Absent such steps, the increased use of natural gas will aggravate smog, expose the public to more carcinogenic chemicals, and worsen climate change.

The larger the defendant, the bigger the blizzard of motion practice and stall filings.

Do you estimate how much these reductions will save industry participants each year?

And do you think that the New Source Performance Standards have driven down actual fugitive methane emissions from oil and natural gas systems at this point?

You all at EPA are the lead on the President's Climate Action Plan.

And our Founding Fathers would be horrified to see this.

the civil jury is in the United States a political institution and one form of the sovereignty of the people.

It is a wonderful, terrific letter. It's very clear. It lays out what your choices are.

In Rhode Island, it's been a success.

The Federal Government needs to do more to limit the release of methane and other pollutants from the production and distribution of natural gas.

I think that having every American have the ability to stand before a jury and be treated equally...

It is recognized as a greenhouse gas, that is absolutely right.

And its role as a greenhouse gas is what?

the EPA estimates that the Oil and Gas New Source Performance Standards finalized in 2012 will result in between 1 million and 1.7 million tons of methane reduced annually.

Discovery is very often extended by defendants in order to keep the blizzard rolling.

I am delighted to be hosting this hearing of our Subcommittee, and I particularly want to welcome our distinguished ranking member back.

My experience has been that plaintiffs want to get to court as fast as they possibly can.

I think it is really important that we get this right.

So there's more than one story about this. And, like I said, Rhode Island isn't a very big State, and we made this work, and it's worked actually pretty well.

And how about the losses during normal production, the ones that were underestimated by EPA and shown to have been larger by the UT study that are further along in the process?

I am concerned about how much value education oversight actually adds these days given the changes that are happening in our population and in our technology.

I would like your thoughts on the ways in which Government's education oversight should be changed to better allow for the type of innovation that is needed.

Yes, particularly if you consider a woman with a couple of children who has been in a minimum wage job...

That is a very significant tragedy in this context because people do not get a second youth to go back and redo an education that was a phony one.

I do not think that the solution is to eliminate it.