Young Conservatives for Energy Reform

<p>Young Conservatives for Energy Reform</p>

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In a campaign season where energy and climate change have become partisan lightning rods, a small but growing group of Republicans are pushing back against their party’s orthodoxy on both issues.

Leading members of the Christian Coalition and the Young Republicans on Monday will launch nationwide the Young Conservatives for Energy Reform, a grassroots group aimed at engaging Republicans on the goals of cutting oil use, backing alternative energy and clean-air regulations, and fighting climate change.</p>

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The announcement comes less than a month after the rollout of a new conservative-run campaign and think tank, the <b>Energy and Enterprise Institute,</b> aimed at winning Republicans over to the idea of using the tax code to cut carbon pollution and fossil fuel use.</p>

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Both groups have an uphill battle. Over the past two years, the Republican Party has galvanized around the fossil fuel industry, drifting far away from its position in 2004 when presidential nominee Sen. <strong>John McCain</strong> of Arizona actually campaigned on the promise to address climate change.</p>

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The 2010 congressional races saw a slew of super PAC attack ads against lawmakers who backed climate change policy. This year, the presidential primaries saw moderate Republicans, including presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney—who had once pushed for climate and clean-energy policies—abandoning those positions and walking back his former acceptance of the science that says human activities cause climate change.

This year’s campaign has been marked by GOP attacks on President Obama’s clean-energy policies, as exemplified by the failed solar company Solyndra, and a fierce partisan fight over what Republicans call Obama’s “war on coal,” including efforts by his Environmental Protection Agency to tighten regulations on pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The fossil fuel industry is spending mightily to keep the GOP on its side: Of the $30 million the oil, coal, and gas industries have spent so far to influence the 2012 election cycle, 88 percent has gone to Republican candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.</p>

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It’s in that atmosphere that the two cofounders of Young Conservatives for Energy Reform, Michele Combs and Brian Smith, hope to make a difference in their party’s approach to energy. Both have rock-solid conservative bona fides.</p>

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Combs is communications director for the Christian Coalition of America, which calls itself the nation’s largest conservative grassroots organization. Her mother, Roberta Combs, is the coalition’s president. Growing up, Combs was a leader in the Young Republicans—she was elected “Young Republican of the Year” in 1989. Before working for the Christian Coalition, she ran a special-events company that produced events for Republican campaigns, conventions, and the George W. Bush inauguration.</p>

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Roberta Combs led a 2010 lobbying push by the Christian Coalition to push GOP lawmakers to act on climate change; Michele Combs says she was inspired to engage on clean-energy issues when she was pregnant and told she couldn’t eat fish because they may be tainted with mercury, which is emitted from coal-fired power plants.

Smith, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and former cochair of the Young Republican National Federation Policy Committee, is pursuing a joint degree in business administration and engineering at Northwestern University, and worked on energy technology and security issues at Pentagon labs.</p>

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The pair wants to harness the resources and networks of the Christian Coalition and Young Republicans at events across the country to make the case to conservatives that they should back clean-energy and climate policies. Combs and Smith said they’ll press the case by presenting alternative energy, climate change, and clean air as nonpartisan issues affecting families and national security.

The group intends to replicate the organizational model of the Young Republicans, creating city, regional, and state chairmen.   

“We want to take this issue and make it not so partisan,” Combs told <em>National Journal</em> last week. “We believe this is a family issue. I’m optimistic that we can make young conservatives comfortable talking about this. I think it’s possible to talk about this and not be labeled a heretic. For younger conservatives, this is a lot more acceptable to talk about.”

Added Smith: “We want to make it safe for Republicans to debate climate change.”</p>

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The group has already held events in Florida, Ohio, and South Carolina, and plans further events—rallies, speeches, roundtables, and town halls—in New Hampshire and other 2012 battleground states.

Juan Lopez, a Florida employment lawyer, is the group’s Florida chairman and a lifelong Republican. He acknowledged that within the Republican Party, the new group represents a lone voice—one with a message that’s sometimes at odds with the Romney-Ryan presidential campaign, which is pushing an aggressive expansion of oil drilling. The ticket’s vice presidential nominee and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. <strong>Paul Ryan</strong>, R-Wis., proposed dramatic cuts to clean-energy spending in his budget proposal.

“The leaders of the party are reasonable people,” Lopez said. “They listen to the voices of reason. Ryan is an outdoorsman, he’s in favor of clean air. He listens to all voices…. Republican Party leaders are reasonable, and we’ll get the message across by having our voices heard.” </p>

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The group hopes to work closely with Sen. <strong>Lindsey Graham</strong>, R-S.C., who has strong ties to the Christian Coalition and who in 2010 teamed with Sens. <strong>John Kerry</strong>, D-Mass., and <strong>Joe Lieberman</strong>, ID-Conn., on a sweeping climate-change bill. But although Graham has frequently expressed the need to tackle energy and climate-change issues, he pulled his support from the bill before it was introduced. And it’s likely to be tougher for him to go out on a limb on issues that inflame his party as he looks toward a Senate primary race in 2014.</p>

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Smith said he doesn’t expect the group to present specific climate and energy legislative proposals, at least at the outset, but rather to try to simply fire up young conservatives on the issues. “We want to help conservatives feel comfortable taking tough votes and not getting shot down if they support clean-energy technology.”</p>

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It remains to be seen whether the new handful of groups can make an impact in a party where fossil fuel interests, including powerhouse lobbying groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, have an outsized impact on legislation and campaign media spending.</p>

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Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House energy official who is now a senior strategist at the Bipartisan Policy Center, noted that the growth of pro-climate voices in the GOP could signal a cyclical return of the party to the issue. “It was just four years ago that John McCain was the nominee and you had dozens of Republicans sponsoring climate change legislation,” he said. “It’s due for a rebound at some point.”

