(Bloomberg Law) -- Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and a pair of former Republican Senate staffers launched a group on Wednesday to push for conservative approaches to climate change and energy.
Some of the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions’ immediate targets will include seeking to streamline the permitting process under the National Environmental Policy Act, said Drew Bond, a coalition cofounder and former legislative assistant to former Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.).
That work includes support for a proposal from the Trump administration’s White House Council on Economic Quality that snips out the requirement to consider a project’s cumulative impacts on the environment, Bond said. Cumulative impact analysis often involves climate change.
The group will also work to replace the National Flood Insurance Program with a private insurance model, and support a plan backed by President Donald Trump to plant 1 trillion trees globally, said John Hart, another cofounder and the former communications director for the late Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).
‘Free-Market Responses to Climate Change’
The coalition will hold policy meetings with lawmakers and officials at the White House, Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department, and Interior Department, Bond said.
Hart said the group takes its funding from “a number of individuals and organizations dedicated to expanding the conversation to include conservative voices and durable, free-market responses to climate change,” but declined to identify them. It’s registered as a 501(c)(3) charitable group and won’t be engaged in formal lobbying, Bond said.
The group supports solar, wind, and waste energy projects, Santorum said. Not all of those approaches eliminate carbon emissions, but the former presidential candidate said they can still be helpful in mitigating environmental harm by, for example, diverting methane-emitting waste from landfills.
“The reality is, you have to have a strong economy in order to have a good environment,” Santorum told Bloomberg Law. “If you go to any place in the world where the economy is terrible, the last thing they care about is the environment. They care about survival. The stronger you are economically, the more these types of solutions work and make sense and improve the quality of life.”
Santorum also said he doesn’t see himself as a lobbyist. “But I can speak out,” he said. “I’m very blessed to have platforms to be able to make sure the things that I care about and want to talk about are heard, whether it’s on TV or Op-Eds or interviews. Those things have an impact.”
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