GOP advances in attempts to "repeal" climate science

April 13, 2011 — Votes in both houses of Congress last week demonstrate strong support for the denial of climate science, despite the sweeping scientific consensus that supports it.  While some Republicans have been frank about denying the science, many other Republicans (and some Democrats) attempted to frame the votes to amend the Clean Air Act and strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases as responses to EPA “overreaching.” In fact, the charge of overreaching appears to be largely an attempt to obscure the fact that some members of Congress are unhappy that EPA went ahead and used the authority the Supreme Court has confirmed that the Agency possesses. The charge also diverts attention from the decision made by some members of Congress that action on climate change is less important than protecting the short-term interests of local industries.

On Apr. 7, every Republican in the House except for five who did not vote, along with 19 Democrats, voted for the "Energy Tax Prevention Act." The measure would effectively nullify the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for the purposes of addressing climate change, as the Agency has just recently begun to do, in connection with the emissions of factories, oil and gas producers, power plants, and other large polluters.

Additionally, the Act would repeal the EPA’s scientific findings, published in 2009, in which the Agency states, among other things, that climate change is occurring as a result of greenhouse gas emissions and that those emissions “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) authored the bill. In 2003, Inhofe famously called the threat of global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Upton, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has said that while he believes that climate change is occurring, he does not believe that it is “man-made.”

According to David Doniger, the policy director for the Climate Center at the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), Congress has never overruled or repealed the EPA’s scientific determination on a pollutant in the more than 40-year history of the Clean Air Act.

“It would be unprecedented to step in as politicians and dictate what the science says,” he stated. “It would be like repealing the Surgeon General’s report that smoking causes lung cancer.”

Also last week, Senate Republicans proposed to amend an unrelated small business bill to include provisions nearly identical to those passed by the House on climate change and EPA authority. The effort garnered 50 votes; four Democrats (Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas) voted in favor, and one Republican (Susan Collins of Maine) voted against.  Opponents of EPA’s attempts to regulate greenhouse gases were heartened by the fact that, in the course of a series of related votes, a total of more than 60 Senators recorded support for limiting, delaying, or ending EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

Taking climate change seriously?

The House bill was notable for a provision apparently designed to convey the impression that Congress was taking climate change seriously — one element of which said that “the United States has a role to play in resolving global climate change matters on an international basis.” But votes on a series of amendments, both in committee and on the House floor, made clear that a majority of the House was indeed refusing to accept climate science or the need for immediate and significant domestic action to limit greenhouse gases.

During the House bill’s mark-up in the Energy and Commerce Committee last month, Democrats had proposed a series of amendments that would have affirmed that climate change is occurring, that it is caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, and that those gases are harmful to public health. (See box identifying what the provision passed by the House included, and what it left out.)

Those amendments were voted down in Committee along party lines. When the bill came to the House floor for a vote last week, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) proposed another amendment that reprised the previous Democratic proposals in consolidated form. The Waxman amendment failed, garnering only one Republican vote from Dave Reichert (R-WA).

Additionally, three Democrats — Dan Boren (OK), Collin Peterson (MN), and Nick Rahall (WV) — voted against the Waxman amendment. None of their offices responded to repeated requests for comment on why they did so. Rahall has previously justified his opposition to EPA regulation on his desire to protect the coal industry; similarly, Boren opposes EPA regulation because of its costs to oil and gas producers; and Peterson has said that agricultural producers in his district would welcome climate change because “[t]hey’ll be able to grow more corn.”

EPA “overstepping”?

Other Members of Congress who voted in favor of the House and Senate measures last week justified the attempt to repeal the EPA’s scientific findings by claiming that the Agency had “overstepped” its authority in regulating greenhouse gases.

For example, Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) said in a press release after the vote, “The Clean Air did not include greenhouse gases and Congress, not EPA, is the one with the authority to amend that law.”

Some Democrats echoed that sentiment, as well. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who voted for the Senate bill, said: “The EPA’s overreach is destroying jobs in my state and all over the country, and it must be stopped. I am committed to using every tool at my disposal to put this Agency back in its place.”

While the Clean Air Act did not include greenhouse gases on its list of harmful air pollutants when first enacted, it does contain several provisions that require the Agency to update its standards as new scientific evidence becomes available. The Act also gives the EPA the authority to regulate new air pollutants if those pollutants are deemed harmful to public welfare.

