Pirate's Cove

While belief in anthropogenic global warming, natch, ‘climate change’, is primarily a Left wing belief, their are certainly a few Republicans who believe that the current Holocene warm period, or at least parts of it (depends on the argument of the day) is mostly/solely caused by Mankind. Folks like Lindsay Graham, Jon Huntsman, Chris Christie, and Mitt Romney. It’s fine for them to have those beliefs, no matter how misguided. It’s not OK to force those beliefs on other people and attempt to solve it by implementing massive government projects, taxes, and controls. Here comes another, which brings to mind the phrase “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, or, “beware of megadonors bearing money”

(AP) Republican businessman Jay Faison says his party should stop fighting science and start talking solutions to climate change. He has $175 million in potential political donations to help inspire them. And if that’s not enough, he’s commissioned a survey, released Monday, that he says shows voters agree.

“I’m pretty frustrated about the political divide,” Faison said. “This is too important to leave to the Democrats.”

Faison made his fortune in 2013 with the sale of his majority stake in his audio-visual equipment company, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He sank much of his profit into the ClearPath Foundation and a separate politically active policy group; both are devoted to moving Republicans beyond saying that the climate is not changing — or, if it is, that humans have nothing to do with it.

I’ll give him this, he’s doing this in smart manner in attempting to push clean energy in a manner that Conservatives can believe it. Heck, I believe it. Do we want clean energy? Sure. 72% of Republicans “support accelerating the development of clean energy”. That comes from a poll at the ClearPath Foundation. We just want it done in a wise manner, one that makes monetary sense, one that is not based on political payback, and ends in companies taking vast sums of taxpayer money, pocketing it, then closing the doors. One that doesn’t replace existing energy methods with costly ones that provide limited power.

We also do not want vast solar and wind farms despoiling the landscape, killing wildlife, and, yes, driving down property values.

That all said, at the end of the day this is first all about fighting Hotcoldwetdry for people like Faison, not pushing clean energy, and, Faison can say all he wants that this won’t increase the size and scope of the government, but, it will. He yammers on about “free market values”. The free markets have mostly decided that these energy forms are not worth it at this time.

In his personal story, Faison writes

Since then, liberals have claimed the energy and climate issue as their own. This was hard to watch. Why weren’t conservative solutions being offered up? Why weren’t more people like me involved? I saw the issue as one that should be owned by conservatives. What could be more conservative than energy independence and freeing up energy markets that were controlled by monopolies?

He’s doing the right thing for the wrong reason. One has to wonder if he has given up all use of fossil fuels in his own life. And, many on his advisory board sure seem to have the same opinions as far left Warmists, ones such as Jeremy Oppenheim, of McKinsey and Company, who is super thrilled by Naomi Klein’s views on totally changing economies to a far left type.

For all his talk about being a Republican, he sure seems unwilling to allow competing views

(NY Times) Democrats, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sought to paint Republicans who question climate change as deniers of science who are out of touch with the mainstream.

Mr. Faison and the Republican pollsters said that in order to avoid that characterization, Republicans need to move beyond questioning and start offering solutions.

Interesting. We’re supposed to solve something we don’t believe in, something based on junk science, flawed and failed computer models, modified data, and left wing hysteria. And, yes, Faison does very much want a “carbon tax”, yet another left wing proposition. I won’t call him a stealth Republican, but he sure seems to be very squishy.