Congressman Fred Upton (R-Michigan)
Michigan’s Fred Upton, who became the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in early January, is a climate change denier, reversing a position he took when he told his home town paper, the River Country Journal, in 1999 that, “Climate change is a serious problem that necessitates serious solutions. Everything must be on the table – particularly renewable sources of energy like wind and solar, nuclear power and clean coal technologies.”
In an interview this week at a public forum with journalist Ron Brownstein, when asked to explain why a bill he introduced with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) challenging an Environmental Protection Agency finding portrays climate change as “possible.” Upton said, “I have said many times, and there was a report a couple of weeks ago that in fact you look at this last year, it was the warmest year in the last decade, I think was the number that came out. I don’t — I accept that. I do not say that it is man-made and I know from the hearings that we had that even if cap and trade had been enacted, it would not have changed the temperature by a tenth of a degree, virtually anywhere in the world.” The video of that interview went viral Tuesday.
Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott
So when the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott appeared today before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, complaining that the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations are, in his opinion, contrary to the Clean Air Act, his complaints were not met by unsympathetic ears. (more…)
