House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), speaking to Washington, D.C. publication The Hill, called the recently-passed climate change legislation a “pile of shit” according to an exclusive report.
Boehner, during Friday’s vote which passed the legislation by a narrow margin, attempted something of a filibuster by reading aloud from the bill’s cap and trade section for over an hour, then presenting a colorful yet visually complicated chart.
“Hey, people deserve to know what’s in this pile of shit,” he told The Hill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declined to comment, The Hill reported, but an unnamed Democratic aide added, “What do you expect from a guy who thinks global warming is caused by cow manure?”
President Barack Obama called the bill’s passage “historic” and urged the U.S. Senate to move quickly to enact the legislation. House Republicans vowed to make an “election issue” out of the first major legislative push by the U.S. government to protect its interests from curb climate change.
Climate change, according to a U.S. government report released June 16, is occurring because of human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases and “is under way in the United States and projected to grow.”
The report was issued by the US Global Change Research Program, a grouping of a dozen government agencies and the White House. It is the first on climate change since President Barack Obama took office and outlines in plain, non-scientific terms how global warming has resulted in an increase of extreme weather such as the powerful heatwave that swept Europe in 2003, claiming tens of thousands of lives.
Hurricanes have become fiercer as they gather greater strength over oceans warmed by climate change.
Global warming impacts everything from water supplies to energy, farming to health. And those impacts are expected to increase, according to the report titled “Global Change Impacts in the United States.”
Areas of the country that already had high levels of rain or snowfall have seen increases in precipitation because of climate change, says the report, which focuses on the United States but also tackles global climate change issues.
Arid areas, such as the largely desert US Southwest, are experiencing more droughts.
On the US Gulf Coast, sea level rise is particularly pressing; in the Northwest, how long snowpack sits on the mountains might be an issue, and farmers in the Midwest are concerned because winters have become milder, allowing more pests to survive the season.
But climate change also operates in a global nexus and the United States cannot be viewed in isolation, the 196-page report says.
Climate change-related food production problems in one part of the world can affect food prices and production decisions in the United States, he added.
“There is a whole host of connections when you discuss climate change; the US cannot be viewed as an island,” said Jerry Melillo, one of the report’s authors from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, speaking with AFP.
The chief aim of the report is to help US policymakers and the general public make decisions on how to act to halt climate change, he added.
In December, the United Nations will be holding a world conference on climate change which aims to produce a new set of goals to curb its destructive effects.
