Facing Rollout Of Democrats' Climate Plan, GOP Screeches, Shakes Magic Feathered Innovation Stick
House Democrats on Tuesday released an ambitious and wide-ranging climate crisis plan on par with what scientists say the world will have to do to avert catastrophic warming. But the US government remains far from ready to seriously tackle the problem, and the action plan will be fodder for election-year attacks from Republicans who will frame it as economy-killing and a grab-bag of Democratic social policies.
The Democratic plan, the details of which the Guardian reported on Monday, endorses a goal of essentially eliminating US climate pollution by 2050. Some House Republicans, including the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, have backed that general timeline in principle. That is where any significant overlap ends.
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Republicans on the House select climate committee that wrote the plan quickly criticized the report, saying they were cut out from the process. The ranking Republican, Garret Graves, touted “policies rooted in innovation lower the cost of energy, drive economic growth, and cut emissions”, without “increasing costs on working families” or adding “burdensome regulations”. He praised a “renaissance” in natural gas – a climate change contributor – for boosting a shift away from burning coal. And he pointed to China and developing nations as the sources of most emissions growth.
The action plan outlines recommendations for zeroing out climate pollution from new buildings by 2030, from new vehicles by 2035 and from electricity by 2040. Republicans, meanwhile, have offered little in the way of details about how they would achieve science-based climate goals. Many for years have denied the crisis is even happening or that it is manmade.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/30/democrats-climate-stymied-political-divide
