The sweltering Summer of 2023 has come to a close. According to NASA and the World Meteorological Organization, it was Earth’s hottest summer on record, with July and August being the two hottest months ever recorded. Our warming climate has moved well beyond the era of minor temperature fluctuations and scientific modeling, it is slapping us in the face by smashing records and adversely affecting people’s lives. Here in the U.S., more than a dozen cities experienced their hottest summer ever. These include Pensacola, Sarasota and Key West, Florida; Mobile, Alabama; Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Del Rio, El Paso, San Antonio and Victoria, Texas; and Roswell, New Mexico. We are seeing real impacts on our health, on our economy and cost of living, and on our water and food supplies. The impacts of climate change are impossible to ignore, and its time for conservatives to get more engaged in crafting real solutions. Climate change is driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the Earth’s atmosphere, gases that act like a blanket to trap more the sun’s heat rather than allowing it to escape back into space. That extra heat not only results in sweltering heatwaves, it affects weather patterns, intensifies storms, expands the range of destructive or dangerous pests, and fuels wildfires. Florida, Arizona, California We have witnessed some record-breaking heat that put all previous summers to shame. NASA’s temperature data show that this summer’s record heat was not just a small blip on the radar. Average temperatures across the country during these months reached levels we’ve never seen before, bringing with them a multitude of challenges for...
PRESS RELEASE October 24, 2023 CRS Releases “Restoring Accountability” Follow-up Report on Taxpayer Exposure from Orphaned Oil and Gas Wells Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS), a national grassroots organization with more than 23,000 members, has produced a new report following up on its 2021 report Broken Promises, which detailed the staggering taxpayer exposure from orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. “Despite agreeing, as a condition of their drilling permit, to fully clean up and plug well sites once they are finished using them, oil and gas companies regularly skip out on that obligation, leaving us taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in clean-up costs,” explained CRS president David Jenkins. This new report, with updated data, underscores how this fiscal burden on taxpayers continues to grow and explains how long overdue new rules proposed by the Department of Interior (RIN 1004–AE80) to significantly increase its oil and gas program bonding requirements can help. In Broken Promises, we reported that at the end of FY2020, there were more than 96,000 “producible and service wells” on federal public lands, which could leave U.S. taxpayers on the hook for as much as $13.7 billion in future clean-up costs. Since then, BLM has approved more than 11,200 additional permits for oil and gas companies to drill new wells on federal public lands—wells that, without federal bonding reform in place, potentially exposing U.S. taxpayers to an additional $1.6 billion more in clean-up costs. Taxpayers could eventually have to pony up as much as $15 billion, and that does not account for any potential future wells from the 34,000 oil and gas leases...
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) turns 50 years old this year. The law, which was passed in 1973 by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress (unanimous in the Senate) and signed into law by President Nixon, stands as an enduring testament that we can rise above our lesser instincts and be good stewards of what President Reagan referred to as “this magical planet that God gave us.” From the deliberate and cruel efforts to eradicate wolves and grizzly bears from the Lower 48, to the carelessness that drove the bald eagle, our national symbol, to the brink of extinction, history is full of examples where mankind has been intolerant of wildlife and/or ignorant of its needs. Thanks to the ESA, bald eagle numbers have recovered across the Lower 48, going from a low of 1,000 or less in the 1950s to more than 300,000 today. Wolves and grizzly bears have also rebounded significantly, with healthy, sustainable populations in several states. Unfortunately, too many people fail to recognize the ESA as the conservative law it is. President Reagan once rhetorically asked, “What is a conservative after all, but one who conserves?” Conservative political theorist Russell Kirk went even further, writing in a Baltimore Sun op-ed, “nothing is more conservative than conservation.” Wildlife, from apex predators to the tiniest insects, play an essential role in keeping the earth’s life-sustaining ecology healthy. Bears and wolves, by preying primarily on weak and sick moose, deer, or elk, make the populations of those ungulates healthier. And pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are essential to our food crops. From my personal experiences, I have come...
David Jenkins, president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship, recently published an op-ed in the The Gainesville Sun taking a closer look at Florida’s energy policies and what they mean for the future of solar. In Florida lawmakers favor solar monopolies over free market, Jenkins walks through concerns that current and proposed policies may be tilting the playing field toward monopoly utilities rather than encouraging real competition. He touches on what that could mean for rooftop solar, consumer choice, and long-term energy costs—while raising broader questions about how much government should shape the market. Read the full op-ed:...
David Jenkins, president of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship, recently published an op-ed in the Reno Gazette Journal titled More drilling in Nevada won’t lower prices, just make Big Oil richer. In the piece, Jenkins looks at a question a lot of people are asking right now: would drilling more oil in the U.S. actually bring gas prices down? He explains that oil prices are set globally, so even if more drilling happens here at home, it doesn’t automatically mean cheaper prices at the pump for drivers. The op-ed also notes that expanding drilling on public lands would largely benefit big oil companies, since they are the ones best positioned to increase production and capture those profits. Read the full op-ed:...
