Responding to what they consider years of Republican indifference, the top Democrats on three key US House of Representatives committees said they will hold 2 days of hearings on climate change and its consequences early in 2019.
“Our rapidly changing climate, and the Trump administration’s efforts to take us in the wrong direction, seriously jeopardize our future,” Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ), Raul M. Grijalva (Ariz.), and Eddie Bernice Johnson (Tex.) jointly announced on Nov. 14.
The three lawmakers now are ranking minority members, respectively, of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Natural Resources Committee, and Science, Space, and Technology Committee. They are in line to become chairs of those committees once Democrats assume majority control of the House in January.
“We plan to hit the ground immediately with a series of hearings early in the next Congress on how best to combat this growing global crisis,” they said. “Our committees plan to work closely together to aggressively assess the public health, economic, and environmental impacts of climate change and to explore the best solutions to combat this challenge.”
They indicated that hearings will examine threats raised in recent reports from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; the World Health Organization; and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The three committees also will explore how other countries and state and local governments are addressing climate change at a time when the Trump administration has pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement and rolled back the Clean Power Plan.
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