At the beginning of the 116th Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats were so focused on climate change that they created a new select committee designed to make science-based policy recommendations on how to address climate change. To further emphasize the need for action, the majority named it the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
The creation of this committee was a headline-grabber, with promise of real solutions to address this serious problem we face. The committee started out with a bang but has culminated in disappointment.
The select committee has now released a “majority staff report.” It was designed by majority Democrats as a staff report intentionally, to prevent any consideration, amendments or votes on the content by the entirety of the select committee. The staff report simply reflects the views and proposals of Democratic committee staff.
After a year and a half and millions of dollars spent, this is an abdication of our responsibilities and an abandonment of the committee’s chartered purpose to produce recommendations for the whole House to respond to climate change.
Even worse, most of the staff’s suggestions are completely partisan and unrealistic. They propose a Clean Energy Standard that mandates net-zero emissions in the electricity sector by 2040, something that is likely technologically impossible, and zero-emission buildings by 2030.
Their report would reimpose costly and unrealistic Obama-era CAFE automobile emissions standards by calling for 100% sales of zero-emission cars by 2035 and heavy-duty trucks by 2040. The proposal says that Congress must ensure domestic manufacturing of cleaner vehicles, despite the fact that the Obama Environmental Protection Agency standards forced more automobiles to be manufactured abroad.
The report even includes totally unrelated policy changes, such as election reforms, campaign finance reforms, and support for organized labor.
Instead of new, innovative ideas, these recycled pie-in-the-sky proposals have not and will not move us any closer to substantial policy change. The report also provides no cost estimates for its numerous calls to dramatically transform every aspect of our economy and society.
As a Republican, I volunteered to serve on this committee to create bipartisan policies that will benefit all Americans. I continue to hold out hope for bipartisan work. Whereas the Democrats’ leadership on this committee has failed, Americans of all stripes still have a desire to protect our planet and communities from the effects of climate change.
The select committee can and should produce official bipartisan proposals. Some of the proposals in the staff report are workable, but first we need to clear the irrelevant, job-killing, and unattainable policy threats out of the way. The committee needs to deliver an official report — anything less is unacceptable.
We must focus on strategies that both help the environment and the economy. The most obvious way to do this is through innovation.
According to the International Energy Agency, in the last 10 years, the reduction of emissions in the United States has been the largest in the history of energy. This is largely attributable to innovation and private sector investment. We can incentivize the development of revolutionary technologies such as Advanced Small Modular Reactors, expand carbon capture, and transition to cleaner, more efficient fuels such as natural gas and biofuels that are carbon neutral. For example, renewable biomass, such as residual forest products, can help us meet our goals while providing an economic benefit to our rural communities. America’s private sector needs to be an important asset.
We can mitigate the greenhouse gases already present in our atmosphere through carbon capture, both man-made and natural. A perfect example of this is the Trillion Trees Act, which would incentivize the planting of a trillion trees domestically and globally to pull carbon straight from the atmosphere.
Naturally, these efforts will take time, and we must adapt to that which we cannot immediately reverse. Through resiliency efforts along coasts, smarter building standards, and cleaning up pollution locally, we will better protect communities from disasters and economic losses due to effects from climate change.
Our nation must lead in this space. Our energy is cleaner than that of rivals such as China and Russia. By exporting our cleaner fuels, we can help other countries improve their air quality, reduce overall global emissions, and boost global security by reducing dependence on bad actors.
As one can see, there is ample room for both sides of the aisle to come together and create solutions.
These are fact-based and realistic approaches that we know can help, yet we have been denied a forum to discuss and debate them. Vast mandates such as the Green New Deal or some proposals in this staff report are simply nonstarters, but by sticking to the original intent of the select committee, we can craft meaningful policies on behalf of our constituents.
Republicans are ready to work, but the question remains whether Democrats actually want to see something done. Our global environment is not predicated on partisan policies and won’t see real change without a bipartisan consensus.
Congressman Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, a Republican, represents the First District of Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a member of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
