'Anti-woke' Republicans ignore climate's business sense

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By Liam Denning / Bloomberg Opinion

Republican Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy’s reported snub to the Chamber of Commerce marks a milestone of sorts in the growing schism between his caucus’ avowed opposition to meaningful climate policy and spreading facts on the ground.

With anti-wokeness now GOP dogma at both state and federal levels — and for likely presidential contender Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — the House of Representatives is about to become a base from which to attack all things environmental, social and governance, or ESG, related. Republican displeasure with the Chamber isn’t unprecedented — there was a similar spat in the early 1990s — and isn’t confined to ESG issues. The environmental bit of ESG is, however, likely to be a growing source of friction.

There’s both a philosophical and physical contradiction in Republican opposition to companies incorporating climate change into their operations and targets. The philosophical one is that climate change, and government efforts to address it, are now concepts established virtually everywhere outside of GOP committee rooms. Companies would be nuts — or, put another way, fiduciary derelicts — to simply ignore them on principle. In turn, Republicans are nuts to expect companies to do so and, by putting pressure on them, also trashing the party’s reputation for letting businesses run things as they see fit. The physical contradiction is that, even as Republican representatives oppose action to mitigate climate change, most of the country’s clean energy infrastructure gets built in their districts; including McCarthy’s.

Those contradictions will widen as environmental considerations become bedrock elements of corporate strategy, including at companies in the business of fossil fuels. There is a clash here of ideological fundamentalism and corporate pragmatism, exemplified by Texas’ blacklist of companies held to be hostile to fossil-fuel producers. Is a lending officer reluctant to extend financing to frackers a woke tree-hugger or just managing exposure to risks around demand and regulation?

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-anti-woke-republicans-ignore-climates-business-sense/

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1. What stupid messaging.

What's the opposite of "woke"? Oh yeah, "asleep". Like Rid van Winkle, the Republicans have been sleeping for decades while the planet is going to hell. And they think that is a positive attribute. What a bunch of clowns.