WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2007
Pelosi Turns Up Heat On Global Warming
Speaker Forcing Legislative Action On Climate Change
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., is moving to create a special committee to recommend legislation for cutting greenhouse gases. (AP)
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Interactive Global Warming The greenhouse effect, a look at the Kyoto Protocol and a history of the Earth's climate.
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Interactive 100-Hour Agenda A look at legislation new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants the chamber to pass swiftly.
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She's moving to create a special committee to recommend legislation for cutting greenhouse gases, most likely to be chaired by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a Democratic leadership aide said Wednesday.
Markey has advocated raising mileage standards for cars, trucks and SUVs and is one of the House's biggest critics of oil companies and U.S. automakers,
Pelosi has discussed the proposal with at least two Democratic committee chairmen: fellow Californian Henry Waxman of Oversight and Government Reform, and West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, who heads the Natural Resources panel. Pelosi intends to announce the move this week, said the leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because not all of the details have been worked out.
The move, to some degree, would sidestep two of the House's most powerful Democratic committee bosses, in shaping what's expected to be at least a yearlong debate on global warming:
Rahall said he had spoken with Pelosi about the idea of a new select committee. Rahall's panel oversees energy development on public lands, including coal, oil and natural gas as well as cleaner, non-carbon sources such as geothermal and windmills.
"I've been assured that no legislative jurisdiction would be taken away from any committee," Rahall said. "No legislative responsibility would be shifted from any committee."
As chair of Energy and Commerce, Dingell oversees the Clean Air Act — and would have the most to lose by letting another panel take the lead. The panel's staff chief, Dennis Fitzgibbons, a former auto company lobbyist, said Dingell was philosophically opposed to Pelosi's plan.
"He has always been cool to the idea, because it undermines the fundamental idea for establishing committees in the first place, which is to acquire expertise in a certain area," Fitzgibbons said.
Dingell, asked about the new committee, said, "I have not been officially informed."
Waxman, like Markey a one-time protege of Dingell, said that Pelosi discussed the idea of a special committee with him several days ago. He, too, is a skeptic.
"I believe the existing committees can deal effectively with global warming," he said Wednesday. "But I can also understand why the speaker believes it's important to highlight this issue."
A new committee would give Pelosi a vehicle to push a regulatory scheme for reducing greenhouse gases and pit her against President Bush, who plans to outline his global warming approach in his State of the Union next week. Mr .Bush has repeatedly opposed any mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, instead advocating voluntary approaches and research on new technologies. Pelosi has supported mandatory reductions with specific target dates for achieving them.
"It's an issue that the speaker thinks is critical to address," said Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider.
Democratic officials said the committee would be responsible for advising the best legislative approaches while the actual bill-writing duties would likely still be done by Dingell's and Rangel's committees. Among the topics being negotiated are how long the committee should exist and how broad its focus should be, since global climate change affects virtually everything.
Pelosi hasn't shied from taking on other powerful House Democrats. She endorsed the losing effort by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., to become majority leader over Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. She also has approved of six-year term limits for committee chairmen over objections from Dingell and other senior Democrats.
She also has a history with Dingell, who backed Hoyer over Pelosi in a 2001 race for the party whip's post. Pelosi backed a Democratic primary challenger to Dingell's re-election the following year.
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Think of all the money the Poor & Elderly will save on their heating bills.
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Posted by SusanHelit at 07:00 PM : Jan 18, 2007
SusanHelit let me tell you about my father who died (78 yr old)
a couple years ago...he smoked, but quit around early 70's
The nurse who filled out the death certificate
put down the cause of death was smoking (cancer)...
forget the 10-15 drugs he was taking the last several years of his life
forget he was 78+ yr old...
if he smoked, and died of cancer,
the record shows he died because of the smoking...
come around the majiority of the scientist that was on the committe to check on global warming say there is none green peace tried to get scientice to sign on and say man is causing global warming and only 2500 signed on what does that tell you! check your facts it a liberal way of controling the people of the USA. IF you check out what the demcrocated controll congrees want to do is if you talk bad about them they want you to report to them and if you don't you can be fined and jailed for up to 1 year. Did you see the congrees do this when the Republinans controled it? the answer is NO if they tried to the liberal news would be all over them and say they are trying to take away our rights but do you hear the liberal papers talking about what the dem's are tring to do? No you are not
It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global. However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying "%u2026current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries".[1]
Palaeoclimatologists developing regionally specific climate reconstructions of past centuries conventionally label their coldest interval as "LIA" and their warmest interval as the "MWP".[2][3] Others follow the convention and when a significant climate event is found in the "LIA" or "MWP" time frames, associate their events to the period. Some "MWP" events are thus wet events or cold events rather than strictly warm events, particularly in central Antarctica where climate patterns opposite to the North Atlantic area have been noticed.
The Medieval Warm Period partially coincides with the peak in solar activity named the Medieval Maximum (1100%u20131250).
The mini ice age followed a period of global warming also somtime around 1400's. Ask the Europeans about that one.
For those of us discussing here, probably not much effect. The burden will fall on our children and future generations...
Nice try, though.
Funny. Not.
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