Crenshaw's Not Necessarily Wrong about Climate Change ("Carbon Capture" Still Boondoggle tho)

"But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy."
James 3:17

There's been some chatter about comments Dan Crenshaw made during Policy Orientation:

“We can make fun of the left’s sort of alarmist views on climate change — and we should, to an extent — but we can’t ignore it completely,” Crenshaw said during a keynote Q-and-A at the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation’s 2020 policy conference. “From a political standpoint, we cannot ignore it completely.”

....

“It’s not totally untrue. Their alarmism is often, almost always, completely untrue and not founded in facts or data. When they’re blaming storms and things on climate change, it’s usually nonsense,” Crenshaw said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t some effect on the climate from man-made emissions, and we can admit that.”

....

“Even if we don’t know what it’s doing to the environment, let’s at least err on the side of caution,” Crenshaw said. “But it doesn’t mean erring on the side of destroying the economy, which is what the left would have. So two things: grant some of the premise — not all of the premise — that they’re operating on, some of it, and expose them for what they’re really trying to do, which is a complete socialist takeover of the economy.”

We were there when Crenshaw said this.  To be honest, we didn't give it any additional thought.  The ensuing kerfuffle is odd.

Crenshaw drew a distinction between the global warming cultists and folks who have valid environmental concerns.  It's a distinction worth drawing more often.  Because Crenshaw's right that it's bad politics to ignore the latter group.

But the great, raging, irony is that Crenshaw made these comments while on a panel with Chip Roy.

Because Roy's been illustrating the same distinction for at least a year:

It's one thing to argue that there have been unintended environmental consequences from the increase in carbon emissions over the past 200 years. That might very well be the case. In that context, a discussion about reducing carbon emissions might be worth having.

Likewise, in that context, you have to acknowledge that collapsing natural gas prices have done more to reduce carbon emissions than anything else.

That will never be good enough for the global warming cultists. And that's fine. Don't waste your breath.

But natural gas prices are a wedge that should be driven between those concerned about the unintended environmental consequences of carbon emissions and the global warming cultists.

And Chip Roy showed us how.

Yet the media completely missed when Chip Roy did this...only to oddly glom onto Dan Crenshaw a year later.

That being said, Crenshaw's counter-proposal is still a dumb boondoggle.  It's one thing to say that innovation is the best way to solve environmental challenges.  It's something else to use that as a cover to merely have government pick a different set of winners and losers.

Which is all the GOP's so-called "carbon capture" proposal does.

Nevertheless, it remains the case that discussing how innovation is the best way to solve environmental challenges is also good politics.

And that's the only point Crenshaw was making last week.

Bottom Line: Sometimes, it's just odd to see which seemingly innocuous comments provoke a backlash.