New House Committee on Global Warming
Great to hear this news; Speaker Pelosi and the Dems are forming a new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, to be led by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA). Unfortunately, change doesn't always come easily, and Pelosi should punish Rep Dingell, who I generally like, for spouting this utter nonsense:
The member of Congress with the most to lose under the new arrangement is Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has been a longtime champion of Detroit automakers and who has consistently resisted forcing them to boost the fuel economy of their vehicles.
Dingell, the chairman of the powerful House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the longest-serving member of the House, greeted the news of the new committee with anger. He told the Associated Press that the new committee would serve as little more than an excuse for members of Congress to take exotic trips.
"We should probably name it the Committee on World Travel and Junkets," Dingell said. "We're just empowering a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs to go around and make speeches and make commitments that will be very difficult to honor. . . . They're going to get under the feet of and interfere with those who are trying to do a decent job of legislating."
The new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is charged with probing climate change and developing approaches to slowing the pace of global warming. Markey, the 16-term Democrat who is expected to be named chairman today, would almost certainly bring a more aggressive approach to the issue than Dingell and some of the other current committee chairmen.
Markey has been an outspoken advocate of boosting fuel-efficiency standards of automobiles, and of instituting mandatory emissions caps on US industry to rein in the production of greenhouse gases. He declined to comment yesterday.
The 60-year-old Markey has served with Dingell on the Energy and Commerce Committee for all of his 30-plus years in the House. He has been widely considered a protégé of the 80-year-old Dingell, who seldom breaks publicly with the chairman. Markey aides said the speaker approached him about taking on the new task.
Creating a new committee requires the approval of the full House, though several House Democrats said rank-and-file members are unlikely to buck Pelosi on the House floor, despite lobbying by Dingell and his allies.
Dingell had announced hearings on global warming before Pelosi moved to create the new committee, though environmentalists regard him with deep skepticism because of his ties to the auto industry. His wife, Deborah, is a top lobbyist for General Motors.
How profoundly embarrassing for Rep. Dingell, that he would make up this garbage about junkets as petty revenge for Pelosi taking a little piece of his fiefdom. If Michigan representatives had actually improved gas mileage standards instead of continually heading them off at the behest of American automakers, maybe Detroit wouldn't be falling behind the Japanese and others and they wouldn't have had to lay off so many American workers.
Anyway, I look forward to hearing more about Rep. Markey's efforts on this new committee on this extremely important topic.
