Two congressional committees are set to examine President Obama’s plans for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change next week before he heads to France.
On Wednesday morning, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold hearings on the Paris talks.
The House Science meeting, titled “The Administration’s Empty Promises for the International Climate Treaty,” will examine how the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan falls short of the administration’s proposed contributions to the U.N. agreement, according to a committee spokesman.
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Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said he’s worried the Clean Power Plan will harm the economy while not doing enough to prevent environmental harm.
“The pledge to the U.N. is estimated to prevent only a 0.03-degree Celsius temperature rise,” Smith said. “There is a reason the president chose to bypass Congress in order to negotiate a climate deal on his own. The president’s plan gives control of U.S. energy policy to unelected United Nations officials. This plan ignores good science and only seeks to advance a partisan political agenda.”
UN officials have said that the commitments pledged by 157 of the 195 countries at the Paris talks will not achieve the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius by mid-century.
Nigel Purvis, CEO of Climate Advisers and former head of U.S. climate diplomacy, said the agreement in Paris would be an executive agreement, which means it wouldn’t have to be ratified by the Senate like a treaty — Obama’s effort to get around Congress, which would be unlikely to approve a deal.
Expected to testify at the House Science meeting are members of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and a National Economic Research Associates consultant.
At the Senate Environment and Public Works hearing, members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, World Resources Institute and a law professor from Hofstra University are scheduled to testify.
No members of the Obama administration are scheduled to attend, but a committee aide said they have an open invitation.
There was a dust-up Thursday morning over whether the agreement reached in Paris will be legally binding among all countries after Secretary of State John Kerry said the agreement is “definitely not going to be a treaty.” French and European Union officials pointed out that the agreement would have some legally binding elements.
