Just as the sun rises in the East and, hard as it may be to remember in the depths of winter, spring comes eventually, so too must the Republican party successfully plant a headline suggesting they care about climate change, while remaining committed to the fossil fuels causing it.
And so as it must be, NPR’s headline credulously parrots GOP Senator Kevin Cramer’s lie that he “wants to tackle climate change,” But Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep’s interview proved Cramer only wants to sound like he wants to tackle climate change. Cramer doesn’t even manage to stick to his new pro-climate talking points, though, repeating stale denial lines about how “Earth has gone through cycles,” which Inskeep does a fine job of pushing back on.
Cramer, though, in his reflexive need to defend fossil fuels, says, “I reject the notion that you have to stop all fossil fuel production and fossil fuel use for electricity in the United States of America to solve climate change.”
Fact check: yeah, pretty much we do. It’s not a “notion,” it’s science: 60% of oil and gas and 90% of coal reserves must remain in the ground if we are to have even a 50-50 chance of meeting the Paris agreement goals, with a global production decline of 3% a year until 2050.
But apparently, denying that fact is lucrative. For example, last November, we noticed that a shady methane group was promoting a Fareed Zakaria op-ed that was in turn promoting methane exports, “Natural Allies For A Clean Energy Future,” and that it had little public presence but lots of links to the methane industry.
Well apparently they’ve taken our criticism to heart, as Rachel Frazin at the Hill reported Wednesday that Natural Allies For A Clean Energy Future hired two former Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp and Mary Landrieu.
What’s their purpose? According to Landrieu (former Louisiana senator whose brother just happens to be a senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator at the White House), it’s nothing uncouth like “lobbying for any federal or state or local policy” but instead “just touting the science and the benefits of this really remarkable asset.”
Oh! What a relief! It’s not like a gas industry front group has hired Mary Landrieu to lobby Mitch Landrieu or anything, Mary said, because “as our siblings will tell you, my influence with my younger brother is limited now and has been since he was about five years old!”
Oh my! What a charming and amusing response! How silly of anyone to believe that someone might be hired for their ability to contact and lobby a federal official through personal communication channels and family gatherings that therefore aren’t subject to public transparency laws! Who could be so jaded and cynical as to think that, when lil bro’s been a real stinker since he was just a wee scamp!
As for former North Dakota senator Heitkamp, who’s now also a lobbyist at a firm with Trump toadie Mick Mulvaney, that counts astroturf-beneficiaries SoCalGas-Sempra Energy among its clients?
She told Frazin their aim is “changing hearts and minds of people in the climate movement” to build support for gas, which would require overturning decades of science meticulously detailing the public health, environmental and climate impacts of gas. For example, most recently, that living downwind of fracking sites is linked to older people dying sooner. Gonna be hard to soften hearts to an industry that’s killing grandma, but if COVID-19 has taught us anything, it should be that lots of people are apparently in the mood for some good ol’ human sacrifice.
Heitkamp, like Cramer, shows how people funded by fossil fuels are desperately trying to get you to believe that the primary cause of climate change (burning fossil fuels) is somehow also a solution.
Unlike NPR’s headline editor, apparently hungry to embarrass the reporter for clicks, you certainly know better than to give it any credence.
Right?