Yesterday, I posted on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plans for the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which is scheduled to dissolve at the end of the year. Signs pointed to her intent to keep the committee going for another session.
In a press conference today, she confirmed it:
It is my intention to put forth a renewal of that committee in the new Congress, in the rules for the new congress. I have consulted in bipartisan way on this subject, and I intend to put it in the rules. I think we do have a need for one more term, because our work is not finished. We do not have the climate change legislation that I had hoped we might be closer to, at least at this point. The committee serves a tremendous intellectual resource purpose for me to get the scientific basis for how we go forward, and it is a big problem. It is as big as the world, literally and figuratively. Chairman Markey has done a magnificent job, to use the word again. And I hope he will agree to serve in that position.
Minutes later, Markey released this statement:
I thank Speaker Pelosi for the opportunity to continue serving as Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Our committee has worked on a bipartisan basis to raise the profile of global warming and energy solutions during the last Congress and I look forward to another productive session in the next two years. With a new, climate-friendly administration, we have an historic opportunity to put the American economy on a green road to recovery and finally solve the greatest challenge the planet has ever faced.
So that’s that!
(Markey’s committee has also released its annual report, which documents its activities over the past year.)
Pelosi also commented on the timing of possible climate legislation:
In terms of the timing of the climate change legislation, we would be working closely with the Obama-to-be Administration on the nature and timing of it. Many decisions have to be made about it yet. We know what our principles are that need to be followed. They have been established largely through the work of the Select Committee. But then there are some decisions in terms of implementation, and we want to do it right and we want to do it in a bipartisan way, and we are going to do it working with the new President of the United States.
Here’s the video:
