On Sun, 4 Jun 2017 17:17:26 -0700 (PDT),
jmschristophers@gmail.com
wrote:
On Monday, June 5, 2017 at 10:24:11 AM UTC+12, nor...@googlegroups.com wrote: >> http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/93340233/with-his-london-terror-attack-tweets-donald-trump-embarrasses-himself--and-america--once-again
He is not just out of control, he is almost certainly mad and clearly full of
hate. How can someone who thinks only of himself, pushes other world leaders >> out of the way and fires anybody who disagrees with him remain at the helm of a
country that believes it is a democracy (it isn't of course!)?
Time he was impeached but will the "establishment" find the courage?
Tony
Those inhabitants of the establishment - i.e. "the swamp" - who've taken Trump's shilling and are now serving in the White House, know they're dealing with a presidential psychotic, this characterised by his grandiosity and paranoia, both of which are
driven by his delusional beliefs.
IOW, Trump is the classic sociopath, detached from all reality, and incompetent in all formal and personal relationships other than with his wife and daughter who, perhaps not surprisingly, increasingly resemble warmed up exhibits from Madame Toussaud's.
It is the modern conservative way. The "face" does not have to do
anything in relation to policies - he just has to be infinitely
malleable, make statements that sound good but don;t mean anything (so
anything done subsequently is a "promise delivered", then sell himself
to the deliverers of campaign finance. He should love media more than
anything else, as every day is a campaign day. Meanwhile, scripts are
worked out by others, and decisions made away from public view. John
Key was not the first model for that behaviour, but he performed the
role well - his prime focus was publicity and trading favours, while
the real agenda of reducing government to enrich the few went
remorselessly on. The NZ National Party and the Republicans have
exchanged information for years - the ability of Key to get away with
dirty tricks, spin, and outright lies will not have been lost on the Republicans, although they probably gave more value to the Nats than
they received; the USA is the leader in the ability to purchase
policy; Key having a Hawaii home wasn't just about meeting Obama . . .
Trump is a figure we can recognise, the policy imperatives behind him
are not those for John Key - see:
POLITICS
How G.O.P. Leaders Came to View Climate Change as Fake Science
By CORAL DAVENPORT and ERIC LIPTONJUNE 3, 2017
A coal-fired power station in Mount Storm, W.Va., in January. The coal
industry played an instrumental role in efforts to unwind the Obama administrationıs climate policies. Credit Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
WASHINGTON The campaign ad appeared during the presidential contest
of 2008. Rapid-fire images of belching smokestacks and melting ice
sheets were followed by a soothing narrator who praised a candidate
who had stood up to President George W. Bush and ³sounded the alarm on
global warming.²
It was not made for a Democrat, but for Senator John McCain, who had
just secured the Republican nomination.
It is difficult to reconcile the Republican Party of 2008 with the
party of 2017, whose leader, President Trump, has called global
warming a hoax, reversed environmental policies that Mr. McCain
advocated on his run for the White House, and this past week announced
that he would take the nation out of the Paris climate accord, which
was to bind the globe in an effort to halt the planetıs warming.
The Republican Partyıs fast journey from debating how to combat
human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a
story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and
a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the
Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising
rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation.
³Most Republicans still do not regard climate change as a hoax,² said
Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist who worked for Senator Marco
Rubioıs presidential campaign. ³But the entire climate change debate
has now been caught up in the broader polarization of American
politics.²
³In some ways,² he added, ³itıs become yet another of the long list of
litmus test issues that determine whether or not youıre a good
Republican.²
Since Mr. McCain ran for president on climate credentials that were
stronger than his opponent Barack Obamaıs, the scientific evidence
linking greenhouse gases from fossil fuels to the dangerous warming of
the planet has grown stronger. Scientists have for the first time
drawn concrete links between the planetıs warming atmosphere and
changes that affect Americansı daily lives and pocketbooks, from tidal
flooding in Miami to prolonged water shortages in the Southwest to
decreasing snow cover at ski resorts.
That scientific consensus was enough to pull virtually all of the
major nations along. Conservative-leaning governments in Britain,
France, Germany and Japan all signed on to successive climate change agreements.
Yet when Mr. Trump pulled the United States from the Paris accord, the
Senate majority leader, the speaker of the House and every member of
the elected Republican leadership were united in their praise.
