President Donald Trump might have left climate change out of his State of the Union address Tuesday night, but the next day, House Democrats filled the silence with twin committee hearings addressing the issue.
Both the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change and the Natural Resources Committee met Wednesday morning to discuss the problem. Democratic California Representative Scott Peters tweeted it was the first Energy and Commerce hearing to focus on the issue in six years, while House Natural Resources Committee Chairman and Democratic Arizona Representative Raúl M. Grijalva said it was the first hearing on climate change in eight years, as CNN reported.
“Today, we turn the page on this committee from climate change denial to climate action,” Grijalva said.
No more climate denialism. No more evasions. @HouseDemocrats are in charge. Led by @RepRaulGrijalva, the Natural Resources Committee will hold the first Congressional hearings on climate change in a decade starting on Wednesday, Feb 6th. It’s time to #ActOnClimate. pic.twitter.com/L39R1W0RQ9
— Natural Resources (@NRDems) February 4, 2019
Here are some of the key takeaways from the hearings:
1. ‘Turning the page’ on denial
House Republicans participating in the hearings largely abandoned outright denial of climate science, E&E News reported.
When Colorado Democratic Representative Diana DeGette asked every witness called by both parties before the Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee if they believed the climate was changing primarily due to greenhouse gas emissions, they all said yes.
“That in itself is a revolutionary step for this committee,” DeGette said, E&E News reported.
It’s unanimous! At the first @EnergyCommerce hearing on #ClimateChange in years, every single witness agreed: Climate Change is real and humans contribute to it. This is an important step in our effort to ensure science and facts guide environmental policy making. Watch: pic.twitter.com/LU4mAmvTox
— Rep. Diana DeGette (@RepDianaDeGette) February 6, 2019
However, there was more skepticism expressed by Republicans and their witnesses at the Natural Resources Committee hearing. One Republican witness was retired chair of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology Judith Curry, who argued that droughts and extreme weather events in the past had been worse than those that have taken place in recent years, The Guardian reported.
2. Green New Deal
Most Republicans, however, opted to accept that climate change is happening while they shifted their disagreement to how it should be addressed.
Republican West Virginia Representative David McKinley told the Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee that “we all agree” on what is happening. “Where we disagree is on solutions,” he said, E&E News reported.
Republicans like McKinley focused their opposition on a Green New Deal, an ambitious plan supported by some Democrats to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels while providing green jobs and addressing economic inequality.
“If anyone thinks that decarbonizing America is going to save the planet, whether that’s 10 years or 20 years from now, they’re delusional,” McKinley said.
Republicans generally prefer market or technology based solutions to sweeping policy proposals, E&E News reported.
“We have heard about general tenets of the plan for the U.S., such as all renewable electricity generation by 2030, all zero emission passenger vehicles in just 11 years, a federal job guarantee and a living wage guarantee,” Republican Oregon Representative Greg Walden said. “We have serious concerns about the potential adverse economic and employment impacts of these types of measures.”
However, top Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee like Subcommittee Chairman and New York Democratic Representative Paul Tonko and full Committee Chairman and New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone are also skeptical of the idea. Pallone recommended addressing climate change within an infrastructure bill that Trump would sign as the most politically realistic way forward.
3. Bipartisan impacts
In a show of how much climate change is already affecting American daily life, both Republican and Democratic governors testified before the Natural Resources Committee about what it had done to their states.
North Carolina Democratic Governor Roy Cooper spoke of the devastation caused by Hurricane Florence and other recent storms. He said his state had survived two 500-year flooding events in two years.
“When storms are becoming more fierce, it is not enough to pick up the pieces. We must take action to prevent this kind of devastation in the future,” Cooper said, as CNN reported. “I urge Congress and all of our federal partners to match the level of determination brought to recovery efforts to fight the effects of climate change.”
Republican Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker agreed with Cooper on the need for preventative action. He spoke about the impact that more frequent storms, higher temperatures and warmer oceans had had on his state’s residents, agriculture, recreation and fisheries and called both for federal plans for infrastructure adaptation and emissions reduction.
In Massachusetts, #climatechange is not a partisan issue. While we sometimes disagree on specific policies, we understand the science and know the impacts are real because we are experiencing them first-hand. #ActOnClimate pic.twitter.com/172oetAbiA
— Charlie Baker (@MassGovernor) February 6, 2019
“This is not a challenge any one of us can solve alone. We need collective action from federal, state and local governments working with the private sector to aggressively reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the changes that are already in motion,” Baker said, CNN reported.
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