House Transportation Panel to Examine Climate Change Impact
The wave of climate policy-centric hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives this month continues.
Transportation authorizers have scheduled a hearing for Feb. 26 to examine the role modes of transportation have regarding the climate. Specifically, the carbon footprint from public entities and private-sector players will be scrutinized by members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The panel’s chairman, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), has indicated the infrastructure package he intends to craft this year will include provisions pertaining to resiliency that would respond to climate change science.
Other key Democrats have affirmed their conviction about humans’ role in climate change.
“Climate change is a real threat to our planet, to our country,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said during a Commerce Committee hearing Feb. 13. Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently unveiled a Green New Deal that proposes the collective reduction of fuel emissions in the coming years.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York proposed that infrastructure legislation should include funding for severe-weather resiliency for construction projects. The proposal is designed to address the concept that storms will intensify over the years.
“We should make massive investments in renewable-energy infrastructure,” Schumer wrote in an editorial in The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, top Republicans, such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), have shared their skepticism about climate change. President Donald Trump has stopped short of endorsing federal data and scientific reports concluding human activity affects the climate.