Those divisions did not happen by themselves. Republican lawmakers
were moved along by a campaign carefully crafted by fossil fuel
industry players, most notably Charles D. and David H. Koch, the
Kansas-based billionaires who run a chain of refineries (which can
process 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day) as well as a subsidiary
that owns or operates 4,000 miles of pipelines that move crude oil.
Government rules intended to slow climate change are ³making peopleıs
lives worse rather than better,² Charles Koch explained in a rare
interview last year with Fortune, arguing that despite the costs,
these efforts would make ³very little difference in the future on what
the temperature or the weather will be.²
Republican leadership has also been dominated by lawmakers whose
constituents were genuinely threatened by policies that would raise
the cost of burning fossil fuels, especially coal. Senator Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky, always sensitive to the coal fields in his
state, rose through the ranks to become majority leader. Senator John
Barrasso of Wyoming also climbed into leadership, then the
chairmanship of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, as a
champion of his coal state.
Mr. Trump has staffed his White House and cabinet with officials who
have denied, or at least questioned, the existence of global warming.
And he has adopted the Koch language, almost to the word. On Thursday,
as Mr. Trump announced the United Statesı withdrawal, he at once
claimed that the Paris accord would cost the nation millions of jobs
and that it would do next to nothing for the climate.
Beyond the White House, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman
of the House Science Committee, held a hearing this spring aimed at
debunking climate science, calling the global scientific consensus ³exaggerations, personal agendas and questionable predictions.²
A small core of Republican lawmakers most of whom are from swing
districts and are at risk of losing their seats next year are taking
modest steps like introducing a nonbinding resolution in the House in
March urging Congress to accept the risks presented by climate change.
But in Republican political circles, speaking out on the issue, let
alone pushing climate policy, is politically dangerous. So for the
most part, these moderate Republicans are biding their time, until it
once again becomes safe for Republicans to talk more forcefully about
climate change. The question is how long that will take.
³With 40 percent of Floridaıs population at risk from sea-level rise,
my state is on the front lines of climate change,² said Representative
Carlos Curbelo, Republican of Florida. ³South Florida residents are
already beginning to feel the effects of climate change in their daily
lives.²
The Turning Pointı
It was called the ³No Climate Tax² pledge, drafted by a new group
called Americans for Prosperity that was funded by the Koch brothers.
Its single sentence read: ³I will oppose any legislation relating to
climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.² Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, was the first member of
Congress to sign it in July 2008.
The effort picked up steam the next year after the House of
Representatives passed what is known as cap-and-trade legislation, a
concept invented by conservative Reagan-era economists.
The idea was to create a statutory limit, or cap, on the overall
amount of a certain type of pollution that could be emitted.
Businesses could then buy and sell permits to pollute, choosing
whether to invest more in pollution permits, or in cleaner technology
that would then save them money and allow them to sell their allotted
permits. The administration of the first President George Bush
successfully deployed the first national cap-and-trade system in 1990
to lower emissions of the pollutants that cause acid rain. Mr. McCain
pushed a cap-and-trade proposal to fight climate change.
³I thought we could get it done,² recalled Henry A. Waxman, a retired
House Democrat who led the cap-and-trade push in 2009. ³We just had
two candidates from the Republican and Democratic parties who had run
for president and agreed that climate change was a real threat.²
Conservative activists saw the legislative effort as an opportunity to transform the climate debate.
With the help of a small army of oil-industry-funded academics like
Wei-Hock Soon of Harvard Smithsonian and think tanks like the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, they had been working to discredit
academics and government climate change scientists. The lawyer and
conservative activist Chris Horner, whose legal clients have included
the coal industry, gathered documents through the Freedom of
Information Act to try to embarrass and further undermine the climate
change research.
Myron Ebell, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute, worked behind the scenes to make sure Republican offices in
Congress knew about Mr. Hornerıs work although at the time, many
viewed Mr. Ebell skeptically, as an extremist pushing out-of-touch
views.
In 2009, hackers broke into a climate research program at the
University of East Anglia in England, then released the emails that conservatives said raised doubts about the validity of the research.
In one email, a scientist talked of using a statistical ³trick² in a
chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. The research was
ultimately validated, but damage was done.
