Fred Upton Should Draft Climate Change Legislation

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Designate Wrong on Climate Change

The Chairman's Op Ed in The Wall Street Journal today gets it all wrong.  Chairman Designate Upton is calling for legislation to delay EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases instead of drafting and promoting legislation that would provide a management plan for mitigating climate change.  Clearly, the delay approach is just a disguise for doing nothing about global warming.  It is disingenuous and avoids directly and immediately addressing the most important environmental issue facing us today.

Fred Upton

Chairman Designate Upton's claims that the regulations will kill jobs and raise electricity prices are wrong too.  The climate change regs will lead to innovation, create jobs and could actually lower electricity prices in the face of already needed electricity price increases.  Congress should do its duty and impliment a Cap and Trade program to effectively and efficiently deal with the climate problem.  Absent that, the EPA is forced to do the work of Congress.  Chairman Designate Upton knows this, but prefers to go for a political kill than get the U.S. Congress to address this most important of environmental issues.  He should be working with Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer to craft legislation to address the climate change problem.