House Republicans to hold hearing on climate change, can I get a witness?

Everything’s upside down. Last week a Democratic president urged a military strike in the Middle East while Republicans dithered about quagmires. Tomorrow, a subpanel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will launch its first climate change hearing in years and hardly any Obama administration official is willing to show up.  Representative Ed Whitfield (R-Ky), who chairs the Committee’s Energy and Power subpanel, says the committee requested presentations from 13 federal agencies. But as of this post only EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz have promised to testify.

Normally, of course, you can’t stop us progressives from talking about climate change. We talk smack about Canadian tar sands, press universities to rethink their carbon investments, and name hurricanes after Marco Rubio. (The last was really funny, but perhaps not fair.) The President’s all in too. Last August, when he denounced, “the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants,” I couldn’t get enough.

So, what leaves Whitfield singing, “Can I Get A Witness?” 

The thing to know is that tomorrow’s major hearing on climate change is not really a major hearing. It is not even one of those Potemkin major hearings where the participants sit like plyboard cut-outs and pretend to be interested in the topic.

No, this is an ambush. And even the Democrats have figured it out.

So, please, do not expect the panel’s vice chairman, Representative Steve Scalise (R-La) to express concern that because of warming and subsidence, Louisiana is experiencing the fastest rate of sea-level rise on the planet. And, no, Representative Cory Gardner (R-Co) is not going to waste time explaining that his state’s water conservation board worries that Colorado may soon lack water to support its cities, farms, and fish runs. Nor will Representative John Barrow (D-Ga) complain that the Peach State lacks any plan to prepare for such climate shockers as heat waves, vector-borne illness, and increased smog?

You see, the real concern of those in charge of this hearing is not that the climate is changing, but that the government might try to do something about it.

Thus Chairman Whitfield’s invitation letter requests that witnesses come prepared to discuss all upcoming “regulations or guidelines” that would make it harder to pump greenhouse gases into the air, and explain how any “agency funds” have been used to reduce or prepare for climate impacts. As Whitfield explained later to press: "It’s important that we be aware of what unilateral action through regulation and executive orders the administration is looking at.”

One of those “unilateral actions” that Whitfield, no doubt, has in mind is EPA’s upcoming proposal to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new fossil fuel power plants. Let’s ignore for the moment how a rule embraced by an elected president, impelled by a Supreme Court decision (Massachusetts v. EPA), and authorized by an act of Congress (the Clean Air Act) can be characterized as “unilateral.” I need to save something for my law students’ final exam.

The coal industry is extremely worried about this because coal is exactly the fossil fuel that President Obama had in mind when he complained about all that “limitless dumping” from “power plants.” And some Beltway experts are predicting that EPA’s new rules may require new coal-fired power plants to adopt expensive technologies like “carbon capture and storage” (CCS) in order to qualify for permits.

Fancy this, for years the coal industry has been telling us about all its clean coal technology.  They said over, and over again that clean coal technology allowed power plants to capture greenhouse gases and pump them underground. We were assured such advancements “aren’t just predictions,” but reality. 

Remember the image of the orange extension cord plugged into that polished lump of coal--the one paraded during NASCAR rallies and in between segments of Sunday morning political talk shows? Remember those television ads with a rainbow coalition of goggled lab and plant workers imploring you to “Believe!”? (Shout it with me: “BELIEVE!”)

And now they say they don’t have it? Let’s have a hearing on that!