.
Tolbert wants Republicans to embrace climate change mitigation policy as something that benefits them and ultimately makes them more competitive in political races.
Tolbert provided the example of Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., as what he would like to see. Even though Curbelo lost his re-election race, his aggressive stance on climate change allowed him to run a “very competitive race” against his Democratic challenger, Tolbert said.
Other Florida Republicans who share Curbelo’s climate convictions are returning.
Reps. Francis Rooney, Matt Gaetz, and Vern Buchanan are returning to the House. Tolbert is heartened that all three supported a resolution that Curbelo endorsed that acknowledges that sea-level rise is a real issue affecting coastal states and requires a real solution. The resolution also also indicates acceptance of the science behind sea-level rise projections that identify climate change as a contributing factor in making the issue worse.
Coastal flooding is a major problem that results from sea-level rise due to melting Arctic sea ice, which is a result of higher average global temperatures.
Another of the group’s messages to lawmakers is that climate change, along with its effects, can be combated without harming the U.S. economy, especially through policies that work through market mechanisms, such as taxes.
“There are solutions out there that really don’t hurt the U.S. economy as a whole, and can even help the U.S. economy as a whole,” Tolbert explained.
What the Lobby doesn’t want to see is intransigence on the conservative side by seeking to debate what is already considered the settled science behind climate change.
“We don’t have time for that,” said Flannery Winchester, national spokeswoman for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
Republicans in the House already have momentum backing climate interventions, including a bill endorsing a carbon fee that Curbelo introduced earlier this year, she said. Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who co-sponsored Curbelo’s bill, has already said he will be pushing the bill in the new Congress, Winchester added.
She also expects the Democrat-controlled House to hold hearings on climate change in the committees of jurisdiction, which the group will support.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has said the new majority will be resurrecting a previously defunct climate change committee that was disbanded when the Republicans took control of the House.
