Washington, D.C. – Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) issued the following statement in response to President Obama’s agreement to a climate deal in Paris.
Chairman Lamar Smith: “The Obama administration’s Paris climate deal will increase the control of the federal government over the lives of Americans, all for little environmental benefit. The cornerstone of the president’s pledge, the so-called Clean Power Plan regulation, would cost billions of dollars and risk thousands of jobs.
“States like my home state of Texas would be hit especially hard. According to a recent report by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the Clean Power Plan alone would increase energy costs for Texans by as much as 16 percent per year by the year 2030. Yet this costly regulation would prevent only one-fiftieth of one degree Celsius temperature rise over the next 85 years. And EPA’s own data shows that this regulation would reduce sea level rise by only 1/100th of an inch, the thickness of three sheets of paper.
“In negotiating this deal, the president pledged to double taxpayer-funded foreign aid by $400 million per year by the year 2020 to help other countries deal with climate change. It is the Constitutional role of Congress to appropriate all funding. By law, the president should come back to Congress to review this agreement. He won’t, because he knows the Senate would not ratify it.
“A better solution is to rely on technological advances that have solved many challenges. U.S. carbon emissions have already declined in recent years. Our national laboratories are working with the private sector to discover the next clean-energy breakthroughs.”