GQP Climate Proposal - More Oil, More Gas, More Non-Existent CCS - Oh, And Some Trees

[hatrack]

EDIT

In an effort to show that they too care about climate change, House Republicans unveiled their “Energy Innovation Agenda” in the days preceding Biden’s Earth Day announcement. That agenda did not include any specific emissions targets. Rather, it includes a continued reliance on fossil fuels and explicitly opposes putting a price on carbon pollution. It stands in stark contrast to the Democrats’ ambitious plan to meet the Paris climate targets by transitioning to clean energy and leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

EDIT

In contrast, House Republicans did not set a climate target, and their agenda would not achieve a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, Republicans’ “Energy Innovation Agenda” focused on narrow measures like planting lots of trees, capturing carbon from smokestacks and directly from the air, and expanding U.S. fossil fuel production. To defend the latter point, Representatives Carol Miller (R-WV) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) suggested that because some American fossil fuels are less carbon-intensive than some foreign sources like Russian liquified natural gas, the U.S. should increase its fossil fuel exports to help, they reason, reduce global emissions. This argument appears akin to a nutritionist promoting a diet of strawberry cheesecake because it’s less calorie-intensive than a diet of chocolate cheesecake. To reach net zero emissions and meet any climate target, experts agree that vast quantities of fossil fuels must be left undisturbed in the ground.

To skirt that reality, the Republican agenda focused heavily on capturing and sequestering carbon. It proposed that the U.S. participate in the international Trillion Trees Project, although the U.S. contribution would reportedly amount to an increase of less than 1 billion new trees planted annually, which would sequester only about 1% of the nation’s carbon emissions over the next decade. And while technological carbon capture and sequestration would assist in meeting climate targets, the process is currently prohibitively expensive. ExxonMobil, for instance, is developing one such project, and its Chief Executive has stated that a carbon price of $100 per ton would be necessary to make it profitable.

But the Republican agenda explicitly opposes putting a price on carbon pollution, even though historically anti-climate policy groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute have recently endorsed market-based approaches to pricing carbon, and more than 2,000 companies already incorporate a carbon pollution cost into their planning.

EDIT

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/04/major-parties-climate-programs-are-miles-apart/

[Mickju]

1. Stunning stupidity

Of course that is to be expected from the GQP.