Inside D.C.

It’s too easy to say you’re green

I could be Rip Van Winkle, just awaking from a 40-year sleep, and I’d know there’s an election coming up.  All sorts of issues so far not talked about much are on all candidates’ lips, including those of the White House incumbent.

Color the latest attacks of effusion and self-aggrandizement green, as in who’s the greenest and who cares the most about “climate change.” 

“We want the cleanest air, we want crystal clean water – and that’s what we’re doing and that’s what we’re working on so hard,” said President Trump in a White House speech last week, flanked by half a dozen cabinet officials, including EPA’s Administrator Andrew Wheeler. The cavalcade of bureaucrats were there o explain what the president was talking about.  Just for a show of congressional support, a handful of House and Senate GOP lawmakers were on hand.

As expected, before, during and after the speech, environmental groups took the president to task and media outlets blasted out “fact checked” versions of Trump’s claims on environmental protections.

Trump said his administration is using “technologies and processes” to clean up energy production and clean up water sources, adding the U.S. leads the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions despite its opposition to the Paris Climate Accord.  Interjecting political jabs at Democrats and other critics, the president said his administration “does not have to sacrifice jobs to lead the world on the environment.”

On the other end of the political spectrum, presidential wannabe Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, VT), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D, OR) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) jointly announced they’ll introduce in their respective chambers a resolution defining climate change as a national emergency requiring “massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse and address its consequences and causes.”   

However, back at the White House, Wheeler was rolling out the numbers.

“From 1970 to 2018, U.S. criteria air pollution fell 74%, while the economy grew by 275%,” Wheeler shared from the podium.  “Under your administration, emissions of all the criteria air pollutants continue to decline…For example, lead and sulfur dioxide have dropped by double-digit percentages over the last two years.”  He also touted methane reductions from natural gas refining despite an increase in natural gas production. 

Wheeler, and by default, Trump, took major flak from critics given the track record of pollution control being touted at the White House was effectively the overall reduction success over the nearly 50-year life of the agency.    

“We’re not taking credit for what happened before, but we’re acknowledging it,” Wheeler said. “I think the American public needs to understand, if they listen to the news every night they would think the air’s gotten worse over the last 49 years, when, in fact, it’s gotten better.”

The Sierra Club was having none of the administration’s enviro victory lap, accusing Trump of “greenhouse gaslighting the public to try and cover up the fact he is the worst president in history for the environment.”

 “The Trump administration has sought to roll back 83 environmental and public health rules since coming into office. Nearly a quarter of those—22—have to do with air quality or carbon emissions; seven are related to water quality,” the environmental group said in a public statement.

The far left’s “national emergency” that is climate change is just one shade of green on Capitol Hill.  Grasping an issue that couldn’t generate a subcommittee hearing two years ago, both Republicans and Democrats are all over the change thing, angling for the lead position. 

House and Senate GOP lawmakers last week announced creation of the Roosevelt Conservation Caucus, an effort to regain control of environmental and public lands issues, including climate change, going into the 2020 elections. 

“I’m tired of playing defense on the environment,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R, SC), co-chair of the new caucus, who publicly acknowledges climate change is a significant threat.  “We will win the solution debate, but the only way you’re going to win that debate is to admit you have a problem.”  In addition to climate change, the new caucus will grapple with clean energy technologies, invasive species, access to public lands and related issues.

Graham’s green gang says technology is the key to climate change remedies, singling out the controversial Ocasio-Cortez idea of the Green New Deal as disruptive and way too expensive. 

“There’s not one Republican who’s going to vote for anything coming out of the Green New Deal ‘cause it’s crazy economics.  We’re hoping we can find solutions that some Democrats will vote for, and if you don’t, you’ve done nothing but talk,” Graham said.