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<h1 class="title">Against the Odds, Young Conservatives Buck the GOP on Energy and Climate Change</h1>

<h3>A group of young Republicans is out to persuade their party to pursue a path toward a future free of fossil fuels.</h3>

<div id="authoredBy" style=" width: 65%; float: left;"><a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/author/maria-gallucci">By Maria Gallucci, InsideClimate News</a></div>

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<div class="field-item odd"><span class="image-caption-container image-caption-container-" style=" display: block; width: 198px;"><span class="image-caption" style=" display: block;">YCER founder Michele Combs testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Credit: C-Span 3.</span></span></div>

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<p>A group of young Republicans has set out to achieve what some might say is an impossible goal: Over the next two years they'll try to persuade their party to craft and support legislation that would reform the nation’s energy system and set a path toward a future free of fossil fuels.

"We want to show conservatives that this truly is an issue that affects us, affects our families and our businesses," said Michele Combs, a 45-year-old legislative consultant who founded the group. <em>(Paragraph includes correction, 09/05/2012).</em></p>

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The organization—<a href="http://www.yc4er.org/" target="_blank">Young Conservatives for Energy Reform</a>, or YCER—joins a small but growing number of like-minded groups and individuals who hope to revive a voice that has been lost in the Republican Party, one that's focused on curbing, not expanding, fossil fuel production. <em>(Paragraph includes correction, 09/05/2012).</em></p>

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At last week's GOP convention in Florida, the Evangelical Environment Network teamed with the Florida Wildlife Federation to buy billboard ads touting prominent Republicans' concerns about climate change, including Ohio Governor <b>John Kasich. In July, a group called the Energy and Enterprise Initiative</b> was formed to bring Republicans and libertarians together to find free-market solutions to the climate change problem.<b> Former Rep. Bob Inglis, a South Carolina Republican, is heading the initiative out of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.</b></p>

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"A lot of conservatives don't believe that there are climactic costs" to burning fossil fuels, said Alex Bozmoski, the initiative's director of strategy and operations. "It's only prudent to acknowledge that the continued, unabated emission of greenhouse gases poses a risk for current and especially future generations."</p>

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YCER's leaders have deep roots in the Republican Party. Combs, the group's president, was a 1989 national "Young Republican of the Year," and Brian Smith, a 32-year-old Air Force Veteran and chair of the Midwest chapter, is a former co-chair of the Young Republicans National Federation, a training ground for party leaders since 1931. Both support Mitt Romney's presidential bid, even though his energy platform favors more fossil fuels and less environmental regulation. <em>(Paragraph includes correction, 09/05/2012).</em>

Combs said YCER won't take individual Republican politicians to task for their climate change skepticism or push for specific policy solutions—at least not immediately. They also won't make climate change science a key part of their agenda.</p>

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"Our position on climate change is that it really shouldn't be a litmus test for Republicans," said Smith on a call with reporters last month. "We want it to be an issue that Republicans can talk about." <em>(Paragraph includes correction, 09/05/2012).</em>

The group also won't go against the grain of the Republican leadership when it comes to scaling up domestic oil and natural gas drilling. Romney made both a key part of his recently unveiled plan for U.S. energy independence by 2020.</p>

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Combs called the ramp-up strategy "a good first step" on the path toward energy reform. But Juan Lopez-Campillo, an Orlando-based attorney and chair of the group's Florida chapter, said YCER hopes to move Republicans beyond the "drill here, drill now" mentality that now pervades the party. He said he supports shifting government subsidies from oil companies to the burgeoning clean-energy sector, a position usually favored by Democrats. "I think there should be a leveling of the playing field," he said.</p>

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One of YCER's first steps will be to address what Combs calls the "lack of education" among conservative Americans who may have tuned out the energy debate because they see it as a strictly liberal agenda.

"Some of them don't even realize what energy reform entails, and they don't realize how much it really controls their lives," she said.</p>

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YCER plans to host local receptions and rallies where energy experts and Republicans interested in energy reform can meet with the public to discuss topics that aren't often talked about in conservative circles.

They'll stress why it is important to gradually phase out fossil fuels in favor of cleaner alternatives like wind and solar energy, emphasize the national security benefits of scaling back oil imports and underscore the reality that America’s own oil and natural gas resources will eventually run out. They will also highlight the health benefits of keeping toxic pollutants out of the air and waterways, and try to drive home the message that spurring growth in the renewables sector can create jobs and economic gains.

"Irrespective of whether you support the science behind climate change or whether you don't, all of us can agree that renewable, clean energy resources are the way to go to stabilize our [energy] future," Lopez-Campillo said.</p>

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<strong>Shifting the Focus from Climate Change</strong></p>

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Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, said that treading lightly on the topic of climate change could prove a smart strategy for groups like YCER. Hayhoe, an  evangelical Christian who describes herself as a conservative, gained national attention last year when then-GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich rejected a chapter she had written on man-made global warming from his book on environmental issues, which is set to come out after the November elections.

Because climate change "has been cast as an ideological issue," Hayhoe said young conservatives might break through to their peers more easily by appealing to common values, like the desire for cleaner air and water, healthier families, and strong local economies.</p>

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