Rep. Bruce Westerman.
Republican Bruce Westerman of Arkansas is the new chairman of the Natural Resources Committee. On the committee’s website homepage against a background photo of Yosemite National Park, he has included the slogan “Putting Conservatives Back Into Conservation.” That might seem encouraging were it not for the fact that on its National Scorecard, the League of Conservation Voters gives Westerman a 4% lifetime rating for his environmentally rated votes in Congress. That means he has voted against the environmentally sound position 96% of the time since he first swore the oath of office in 2015. Most Republican members of the committee are just as bad. (Democrats have not yet announced who their committee members will be, although that could happen as early as this week.)
In a 2017 interview with the right-wing Washington Examiner, Westerman said: "I assume if climate's changing, it's changing in Arkansas, as well as other places. So I did a little research and found out the number of forest fires in Arkansas has actually decreased over the past 20 years. It's either held level or slightly decreased as our management has continued to increase. So apparently the climate change isn't affecting forest fires in my state. You would think even though it's a more moderate or temperate climate, if climate change was causing more fires we would see a lot more of them than what's in the baseline."
A certified forester, Westerman prefers natural solutions to address climate change and has proposed to plant 1 trillion trees to sequester carbon. Not a bad idea on its face. But a bill he introduced—the Resilient Federal Forest Act of 2017—would have, according to a Sierra Club critique, made “clear-cutting forests easier and undermine environmental review" and would not have led to healthy forests nor solve the problem of forest fires. Actual conservationists know we aren’t going to log our way out of a climate disaster. The forest bill was shot down in the Senate.
Westerman also supports expanded leasing of federal oil and gas lands. He has already threatened the Department of Interior with funding cuts if it doesn't hold lease sales more regularly.
Rep. Harriet Hageman.
The rest of the Republican line-up is chock full of members who spout various forms of climate science rejection and other environmental ignorance. For instance, there’s Garrett Graves of Louisiana, the committee’s top collector of donations from the oil and gas industry. In a hearing on environmental racism last April, Graves proclaimed that natural disasters “don’t discriminate in any way, shape or form.” The disasters don’t, but throughout the nation, various policies have placed Black, Latino, and Native communities at greater risk when disasters, natural or otherwise, do strike. Graves has also noted that Biden is "ushering in a Soviet-style state" with his climate policies.
Then there’s the notorious Paul Gosar of Arizona, previously booted from the committee by the Democratic House leadership because of his posting a video depicting violence against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. His view on climate? In 2015, he blasted Pope Francis for “socialist talking points” in his second papal encyclical where he called the climate crisis “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.” Gosar responded, “If the Pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change then he can do so in his personal time. But to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous.”
The next year, a young person in the audience of a press conference conducted by the right-wing Western Caucus had a question for Gosar:
My generation is the one that’s going to deal with this catastrophe that’s impending. What is it that you are doing to prevent carbon dioxide emissions?” he asked the Arizona Republican.
“Unfortunately you haven’t been taught about photosynthesis,” Gosar replied. “Photosynthesis is where plants take carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. That’s a problem in today’s world. We haven’t taught kids exactly what’s going on in America and in science.”
No mirrors in Gosar’s office to reflect on what’s not been taught to certain congresspeople.
Plus there’s conspiracy-mongering Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who tweet-called climate activist Greta Thunberg the “world’s (least) favorite teenage ecoterrorist.”
And land use attorney Harriet Hageman, who in November won the at-large congressional seat of Wyoming previously held by Liz Cheney. Hagaman likes to talk about exporting “clean coal," an oxymoron if ever there was one. She noted in an interview with the Working Ranch Radio Show, “The federal government under Joe Biden and radical Democrats are intent on taking over and federalizing our private property rights under the auspices or claim of combating climate change. This is a U.N.-driven, unlawful land grab that would be devastating to the economy in this country and dramatically alter the very nature of private property rights and who and what the United States is."
Cue the black helicopters.
But while these obnoxious naysayers on the climate crisis work to position themselves in the spotlight, other Republicans on the committee have pushed their anti-environmental agendas more quietly, and we can expect to see more of the same over the next two years. One big reason can be seen in the cash that comes their way from the fossil fuel industry.
According to the watchdog group Accountable.US, Republican members of the committee have taken nearly $4 million in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. The group said in a statement:
"The new MAGA-controlled House Natural Resources Committee aligns much closer with violent anti-public land extremists like the Bundys than they do with most Americans," referring to the Nevada family that engaged in a 2016 armed confrontation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over unpaid cattle grazing fees. The statement continued:
Of the Republicans on the committee, five outright oppose federal public lands, most have demonstrated support for election denial, and all have supported policies to expand industry-friendly federal leasing to Big Oil and other extractive sectors. While nearly all of the members have received donations from oil and gas companies, several have personal financial conflicts of interest in the form of either spousal employment or stock holdings.
Below are listed oil and gas contributions of the 21 voting Republican members on the Natural Resources Committee plus their lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters.
Career oil and gas contributions in parenthesis via Open Secrets; League of Conservation Voters lifetime rating in brackets. For the record, the average House score for both parties is 57%. New members of Congress have no rating, of course.
- Bruce Westerman
Chairman
Arkansas, 4th District ($430,725) [LCV: 4%]
- Doug Lamborn
Colorado, 5th District ($343,130) [LCV: 4%]
- Rob Wittman
Virginia, 1st District ($171,608) [LCV: 11%]
- Tom McClintock
California, 5th District ($278,559) [LCV: 4%]
- Paul Gosar
Arizona, 9th District ($87,053) [LCV: 4%]
- Garret Graves
Louisiana, 6th District ($857,845) [LCV: 6%]
- Doug LaMalfa
California, 1st District ($153,039) [LCV: 2%]
- Daniel Webster
Florida, 11th District ($87,495) [LCV: 6%]
- Russ Fulcher
Idaho, 1st District ($32,100) [LCV: 6%]
- Pete Stauber
Minnesota, 8th District ($216,141) [LCV: 18%]
- John Curtis
Utah, 3rd District ($178,400) [LCV: 5%]
- Tom Tiffany
Wisconsin, 7th District ($35,940) [LCV: 3%]
- Jerry Carl
Alabama, 1st District ($35,450) [LCV: 4%]
- Matt Rosendale
Montana, 2nd District ($403,656) [LCV: 0%]
- Lauren Boebert
Colorado, 3rd District ($141,470) [LCV: 0%]
- Cliff Bentz
Oregon, 2nd District ($62,270) [LCV: 17%]
- Jen Kiggans
Virginia, 2nd District ($31,137) [LCV: n/a]
- Wesley Hunt
Texas, 38th District ($335,070) [LCV: n/a]
- Mike Collins
Georgia, 10th District ($18,800) [LCV: n/a]
- Anna Paulina Luna
Florida, 13th District ($46,729) [LCV: n/a]
- John Duarte
California, 13th District ($79,014) [LCV: n/a]
- Harriet Hageman
Wyoming, At-large ($63,718) [LCV: n/a]
The Natural Resources Committee’s jurisdiction:
- Fisheries and wildlife, including research, restoration, refuges, and conservation.
- Forest reserves and national parks created from the public domain.
- Forfeiture of land grants and alien ownership, including alien ownership of mineral lands.
- Geological Survey.
- International fishing agreements.
- Interstate compacts relating to apportionment of waters for irrigation purposes.
- Irrigation and reclamation, including water supply for reclamation projects and easements of public lands for irrigation projects; and acquisition of private lands when necessary to complete irrigation projects.
- Native Americans generally, including the care and allotment of Native American lands and general and special measures relating to claims that are paid out of Native American funds.
- Insular areas of the United States generally (except those affecting the revenue and appropriations).
- Military parks and battlefields, national cemeteries administered by the secretary of the Interior, parks within the District of Columbia, and the erection of monuments to the memory of individuals.
- Mineral land laws and claims and entries thereunder.
- Mineral resources of public lands.
- Mining interests generally.
- Mining schools and experimental stations.
- Marine affairs, including coastal zone management (except for measures relating to oil and other pollution of navigable waters).
- Oceanography.
- Petroleum conservation on public lands and conservation of the radium supply in the United States.
- Preservation of prehistoric ruins and objects of interest on the public domain.
- Public lands generally, including entry, easements, and grazing thereon.
- Relations of the United States with Native Americans and Native American tribes.
- Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline (except ratemaking).
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