Out of Context Podcast: Conservatives Are Taking the Lead in the Climate Change Movement

via Fox Business Channel:

The fossil fuel divestment movement is spreading across college campuses. Most recently, students at the University of Washington staged a sit-in to urge the university administration to divest from its fossil fuel holdings. Last year, Harvard University – which has the largest fossil fuel endowment in the country – announced plans to divest from the industry after its student body protested. 

Divesting from fossil fuels sounds like a great idea for a young, climate-conscious activist to get behind. That is until you get into the details and consequences. 

The fossil field divestment movement, and those who support it, have no real plan for the aggressive clean energy transition they propose. Not only do fossil fuels still make up 60% of American energy, but a new report from the American Petroleum Institute shows that the industry supports nearly 11 million jobs and contributes more than 7% of the U.S. GDP.  

Advocating for the dissolution of the entire industry over the next few decades would also mean dissolving economic opportunity and quality of life for more than 330 million Americans. 

Even President Joe Biden acknowledged that fossil fuels aren’t going away anytime soon during his 2023 State of the Union address. Instead of pushing for unrealistic divestment that would deeply hurt local communities and our nation’s energy security, we should prioritize producing energy from fossil fuels in the cleanest, most environmentally responsible way possible while simultaneously ramping up renewable energy production. 

This is personal for me. My home state of Texas leads the nation in generating fossil fuel revenue, with more than $450 billion for the state’s economy. I grew up in Houston, where the energy industry is the lifeblood of the city and its citizens, regardless of whether they are directly employed by the industry or not. Widespread divestment from the fossil fuel industry would ruin Houston economically, as well as countless other communities across the country. 

More surprisingly, the second-largest oil and gas economy in the country is no other than California. The oil and gas industry generates $217.1 billion for the state’s economy, which would be hard to guess from the renewables-over-all attitude that California projects. This is just further proof that divesting from fossil fuels is a huge, unrealistic mistake – even for bright blue states. 

Perhaps even more importantly, shunning this industry here in the United States wouldn’t result in lower global greenhouse gas emissions. 

The American oil and gas industry produces energy with some of the highest environmental standards and close to the least carbon intensity in the world. If our major institutions divest from fossil fuels and handicap the industry, fossil fuels won’t go away. Other countries will simply produce fossil fuel energy in a dirtier way. 

This is not to say that clean energy – or an energy transition as a concept – is not important. We should be prioritizing clean energy sources, but we should be doing so with a realistic mindset. We need an all-of-the-above approach that balances reliability, affordability, abundance, and yes – cleanliness. 

The underlying conclusion here is that we cannot afford to sacrifice energy security and economic prosperity for climate activism without a follow-through plan. Clean energy should continue to be a priority in the coming years, but not at the expense of prosperity and American economic dominance.  

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As Republicans prepare to debate in Milwaukee, matters of the environment are top of mind for many young voters, including conservatives watching the field shape up. Stephen Perkins of the American Conservation Coalition joins Jim to explain how the group is working on the ground in Milwaukee to engage the candidates as they work to win over a new generation of voters.

Watch it here

After a week of limbo and 14 failed ballots, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was finally elected Speaker of the House last week. The chaotic start to the 118th Congress was the opposite of what most House Republicans were hoping for. Instead of showing up united and ready to work on the priorities they won a majority with, their dirty laundry was aired before the nation on C-SPAN.

Midterm polling showed that voters wanted solutions, not grandstanding, from political leaders on the issues that mattered most. Among those issues were affordability and climate, which poll respondents said were the two most urgent issues facing our nation. Last week’s rocky start did not inspire confidence in voters about the GOP’s capabilities — 20 members allowed infighting over internal rules to overshadow the issues their constituents expressly said they cared about.

Now that the intra-party dispute has been resolved, it’s time for House Republicans to deliver what the American people want: lower energy costs — and lower emissions.

