House Republican Plans to Introduce Pro-Climate-Science Bill

A Re­pub­lic­an House mem­ber is bat­tling the skep­ti­cism to­ward cli­mate-change sci­ence that’s com­mon in GOP ranks. And he wants to put law­makers on re­cord in the pro­cess.

Rep. Chris Gib­son said Thursday he plans to in­tro­duce a res­ol­u­tion on cli­mate change that will help oth­ers “re­cog­nize the real­ity” of the situ­ation. Gib­son said the ex­treme weath­er he has wit­nessed in his own up­state New York dis­trict sup­ports the sci­ence, and he wants to be a lead­er in spur­ring re­cog­ni­tion of chan­ging weath­er pat­terns.

“My dis­trict has been hit with three 500-year floods in the last sev­er­al years, so either you be­lieve that we had a one in over 100 mil­lion prob­ab­il­ity that oc­curred, or you be­lieve as I do that there’s a new nor­mal, and we have chan­ging weath­er pat­terns, and we have cli­mate change. This is the sci­ence,” said the two-term law­maker who was reelec­ted in Novem­ber.

“I hope that my party—that we will come to be com­fort­able with this, be­cause we have to op­er­ate in the realm of know­ledge and sci­ence, and I still think we can bring for­ward con­ser­vat­ive solu­tions to this, ab­so­lutely, but we have to re­cog­nize the real­ity,” Gib­son said. “So I will be bring­ing for­ward a bill, a res­ol­u­tion that states as such, with really the in­tent of ral­ly­ing us, to harken us to our best sense, our abil­ity to over­come hard chal­lenges.”

Gib­son spoke at an event hos­ted by Cit­izens for Re­spons­ible En­ergy Solu­tions, which is a pro-Re­pub­lic­an ad­vocacy group; a PAC that sup­ports Re­pub­lic­ans called Con­cord 51; and the Con­ser­va­tion Lead­er­ship Coun­cil, a group of con­ser­vat­ives that in­cludes Gale Norton, who was In­teri­or Sec­ret­ary un­der George W. Bush. The En­vir­on­ment­al De­fense Fund helped cre­ate the CLC.

Event or­gan­izers provided a video clip of his com­ments. Gib­son’s of­fice did not re­spond to in­quir­ies about the mat­ter. But while the spe­cif­ics of the ef­fort aren’t yet clear, Gib­son’s stances are at odds with many in the GOP’s ranks.

As­cend­ant Re­pub­lic­ans on Cap­it­ol Hill are pre­par­ing fresh as­saults on the White House cli­mate agenda, and ex­press­ing con­tin­ued doubts about the sci­entif­ic con­sensus that burn­ing fossil fuels and oth­er hu­man activ­ity is the lead­ing driver of glob­al warm­ing.

In­com­ing Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell, dur­ing his reelec­tion cam­paign in Ken­tucky, said he is “not a sci­ent­ist” when asked about cli­mate change, a line used by a num­ber of Re­pub­lic­ans.

Gib­son, to be sure, hardly marches in lock­step with en­vir­on­ment­al­ists. He sup­ports the Key­stone XL oil-sands pipeline and has voted for ex­pan­ded off­shore drilling.

But he also joined just two oth­er Re­pub­lic­ans last March in vot­ing against a bill to scuttle EPA’s car­bon-emis­sions rules for power plants, and he has also voted against oth­er at­tacks on fed­er­al cli­mate-change pro­grams.

He won sup­port in this year’s elec­tions from the polit­ic­al branch of the En­vir­on­ment­al De­fense Fund. “It’s very en­cour­aging to see this kind of lead­er­ship emer­ging in the Con­gress,” Tony Kreind­ler, EDF Ac­tion’s seni­or dir­ect­or for stra­tegic com­mu­nic­a­tions, said of Gib­son’s planned res­ol­u­tion.

Else­where in his re­marks, Gib­son both touted his sup­port for ex­pan­ded drilling and called for more in­vest­ment in fed­er­al green-en­ergy in­vest­ment, while not­ing the po­ten­tial of sol­ar en­ergy as costs de­cline.

He ex­pressed hope that more right-left co­oper­a­tion on the en­vir­on­ment and en­ergy is pos­sible. “For work­ing-class fam­il­ies and small busi­nesses … we have got to find ways to lower en­ergy costs,” while at the same time “en­sur­ing that we have an in­hab­it­able Earth go­ing for­ward.”