Castor Announces House Democrat Environmental Efforts

The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has announced a plan to address environmental concerns. Florida Rep. Kathy Castor (D), the chairwoman of the committee, took part in a press conference over the weekend, discussing the efforts of the plan. Castor made a distinction between Republicans and Democrats on environment efforts, criticizing the GOP for not taking an approach.

The committee’s report discussed the “historic progress” that’s been made regarding the environment while highlighting the work that needs to be done. House Democrats have praised advances “to reduce heat-trapping pollution, lower energy costs, and create good-paying jobs across America by addressing the climate crisis and deploying cleaner, cheaper energy.” Moreover, the report also provides the committees’ goal “to help communities adapt to climate impacts and become more resilient in the face of worsening extreme weather events.”

The committee listed key accomplishments such as the Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, which “authorized history clean energy RDD&D,” the Energy Act of 2020, and it also listed several goals including developing “a strategy to more efficiently permit clean energy infrastructure while ensuring community input and environmental protection” and fixing “supply chain constraints for grid-scale storage” among others.

The committee has also expressed wanting to pass a clean electricity standard, which would “achieve net-zero emissions in the electric sector by no later than 2035.”

In the press conference, Castor championed the efforts, commenting that Republicans have not taken environmental concerns seriously.

“The Republicans say we’re going to dismantle climate actions, not a priority for us,” Castor said, adding that “the difference between Democrats and Republicans is we had a plan and we built the coalition, and we passed the policies into law. Republicans have no plan.”

A two page summary of the House Select Committee's report can be found here.

The majority staff report can be found here.