A shift in Republicans' climate rhetoric?

Your guide to the political forces shaping the energy transformation

Feb 10, 2023 View in browser   By Alex Guillén President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address. | AP What a difference a decade can make. Ten years ago, President Barack Obama delivered a State of the Union address that bragged about the natural gas boom — "We need to encourage that" — and touted his "all of the above" energy policy. He talked up renewables as well, of course, but Obama vowed to speed up oil and gas permitting and praised domestic oil production. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden went in front of Congress with a slightly different message. “The climate crisis doesn't care if you are in a red or blue state," he said. "It is an existential threat. We have an obligation, not to ourselves, but to our children and grandchildren, to confront it.” Biden baited Republicans into cheering by ad-libbing that the U.S. will need oil “for at least another decade and beyond that” — an undeniable fact, unless the country were to revert overnight to some sort of preindustrial agrarian society. But he used the near-consensus among energy analysts not to highlight his moderation but to bash oil companies for using record profits to fund stock buybacks. Republicans have also shifted their tune on climate change. Ten years ago, Sen. Marco Rubio’s official GOP response to Obama’s speech included the line that “no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can’t control the weather.” (Yes, this was the same speech as the sip of water heard ‘round the world). Just a week earlier, the Florida Republican had said “reasonable debate” existed on whether humans are warming the planet. The GOP soon went much further. Two years later, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) tossed a snowball on the Senate floor to argue that human activity doesn’t affect the climate. (Total D.C. accumulation so far this winter: 0.4 inches. Today’s high: 61 degrees F.) And 2016 brought President Donald Trump, who argued climate change was a Chinese-invented hoax and later pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. Republican reaction this time was different. House Energy Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) didn’t deny that climate change is real, and instead accused Biden of leading a “rush to green” that puts the U.S. at the mercy of China’s mineral supply. She also dinged Biden's climate law for using "massive government subsidies” to champion “unreliable, weather-dependent” wind and solar power. Does a GOP shift from arguing that “the climate is always changing” to warning that cars are going electric too quickly actually prop open the door in Washington for real policy debates? And what will the Republican stance be in another 10 years? Happy Friday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Alex Guillén. Arianna will be back soon! Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to askibell@eenews.net.   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID.     Listen to today’s POLITICO Energy podcast Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Zack Colman explains how the Biden administration is trying to raise awareness of one of its biggest accomplishments, the Inflation Reduction Act, ahead of next year's election. Fuels Renewable fuel options pictured for sale in 2016 at a gas station in Glyndon, Minn. | Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa via AP Images Congressional Republicans furious that the Biden administration has declined to ease the biofuel regulatory burden for small refineries have been stymied by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO said Thursday that EPA's denials don't amount to "rules," and therefore lawmakers can't nullify them via the Congressional Review Act, reports Kelsey Tamborrino. Many refiners have taken EPA to court, a process still playing out. It's not clear that such efforts would succeed — the politics around biofuels make for some strange bedfellows — and President Joe Biden likely would have vetoed any successful CRA resolution. But the fight highlights how biofuels are only becoming more contentious, even as the Biden administration is trying to move off liquid fuels altogether. Power Centers A woman bathes her daughter in the Yamuna River, which is covered by chemical foam caused by industrial pollution, in New Delhi in 2021. | AP Photo/Manish Swarup India at a crossroads India is running a climate experiment with 1.4 billion participants. The second most populous nation is trying to move away from fossil fuels while expanding access to transportation and cooling, Sara Schonhardt writes. “It still remains a lower-middle-income country, so the bulk of its economic development, and meeting various needs — of housing, water, energy, mobility, nutrition — all of these challenges still remain ahead,” said Ulka Kelkar, director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute India. “And so far no country has met these goals without also causing greenhouse gas emissions, without using fossil fuels.” Won't you be mine Republicans and Democrats have been fighting over mining law changes for years, but bipartisan agreement about the need to boost critical minerals production may not be enough, write Hannah Northey and Timothy Cama. House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) highlighted plans for a legislative push on critical minerals at a hearing Thursday. But ranking member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) quickly drew a line in the sand about desired updates to the nation's 1872 mining law. Kremlin chop Facing Western sanctions and a Group of Seven price cap, Russia on Friday said it will cut its oil production by half a million barrels per day, Charlie Cooper reports. The sanctions and price cap have caused Russia's fossil fuel income to take a serious hit. The move is an "early sign that Russia might try to weaponize oil supplies after last year’s failed attempt to weaponize natural gas," said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the think tank Bruegel. Still, the cuts aren't "likely to lead to sustained higher prices for consumers," The Wall Street Journal reported, with one analyst noting that “the global demand picture is quite weak.” In Other News New Polestar electric cars sit in a parking lot. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Price wars: Electric vehicle sticker prices will soon reach parity with gasoline cars, particularly once government incentives are included. Overseas: South Africa has declared a national state of disaster over the country's energy crisis. Geoengineering: Astrophysicists have proposed using moon dust to create a sunshade around Earth to reduce global warming.   LISTEN TO POLITICO'S ENERGY PODCAST: Check out our daily five-minute brief on the latest energy and environmental politics and policy news. Don't miss out on the must-know stories, candid insights, and analysis from POLITICO's energy team. Listen today.     Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Houston-based NRG Energy Inc. sold its share of the Petra Nova carbon capture facility in Texas to Japanese firm JX Nippon for $3.6 million. | NRG The biggest carbon capture and sequestration project in the U.S., Petra Nova in Texas, may restart three years after shutting down as its coal-fired power plant is brought back online. Four dozen Democrats are demanding EPA step up its work on plastics production and pollution. They want nationwide targets on singe-use plastics in the food industry and a microplastics pilot program, among other things. Big changes could be in store for the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, the Bureau of Reclamation revealed this week. The government is scrambling to adapt as drought conditions take Lake Powell perilously close to its minimum required level. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.   Follow us on Twitter Arianna Skibell @ariannaskibell   Follow us

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