By Alison Fairbrother for TakePart.com
The 112th Congress has adjourned until after the election but leaves us with a shocking statistic: Since January 2011, one out of every five votes during the last 2 years was to undermine environmental protections.
With all the climate-related disasters that unfolded this year—wildfires and floods and extreme heat, not mention the Arctic sea ice that melted to a record low level—you would think that Congress might get the message that action on climate change is a necessity.
This makes the current U.S. House of Representatives the most anti-environment Congress in history, according to a report by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), from the Committee on Natural Resources.
The votes weren’t cosmetic either—they were efforts to weaken environmental oversight legislation like the Clean Air Act, a 40-year-old law that regulates air pollution, which the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated will prevent 230,000 pollution-related early deaths by 2020, and provide more than $2 trillion in economic benefits.
The House’s anti-environment votes largely fell along party lines, according the report: 94 percent of Republican members voted for the anti-environment positions, while 87 percent of Democratic members voted for the pro-environment positions.
Here’s a rundown of the most egregious voting patterns, care of Representatives Waxman and Markey:
- 77 votes were to undermine Clean Air Act protections and “block EPA regulation of toxic mercury and other harmful emissions from power plants, incinerators, industrial boilers, cement plants, and mining operations.”
- 39 votes were to weaken protection of public lands and wildlife, including removing protections for certain over-exploited or endangered species like wolves and sea turtles.
- 31 votes were to undermine Clean Water Act protections, including votes “to repeal EPA’s authority to stop mountaintop removal mining disposal; and to block EPA from protecting headwaters and wetlands that flow into navigable waters.”
- 37 votes were to block action to address climate change, “including votes to overturn EPA’s scientific findings that climate change endangers human health and welfare,” and “to prevent the United States from participating in international climate negotiations; and even to cut funding for basic climate science.”
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