Climate Change

Floor Speech

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Mr. CURTIS. Mr. Speaker, Utahns believe in being good stewards of our planet, leaving the Earth better than we found it.

When I served as the mayor of Provo, we pursued policies to construct LEAD-certified buildings, create more environmentally friendly transit options, and educate our residents on how they can be better stewards of the environment. We considered these efforts to be meaningful steps in the right direction.

But, imagine my surprise when I arrived in Congress and learned of the dangerous winner-take-all system of governing that has overtaken Washington, especially on issues impacting the environment.

Instead of a pragmatic approach to a positive change through small and consistent consensus, an all-or-nothing approach dominates the debate and villainizes all but the most extreme positions.

Congress is a place where ideological purity is rewarded more than results. It is easy to vote on a messaging bill that the sponsor knows will never be passed into law and then go home and take the applause from the like-minded constituents, but it is difficult to leave the echo chambers and work across the aisle with individuals who have different backgrounds than yourself and find common ground.

The most obvious example of this is the climate change debate in our country where, today, my Democratic colleagues have taken the easy path. The bill we are voting on today has 224 Democratic sponsors and not a single Republican sponsor.

Instead of working with Republicans on our four-part approach to addressing climate change through innovation, conservation, adaptation, and preparation, we are sending a partisan bill to die in the Senate.

I attempted to work with my colleagues on this bill. I offered a good-faith amendment that would increase transparency and competition by comparing emissions produced by all the countries in the Paris Agreement. This amendment wasn't even allowed a vote by the Democratic leadership, although there was no problem allowing votes from their Democratic friends' amendments.

In fact, only three Republican amendments will be considered, and 26 Democratic amendments will be offered for debate.

It is as if my colleagues on the other side are afraid of hurting the feelings of China and Russia by pointing out that they are not pulling their weight.

I have long been a proponent for the environment, and I was proud to receive the Utah Clean Air Partnership Person of the Year award in 2017. I have championed hundreds of thousands of acres of bipartisan conservation in Utah.

I, like all Utahns, care deeply about conserving our planet and our way of life for future generations, but I cannot vote for H.R. 9 because I believe it further divides us apart, reinforcing the false narrative that all Republicans don't care about the environment because they are unwilling to get on board with an all-or-nothing, unrealistic approach to addressing climate change.

H.R. 9 completely ignores the serious and legitimate concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the Paris Agreement.

H.R. 9 ignores that President Obama's pledge to the Paris Agreement could cost the United States $250 billion and nearly 3 million jobs in this next 6 years; and it ignores that, in the next 20 years, this commitment could cost us $3 trillion and 6.5 million American jobs.

H.R. 9 also ignores that, because of innovation and technological improvement, the United States is already leading the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2000, the United States has decreased annual carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 800 million tons, the largest absolute decline among all countries since 2000.

H.R. 9 ignores the fact that, if the United States cut CO2 emissions to zero, it would not even come close to offsetting the emissions coming from the rest of the world.

H.R. 9 even ignores that the Paris Agreement allows China, the Earth's largest greenhouse gas polluter, to increase their emissions through 2030 with little evidence to show that they plan to comply in the future.

I have heard over and over that the U.S. must remain in the Paris Agreement to show leadership. And I ask you: What kind of leadership leads to double-digit unemployment in rural America but lets China off the hook?

I agree that America must continue to show leadership, but let's focus on leadership that goes back to the core principles of innovation, conservation, adaptation, and preparation. This bill fails to do any of that.

Let's continue leading the world and bettering our environment, but let's not pretend that H.R. 9 is a silver bullet to our evolving world.

I hope that we can stop with the easy, cheap rhetoric that offers false promises and divides our country even further and focus on those things that make meaningful change.

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