Republicans Promote the Use of Fossil Fuels: Republicans Promote the Use of Fossil Fuels: As part of this year’s United Nations climate negotiations, Republican members of Congress spoke on Friday to promote the use of fossil fuels.
Conservatives like the GOP are all for burning fossil fuels
At this year’s U.N. climate conference, a Republican congressional delegation defended fossil fuels, a daring stance at a summit focused on reducing carbon emissions. Scientists believe that heat-trapping gases from coal, oil, and gas burning raise global temperatures, causing sea-level rise, harsh weather, and species extinction.
Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, disagreed. “I think we need to determine as a world: Do we hate greenhouse gas emissions or do we hate fossil fuels,” said Curtis, who founded the Conservative Climate Caucus. “It’s different.”
“One of the things we ought to be doing is not targeting oil and gas, it’s to attack the emissions connected with it, to where it can be indistinguishable from other renewable energy technologies,” he told an audience at the U.S. pavilion at the climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Graves called fossil fuels “an arrow in the quiver as we strive to address our objectives of energy affordability, dependability, cleanliness, exportability and security of supply chain.”
Given the projected House Republican takeover, House Republicans’ opinions may become more crucial. . Andrea Dutton, a geoscience professor, and MacArthur Fellow at Wisconsin-Madison said that’s impossible. “Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gases that are driving temperatures to rise fast, and this is the biggest contributor to global warming,” she stated in an email.
Due to government regulation and climate change activists, the fossil fuel sector has reduced emissions per unit of fuel burned, but coal, oil, and gas are still dirty energy sources. Carbon capture, which stores exhaust gases underground, is one industry approach to reducing emissions.
Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor Andrew Dessler said nobody has shown a cost-effective approach to accomplish either at scale. “Renewables are the cheapest energy—even without carbon capture on fossil fuels—so adding carbon capture is never going to be the economically better solution,” he added.
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“Let them build the pipelines and export terminals they need,” Crenshaw urged the Egyptian audience, adding that it would be “the equivalent of giving every American solar panel, giving every American a Tesla, and tripling our wind capacity.”
The Associated Press’s analysts acknowledged that wasn’t optimal. Methane dominates natural gas. Satellites show greenhouse gas seeping from industrial equipment.
“Natural gas production and consumption do both, therefore we must cease utilizing it as soon as possible.” Overpeck cautioned that all fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas, risks becoming stranded if governments try to reduce climate change.
“This is why we must leapfrog the gas-based solutions to renewable energy-based solutions, plus battery storage, plus hydrogen,” he told The AP in an email.
Texas senator Crenshaw accused “radical environmentalists” of exaggerating climate change’s threat and misrepresenting science.
“Nobody’s suggesting children are going to burn to death,” Wuebbles wrote. “This is a tremendously significant situation, possibly the most important challenge humanity has ever faced and we need to deal with it.”
The Republican delegation appeared before U.S. President Joe Biden spoke in a crowded auditorium at the same location, where he announced greater methane emission reductions and advocated his administration’s new climate package to encourage rooftop solar and electric car adoption.
