Billy Long: I want to fight climate change, but Democrat's Climate Action Now Act is not the way to do it

(From Seventh District Congressman Billy Long)

According to the European Climate Action Network, not a single European Union country is on target to meet the goals they agreed to when they signed the Paris Climate Agreement.

If these countries want to eventually meet their goals, a United Nations report stated they must triple their current efforts. This is very typical of most multilateral agreements the United States enters into. The world watches as other nations ignore what they signed up for but everyone expects the U.S. to live up to the letter of the law. 

When President Trump in 2017 announced his intentions to withdraw from the agreement, he knew it would save thousands of Americans jobs.

Democrats refuse to acknowledge the reality of the situation. They know the numbers and they know other countries are nowhere near capable of meeting their goals. While ignoring the cold hard facts, their recently introduced bill, the Climate Action Now Act, would reverse President Trump’s decision. 

Similar to the Paris Climate Agreement, this bill is a political gimmick that has no bipartisan support. The Democrats on Energy and Commerce held no subcommittee hearings or markups, didn’t take feedback from the administration or stakeholders and talked with no experts on the issue before passing the bill out of committee.

Like I’ve said before, we need to do all that we can to combat climate change, but not by entering into well intentioned agreements that have no achievable standards. Unfortunately, in 2015, President Obama did just that. 

This unilateral decision had no congressional advisement, economic impact or cost-benefit analysis and was never ratified by the Senate. According to National Economic Research Associates, this deal would cost the U.S. 2.7 million jobs by 2025 and $3 trillion by 2040. Not only would this deal cost money and jobs, it wouldn’t actually lower greenhouse gas emissions or global temperatures.

I want to fight climate change, but the Climate Action Now Act is not the way to do it. We in Congress, along with private companies, have taken a number of actions over the years that have helped our environment without costing jobs and money. Missouri is a great example of this. 

Between 2005 and 2016, Missouri companies took it upon themselves and reduced the state’s carbon emissions by nearly 17 percent. These are the types of solutions that need to be discussed, not partisan agreements that only cause harm.