As Straight-Up Lies Fail, Expect Lots Of "Innovation" From Republicans When Talking Climate, Energy

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As The Hill recently noted, a growing number of Republicans have “settled on innovation as their primary position to counter progressive Democrats” on climate change. Innovation “has a critical role,” Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) said. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) told Fox News Sunday in November, “What the US needs to do is participate in a long-term conversation about how you get to innovation, and it’s going to need to be a conversation again that doesn’t start with alarmism.”

And most notably, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), current chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote a New York Times op-ed called “Cut Carbon Through Innovation, Not Regulation.” The US has reduced emissions recently not through “punishing regulations, restrictive laws or carbon taxes,” he writes, “but because of innovation and advanced technology, especially in the energy sector.” He touts “investment, invention, and innovation.”

There’s no arguing: These are nice words. You’d be hard pressed to find an analyst in any field of economic policy who is against invention and innovation. Indeed, I have trouble recalling a single articulation of the anti-innovation position (though I’m open to correction). But in the remainder of the op-ed, Barrasso — who has a lifetime score of 8 percent from the League of Conservation Voters — reveals what he means, and as climate policy, it is ... unimpressive.

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It isn’t a climate policy. Like Paul Ryan’s infamous child-poverty initiative, it is an attempt to repackage familiar conservative policies — in this case, sporadic subsidies to favored industries, along with a promise of deregulation — under a fresh label.

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