Kasich and the other occupants of the GOP clown car can flap their gums until their teeth fall out when it comes to climate, but that doesn't make them an ally on this issue. Consider the Climate Solutions Caucus. They've been around for three whole years, and what have they accomplished in that time? Next to nothing, other than provoking articles pointing out just how wonderfully bi-partisan they are.
In July of 2018, exactly FOUR Republican members of the Caucus had the political guts to vote against a non-binding resolution that called carbon pricing "detrimental to American families and businesses". Four. Not a bill, not a budget, but a non-binding resolution that passed (of course) along party lines of 220-180.
Not that GOP Caucus members were short on big ideas. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in February 2017 proposed abolishing the EPA, and loudly applauded Trump abandoning the Paris accord, but just nine months later, with re-election just a year away, the Climate Solutions Caucus found a place for him so that he could, y'know, look all reasonable. Another now-former member - the legendary Darrel Issa, with a lifetime LCV score of 4.
Every single Republican member of the caucus voted to speed up approvals of international pipelines like Keystone XL; most voted to open ANWR to drilling (a rider in the tax cut bill); and not one co-sponsored any cap-and-dividend or cap and trade bill put forward by a Democratic colleague.
The only thing the caucus accomplished that approaches meaning anything was voting in July, 2017 against an amendment that would have prohibited the Department of Defense from studying global warming as a security threat, both to military installations around the world and as a destabilizing trans-national force.
I no longer care what any Republican says about climate or the environment; talking doesn't matter any more, and they'll talk and talk and talk until seawater covers the Capitol steps, provided it keeps the money flowing and keeps them in office. They'll talk and talk and talk about the need for further research, and more studies, and how scientists don't really know and on and on and on. The Republican party has spent decades painting itself with lies and bullshit and mendacity and flat-out insanity on environmental issues, and they are poison.
When Republicans start doing something, I'll be inclined to pay attention, and John Kasich will deserve a letter of thanks when he shuts the fuck up and actually does something. I'm not in the habit of handing out party hats and champagne to celebrate someone for having the intellectual firepower and damn-the-torpedoes moral courage needed to point out to me the whereabouts of the sky. John Kasich says global warming is a problem. Yeah, no shit.
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