Publication Name
The Atlantic
Author(s)
Coral Davenport
To hear GOP presidential front-runner Rick Perry and some tea party-backed lawmakers tell it, the Republican position on global warming is that it's a problem that doesn't even exist.
That wasn't always the case. And if prominent Republican elder statesmen have their way, it won't continue to be.
Between 2005 and 2010, prominent moderate Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John Warner of Virginia (now retired) were among Washington's leading voices in the call to fight climate change, and authored cap-and-trade bills aimed at addressing the problem.
And they did so as leaders of their party: while running for president, chairing Senate committees, and working within the congressional leadership.
...
Respected elder statesmen of the GOP also are using their clout to send a message on climate. John Warner, the former Virginia senator who now lobbies with the firm Hogan Lovells, is also a senior adviser to the Pew Project on National Security, Energy, and Climate Change, which focuses on the need to develop alternative energy to combat climate change and lessen dependence on foreign oil.
Warner, who in 2007 cosponsored a sweeping climate-change bill with then-Democrat and now independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, recalled proudly that his cap-and-trade bill got further in the Senate than any climate legislation before or since.
"Factually, that is the only comprehensive clean-energy bill that got to the Senate floor, and nothing's happened since," Warner said.
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Read the full article Retired Republicans Push GOP to Confront Climate Change by visiting The Atlantic online.
