On the recordSeptember 7, 2017
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chair, I very much respect the viewpoint of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan), and I want to be clear: I believe in fossil fuel. I think that the real conundrum in this debate is who is best able to determine whether or not areas off of where they happen to live should or shouldn't be developed: Should it be decided from Washington, D.C., or should it be decided by local folks? So I would frame this, fundamentally, as an issue of home rule, that all the points that you are making are very, very valid, but shouldn't that determination be made by folks that are most close and would be most affected by what might or might not happen in the offshore waters off of the coast of South Carolina or Florida or Georgia or elsewhere? So I just go back to, if we found the mother of all lodes, there has been testing out there, they say 132 days' worth of supply might be off the coast of South Carolina, and what people have said is we have a vibrant tourism industry on the coast of South Carolina and we don't think the risks are worth the rewards based on what might or might not be out there. So I very much respect the viewpoint of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan), but again, what folks are telling me at home on the coast of South Carolina is, even if stuff is out there, we are concerned about the tourism risk and we are concerned about the infrastructure that would be required to support it.
