Republicans appear ready to cast off their label as the party that sidesteps or denies climate change. That doesn't mean the GOP will embrace President Joe Biden's agenda — quite the opposite — but the evidence suggests lawmakers are investing new energy into formulating a Republican response to the crisis, at least on paper. Under new Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the lower chamber's Energy and Commerce Committee is updating its leadership roster and the names of relevant subcommittees to highlight the revamped GOP agenda, which specifically emphasizes the ties between climate and energy policy, writes Jeremy Dillon. For example, Rep. John Curtis of Utah, who heads the Conservative Climate Caucus, will serve as vice chair of the newly named Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee (formerly the Energy Subcommittee). "We believe that our energy solutions are climate solutions and that addressing climate change is absolutely a prime priority," Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state told Jeremy. That's in line with McCarthy's own efforts to craft a GOP climate strategy before last year's midterms. Some Republican lawmakers are promoting measures to boost deployment of renewable energy and sequester carbon through tree planting (while others are stuck on the hoax thing). But overall, the GOP agenda is still one that promotes the use of fossil fuels without benchmarks for reducing climate pollution, writes Emma Dumain. "Republicans have moved from denial to an acknowledgment of climate change," Alex Flint, a former Republican congressional staffer who now leads the conservative group Alliance for Market Solutions, told Emma. "They have not yet articulated clear climate goals, and their proposals are inadequate to address the risks associated with climate change." Party members have also decried efforts to consider social and environmental factors in investment decisions as "woke capitalism," and just this week one of the Senate's top Republicans, John Barrasso of Wyoming, peddled a debunked conspiracy theory that Russian President Vladimir Putin is funding U.S. environmental groups, as Scott Waldman reports. The bottom line: The GOP wants to appease climate-conscious voters and powerful business interests that want the party to act on climate. But they don't want to impose any of the sweeping federal mandates or spend the kind of money many experts believe are necessary to stave off the worst of global warming. The party that traditionally prides itself as pro-business may ultimately not have much choice in the matter. For the first time, the world's investors poured as much money into low-carbon energy projects as they did into fossil fuel ones, according to a new market analysis from BloombergNEF.
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