The GOP Energy Tent Is Slowly Getting Bigger (sic)

[FBaggins]

You know that you're getting traction with the public when the other side realizes that it's a losing position to completely oppose renewables.

House members like Rep. Kevin McCarthy are still avid fossil-fuel proponents, but they’ve begun to advocate for renewables, too.

Each January, when Congress gavels a new session to order, the party in charge rolls out a series of bills laying out its political agenda—and often they’re predictable variations on well-worn themes. So it was when House Republicans launched the year with a bill that demanded President Obama present a plan to wipe out the federal deficit, one that slashed pay for federal workers, and one that sought to increase renewable energy.

(Record scratch.) Wait, what?

It’s true: The same party that had just spent the previous year eviscerating Obama on the campaign trail for his green-energy agenda and the bankruptcy of Solyndra was now signaling that it was ready to go quietly, carefully greener. That message will be amplified this summer, when a squadron of House Republicans calling itself the House Energy Action Team—yes, HEAT—will hit town halls and TVs with a new set of energy talking points that, while still embracing oil and gas drilling, also say good things about energy efficiency and renewables.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-gop-energy-tent-is-slowly-getting-bigger-20130516

Hmmm... though perhaps it's just cover.

This spring, however, McCarthy has been holding regular meetings with HEAT members to strategize over energy efficiency, innovation, and technology ahead of another summer messaging drive. The Republicans will still offer plenty of talking points on the virtues of oil, gas, and coal, but they will also discuss such issues as the electric grid, infrastructure, distribution, energy efficiency, technological innovation—even renewable energy.

Or more than "perhaps".

Still, the green shoots of renewable energy in the red GOP soil certainly don’t mean the new messaging will abandon the party’s long and profitable relationship with the fossil-fuel industry. McCarthy and his HEAT crew will continue to attack Obama for his long delay in approving Keystone. And while some Republicans might warm up to green energy, many in the party still question the science of climate change. Even there, while signaling that the party is no longer following a lockstep policy of denying global warming, McCarthy said that the GOP is “a big tent. We’ve got many views inside the conference on that.” For a message-maker who hasn’t hesitated to stick to rock-ribbed Republican staples in the past, it’s a freshly nuanced view.

There's where it all breaks down. If you don't belive in climate change at all... what's the point in cleaner (but more expensive) alternatives? Why "waste" money on nuclear/wind/solar if there is no need?

Maybe this "tent" is just a sideshow.

[kristopher]

1. Sounds like they're taking lessons from the Nuclear Industry.

Say whatever is necessary to piggyback on the popularity of renewable energy while simultaneously working in the halls of power to eradicate it.

[FBaggins]

2. Sounds like you still live in a fantasy world.

When has nuclear ever "piggybacked" on renewables?