Lockstep Anti-Environmental GQP Congressional Candidates Slapping On Greenwash As Election Nears
The Republican congressman for New York’s increasingly flood-prone lower Hudson Valley and Finger Lakes region, Rep. Marc Molinaro, tells his constituents that urgent action is needed on climate change. In California’s Sierra Nevada, scarred by recent wildfires unprecedented in recorded history, Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley pitches himself as one of the state’s biggest champions of clean energy. But the two freshman Republicans have voted reliably with the House GOP majority to undo efforts to cut greenhouse gas pollution and accelerate the transition to renewable power and electric vehicles. And they are strong supporters of former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed both candidates and promised to deliver a fatal blow to existing climate policy if re-elected.
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“Our climate is changing, and a lost focus on resource preservation, physical infrastructure investment, and conservation-based solutions is leaving us more vulnerable than ever,” Molinaro wrote last fall in an editorial in Binghamton’s Press and Sun-Bulletin. He noted the increasing insurance premiums due to flooding in Tompkins County, where newly revised Federal Emergency Management Agency maps have greatly expanded areas of flood risk along the tributaries of Cayuga Lake and the low-lying city of Ithaca at its south end. But environmental activists view Molinaro’s proposal for “decisive action” as weak. (His bill would reduce the local cost share for some federally funded flooding mitigation projects and launch a nationwide study of agricultural vulnerabilities to flooding.) Food & Water Action activists rallied in Hudson, New York, in late August to protest Molinaro’s votes in favor of repealing the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy investments and for expanding oil and gas development. “Molinaro Protects Fossil Fuel Corps, Not New Yorkers,” said one sign.
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Kiley has touted his work advocating for more federal assistance for wildfire victims. He acknowledges that climate change is a factor in the state’s punishing droughts and devastating wildfires, but he has blamed “incompetent government performance” as a primary cause, citing poor forest management and water-saving and -storage failures (Morse points out, however, that as a state assemblyman Kiley voted against government investments in forest health and fuel breaks that the California fire officials believe already have helped protect communities.) Kiley talks about technological innovation as the key to solving climate, as opposed to curbing fossil fuel consumption.
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Nearly all Republican House incumbents have voted multiple times to repeal the clean energy provisions of Biden’s landmark climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. That includes Kiley, whose California district received new USDA rural electricity grants for energy efficiency and solar systems, and Molinaro, whose New York district has benefited from a new $68 million battery plant that is resurrecting an old factory site and is expected to produce 500 jobs. Electric truck startup Harbinger Motors, awash in new orders generated by federal incentives for commercial EV purchases, recently expanded in the Orange County district of Republican Rep. Michelle Steel, one of 129 House Republicans who scored zero on the LCV environmental voting scorecard.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05102024/in-competitive-purple-districts-republicans-paint-themselves-green/