As Congress moved toward actually passing climate change legislation,
a fringe issue had become a part of the political mainstream.
³That was the turning point,² Mr. Horner said.
The House passed the cap-and-trade bill by seven votes, but it went
nowhere in the Senate Mr. Obamaıs first major legislative defeat.
Unshackled by the Supreme Courtıs Citizens United decision and other
related rulings, which ended corporate campaign finance restrictions,
Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity started an all-fronts
campaign with television advertising, social media and cross-country
events aimed at electing lawmakers who would ensure that the fossil
fuel industry would not have to worry about new pollution regulations.
Their first target: unseating Democratic lawmakers such as
Representatives Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello of Virginia, who had
voted for the House cap-and-trade bill, and replacing them with
Republicans who were seen as more in step with struggling Appalachia,
and who pledged never to push climate change measures.
But Americans for Prosperity also wanted to send a message to
Republicans.
Until 2010, some Republicans ran ads in House and Senate races showing
their support for green energy.
³After that, it disappeared from Republican ads,² said Tim Phillips,
the president of Americans for Prosperity. ³Part of that was the
polling, and part of it was the visceral example of what happened to
their colleagues who had done that.²
What happened was clear. Republicans who asserted support for climate
change legislation or the seriousness of the climate threat saw their
money dry up or, worse, a primary challenger arise.
³It told Republicans that we were serious,² Mr. Phillips said, ³that
we would spend some serious money against them.²
By the time Election Day 2010 arrived, 165 congressional members and
candidates had signed Americans for Prosperityıs ³No Climate Tax²
pledge.
Most were victorious.
³The midterm election was a clear rejection of policies like the
cap-and-trade energy taxes that threaten our still-fragile economy,²
said James Valvo, then Americans for Prosperityıs government affairs
director, in a statement issued the day after the November 2010
election. Eighty-three of the 92 new members of Congress had signed
the pledge.
Even for congressional veterans, that message was not missed.
Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who once called
climate change ³a serious problem² and co-sponsored a bill to promote energy-efficient light bulbs, tacked right after the 2010 elections as
he battled to be chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce
Committee against Joe Barton, a Texan who mocked human-caused climate
change.
Mr. Upton deleted references to climate change from his website. ³If
you look, the last year was the warmest year on record, the warmest
decade on record. I accept that,² he offered that fall. ³I do not say
that itıs man-made.²
Mr. Upton, who has received more than $2 million in campaign donations
from oil and gas companies and electric utilities over the course of
his career, won the chairmanship and has coasted comfortably to
re-election since.
Two years later, conservative ³super PACs² took aim at Senator Richard
G. Lugar of Indiana, a senior Republican who publicly voiced climate
concerns, backed the creation of a Midwestern cap-and-trade program
and drove a Prius. After six Senate terms, Mr. Lugar lost his primary
to a Tea Party challenger, Richard E. Mourdock. Although Mr. Lugar
says other reasons contributed, he and his opponents say his public
views on climate change played a crucial role.
³In my own campaign, there were people who felt strongly enough about
my views on climate change to use it to help defeat me, and other
Republicans are very sensitive to that possibility,² Mr. Lugar said in
an interview. ³So even if they privately believe we ought to do
something about it, theyıre reticent, especially with the Republican
president taking the views he is now taking.²
Obama Feeds the Movement
After winning re-election in 2012, Mr. Obama understood his
second-term agenda would have to rely on executive authority, not
legislation that would go nowhere in the Republican-majority Congress.
And climate change was the great unfinished business of his first
term.
To finish it, he would deploy a rarely used provision in the Clean Air
Act of 1970, which gave the Environmental Protection Agency the
authority to issue regulations on carbon dioxide.
³If Congress wonıt act soon to protect future generations, I will,² he
declared in his 2013 State of the Union address.
Document: An Ad Trump Signed Supporting Action on Climate Change
The result was the Clean Power Plan, which would significantly cut planet-warming emissions by forcing the closing of hundreds of
heavy-polluting coal-fired power plants.
The end run around Congress had consequences of its own. To Republican
(and some Democratic) critics, the Clean Power Plan exemplified
everything they opposed about Mr. Obama: He seemed to them imperious, heavy-handed, pleasing to the elites on the East and West Coasts and
in the capitals of Europe, but callous to the blue-collar workers of
coal and oil country.
