We Talked to Congressional Republicans at UN Climate Talks About Their ‘Rational Approach’

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND — The Republican local weather delegation has landed on the Glasgow local weather talks. As 100,000 protesters took to the streets to demand radical, transformational change, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, and Rep. John Curtis of Utah walked into the conference heart the place negotiators are hammering out a local weather deal.

Their pitch is decidedly not transformational, although it definitely is radical. Instead of decarbonizing by constructing out renewable capability as rapidly as doable, the group is pitching exporting extra American pure gasoline and investing in expensive nuclear energy and unproven carbon seize know-how as what’s wanted to handle the local weather disaster.

Earther occurred to run into the entourage as they had been wandering the nation pavilions the place nations host talks from consultants and tout their local weather bona fides. Crenshaw paused at one level to snap a photograph of an art installation that includes polar bears sporting life vests on the pavilion for Tuvalu, an island nation dealing with the prospect of extinction on account of sea degree rise, earlier than taking a gathering within the Danish pavilion. We had been in a position to meet up with him after.

“As a Republican delegation here, I would say generally [we’re here] to bring more rational perspective to all of this,” he mentioned. When requested in regards to the options the group was right here to advertise, he famous that it included nuclear power, together with superior modular reactors, carbon seize, and Texas pure gasoline. “This is more of a rational discussion on promoting nuclear energy, promoting carbon capture, promoting natural gas exports from the U.S., which would displace coal around the world and have a heck of a lot more impact on reducing emissions than, frankly, any of the goals that are being talked about here. … The reason Republicans are in favor of those type of solutions because they actually work.”

The rationality of those positions, although, is on considerably shaky footing, together with how nicely they really work. Let’s begin with nuclear energy, which is an important supply of carbon-free power that’s in critical hazard. Many crops within the U.S. are nearing or previous retirement age. In New York, Indian Point was shuttered this 12 months, whereas in Illinois, the state authorities lately threw a lifeline to the getting older nuclear fleet to maintain it on-line, underscoring the 2 wildly divergent choices out there.

New nuclear crops, nevertheless, have confirmed extremely difficult to construct out. There’s at the moment just one beneath building within the U.S., the Vogtle Nuclear Plant, which is years not on time and is now double its initial cost. Investments in nuclear are definitely one avenue to decarbonization, however the challenges at Vogtle present that it’s not a slam dunk neither is it seemingly sufficient nuclear capability may come on-line within the timeline wanted.

Carbon seize and storage, or CCS, has up to now been a pipedream that has failed. That consists of the shuttering of the Petra Nova facility in Crenshaw’s Texas earlier this 12 months as a result of it was too expensive and ineffective. (The carbon it captured was additionally used to extract extra oil, which isn’t precisely a win for the local weather.) Crenshaw mentioned that was a “pilot project,” which in itself says rather a lot in regards to the state of CCS. That’s to not say it’s not a worthy know-how to put money into, and in reality, it will purchase the world time to cut back emissions. But it’s not a silver bullet or a serious plank within the race to decarbonize the power system.

Then there’s the pure gasoline factor. Gas is healthier than coal, sure. But it nonetheless releases methane. Even comparatively “cleaner” Texas gasoline poses a local weather problem, with fugitive methane emissions that trigger the planet to heat 80 occasions quicker than carbon dioxide.

A serious report from the International Energy Agency, which was based within the wake of the Seventies oil disaster and isn’t precisely a granola-and-hemp-loving group, launched earlier this 12 months discovered that new oil and gasoline exploration should cease subsequent 12 months. Crenshaw mentioned he hadn’t seen the report, however “that’s not feasible at all.”

Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on reaching the 1.5-degree-Celsius (2.7-degree-Fahrenheit) purpose discovered oil and gasoline use should decline 37% and 25% respectively by 2030. Crenshaw additionally mentioned the Texas blackouts confirmed the necessity for extra pure gasoline and the chance of counting on renewables. (Peer-reviewed science has discovered the blackouts confirmed the chance of not weatherizing pure gasoline infrastructure.)

“There was a strawman argument made like, ‘oh, the Republicans are saying the wind turbines froze,’” he mentioned. “Maybe some did say that. I didn’t say that. There was a meme that said that on the internet.”

Indeed, there was a debunked meme. While Crenshaw didn’t share mentioned meme, he did tweet a thread about why Texas’ grid failed, beginning with “Frozen Wind Turbines” and that he can be digging into what occurred “so we’re not relying on frozen wind turbines to heat our homes during a blizzard.” Again, that is merely not what consultants who research power coverage have discovered was the primary reason behind struggling.

The Republican imaginative and prescient for rationality on the UN talks, then, is actually persevering with to depend on fossil fuels with some CCS and nuclear bells and whistles that, whereas crucial investments, will not be sufficient to maintain the tides from swallowing locations like Tuvalu.