Committee Democrats Defend Clean Power Plan and NOAA
(Washington, DC) - Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing to review EPA’s final Clean Power Plan (CPP) rule and to discuss how the rule relates to the upcoming climate negotiations in Paris.
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said in her statement for the record, “We will likely hear again today that the Clean Power Plan will cause nothing but harm to our economy; that the federal government is overstepping its authority; and that the rule won’t make any difference in the long-run. We will also hear that the President’s climate agenda is ‘extreme’ and that it is being driven by ‘climate alarmists.’
“I recognize that implementing the Clean Power Plan will not be easy, and that there are real costs associated with transitioning to a low carbon economy. But the bottom line is that the costs of inaction are even greater. Equally important is that in addition to its long-term benefits, the Clean Power Plan sends a strong and much needed signal to the rest of the world about the seriousness of the United States in addressing climate change. Such a commitment is critical to meaningful international engagement.”
Democratic Members of the Committee focused on the need to address the threat of climate change, including the importance of American leadership on the issue; the reasonableness and flexibility of the Clean Power Plan; and the idea that economic security and environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive goals.
Ranking Member of the Environment Subcommittee, Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), said, "When you have the scientific and business communities agreeing that action to address climate change is necessary and that the benefits outweigh the risks, then it is clearly time for Congress to listen. I am hopeful that with the United States’ leadership and commitment, the UN climate negotiations will result in meaningful actions to address our biggest environmental challenge.”
Unfortunately, the Chairman also used the hearing as a platform to continue his attack on NOAA’s climate science. He said, “Another example of how this administration attempts to promote its suspicious climate agenda can be seen at NOAA. Its employees altered historical climate data to get politically correct results in an attempt to disprove the hiatus in global temperature increases.”
After the hearing, Ranking Member Johnson responded, “There have been a lot of unsupported allegations coming from the Majority and a number of right-wing blogs about NOAA’s climate research. In the scientific community, the research results in question aren’t controversial at all. The research was peer-reviewed and published in one of our nation’s premier scientific journals. Also, despite the repeated assertions of the Majority over the past several months, all of the scientific data and methodologies used in the research study are publically available for reanalysis.”
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