Election deniers on the climate change caucus
Seven of Congress’s election disinformers were members of the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus last year.
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Last week, a HEATED investigation found that most of the 147 Republican members of Congress who spread disinformation about the 2020 presidential election also routinely spread disinformation about human-caused climate change.
But not every lawmaker who voted to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory is an outspoken climate change denier.
In fact, seven of Congress’s election disinformers were card-carrying members of the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus last year—and will be this year, too, if membership renews for the 117th Congress.
This fact is causing outrage among some members of the volunteer-based Citizens Climate Lobby, which helped form the caucus in 2016.
It’s also raising important questions about the need for bipartisanship as Congress heads into the most important legislative session for climate action in our lifetimes.
The election deniers in the climate caucus
Representatives David Schweikert (R-AZ), Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Jack Bergman (R-MI), Bill Posey (R-FL), Brian Mast (R-FL), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) all voted to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, thereby embracing the fringe conspiracy theory that caused a pro-Trump mob to attack the Capitol.
They also all claim to be working to solve the climate crisis, a problem spurred in large part by lawmakers who embrace disinformation and conspiracy theory.
Volunteers with the non-profit Citizens Climate Lobby have already noticed the overlap. “Our supporters are very upset about the attack on the Capitol, and many of them are infuriated at the members of Congress who voted not to certify the election,” CCL Communications Director Flannery Winchester told HEATED in an email. She said some volunteers “are choosing not to meet with those members of Congress anymore,” while others “are choosing to continue meeting with them to try to demonstrate what democracy should look like and how it should function.”
The choice of whether lawmakers who voted to overturn Biden’s victory will be allowed to rejoin the Climate Solution Caucus does not lie with CCL, Winchester noted. She said it lies with Democratic Congressman Ted Deutch, who chairs the caucus.
HEATED reached out to Rep. Deutch’s office to ask if lawmakers who embrace conspiracy theory about the presidential election deserve a seat at the table for bipartisan climate solutions when the caucus reorganizes for the 117th Congress and have not received a response.
A “groundbreaking” or “meaningless” caucus?
Formed in 2016, the House Climate Solutions Caucus seeks to end partisan gridlock over climate policy. It’s “a judgment-free zone,” said Mark Reynolds, the executive director of the nonprofit Citizens Climate Lobby, which helped form the caucus. “It has the potential to be an incubator for bipartisan solutions that stand a good chance of passage.” (The Senate formed its own bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in 2019).
But the Climate Solutions Caucus has been anything but free of judgment. While it’s been called “groundbreaking and crucial” by bipartisan groups like the Environment and Energy Study Institute, other climate advocates—like RL Miller of Climate Hawks Vote—has called it “a meaningless caucus being used as political cover by vulnerable Republicans” who have never actually voted for climate legislation.
“We’ve been concerned that the Republican members of the Climate Solutions Caucus are less climate hawks than climate peacocks, posing and strutting with false concern to protect them from constituent anger,” she said in 2018. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has called it the “do-nothing” caucus.
Citizens Climate Lobby has historically said its critics aren’t accepting a harsh reality: that action on climate change will never happen without Republicans. “Obviously we want them to go beyond just joining the caucus,” the group’s communications director Steve Valk told me in 2018. “But to get them to do that, that’s really up to us, the constituents, to give them the support to grab the next piece of the ladder and climb up.”
But with a Democratic-controlled House, Senate, and presidency, will Republicans truly be needed to pass climate legislation? And if they are, should they all be treated equally?
Should Democrats trust lawmakers with a demonstrated inability to accept basic facts about the election to accept basic facts about the climate crisis? Is it possible to have good-faith policy disagreements with lawmakers who deny, or even downplay, reality?
The addition of “downplay” is important, because it serves the same purpose as denial. After all, it wasn’t just those who voted to overturn Biden’s victory who contributed to the lie of election fraud, and the violence that ensued.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, didn’t vote to decertify the election but pushed Trump’s false claims of fraud for months. Last week, he refused to apologize. Should he have a seat at the climate solutions table?
These are difficult, yet necessary questions as we head into the most important legislative session for climate action in our lifetimes. I don’t have the answers yet—but maybe you have some ideas. Leave them in the comments by clicking the button below. (Subscribers-only).
Further reading:
Why I’m skeptical of climate bipartisanship. The HEATED community is pretty split on the issue of bipartisanship. In one of our early newsletters, I surveyed the community and divided them into two basic teams: Team Love Thy Neighbor, and Team Kick ‘Em To The Curb. I also offered my thoughts on the matter, because I think part of being a fair journalist is letting you know where my biases lie. This is actually one of those areas where there are two sides and both are valid. Makes things kind of exciting, don’t you think?
