Last month, we noticed that the ongoing conservative greenwashing of the Republican party was ramping up after midterms, with the rhetoric making it sound like compromise might be possible, even though "Science is fake"-style fossil fuel fundamentalism is still their policy platform.
Then on Friday, Nick Sobczyk at E&E/Politico covered how ClearPath and related conservative "pro-climate” groups have "helped prod Republicans on climate change, moving the party away from outright denialism."
Sobczyk does at least cover the funding behind these groups, unlike most other journalists who take this bait, and also notes that Republicans "still don't support new regulatory regimes or even a carbon tax" and "vehemently opposed the Inflation Reduction Act" and all its clean energy funding.
But he then quotes Quill Robinson of the falsely-named American Conservation Coalition who claims that while he's "heard all the different criticisms," he still thinks "back to 2018 and the state of the conversation then," and says "we're living in a completely different world."
Are we though? As Sobczyk aptly follows, "many in the environmental community see attempts to develop a Republican climate policy as misguided at best and disingenuous at worst."
It is very clearly disingenuous, and it shouldn't just be environmentalists who notice that. Sobczyk's colleague Scott Waldman's story on Monday proves exactly this point.
While the climate conservatives are thrilled that incoming House leader Kevin McCarthy has "a climate plan," it's not a plan to help the climate so much as it is a scheme to make the problem worse by unleashing fossil fuels and attacking those who are actually trying to help.
Here's Waldman's lede: "Republican lawmakers plan to conduct an investigation into the conspiracy theory that falsely claims Russia is behind President Joe Biden’s climate policies."
Yes, the supposedly improving GOP is trotting out an "8-year-old allegation" that "has never been supported by any evidence." As we and other fact-checkers have pointed out, this claim never had any evidence to begin with, then it was thoroughly debunked by leaked financial records in 2017, which were then confirmed by the donors themselves in 2018.
Conservative greenwashers want you to think the party has grown and learned and gotten more moderate since 2018, the year that we laid to rest the conspiracy theory that Putin funds anti-fracking groups. But that's exactly the conspiracy theory Republicans are planning to investigate in 2023 using their House authority. This disinformation has gotten even more obviously and verifiably wrong since 2014, but that's the best they can do.
Which is why the idea that Republicans are on the cusp of real climate policy is clearly "misguided at best and disingenuous at worst."