WASHINGTON – Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, today made the following statement during the Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing entitled, “Adaptation Policies in Climate Legislation”:
“I want to again commend you and Chairman Waxman for holding this series of hearings. They’re very informational and most of the time they’re even entertaining so I’m grateful as always for this regular order.
“I especially want to thank Lord Monckton for testifying. He is generally acknowledged as one of the most knowledgeable, if not the most knowledgeable, expert from a skeptical point of view on this issue of climate change. I’m very glad he could stay over this week in the United States and testify at the hearing.
“Today’s hearing is about adaptation. Adapting is a common, natural way for people to adapt to their environment. I believe that the earth’s climate is changing but I think it’s changing for natural variation reasons. I think mankind has been adapting to climate as long as man has walked the earth. When it rains, we find shelter; when it’s hot, we find shade; when it’s cold, we find a warm place to stay. Adaptation is the practical, affordable, utterly natural reflex response to nature when the planet is either heating or cooling, as it always is.
“As Lord Monckton will testify, in the Middle Ages it was warmer everywhere than today. Some of our ancestors grew grapes in Britain and others sailed ice-free seas to settle northern places like Newfoundland and Greenland. This period, known as the Medieval Warm Period, was followed by the Little Ice Age, a period of dramatic cooling that lasted until the middle of the 19th century. During this Little Ice Age, both the Vikings and the British adapted to the cold by changing. I suppose that one possible consequence of Viking retrenchment and British expansion is that we’re conducting the hearing today in English instead of Norwegian.
“In the Chesapeake Bay and Piermont Marsh of the lower Hudson Valley, layers of sediment reflect what happened to the North American continent. That history shows that the nature of climate is to change and to make organic shifts in temperature regardless of mankind’s presence or supposed influence. Nature doesn’t seem to adjust to people as much as people seem to adjust to nature. I think it is inevitable that humanity will adapt to global warming. I also believe that the longer we postpone finding ways to do it successfully, the more expensive and unpalatable the adjustment will become.
“Adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult. What will be difficult is adaptation to rampant unemployment and enormous, spontaneous and avoidable changes to our economy if we adopt such a reckless policy as cap and tax, or cap and trade. That will devastate our economy and that we will have difficulties adapting to that. The majority of this committee has promised, and I hope this is a promise they don’t meet, to introduce an economy-wide cap-and-trade bill in the next month. No matter that the past seven years have witnessed cooling worldwide and Europe has experienced its coldest winter in the last 20 years.
“In the name of a house of cards posing as scientific certainty and an alarmist policy asserted by its followers with a religious fervor, the Democratic majority apparently is hell-bent to cap our economy and trade away our jobs. Some of us on this committee are going to try to stop that, or at least deflect it.
“On top of the very real threat of job loss caused by closed factories, shut down mines, and power plants rendered uncompetitive under an American cap-and-trade scheme, the majority’s cap-and-trade goal is to make our electricity so expensive, our gas so pricey, and our food so dear that we will be forced to change the way we live. We will literally be forced to change the American way of life.
“We have had hearing after hearing where armies of witnesses representing both sides have warned us of the impact of cap-and-trade on everyone in this country but the mega-rich. The people at greatest risk are low- and middle-income families, blue collar workers, the elderly, and those whose jobs will be destroyed if we adopt a cap-and-tax policy.
“The question is not how Americans will adapt to cap-and-trade legislation. The question is how they can survive, when blackouts, rampant job loss, and empty cupboards threaten our very way of life.
“With those cheery words, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.”
