Warlord
03-06-2020, 11:31 AM
(CNN)Something was different at CPAC 2020.
Sure, Fox News and the NRA were in their regular spots between booths full of "deplorable" hammocks, Donald Trump nutcrackers and a life-size statue of the President, made of nails and posed as Superman.
But in the middle of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, the booth cocking the most eyebrows was focused on climate change -- not as something to deny or mock -- but as a crisis to fight. With taxes!
Between cardboard cutouts of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, young men in ties and ball caps tried to convince the curious (and the occasional heckler) to ignore everything they've been told about global warming at CPACs past.
Looming across the aisle was The Heartland Institute, the powerful think tank long devoted to denying global warming science, and two booths down stood "Climate Hustle 2" (starring television Hercules Kevin Sorbo) but the Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends worked a crowd two-people-deep with the confidence of CPAC veterans.
"This is really a generational issue," Harvard senior and YCCD founder Kiera O'Brien told me. "We believe that people my age and a little bit older are really waking up to the problem that is climate change on both sides of the aisle."
...
The nationwide action she supports was published in 2017 by Reagan-era cabinet members James Baker and George Shultz and six other authors, and proposes a carbon tax of $40 per ton that would gradually go up in order to drive down fossil fuel demand and spur clean energy innovation. To help cover the higher costs of fuel, the tax would pay the average American family around $2,000 a year in dividend and slap a "border adjustment" on the cost of imported fossil fuel to urge other nations to fall in line.
But central to the plan is a provision that makes most environmentalists recoil: complete deregulation of carbon. So no restrictions on mining coal, fracking or drilling for oil in the United States. It is one big reason Baker-Shultz has the support of oil giants like ExxonMobil and BP. Corporations like Microsoft and Ford and an assortment of strange political bedfellows, including the late Stephen Hawking, Ben Bernanke, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio and Christiana Figueres, lead negotiator for the Paris Climate Accord, are all listed as founding supporters.
O'Brien boasts that such a pedigree has lured the support of around half of the nation's College Republican state chairs and vice chairs. "Those are your next generation leaders of the Republican Party. And when you come with that pitch, party leaders tend to listen."
More:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/young-green-republicans-climate-weir-wxc/index.html (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/young-green-republicans-climate-weir-wxc/index.html?utm_term=image&utm_content=2020-03-06T17%3A02%3A02&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNNp)
Sure, Fox News and the NRA were in their regular spots between booths full of "deplorable" hammocks, Donald Trump nutcrackers and a life-size statue of the President, made of nails and posed as Superman.
But in the middle of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, the booth cocking the most eyebrows was focused on climate change -- not as something to deny or mock -- but as a crisis to fight. With taxes!
Between cardboard cutouts of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, young men in ties and ball caps tried to convince the curious (and the occasional heckler) to ignore everything they've been told about global warming at CPACs past.
Looming across the aisle was The Heartland Institute, the powerful think tank long devoted to denying global warming science, and two booths down stood "Climate Hustle 2" (starring television Hercules Kevin Sorbo) but the Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends worked a crowd two-people-deep with the confidence of CPAC veterans.
"This is really a generational issue," Harvard senior and YCCD founder Kiera O'Brien told me. "We believe that people my age and a little bit older are really waking up to the problem that is climate change on both sides of the aisle."
...
The nationwide action she supports was published in 2017 by Reagan-era cabinet members James Baker and George Shultz and six other authors, and proposes a carbon tax of $40 per ton that would gradually go up in order to drive down fossil fuel demand and spur clean energy innovation. To help cover the higher costs of fuel, the tax would pay the average American family around $2,000 a year in dividend and slap a "border adjustment" on the cost of imported fossil fuel to urge other nations to fall in line.
But central to the plan is a provision that makes most environmentalists recoil: complete deregulation of carbon. So no restrictions on mining coal, fracking or drilling for oil in the United States. It is one big reason Baker-Shultz has the support of oil giants like ExxonMobil and BP. Corporations like Microsoft and Ford and an assortment of strange political bedfellows, including the late Stephen Hawking, Ben Bernanke, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio and Christiana Figueres, lead negotiator for the Paris Climate Accord, are all listed as founding supporters.
O'Brien boasts that such a pedigree has lured the support of around half of the nation's College Republican state chairs and vice chairs. "Those are your next generation leaders of the Republican Party. And when you come with that pitch, party leaders tend to listen."
More:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/young-green-republicans-climate-weir-wxc/index.html (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/young-green-republicans-climate-weir-wxc/index.html?utm_term=image&utm_content=2020-03-06T17%3A02%3A02&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNNp)