By Former Congressman Joe Barton
Last week’s Senate Budget Committee hearing, ostensibly an opportunity for Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to present the latest findings of their yearslong investigations into the fossil fuel industry, amount to a politically motivated hit job on lawful energy production. With dramatic rhetoric, these Democrats are engaging in an attempt to stretch evidence to suit their preferred narrative: that energy producers have allegedly engaged in “denial, disinformation, and doublespeak” to mislead the public about their responsibility for the global phenomenon of climate change.
The reality is the opposite: the evidence being presented showcases these companies’ commitment to finding private sector solutions for confronting climate change and other environmental challenges. If there’s any “deception” at play, it’s that these politicians are actually catering to the whims of extreme activists, donors, and high-paid attorneys motivated to either advance an extreme climate agenda, or profit from its prosecution. This hearing was a bullhorn giving political cover for a coordinated battery of state- and municipal-level lawsuits against energy companies, claiming that they are liable for climate-related damages and misled the public about the effects of fossil fuels on the environment. These suits will almost certainly fail – making the hearings doubly wasteful.
As former Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who served four decades in Congress, I believe I have chaired more hearings on these matters than most members in office today. To my mind, last week’s hearing was a blatant misuse of both the House Oversight Committee’s authority and the Senate Budget Committee’s jurisdiction. I suspect both committees have far more critical priorities to address, like investigating government waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars, rather than a far-fetched effort to publicly disparage companies that provide America with reliable and affordable energy. As Budget Committee Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and his Republican colleagues wrote in a letter related to this hearing, “Our constituents deserve a Budget Committee that works diligently to find common ground on ways to put our nation on a sustainable fiscal path, rather than preening for the cameras.”
The preening, of course, is the point. But it will likely do little to assist the aforementioned lawsuits – and in fact might discredit their major deception claims. Since 2017, government officials in states and municipalities have filed more than nearly three dozen such cases. That these committees—even with the full force of government subpoena power, numerous hearings with industry executives, and volumes of documents and correspondence totaling over two million pages—could not prove any of their claims, it stands to reason that state attorneys general and plaintiffs’ firms won’t either. The results being broadcasted by last week’s hearing could ironically be cited by the energy company defendants in these state and local suits, assisting lower courts in dismissing them. As George Mason Law Professor J.W. Verret explained for the Washington Examiner in 2022: “The House Oversight Committee’s report suggests it may be time for plaintiffs and state attorneys general to put a cap on the well exploring a fraud theory against oil companies and move on to drill elsewhere.”
Indeed, this investigation has served to better highlight the sustained, constructive work undertaken by oil and gas producers to advance climate solutions. Why penalize them for it? If these Democrats were authentically committed to solving these issues, they should be applauding and working alongside these corporations. For example, The Environmental Partnership, launched in 2017, represents more than 70% of total U.S. onshore natural gas and oil production, with companies large and small focused on driving innovation, sharing best practices across the industry and reducing methane emissions. This hearing might have put a spotlight on the millions of dollars the energy industry has committed to research and development efforts to generate cleaner energy solutions. Further, more natural gas production has itself been beneficial in reducing greenhouse gases. The natural gas industry is among the leading contributors to lower American carbon emissions: the Energy Information Administration found the transition from coal to natural gas in the power sector led to a reduction of lower carbon emissions by 61 percent since 2005.
I was a primary author of and chairman of the Congressional conference committee that produced the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This legislation is still the primary energy law for the United States. In it, major incentives and tax credits were put in place for ethanol, wind, solar, biomass, and other forms of alternative energy. The major energy companies have endorsed and invested billions of dollars in these new clean energy forms – which I suspect is a larger investment in clean energy than all of the environmental groups combined.
To better accomplish their own stated goals for this hearing and investigation, Congressman Raskin and Senator Whitehouse should recognize that grandstanding helps no one. Rather than demonize needed partners in planning a path towards a cleaner American energy future, they should drop the act and extend a hand.
Joe Barton is a former Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, and served in Congress representing the 6th congressional district of Texas from 1989-2019.