In 2007, during George W. Bush's second term, the Supreme Court heard arguments on these issues. The EPA argued that the Clean Air Act did not give it the authority to regulate vehicle emissions, while several states argued that it did and required regulatory action on the part of the Agency. The Court ruled against the Bush-era EPA, writing: “On the merits, the first question is whether…the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions…in the event that it forms a "judgment" that such emissions contribute to climate change. We have little trouble concluding that it does.”

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens added that the Court found “nothing suggesting that Congress meant to curtail EPA’s power to treat greenhouse gases as air pollutants.”

The Court then ordered the Agency to judge whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases contribute to global warming and, if so, to regulate them accordingly by setting standards and issuing permits. Two years later, the Agency issued its “endangerment” findings in which it concluded that greenhouse gases are harmful and contribute to climate change (the endangerment findings that would be “repealed” under the bill). The process of issuing permits began earlier this year.

“The argument that the EPA has somehow overstepped its authority here has no basis in fact,” said the NRDC’s Doniger. “Those members of Congress who claim that EPA or the Supreme Court made this up are just plain wrong. The Congress wrote the law and the Supreme Court interpreted it correctly and the EPA is now following it after a long period of paying it no mind.”

Bill Snape, senior counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity, agreed. “The legal part of this is really not that complicated,” he said.

Remapping Debate made repeated requests for comments from six of the Republicans and seven of the Democrats in the House and Senate who justified their vote by saying that the EPA had overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act (or who had previously made such claims). None took the opportunity to explain their positions.

Covering one’s tracks

For some members of Congress, it has apparently become preferable to focus attention on making arguments against the EPA than to focus on rejecting climate science on the merits.

For example, when asked by Remapping Debate why the provision to repeal the EPA’s greenhouse gas findings was in the legislation, Robert Sumner, the press secretary for Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), who co-sponsored the House bill, did not say that Whitfield included it because he believed that the findings were erroneous.  Instead, he said that Whitfield justified the provision on the basis that the findings were “the predicate for all of EPA’s actions in this area,” and that Whitfield believes that the Agency should have Congressional authorization before going forward with its regulations.

When pressed as to whether that means that Whitfield accepts the EPA’s scientific findings, Sumner said, “This isn’t about the science. It’s about the Clean Air Act not being an appropriate vehicle for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.”

When pressed further on Whitfield’s beliefs on the existence on climate change caused by human activities, Sumner said simply, “We’ll defer to our previous statements.”

While EPA needed to make findings as a predicate to action, no one suggests that Congress does not have the power to legislate limits on actions to control global warming without having to undo EPA’s findings. But Bill Snape argued it would be more difficult for lawmakers to justify their decision to roll back the EPA’s authority if they left the scientific justification for action in place.

Snape said, however, that it was increasingly apparent that much of the public and many lawmakers do not accept the denial of climate science as a basis for refusing to regulate emissions.

“I don’t think there’s much of a stomach for arguing over [the reality of human-caused climate change] anymore,” he said.

That, Snape said, explains why the House bill contained the provision designed in part to suggest Congress concern about climate change.

Remapping Debate spoke with some Democrats who do accept both the EPA’s findings and its authority to act on those findings. Jake Thompson, a spokesperson for Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, said that Nelson does not dispute either point:  “He thinks the amount of carbon should be reduced, obviously.” But, Thompson said, Nelson voted to strip EPA of authority to regulate in the area because “he thinks that it should be done with incentives, not regulations from the top down.” Thompson went on to explain that Nelson is concerned that the EPA’s regulations would prove too costly for businesses and individuals in Nebraska, a position Nelson has made repeatedly in the past.

But according to Doniger, “There’s no serious pollution problem that’s ever been solved by voluntary action.”

Denial specific to American conservatives?

The GOP position on climate change stands in stark contrast to conservative platforms in other countries. In England, for example, the facts that climate change is happening, that it is caused by human activities, and that it needs to be controlled by the government are actually part of the Conservative Party’s official position. (see box on a different kind of conservatism).

In a 2009 speech before Congress, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union Party, told Congress: "We cannot afford failure with regard to achieving the climate protection objectives scientists tell us are crucial. That would not only be irresponsible from an ecological point of view, but would also be technologically short-sighted, for the development of new technologies in the energy sector offers major opportunities for growth and jobs in the future."

Doniger sighed. “This seems to be a particularly American problem.”

Photo credit: Dori (dori@merr.info)