Welcome Back, Mr. President: House Votes to Scrap Environmental Regs
As Obama returns from the U.N. summit on global warming, Republicans moved to repeal signature pieces of his climate platform.
Exhaust rises from Mitchell Power Station on Sept. 24, 2013, a coal-fired power plant outside Pittsburgh.
This was anything but a warm welcome.
As President Barack Obama returned from his visit to Paris for a major U.N. summit on global warming, House lawmakers passed two bills that would overturn the first-ever nationwide restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, both centerpieces of Obama's climate efforts.
The House voted 242-180 to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, which would limit carbon emissions from existing power plants, and 235-188 to block EPA rules governing emissions from new power plants.
[PRIMER: The U.N. Climate Summit in Paris]
The votes come two weeks after the Senate approved identical legislation. The White House has vowed to veto the bills, which lack the votes needed for an override.
"The need to act, and to act quickly, to mitigate climate change impacts on American communities has never been more clear," the White House said in a statement at the time of the Senate vote.
Republicans, fossil fuels groups and some utilities have lacerated the dual rules, arguing they'll hamper economic growth, drive up electricity rates and undercut the reliability of the electric grid.
[READ: As U.S. Approaches Paris Climate Summit, GOP Pushes Back]
“Both of these measures pose a serious risk to the nation’s electricity system and any person or business that has to pay an electric bill should be very concerned," Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., who introduced the measures in the House, said in a statement.
While the bills have no shot of being enacted, the Senate and House votes effectively signal to world leaders that Obama does not have Congress' support for his actions aimed at reducing global emissions and slowing warming. Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates have lampooned the international talks, and senators last month threatened to withhold $3 billion that Obama pledged to help developing nations prepare for climate change unless he submits any U.N. climate agreement to the Senate for approval.
[THE CLEAN POWER PLAN: Your State-by-State Greenhouse Gas Emissions]
Whether and how wealthier countries will help poorer nations deal with global warming and transition to clean energy remains a main source of disagreement at the Paris climate talks. Before departing Tuesday, Obama emphasized the need for international cooperation and a multilateral accord on warming, despite domestic opposition.
"If we let the world keep warming as fast as it is, and sea levels rising as fast as they are, and weather patterns keep shifting in more unexpected ways -- then before long, we are going to have to devote more and more and more of our economic and military resources not to growing opportunity for our people, but to adapting to the various consequences of a changing planet," he said during a Tuesday press conference before heading home. "This is an economic and security imperative that we have to tackle now."
