TPM reports Every Single GOPer On House Energy Cmte Won't Say Climate Change Is Real. "Democrats on the panel had suggested three amendments that said climate change is a real thing, is caused by humans and has potentially dire consequences for the future. The amendments came on a Republican bill to block the EPA from offering regulations to mitigate the results of global climate shifts. The global scientific community is in near unanimous agreement that climate change is real, and that humans contribute to it.
None of the 31 Republicans on the committee would vote yes on any of the amendments (Rep. Marsha Blackburn [R-TN] declined to vote on one.) The committee's 21 Democrats voted yes on all three."
"There was a time when members of the mainstream GOP were ready to offer their own solutions to climate change. But in the tea party age, those Republicans are few and far between at best, observers say." This is why I get upset with people who claim the tea party are the responsible ones and the people in Washington aren't.
And if you think this is liberally biased TPM, it's not. Here's The Hill on it, House GOP rejects amendments that say climate change is real. "Republicans, in response to the amendments, took issue with climate science Tuesday. "My good friend from California tries to make it clear that the science is settled. I would say it’s not settled," Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said of Waxman's amendment."
It's one thing to say these amendments shouldn't be in this bill, and clearly this is the Democrats trying to embarrass the Republicans. That's politics and that's fine, but it's not like the Republicans are saying climate change is real and here's this other way we want to address it. Instead they just say no.
The bill is about having the EPA regulate carbon emission which is a leftover from the MA vs EPA supreme court decision. That was the case brought by the MA Attorney General to get the Bush administration to regulate green house gases like Bush said he would during the 2000 campaign. But once in office he changed his mind. The law says the EPA must regulate pollution and the AG said Carbon Dioxide is pollution. The Supreme Court agreed even though Scalia dug up Webster’s New International Dictionary 1910 (2d ed. 1949) who's second definition said “[t]he body of the earth’s atmosphere; esp., the part of it near the earth, as distinguished from the upper rarefied part” and concluded that since CO2 rests high in the atmosphere, the EPA shouldn't regulate it because it's not part of "the natural meaning of that term" pollution. (I love bringing that up).
So yeah, it seems to me that all the climate deniers go out of their way to do so. It's all an excuse to not raise taxes on anything. Of course the point of a carbon tax would be to price in real externalities (destroying the environment is a real cost that should be included in prices) and to use free market forces to find alternative energy solutions. Isn't that what conservatives want? And by the way, we're still subsidizing giant oil companies (the most profitable companies) with tax breaks worth about $4 billion a year. But tea partiers don't talk about cutting that, better to cut $5 from education and some from NOAA (who needs weather monitoring).
Sigh, I'm ranting too much. I don't like it when I do that.
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