Sherwood Boehlert: “I want to applaud that action, because I think for years now the language this amendment would strike has been used to…”

“I want to applaud that action, because I think for years now the language this amendment would strike has been used to hound Federal agencies that try to address climate change. It was used to harass agencies who sent government officials to international climate change meetings, and it has been used in attempts to thwart voluntary agreements, voluntary agreements, with industries that offered to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, both President Bushes, 41 and 43, acknowledged that climate change is a serious problem. In fact, President George Herbert Walker Bush even signed an international agreement to reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases, and that treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate. Despite its misgivings about the Kyoto Protocol, this administration too has acknowledged the seriousness of climate change. As many know, after receiving last month the report he requested from the National Academy of Sciences, a report that underscored yet again the scientific consensus that exists on climate change, President Bush pledged that the U.S. will take a leadership role to address it.”