McCain – Wait, this Time It’s Domenici – Packs Climate Hearings with More of the Same Alarmism

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<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington, D.C., July 20, 2005— Tomorrow’s scheduled Senate hearing on the science and economics of climate change misses an important opportunity to present a balanced, full view of the debate over its topic.  Rather than invite experts with different perspectives to present their findings, Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) has chosen to stack the panel with scientists from the alarmist side of the debate.

“The choice of witnesses is eerily reminiscent of hearings held in the last Congress by Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain (R-AZ),” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Like Sen. McCain, Chairman Domenici appears to have made up his mind and only wants to hear from people who agree with him.”

During debate on the energy bill in June, Chairman Domenici announced that he thought an energy rationing proposal by Sen. Jeff Bingaman represented “a middle-ground consensus” on climate policy and that he would help it gain Senate approval. Unfortunately, this hearing will not provide a critical examination of the real costs and benefits of the Bingaman proposal. A brief critical examination, titled “All Cost, No Benefit,” by CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis, Jr. can be found online.

“I question how much the Committee can learn about the true state of the debate from this stacked witness panel,” said Iain Murray, CEI Senior Fellow. “The uncertainties inherent in a complex, evolving field of scientific inquiry like global climate change have been repeatedly steamrolled by an activist agenda that demands catastrophic global warming be depicted as an unequivocal certainty and energy suppression the only possible answer. If Chairman Domenici had broadened the scope of his witness list, his committee members would be getting a more realistic view of the current scientific and economic debate.”

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.