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Pelosi Climate Panel Dies in Republican Sweep of House (Update2)
2010-12-02 00:08:14.209 GMT
(Updates with comment from Boehner in fifth paragraph.)
By Jim Snyder
Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Republicans will eliminate the House
committee created by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to highlight the
threat of climate change, Representative James Sensenbrenner,
the top Republican on the panel, said today.
In one of her first acts as speaker in 2007, Pelosi, a
California Democrat, created the House Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming to draw attention to
climate-change science and showcase how a cap on carbon dioxide
needn't be a threat to economic growth.
Republicans, who won control of the House in the Nov. 2
election, have opposed legislative efforts to regulate carbon
emissions as a tax on energy. When the panel convened today,
Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, said that the hearing
"will be the last of the select committee."
Sensenbrenner had advocated extending the panel as a forum
to scrutinize Obama administration actions. In an opinion column
on Nov. 8 in the Washington newspaper Roll Call, he wrote that
the committee was "more qualified than any other" to challenge
Obama environmental initiatives that he said may threaten the
economy. He acknowledged that other Republicans thought the
panel should be eliminated to save money.
"We are going to get rid of waste and duplication in terms
of how we run the Congress," House Republican Leader John
Boehner, who is slated to become speaker in January, told
reporters today. "We believe the Science Committee is more than
capable of handling this issue and in the process save several
million dollars."
'Very Disappointing'
Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, said it's "very
disappointing" that House Republicans will shut the committee
and won't make energy independence and climate change a priority
in the next Congress.
"Disbanding the select committee does not diminish the
urgent need to act on these very critical issues," Hammill said
in an e-mailed statement.
The election increased the ranks of Republican climate-
change skeptics in both the House and Senate, according to
ThinkProgress, an arm of the Center for American Progress Action
Fund, a Washington research group allied with Democrats.
Committee Chairman Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat,
criticized the attitude among many Republican lawmakers.
"While members of Congress may question the science of
global warming, the rest of the world does not," he said in his
final statement as chairman.
The panel held 75 hearings, creating a record of evidence
showing that humans are causing the planet to warm and that the
United States is in danger of falling behind in the race for
clean-energy technologies, Markey said. China plans to invest
$738 billion on clean-energy technologies, he said.
"The politics may change but the problem isn't going
away," Markey said.
For Related News and Information:
Today's top power news: PTOP <GO>
Top energy stories: ETOP <GO>
--Editors: Terry Atlas, Steve Geimann
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jim Snyder in Washington at +1-202-624-1972 or
jsnyder24@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Larry Liebert at +1-202-624-1936 or
lliebert@bloomberg.net.