³It fed into this notion of executive overreach,² said Heather Zichal,
who advised Mr. Obama on climate policy. ³I donıt think there was a
good enough job on managing the narrative.²
Republicans who had supported the climate change agenda began to
defect and have since stayed away.
³On the issue of climate change, I think itıs happening,² Mr. McCain
said in a CNN podcast interview last April. But, he said, ³The
president decided, at least in the last couple years if not more, to
rule by edict.²
Mr. Obamaıs political opponents saw the climate rules as a ripe
opportunity. ³When the president went the regulatory route, it gave
our side more confidence,² Mr. Phillips said. ³It hardened and
broadened Republican opposition to this agenda.²
Starting in early 2014, the opponents of the rule including powerful
lawyers and lobbyists representing many of Americaıs largest
manufacturing and industrial interests regularly gathered in a large conference room at the national headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, overlooking the White House. They drafted a long-game legal
strategy to undermine Mr. Obamaıs climate regulations in a coordinated
campaign that brought together 28 state attorneys general and major corporations to form an argument that they expected to eventually take
to the Supreme Court.
They presented it not as an environmental fight but an economic one,
against a government that was trying to vastly and illegally expand
its authority.
³This is the most significant wholesale regulation of energy that the
United States has ever seen, by any agency,² Roger R. Martella Jr., a
former E.P.A. lawyer who then represented energy companies, said at a
gathering of industry advocates, making an assertion that has not been
tested.
Attorneys General Step In
Republican attorneys general gathered at the Greenbrier resort in West
Virginia in August 2015 for their annual summer retreat, with some
special guests: four executives from Murray Energy, one of the
nationıs largest coal mining companies.
Murray was struggling to avoid bankruptcy a fate that had befallen
several other coal mining companies already, given the slump in demand
for their product and the rise of natural gas, solar and wind energy.
The coal industry came to discuss a new part of the campaign to
reverse the countryıs course on climate change. Litigation was going
to be needed, the industry executives and the Republican attorneys
general agreed, to block the Obama administrationıs climate agenda
at least until a new president could be elected.
West Virginiaıs attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, led the session,
³The Dangerous Consequences of the Clean Power Plan & Other E.P.A.
Rules,² which included, according to the agenda, Scott Pruitt, then
the attorney general of Oklahoma; Ken Paxton, Texası attorney general;
and Geoffrey Barnes, a corporate lawyer for Murray, which had donated
$250,000 to the Republican attorneys general political group.
That same day, Mr. Morrissey would step outside the hotel to announce
that he and other attorneys general would sue in federal court to try
to stop the Clean Power Plan, which he called ³the most far-reaching
energy regulation in this nationıs history, drawn up by radical
bureaucrats.²
Mr. Pruitt quickly became a national point person for industry-backed
groups and a magnet for millions of dollars of campaign contributions,
as the fossil fuel lobby looked for a fresh face with conservative
credentials and ties to the evangelical community.
³Pruitt was instrumental he and A.G. Morrisey,² said Thomas Pyle, a
former lobbyist for Koch Industries, an adviser to Mr. Trumpıs
transition team and the president of a pro-fossil fuel Washington
research organization, the Institute for Energy Research. ³They led
the charge and made it easier for other states to get involved. Some
states were keeping their powder dry, but Pruitt was very out front
and aggressive.²
After the litigation was filed by Mr. Morrissey and Mr. Pruitt,
along with other attorneys general who attended the Greenbrier meeting
Murray Energy sued in the federal court case as well, just as had
been planned.
In February 2016, the Supreme Court indicated that it would side with
opponents of the rule, moving by a 5-4 vote to grant a request by the
attorneys general and corporate players to block the implementation of
the
Clean Power Plan while the case worked its way through the federal
courts.
Trump Stokes the Fires
When Donald J. Trump decided to run for president, he did not appear
to have a clear understanding of the nationıs climate change policies.
Nor, at the start of his campaign, did he appear to have any specific
plan to prioritize a huge legal push to roll those policies back.
Mr. Trump had, in 2012, said on Twitter, ³The concept of global
warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S.
manufacturing non-competitive.² But he had also, in 2009, joined
dozens of other business leaders to sign a full-page ad in the The New
York Times urging Mr. Obama to push a global climate change pact being negotiated in Copenhagen, and to ³strengthen and pass United States legislation² to tackle climate change.