Climate change is a difficult problem. Solving it requires a national solution. We cannot force people to believe as we do. An op-ed from the other perspective, via CCL member Sylvia Neely.
Is Climate Bipartisanship Dead? I wrote about the future of the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus for The New Republic in 2018, after its Republican members got clobbered in the midterm elections.
A Republican and Democrat form a climate caucus. What can they get done? The Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni writes on the formation of the Senate’s bipartisan Climate Caucus in 2019.
The Climate Solutions Caucus has the potential to shift the conversation on climate change. The Environmental and Energy Institute offered a defense of the Climate Solutions Caucus in 2017.
Senator exposes the hypocrisy of ‘so-called climate caucus’ members. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse criticizes the Climate Solutions Caucus in 2018.
Catch of the Day:
Fish is Team Love Thy Neighbor. He loves everyone. (Except other dogs. And the toaster).
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IMHO it is better to encourage and cultivate the Climate Solutions caucus than to ditch it or dwell on its members’ weaknesses. It’s one more perhaps small political lever in the struggle to get Congress to take meaningful action such as the carbon-fee-and-dividend Energy Innovation Act promoted by CCL. The caucus is possibly the key to a Senate companion bill in the coming session and it seems like some Rs in it might be more receptive to “liberal” concerns in the new congressional constellation? maybe I’m dreaming
The House Climate Solutions Caucus formed five years ago - a time when no Republicans were talking about climate solutions. It grew to a total of 90 members, 45 from each party, by 2018. All or at least nearly all of the members were in the caucus for the right reason. (Here's some history about the creation of the House CSC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0-VcW_6RGA&list=PLID5D4dOkPpKZkJ-BijUalzUFq-Kcad-u&index=5).
Shortly after the 2018 election, the bipartisan Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act bill was created in both the House and Senate - thanks in big part to the House Climate Solutions Caucus. This bill is the most significant bipartisan bicameral climate bill ever - it will reduce US GHG emissions by 40% in twelve years and 90% in thirty and push the necessary carbon price around the world ($100/tCO2e by 2030 and rising after), which is what the IPCC, IMF, World Bank, OECD, and World Economic Forum all agree is a critical foundation of successfully addressing climate change. (http://carboncashback.org/carbon-cash-back). And it does that while protecting low- and middle-income household budgets and growing jobs (net). It is a great first step at addressing climate change, a big step forward at starting to address EJ concerns (carboncashback.org/benefits), and it has bipartisan support.
On the Senate side, the Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus was created last year with founding members from both parties who are serious about bipartisan climate solutions. The big takeaway is that there are members from both parties who are interested in working together on solutions in both Houses of Congress. It's not a fatal flaw that a handful of members on the House Caucus did something CCL volunteers don't agree with. If solving climate change was easy Congress would have done it 30 years ago.
Our only hope of addressing global warming at the scale required is a bipartisan solution. First of all, because there is little chance of passing effective climate legislation by a single party given the current make-up of Congress.
Second, because even if single party legislation could be somehow threaded through, its long-term durability would be predictable. It would become a political football rather than something both parties are engaged in to help improve and build on over time. The chance of Democrats holding a majority in both Houses even just two years from now is slim. The history of ACA is a painful example of what happens to a one-party approach. Our country doesn't need more divisive single-party major legislation pulling it further apart, especially on the time-critical problem of climate change. There are Republicans, not all but many, who are willing to work with Democrats on this if given safe passage to do so. Let's focus on creating that for them.
Third, with a very conservative Supreme Court, meaningful regulations on GHG emissions are bound to be blocked by the same judicial impass that thwarted President Obama's CPP. Legislation is the only way to address climate pollution at the scale required and in the time needed, and a bipartisan approach is the only way to make it viable and durable.
Senators Murkowski and Whitehouse recently participated in a discussion about climate solutions, and this 18 seconds of it gives me hope that there is daylight at the end of a long tunnel: https://www.youtube.com/embed/aE6vxzWJRts?start=2701&end=2719&autoplay=1&rel=0
Canada has done Carbon Fee and Dividend, and recently updated it significantly. The EU will be introducing Border Carbon Adjustments by 2023. The US can do this too, and right now it is our best hope at effective, equitable, and beneficial climate legislation (https://citizensclimatelobby.org/canada-ramps-up-its-carbon-price-moves-to-quarterly-dividends).