Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, this is ironic because we hear from Republicans all the time about the importance of cost-benefit analyses before this regulation, before that regulation. Well, of course, we acknowledge and I acknowledge that there are costs to regulation with regard to emissions, there is no doubt. There are also benefits.

I have a tourism-dependent district. We have great ski areas like Vail, Breckenridge. Well, guess what. That is climate dependent. We have agriculture in my district--climate dependent.

You know what? I would also acknowledge, of course, all the costs, all the benefits, those are estimates.

You know, what? No model is perfect, but I guarantee you that the model is far superior to just throwing it out altogether and having no model. There are real costs to carbon emissions, and it is completely appropriate to use the best science-driven data to estimate those in any type of regulation.

It is important to look at costs as benefits, and I feel we are making the argument our Republican friends usually make. But here, in this case, they don't happen to like these particular costs. Maybe they don't think they are real. Maybe they don't believe in them. But we let science guide us.

The fact that I have a weather-dependent district and we have a climate-dependent economy across our country is powerful testimony towards including the social cost of carbon.

I urge my colleagues to adopt the amendment.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an excellent amendment at the desk.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I am proud to offer this amendment, along with my colleagues, Ms. DeGette, Mr. Cartwright, Mr. Lowenthal, Mr. Sarbanes, Mr. Huffman, and Ms. Lujan Grisham.

It is a very simple amendment. It just strikes a policy rider, section 439 of the bill. This section would block the EPA from doing its job. It would block the EPA's commonsense standards for sources of emissions of methane in the oil and gas industry, an issue that is literally in our backyards in the State of Colorado.

It would even prevent the EPA from doing research into existing drill sites for methane standard purposes, and, most astonishing, it would actually prevent the EPA from clarifying the scope of emission sources, which would continue to make sure that we know less and are less protected rather than more protected.

The President and the EPA are taking action to protect our country, our planet, from methane emissions. It is past time that we take bold action to combat climate change and reduce the impact of impending catastrophic changes to our climate, to our world, reducing national security and hurting our economy in tourism and agriculture-dependent districts like mine. Taking aggressive action now is, quite simply, a moral imperative, not only within the purview of the EPA, but the actual charge that Congress is giving the Environmental Protection Agency.

The sad reality is that right now, the majority of our energy still comes from fossil fuels. That is why while of course we need to invest in renewables, at the same time, we can't wait to transition entirely to renewable energy before we address the extraction process that releases dangerous chemicals, such as methane as a by-product. Pound for pound, methane pollution from oil and gas wells is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is responsible for one-quarter of human- made climate change, according to scientists.

These EPA rules are long overdue standards for the oil and gas industry, which will reduce methane pollution and provide certainty for the industry. Although I wish, frankly, these new rules went further, I wish, frankly, that Congress had taken bold action, these stricter standards are a good start, and they are necessary. Scientists have recently published even more convincing data showing that the methane released during natural gas extraction is a deadly climate threat.

New scientific mapping shows that 12.4 million people live within a half mile of the 1.2 million active oil and gas facilities in the United States, many in my home of Colorado. This threat radius is a very conservative estimate of the distance from which toxic air emissions from oil and gas facilities have an adverse impact on public health. It is why in many areas of northern Colorado and Wyoming, we have worse air quality than downtown Los Angeles.

We must not prevent the EPA from moving forward to protect our air, our water, and our planet, which is what Congress has charged them to do. It is time for us to allow them to do their science-based work. It is time to make the fossil fuel industry and fracking play by the same set of rules the rest of the country plays by, instead of letting them emit tons of chemicals, literally tons of chemicals into our air that put our health and the future of the planet in jeopardy.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, voluntary measures are just that, voluntary. While there might, and perhaps there are a few good actors willing to abide by them in some States, like my home State of Colorado, have implemented air standards. What we care about is the aggregate. We want to discourage a race to the bottom among producers and have a national baseline for methane emissions.

While, again, frankly, I think this rule should go a lot further, at least it provides that baseline, provides the industry certainty, and helps begin the process of us getting a handle on ensuring that the air we breathe is clean and reducing climate change.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, you can't just pretend that things don't have costs. Of course, carbon emissions have a cost. Of course, methane emissions have a cost. It doesn't mean that people are proposing we abolish carbon emissions from our economy. It means we want to look at, in this case, methane emissions and their cost. Colorado has implemented similar rules already that the industry has adopted. There are actors in the industry who want this very certainty so they know what they need to do with regard to methane emissions. There are plenty of companies providing new recapture technologies.

All this does is begin to get a handle on it. Again, in my opinion, it doesn't go far enough. In my opinion, it isn't the kind of action I would hope a bold Congress would take. But at the very least, let's have standards for methane emissions. Let's prevent a ban on research into existing drill sites for methane standard purposes.

If this section is left intact, not only does it strike the emission standards, it prevents the EPA from doing research into what the standards should be or could be, so we are never going to reach ``the right answer.'' It should be beholden on those who believe that this is not the right answer to actually support the very kind of research for methane standard purposes that is blocked by this very section, which our amendment will remove from the bill. I ask for your support on this simple, commonsense amendment to remove this policy rider and help keep our air clean.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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