Beyond the anti-democratic horrors created by Republicans for this country’s immediate weeks and months, these ass-wipes are also endangering the not-so-distant future for the entire freaking planet — climate change is a most-way-real catastrophe and it’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when,’ which in reality is much-closer than even often-used so-called  ‘around the corner.’

Reality, however, is not what the GQP is all about (h/t tweet Susie):

Hilarious. At a private GOP retreat, conservative lawmakers are urged to a) talk more about climate change, because voters care about it, and b) not actually do anything about climate change, because fossil oligarchs don't like it. So … stay the course?https://t.co/ZYmxb6cIz3

— David Roberts (@drvolts) June 9, 2021

Although GQPers will talk a good-talk about climate change, they really don’t give a shit and will continue to allow emissions to carry on business as usual. Yet they’re politicians to the lying, nasty core — details on the tweet from E&E News on Tuesday:

A Republican pollster at a secretive meeting with roughly 20 lawmakers in February offered the party a plan to win control of Congress.

He urged them to talk about climate change.

The pollster, Greg Strimple, presented research suggesting that pro-climate messaging could turn the tide in enough close races to offer the tantalizing prospects of controlling the House.
He told the lawmakers that 69-percent of Republican voters use terms like “climate change” and “global warming” to describe what’s happening to the planet.

“At one point global warming was just the language of John Kerry and Al Gore. Right now, Republicans and conservatives, large majorities of them, think something in that vein is happening,” Strimple said in an interview.
…
Not long after the gathering, organized by Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), House Republicans rolled out a package of bills that would increase investments in carbon capture research, plant billions of trees and boost nuclear power.
Lawmakers touted them as a first step in building a new GOP climate platform — one that accepts the basic tenets of climate science but doesn’t restrict the use of fossil fuels.

“I don’t think Republicans are right now in the position of losing an election on the environment, but I do think Republicans are right now in a position to win an election on the environment if they address it and talk about it,” Strimple said.
…
Strimple told the lawmakers that they need a “confidence boost” in talking about climate and the environment.
Social media platforms, where users are more likely to take extreme positions, don’t reflect reality, he told them.

On Twitter, Republicans are often portrayed as climate deniers. But many of those voters are open to environmental policy, especially if it’s bipartisan, he said.
Women with college degrees, in particular, want candidates to talk about addressing climate change,
Strimple’s research shows. But other voters, including those not closely engaged in politics, also want to hear climate messaging from their candidate.

“When a Republican talks about the environment, it’s a man-bites-dog-type story,” he said.
“All of a sudden it’s ‘Oh, he’s not talking about abortion or a tax cut. Wow, this person must be a decent human being.’ The type the middle wants to vote for.”
…
The event was a milestone for the party, said Heather Reams, executive director of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, which made a presentation at the conference.
It showed that senior party officials and rank-and-file members were engaged enough on climate to fly across the country during a pandemic to outline a new climate platform.

The party sees an opening in the Democrats’ pursuit of Green New Deal policies, because it gives Republicans space to create another position that is less extreme, she said.

“The table was set for Republicans who want to engage because voters are in favor of limited government rather than the command and control favored by Democrats,” Reams said.
“They have to decide to come to the table, it’s there.”

However, once again reality pokes it head into the bullshit: ‘According to the Pew Research Center, Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans to say dealing with climate change should be a top priority (78-percent vs. 21-percent).‘

And it’s all just ‘shiny objects‘ to Republicans — make big talk, but look the other way when the rubber means the road, or in this particular case, fossil fuel-cutbacks are discussed. The front is louder than the reality.
And that real point is to shitface climate — per Axios this morning:

Infrastructure talks between the White House and Congress have entered a phase that’s making climate advocates extremely nervous.

Why it matters: Environmental groups and even some Democratic lawmakers are increasingly vocal with their fears that the White House will jettison central components of President Biden’s climate plan during the talks, which could cause the U.S. to fall short of its new emissions targets.

Driving the news: The anxiety burst into the open following a statement that Biden’s national climate adviser Gina McCarthy made to Politico on Tuesday, which pointed to the Clean Electricity Standard (CES) as one of the policies that might fall short.

“While every piece like a clean electricity standard may not end [up] in the final version, we know that it is necessary, we know that the utilities want it, we are going to fight like crazy to make sure that it’s in there,” McCarthy said.
“And then we’re going to be open to a range of other investment strategies.”

The flux capacitor is dry:

I tweeted earlier this week about climate failure. Well, I’m still nervous. We must get Senate Dems unified on climate on a real reconciliation bill, lest we get sucked into “bipartisanship” mud where we fail on climate.

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) June 9, 2021

Axios continues:

The big picture: It’s not just activists who are getting nervous watching the legislative clock tick down. Senate Democrats are increasingly staking their ground on climate, too.
…
What we’re watching: How any infrastructure bill or bills balances the thorny politics on Capitol Hill with the stark math of climate change will be one of the key stories to watch this summer.

Add all that to actual real-time work by Repubicans to keep the climate rolling toward its inevitable horrible ending — if nothing is done, and fast. A current court case is an example of the behind-the-scenes shitstorm Republicans are actually doing to maintain the oil/gas-industries status quo — via Jacobin Magazine, also this morning:

Republican attorneys general in seventeen states are attempting to derail a key climate lawsuit days before settlement talks are set to begin. The abrupt move, which follows the fossil fuel industry funneling millions to the GOP politicians involved, threatens to upend what could be a historic win for environmental activists.

The Republican effort comes in the same week scientists sounded an alarm about atmospheric carbon dioxide hitting its highest level in four million years.

In 2015, twenty-one young plaintiffs, supported by the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust, sued the Obama administration in a case called Juliana v. United States.
The claimants, ages eight to nineteen, argued that the federal government had directly contributed to the global climate crisis and in doing so, violated their constitutional rights — essentially to life, liberty, and property.

And the meat of the subject:

The seventeen attorneys general have together raked in more than $3 million from oil and gas interests since 2016, according to data compiled by the National Institute on Money in Politics.
Additionally, the officials’ national political organization, the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), received more than $2.7 million in 2019 and 2020 from fossil fuel companies, and their lobbying groups, according to a Daily Poster review of data compiled by CQ Roll Call’s Political MoneyLine.

RAGA has a long-standing relationship with the fossil fuel industry.
In April 2019, the group hosted an “oil and gas summit” in Houston, Texas.
A 2019 membership document obtained by the watchdog group Documented revealed that corporate interests can pay anywhere from $15,000 to more than $1 million to score varying levels of access to Republican attorneys general and their staff at RAGA events.

Money and power, especially power, the rock-bottom reality of the GQP, and they will do anything — and the word, ‘anything,’ literally means ‘anything’ — to keep that power. Even if in the end kills everyone on the planet…

(Illustration out front found here).