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Nearly four years ago, the New York Times did a piece about what seemed to be a growing number of Republicans who wanted to do something about climate change. The article told the story of a

clandestine gathering in a ballroom of the Grand America Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City,

where these members of Congress worked through different ideas and proposals to cope with a

warming planet.

And the member of the House who invited them all was John Curtis, who has just been sworn in as senator for Utah.

Recently, Curtis told us about that meeting.

He said the question he was trying to answer was, how do you get Republicans to talk about climate?

Wouldn't it be amazing if we could get a few Republicans out to Utah to talk about climate?

There's a couple of things there. One is, I want Utah to be the leader on everything.

That's why it was important for me to bring them out to Utah. And I think in our wildest

imaginations, we thought we could get several Republicans to come to Utah to talk about climate.

Imagine our surprise and our delight when I've forgotten the exact number.

I'm going to say it was about 18.

Republicans said, yeah, we'll come out to Utah and talk about climate.

Not to be fair, more than one of those said, if there's any press, I won't come.

Meaning, if my name's associated with climate, I'm not in.

But I am interested enough to come and talk about climate. And these were not just ordinary

House Republicans. And as they would RSVP, the staff would excitedly announce a new name that was coming.

And everyone was an announcement and was a big deal.

As it turned out, we had the top Republican on every committee of jurisdiction that had anything to do with climate.

So energy and commerce, transportation, ag, all of these top Republicans came, and they were

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