However, it did not go unnoticed that coal country was giving his
presidential campaign a wildly enthusiastic embrace, as miners came
out in full force for Mr. Trump, stoking his populist message.
And the surest way for Mr. Trump to win cheers from coal crowds was to
aim at an easy target: Mr. Obamaıs climate rules. Hillary Clinton did
not help her cause when she said last spring that her climate policies
would ³put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.²
In May 2016, Mr. Trump addressed one of the largest rallies of his
campaign: an estimated crowd of over 10,000 in Charleston, W.Va.,
where the front rows were crammed with mine workers.
³Iım thinking about miners all over the country,² he said, eliciting
cheers. ³Weıre going to put miners back to work.²
³They didnıt used to have all these rules and regulations that make it impossible to compete,² he added. ³Weıre going to take it all off the
table.²
Then an official from the West Virginia Coal Association handed the
candidate a minerıs hat.
As he put it on, giving the miners a double thumbs-up, ³The place just
went nuts, and he loved it,² recalled Barry Bennett, a former adviser
to Mr. Trumpıs presidential campaign. ³And the miners started showing
up at everything. They were a beaten lot, and they saw him as a
savior. So he started using the save coalı portions of the speech
again and again.²
Mr. Trumpıs advisers embraced the miners as emblematic of the
candidateıs broader populist appeal.
³The coal miners were the perfect case for what he was talking about,²
Mr. Bennett said, ³the idea that for the government in Washington,
itıs all right for these people to suffer for the greater good that
federal power is more important than your little lives.²
Mr. Trump took on as an informal campaign adviser Robert E. Murray
chief executive of the same coal company that had been working closely
for years with the Republican attorneys general to unwind the Obama environmental legacy.
Mr. Murray, a brash and folksy populist who started working in coal
mines as a teenager, is an unabashed skeptic of climate science. The
coal magnate and Mr. Trump had a natural chemistry, and where Mr.
Trump lacked the legal and policy background to unwind climate policy,
Mr. Murray was happy to step in.
³I thank my lord, Jesus Christ, for the election of Donald Trump,² Mr.
Murray said soon after his new friend won the White House.
Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Ebell, the Competitive Enterprise Institute
fellow who had worked for years to undermine the legitimacy of
established climate science, to head the transition team at E.P.A. Mr.
Ebell immediately began pushing for an agenda of gutting the Obama
climate regulations and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.
When it came time to translate Mr. Trumpıs campaign promises to coal
country into policy, Mr. Murray and others helped choose the perfect
candidate: Mr. Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general.
Mr. Trump, who had never met Mr. Pruitt before his election, offered
him the job of E.P.A. administrator putting him in a position to
dismantle the environmental rules that he had long sought to fight in
court.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump wanted to be seen delivering on the promises he
had made to the miners. As controversies piled up in his young
administration, he sought comfort in the approval of his base.
In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to
begin unwinding the Clean Power Plan and he did so at a large public
ceremony at the E.P.A., flanked by coal miners and coal executives.
Mr. Murray beamed in the audience.
Meanwhile, a battle raged at the White House over whether to withdraw
the United States from the Paris agreement. Mr. Trumpıs daughter
Ivanka and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, urged him to
remain in, cautioning that withdrawing could be devastating to the
United Statesı foreign policy credentials.
Murray Energy despite its enormous clout with Mr. Trump and his top environmental official boasts a payroll with only 6,000 employees.
The coal industry nationwide is responsible for about 160,000 jobs,
with just 65,000 directly in mining, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
By comparison, General Electric alone has 104,000 employees in the
United States, and Apple has 80,000. Their chief executives openly
pressed Mr. Trump to stick with Paris, as did dozens of other major corporations that have continued to support regulatory efforts to
combat climate change.
But these voices did not have clout in Washington, either in Congress
or at the White House, when it comes to energy policy.
Mr. Trumpıs senior adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, backed by Mr. Pruitt,
told the president that pulling out of the deal would mean a promise
kept to his base.
