Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
11/6/2015
Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this week expressed displeasure with the administration’s climate policy during a roundtable discussion with visiting members of the European Parliament. Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) explained Thursday to the European delegation that it is important to Republicans that the international community knows President Barack Obama does not have the backing of the GOP-controlled Congress going into the climate negotiations taking place next month in Paris. “Republicans have been fortunate in that we’ve controlled the House in 17 of the last 21 years, and we’re going to control it next year, so we are not going to be rolling over for the president on the clean energy plan. I just wanted to point that out just to give you a very realistic view of how the executive branch and the legislative branch is totally divided on that particular issue.”
Whitfield noted congressional efforts to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon emissions standards for new and existing coal-fired power plants, regulations that are at the core the United States’ Intended Nationally Determined Contribution submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Each member of the UNFCCC will submit an INDC before the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) being held in Paris from Nov. 30 – Dec. 11. COP21 is hoped to be the venue for the development of a new international climate agreement.
“Because the Obama administration has placed climate change as the No. 1 issue facing mankind, from their perspective, we have some real problems there because we recognize the climate is changing, we recognize that it’s a serious issue, but on our side of the aisle we think that jobs, access to energy, healthcare, clean water, there are other more pressing issues particularly in today’s world and from the perspective of refugees as an example,” Whitfield said.
Estonian MEP Kaja Kallas fired back at Whitfield’s comment to the current refugee crisis in Europe, explaining that the Syrian conflict is linked to climate issues. “If you say that we have more important problems in the world then actually when we look at this Syria conflict then when we look at the roots of the conflict it’s actually climate change,” she said. “It’s actually climate change because all of the drought that they have had, so it is interrelated the problems there.”
Whitfield also suggested that members of Congress will be headed to Paris for COP21. “We look forward to seeing some of you in Paris as well because we’ll be taking a [delegation] over there also,” he said.
