Pelosi to keep climate committee, Castor as chair

December 14, 2020

The Select Committee on the Climate Crisis will return for the 117th Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday, as President-elect Joe Biden pushes for aggressive action on climate change.

"As we look toward the future, this Select Committee will continue to champion ambitious progress to protect our communities, promote justice, create good-paying jobs and safeguard our planet for generations to come," Pelosi said in a statement.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) will remain chairwoman of the panel, which lacks legislative or subpoena authority.

Pelosi did not say specifically what its role will be next year or whether its membership will remain the same.

One of the committee's Democratic members, Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, will leave the House next year after being elected to the Senate.

The select committee was created at the beginning of the 116th Congress to provide climate policy recommendations by the end of this year, and Democrats on the panel issued a majority staff report to fulfill that obligation in June (Greenwire, June 30).

Next Congress, it will likely offer a messaging vessel for House leadership to push ideas about climate policy, with a closely divided Senate on the horizon and the incoming Biden administration promising to make climate a priority.

Castor said in a statement that her committee's report was "the most detailed, sweeping climate plan in American history."

"In the 117th Congress, the outstanding members of the Committee will proudly work with Speaker Pelosi and the Biden-Harris Administration to turn these climate solutions and clean energy investments into a reality," Castor said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a member of the select committee, said in an interview over the weekend that the panel could serve in a coordinating role, tracking progress on whether Congress and the administration are implementing its recommendations and highlighting climate issues to complement work in the committees of jurisdiction (E&E Daily, Dec. 14).

"This is a very siloed institution, and I think someone doing some air traffic control could be very helpful," Huffman said.

The committee's report offers a broad range of spending and regulatory recommendations, including a clean energy standard and infrastructure investments, many of which mirror the ideas Biden talked up on the campaign trail.

Whether any of it can pass Congress largely depends on whether Democrats win both runoff elections in Georgia next month and take control of the Senate.

The select committee also cannot currently advance legislation or subpoena witnesses, and Huffman said he has not heard talk about "huge new authorities that the select committee would receive."

The panel's creation last year sparked a controversy among some committee chairmen, who did not want to see it take away their power on climate issues, but Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said yesterday that "the whole country will benefit from seeing their work continue."

"Seriously addressing climate change is an across-the-board effort that will touch every aspect of our lives, and if the Biden administration is going to be successful, it needs Chair Castor and her team conducting the necessary oversight and drawing on all the best available ideas," Grijalva said in a statement.

League of Conservation Voters Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Tiernan Sittenfeld said the select committee's comeback is "great news."

"The climate crisis requires an all-of-government approach, and the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis is critically important to making that happen," Sittenfeld said in a statement.


By:  Nick Sobczyk
Source: E&E News