The 117th Congress, despite the media narrative of partisanship and gridlock, was incredibly productive when it came to bipartisan solutions for issues like climate change. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for instance, was the result of months of negotiations in the Senate and included significant measures for climate resilience and clean energy. The Growing Climate Solutions Act, which was ultimately included in the end-of-year omnibus bill, garnered the support of 92 senators to empower farmers and ranchers to utilize sustainable practices on their lands. The Senate even ratified the Kigali Amendment, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol to limit the use of pollution-driving hydrofluorocarbons, on a bipartisan basis.

This approach to legislating is what we need in the 118th Congress. House Republicans have many leaders on environmental issues, from House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman’s (R-Ark.) forestry expertise to energy innovation advocate House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) to Conservative Climate Caucus Chairman John Curtis’s (R-Utah) thought leadership.

In his Commitment to America, McCarthy lays out a path forward on climate and energy issues. This approach may look different from that of the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for bipartisan consensus and real legislative work.

There are a plethora of issues that could garner significant bipartisan support. The 2023 Farm Bill provides a significant opportunity for natural climate solutions and climate resilience. Members of both parties have signaled openness to permitting reform to unleash allAmerican energy production. Nuclear energy and critical mineral production, too, are areas where legislators can work together toward robust, bipartisan solutions. Both parties are all too familiar with detractor firebrands who prevent the body from legislating, but the American people have had enough.

The bottom line is: The American people saw dysfunction from the House when they should have seen legislating. Luckily, the 118th Congress has just begun, and there’s time for Congress to get to work.

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The Irish government is considering a “dairy cow massacre” to reduce emissions and meet climate targets. If that sounds insane, it’s because it is. Even conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair and entrepreneur Elon Musk agreed on Twitter, which sparked much discussion – and outrage – across Europe and the United States.

This isn’t the first time climate alarmists have lost the plot and resorted to extreme “solutions.” In recent years, environmentalists have urged people to not have children, give up their pets, stay away from houseplants, and now, slaughter farm animals.

Being anti-life – whether it be animal or human – is no way to fight climate change. As an environmentalist, I want to preserve the health of our planet so that life can be abundant, not nonexistent.

For too long, we’ve operated under the assumption humans and our society are a disease on the earth that needs to be cured. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, human society has contributed to environmental challenges, like climate change, but we’ve also made incredible advances and discoveries. Whether it be in art, science, or agriculture, it’s clear humans are not the disease; we’re the cure.

There are many diverse solutions to the climate challenges we face, but I can assure you ending the lives of 200,000 dairy cows prematurely is not one of them. Sacrificing life – any life – for emissions reductions is a poor precedent to set, and it frankly won’t be effective. In the United States, for instance, dairy cows account for 1.3% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Surely, we could be spending our efforts elsewhere instead of terrorizing the agricultural sector.

Moreover, there are often more elegant and innovative ways to mitigate the effects of climate change than the extreme measures proposed. For instance, regenerative agriculture techniques such as the usage of cover crops for grazing to improve soil quality are already in use all around the world. Allowing cattle to roam and graze naturally, rather than overgrazing pastures, has proven an effective way for both the animals and the ecosystem to thrive. Those in agriculture have also discovered simply switching out dairy cows’ feed can greatly reduce methane emissions associated with their herds. 

These solutions are not only more humane than the options Ireland is considering, but they’re also more forward-looking. Reducing the size of dairy cow herds in one fell swoop would be a short-term emissions reduction, sure, but in the long term, there would be no progress in making the industry more sustainable overall. We know logically we cannot, as a society, survive without a robust agricultural sector, so we should strive to incrementally reduce its environmental impact, not exterminate it.

Protecting our planet should also mean protecting the life on it. We shouldn’t sacrifice life for the planet, or the planet for life. Instead, we should take an approach – such as regenerative agriculture for this instance – that allows constructive collaboration between nature and society. The alternative is pursuing medicine worse than the disease.

Read the original here.