Rep. Rob Bishop has a plan for resisting the Democratic push for climate legislation at the House Natural Resources Committee.
Bishop, the panel’s top Republican and a Utahn, argues that his panel does not have jurisdiction over climate change and thus cannot move major climate legislation and that the panel would be better suited for narrower legislation.
“The jurisdiction issue is that the Natural Resources Committee has ZERO jurisdiction over any climate legislation including Clean Air rules, Clean Water Act, etc.,” said Kristina Baum, spokeswoman for Bishop’s side of the committee, in an email.
She explained that all air emissions issues are handled by the Energy and Commerce and Science, Space and Technology Committees. “There is legitimately no reason why we’re discussing climate change in the House Natural Resources Committee,” she added.
Bishop, instead, says that he wants to focus on issues like wildfire management, which can have a significant impact on air quality, along with a serious parks maintenance backlog — which are squarely under the panel’s jurisdiction.
“It is my hope that what we do is come up with ways that we actually help people,” Bishop said in his opening remarks at the panel’s first of six hearings to address climate change last week.
Bishop maintains that the only other area under the committee’s jurisdiction is using trees to control the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Trees, like all plants, take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen.
“That is the jurisdiction of this committee, and those are the kinds of things that I hope we can do to help with specific issues,” Bishop said.
Bishop has faulted the committee’s Democratic chairman, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, for not sharing the panel’s climate change agenda with him, preventing him from determining whether it includes items that he would argue are outside its jurisdiction.
Bishop’s office argues that the Democrats have already broken the rules in the first stages of the legislative process with last week’s hearings.
Under the House committee regulations, the majority must post a public memo that details the subjects of a hearing and names the witnesses. Bishop’s office says Democrats didn’t do so.
“The public memo is supposed to be a transparent way to provide the public with information about what to expect in the hearing and what the focus of the conversation will be,” Baum said. “Without it, no one knows why they are there.”
The first climate hearing last week featured two governors: one from North Carolina and one from Massachusetts. Bishop said if he had known in advance, he would have suggested having a governor from the Western states participate.
