Hope you’ll read my latest L.A. Times column and let me know what you think! Here’s how it starts:
>*Solving climate change would be a hell of a lot easier if the Republican Party would get on board.*
>
>*Can John Curtis make it happen?*
>
>*I’ve been reading about the Utah Republican since 2021, when he founded the Conservative Climate Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives and began making the case that the GOP should take global warming seriously. When he announced this month that he’s running for the Senate, my curiosity finally got the better of me: Should I be taking this guy seriously?*
>
>*So I reached out to his office and set up an interview.*
>
>*Curtis was gracious with his time, spending more than 45 minutes on the phone answering my questions and explaining how he’d chosen to make the climate crisis a focus of his political life. He started off telling me how he grew up hiking in the Uinta Mountains and learning to love the great outdoors. He described Provo — where he served as mayor before being elected to the House in 2017 — as “one of the most beautiful cities on the planet.”*
>
>*“On a morning like today, you’d wake up and see snowcapped mountains with the blue sky and the sun,” he said. “If you’re not drawn to nature by that, you have no hope, nothing in you that is decent.”*
>
>*When he arrived in Washington, D.C., he said, he was “confronted face to face with this reputation that somehow Republicans didn’t care, that they denied the science and somehow didn’t want to pass on a better Earth.”*
>
>*Although that reputation is, in my own view, well-earned — more on that in a minute — Curtis said it “really disturbed” him. So he founded the Conservative Climate Caucus, which today has 81 members — more than one-third of House Republicans.*
Again, I hope you’ll read the whole thing and let me know what you think. You can sign up to get my Boiling Point columns and news roundups in your inbox here: [latimes.com/boilingpoint](https://latimes.com/boilingpoint)
He’s my representative.
Having a Conservative Climate Caucus is pretty empty until they do something to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, reduce air pollution, protect waterways from pollution and development, manage aquifers responsibly, and protect wildlife habitat and wilderness areas. Once they deliver I’ll cheer them on.
But being a Republican means Curtis votes how the Majority Whip tells him to, and Republicans get so much money from oil companies and mining companies that I question how a Republican environmental group will accomplish anything positive for the environment while taking campaign contributions from polluting industries who oppose even existing government oversight and regulation.
2 comments
Hope you’ll read my latest L.A. Times column and let me know what you think! Here’s how it starts:
>*Solving climate change would be a hell of a lot easier if the Republican Party would get on board.*
>
>*Can John Curtis make it happen?*
>
>*I’ve been reading about the Utah Republican since 2021, when he founded the Conservative Climate Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives and began making the case that the GOP should take global warming seriously. When he announced this month that he’s running for the Senate, my curiosity finally got the better of me: Should I be taking this guy seriously?*
>
>*So I reached out to his office and set up an interview.*
>
>*Curtis was gracious with his time, spending more than 45 minutes on the phone answering my questions and explaining how he’d chosen to make the climate crisis a focus of his political life. He started off telling me how he grew up hiking in the Uinta Mountains and learning to love the great outdoors. He described Provo — where he served as mayor before being elected to the House in 2017 — as “one of the most beautiful cities on the planet.”*
>
>*“On a morning like today, you’d wake up and see snowcapped mountains with the blue sky and the sun,” he said. “If you’re not drawn to nature by that, you have no hope, nothing in you that is decent.”*
>
>*When he arrived in Washington, D.C., he said, he was “confronted face to face with this reputation that somehow Republicans didn’t care, that they denied the science and somehow didn’t want to pass on a better Earth.”*
>
>*Although that reputation is, in my own view, well-earned — more on that in a minute — Curtis said it “really disturbed” him. So he founded the Conservative Climate Caucus, which today has 81 members — more than one-third of House Republicans.*
Again, I hope you’ll read the whole thing and let me know what you think. You can sign up to get my Boiling Point columns and news roundups in your inbox here: [latimes.com/boilingpoint](https://latimes.com/boilingpoint)
He’s my representative.
Having a Conservative Climate Caucus is pretty empty until they do something to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, reduce air pollution, protect waterways from pollution and development, manage aquifers responsibly, and protect wildlife habitat and wilderness areas. Once they deliver I’ll cheer them on.
But being a Republican means Curtis votes how the Majority Whip tells him to, and Republicans get so much money from oil companies and mining companies that I question how a Republican environmental group will accomplish anything positive for the environment while taking campaign contributions from polluting industries who oppose even existing government oversight and regulation.