House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi announced Friday that Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., will lead the resurrected special committee on climate change, which the GOP killed off in 2011.
Pelosi said in a statement that Castor will bring an new “urgency to the existential threat of the climate crisis” facing the United States and the world in leading the committee. The presumed incoming speaker also said the committee will shape how Congress addresses global warming while also looking at ways to create good-paying, “green” jobs.
Castor has made climate change a front-and-center issue, given the impact her state has felt from sea-level rise and other issues impacting Florida’s coastal communities that have been linked to global warming.
She is considered a moderate on climate issues, supporting only some aspects of the “Green New Deal,” which supports moving the country to 100-percent renewable energy.
The news comes as Castor launched a campaign with fellow Florida Democrat Charlie Crist to convince the United Nations to hold its 25th international meeting on climate change, or COP25, in Tampa, Florida.
“The Tampa Bay community is not only ready, willing, and able to host the COP 25, but it is representative of the local communities around the world that are both most effected by the impacts of a warming planet and are leading efforts to adapt to and mitigate global climate change,” Castor and Crist wrote in a letter sent last week to the head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
She underscored that Florida’s coasts are some of the “most impacted communities” when it comes to flooding and more intense weather, which is a result of the Earth’s warming temperatures. The U.N.’s 2019 meeting will deal with implementing the Paris climate change accord, which President Trump is still on course to exit from.
Castor will be entering her seventh term in the House next year. She also serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
