Democrats will try to put Republicans on record about whether they believe climate change is happening and caused by humans when legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline reaches the Senate floor next week.
Now in the minority, Democrats are planning to use the open amendment process promised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to get GOP senators to put their names behind positions that liberals consider extreme, and not just on the Keystone legislation. Rejecting or being skeptical of human activity causing climate change is on the top of the list for Democrats, which they and their allies made clear during the 2014 midterm elections.
“In some respects it’s kind of surprising that the Republicans would want to introduce themselves to the world and their new majority being on the wrong side of climate change and giving us a multi-weeks-long opportunity to discuss it. But that’s their call, they thought it was a wise thing to do,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told reporters Thursday.
Democratic senators said many ideas are circulating and all come to the same point.
“The simple point is do you believe we need to do something about climate change? I think every senator should be forced to answer that question,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told reporters.
Amendments will need 60 votes to be attached to the main bill to approve the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline. But even failed measures could make for campaign material in the 2016 election, which will see a host of Republicans who were elected during 2010’s Tea Party wave on the ballot.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told the Washington Examiner that Democrats would be persistent in offering climate change amendments even after the Keystone XL bill.
“We know that some people think it’s a hoax. Fine. People are entitled to their views,” Sanders said. “But I think the American people need to know whether the predominant political party in this government, in the Congress, believes that climate change is real and caused by human activities. Scientists overwhelmingly believe yes. What do they believe?”
Some Republicans who are up for re-election in 2016 might be faced with a tough choice when the upper chamber votes on whatever amendment Democrats pose.
In 2016, nine incumbent Republicans will be on the ballot in states President Obama carried at least once. Increased voter turnout for a presidential election could also bring more left-leaning voters to the polls, and environmental groups have pledged to spend big dollars raising climate change as a campaign issue.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who is up for re-election in 2016, told the Examiner that he believes humans have a role, but that the climate has always been changing. Scientists, however, say humans are largely responsible for current warming trends. Johnson said the financial costs reducing greenhouse gas emissions would outweigh the benefits.
But Johnson displayed some sensitivity to the attacks environmental groups have levied against him.
“I’m trying to dispel the myth that I’m denying climate change,” he said. “I think we’re all environmentalists. I want a pristine environment.”
Opinions in the Republican caucus are nuanced, with some on the extreme saying global warming is, in the words of Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, a “hoax.” Others, like Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, say the climate is changing, humans contribute to it in some fashion, and that responses to mitigate it shouldn’t harm the economy.
Some Republicans said they’re unfazed.
Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado recently elected to the upper chamber, echoed Murkowski’s sentiments, telling the Examiner that, “The chairman said it very well in terms of agreeing that the climate is changing but what [Democrats and Republicans] can do together to not hurt this country.”
Inhofe, for his part, told reporters Wednesday that he thought climate change has dropped in importance for voters since the “scare days” leading up to the 2009 United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen.
For all the environmental spending during last year’s elections to raise the profile of climate change, the Senate candidates those groups backed fared poorly. NextGen Climate Action, the super PAC bankrolled by $57 million from billionaire ex-hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, notched two wins — Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Gary Peters of Michigan — but also a pair of losses.
Environmental groups said the electoral mood and map were stacked against their preferred candidates. But climate change typically polls low among voter concerns. Even NextGen Climate’s advertisements strayed from climate change into views on abortion and taxes.
Climate change, however, is the most significant “major threat” concern for Democrats, according to an August 2014 Pew Research Center-USA Today poll. Sixty-eight percent of Democratic respondents called climate change a major threat, compared with 25 percent of Republicans.
Environmental and left-leaning groups contend it’s still an issue that can swing voters in red and blue states alike. A poll conducted by Harstad Strategic Research for the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund found that 63 percent of likely voters in nine states that included Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina want their senators to address climate change.
“A climate denier will have a hard road ahead if he or she wants to win the White House in 2016 because green voters intend to show up,” said Wesley Warren, policy advocacy director for the NRDC Action Fund.
