2 House Members File To Form Bipartisan Caucus On Climate (Yes, They're Both From S. Florida)
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Two congressmen — Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R) and Rep. Theodore Deutch (D), both of Florida, filed paperwork this week to create the Climate Solutions Caucus.
The group plans to look at options to address climate change and will serve “to educate members on economically-viable options to reduce climate risk and protect our nation’s economy, security, infrastructure, agriculture, water supply, and public safety,” according to the petition filed with the Committee on House Administration, which oversees caucuses — formal groups of legislators who meet regularly to advance specific legislative agendas. “This is music to our ears,” Steve Valk, a spokesperson for Citizen’s Climate Lobby, told ThinkProgress. “This is what we’ve kind of been waiting for.”
Over the past two decades, climate change has moved from being a bipartisan concern to a hotly-contested, highly-politicized issue in Washington. None of the current Republican presidential candidates accept — or admit that they accept — mainstream climate science. The chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is perhaps best known for using the existence of a snowball to doubt the existence of climate change.
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It should come as no surprise that Lowenthal’s colleagues who started the bipartisan effort are from Florida. Despite the state’s restrictive laws on solar energy and pro-fracking initiatives, residents there are well-positioned to see the dire impacts of climate change. Sea-level rise, storm surges, and increasingly violent hurricanes are already impacting the state — and could spell doom for low-lying South Florida, which a quarter of Florida’s population calls home.
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/05/3746212/house-climate-caucus/
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