Republican Mike Castle, who heads a group of 69 moderate House members, senators and governors, says the strategy doesn't address the fact that pollution continues to be a health threat.
"If I tried to follow these talking points at a town hall meeting with my constituents, I'd be booed," he said.
Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords, who left the Republican Party in 2001 to become an independent partly over its anti-green agenda, called the memo "outlandish" and an attempt to deceive voters.
"They have a head-in-the-sand approach to it. They're just sloughing off the human health impacts -- the premature deaths and asthma attacks caused by power plant pollution," Jeffords said.
Republican House Conference director Greg Cist, who sent the e-mail, said: "It's up to our members if they want to use it or not. We're not stuffing it down their throats."
He said the memo was spurred by concerns that environmental groups were using myths to try to make the Republicans look bad.
"We wanted to show how the environment has been improving," Cist said. "We wanted to provide the other side of the story."
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