This is very, very troubling because the pace of climate change is now accelerating.

Fire season now lasts about two and a half months longer than it did in 1970.

Obviously we need a real solution to fight wildfires, a solution that ensures sufficient funding, that keeps environmental protections in place and that provides certainty for all of the other Forest Service programs.

The conditions that produce more wildfires are well known.

I want to explore whether this industry self-regulation really works.

I think that is a real problem that we have got.

How can there be so many?

This business about market structure is just powerfully important. That makes this hearing very important.

I want to know what you plan to do about it.

For months the massive gas leak at Porter Ranch, California spewed methane from an underground storage facility into the air.

Yet we have seen the Federal regulators out in California just hand this over to the states.