After Al Gore and Senator Warner gave their testimony, Newt Gingrich provided testimony on climate change for the wingnuts. Meaning that he was there to cheer on the polluters, continue the denial stance of the GOP and to roll out some new framing of the issue. I haven’t found any video of Gingrich’s opening remarks — but there are sliced and diced versions of some of his testimony that highlight Gingrich’s skills at cherry-picking information.
So what did this defender of the polluters have to say? Mostly the same old broken record — you’d be forgiven if you thought you’d be getting some of those new ideas Newtie and the GOP keep claiming they have. And this is the same Newtie who sat on that couch with Nancy Pelosi during the We campaign — that series of commercials featuring political antagonists talking about coming together to deal with climate change. But green-washed Newtie called for the same old, same old:
- NO to cleaner energy — just drill everywhere for petroleum and natural gas. Not exactly a way to either reduce the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere and not exactly a way to get to energy independence, either. And build nuclear plants.
- NO to cap and trade — and he keeps repeating the lie that cap and trade increases utility bills by $3K. Not to mention that he hasn’t much of a clue as to how the current bill would work, anyway.
- NO to the DOE setting energy efficiency standards, apparently thinking that Americans are oppressed by an agency that provides energy standards for jacuzzis. I’m not making that up.
- NO to working with the current science. He wants a new study to accommodate the “debate”. Which is the tell on when you are dealing with a fraud, BTW. The debate is well beyond where Newtie thinks it is.
- YES to Clean Coal! Although he calls it Green Coal, which I guess is the green-washed framing of this thing now. Once again — there is no such thing as clean coal. And there is no such thing as green coal. While research and maybe one day implementation of carbon sequestration technologies may reduce the amount carbon that burning coal releases to the atmosphere, no one will make clean or green the extraction technology. Rep. Jay Inslee recalled to Gingrich an interview he gave to Frontline in 2007 where Gingrich actually supported cap and trade to reduce carbons and then said to Gingrich — “I think many people will ask what happened to the old Newt Gingrich,” said Inslee. “We expected an optimist, someone who believes in the creative power of the American economy, but we’ve had a sudden attack of pessimism that we can’t solve this problem.”
In short, Green-washed Newt came to Congress to insist on the same ill-informed scare tactics that continue to represent the current GOP thinking. And just so you know where Newtie’s bread is buttered here, his PAC is funded by folks with plenty of interests in oil and gas. Newtie’s effort here is to help pave the way for green-washing the same tired bullshit that the GOP has been passing off on behalf of their major donors forever.