³It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania along with many, many other locations
within our great country before Paris, France,² Mr. Trump said in
his Rose Garden speech on Thursday. ³It is time to make America great
again.²
The Science Gets Stronger
The recognition that human activity is influencing the climate
developed slowly, but a scientific consensus can be traced to a
conference in southern Austria in October 1985. Among the 100 or so
attendees who gathered in the city of Villach, nestled in the
mountains along the Drava River, was Bert Bolin, a Swedish
meteorologist and a pioneer in using computers to model the
climate.
Dr. Bolin helped steer the conference to its conclusion: ³It is now
believed that in the first half of the next century a rise of global
mean temperature could occur which is greater than any in manıs
history,² he wrote in the conferenceıs 500-page report.
While the politics of climate change in the United States has grown
more divided since then, the scientific community has united: Global
warming is having an impact, scientists say, with sea levels rising
along with the extremity of weather events. Most of the debate is
about the extent of those impacts how high the seas may rise, or how
intense and frequent heavy storms or heat waves may be.
In recent years, many climate scientists have also dropped their
reluctance to pin significant weather events on climate change.
Studies have shown that certain events a 2015 Australian heat wave,
floods in France last year and recent high temperatures in the Arctic
were made more likely because of global warming.
But in Congress, reluctance to embrace that science has had no
political downsides, at least among Republicans.
³We donıt yet have an example of where someone has paid a political
price being on that side of it,² said Michael Steel, who served as
press secretary for the former House speaker John A. Boehner, the
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and the current House
speaker, Paul D. Ryan, during his 2012 run as Mitt Romneyıs
vice-presidential choice.
Instead, the messages of Mr. Pruitt still dominate.
³This is an historic restoration of American economic independence
one that will benefit the working class, the working poor and working
people of all stripes,² Mr. Pruitt said on Thursday, stepping to the
Rose Garden lectern after Mr. Trump. ³We owe no apologies to other
nations for our environmental stewardship.²
American voters even many Republicans recognize that climate
change is starting to affect their lives. About 70 percent think
global warming is happening, and about 53 percent think it is caused
by human activities, according to a recent study by the Yale Program
on Climate Change Communication. About 69 percent support limiting
carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.
But most public opinion polls find that voters rank the environment
last or nearly last among the issues that they vote on. And views are
divided based on party affiliation. In 2001, 46 percent of Democrats
said they worried ³a great deal² about climate change, compared with
29 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup tracking poll on the
issue. This year, concern among Democrats has reached 66 percent.
Among Republicans, it has fallen, to 18 percent.
Until people vote on the issue, Republicans will find it politically
safer to question climate science and policy than to alienate moneyed
groups like Americans for Prosperity.
There will be exceptions. The 2014 National Climate Assessment, a
report produced by 14 federal agencies, concluded that climate change
is responsible for much of the flooding now plaguing many of the Miami
areaıs coastal residents, soaking homes and disrupting businesses, and Representative Curbelo is talking about it.
³This is a local issue for me,² Mr. Curbelo said. ³Even conservatives
in my district see the impact. Itıs flooding, and itıs happening now.²
Mr. Curbelo helped create the House Climate Solutions Caucus, 20
Republicans and 20 Democrats who say they are committed to tackling
climate change.
Mr. Curbelo is confident that as the impact of climate change spreads,
so will the willingness of his Republican colleagues to join him.
Outside of Congress, a small number of establishment conservatives,
including a handful of leaders from the Reagan administration, have
begun pushing Washington to act on climate change. Earlier this year,
James A. Baker III, one of the Republican Partyıs more eminent senior
figures, met with senior White House officials to urge them to
consider incorporating a carbon tax as part of a broader tax overhaul
package a way to both pay for proposed cuts to corporate tax rates
and help save the planet. A Reagan White House senior economist, Art
Laffer; a former secretary of state, George P. Shultz; and Henry M.
Paulson Jr., George W. Bushıs final Treasury secretary, have also
pushed the idea.
³There are members from deep-red districts who have approached me
about figuring out how to become part of this effort,² Mr. Curbelo
said. ³I know we have the truth on our side. So Iım confident that
weıll win eventually.²
Henry Fountain contributed reporting from New York.
A version of this article appears in print on June 4, 2017, on Page A1
of the New York edition with the headline: How G.O.P. Leaders Came to
Reject Climate Science.
İ The New York Times Company 2017
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