Environment: Senate Looks At Climate Change; House, At EPA Science

Action on climate change may be more vigorous this year as a prominent senator re-pledged her support for a legislative solution. That senator, California’s Barbara Boxer (D), chair of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, has long been an advocate for climate-change action and is expected to ramp up efforts to address the topic, committee staff note.

Boxer’s awareness of this issue was seen in early January in her response to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s report that 2012 was the hottest year on record (C&EN, Jan. 14, page 28).

“The facts speak for themselves,” she says. “We need to focus now on what we must do to address climate change so that we can protect our people, local communities, and the nation’s economy.”

The committee, staff say, intends to work on climate change on multiple fronts, including hearings and possible legislation. Boxer also plans to create a Senate “climate clearinghouse,” she has said, to coordinate the Senate’s climate-change activities; Boxer will cochair that panel with the heads of the Energy & Natural Resources and the Foreign Relations Committees.

Meanwhile, the Committee on Science, Space & Technology in the House of Representatives is expected to continue working on improving science at the Environmental Protection Agency this year. In the last Congress, legislation to reform EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) was introduced. A hearing on the legislation was scheduled by the science committee, but it was postponed and never rescheduled. Observers predict that similar legislation will be introduced again this year.

Sponsors of the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act of 2012 claim the legislation would have enhanced transparency and limited conflicts of interest on EPA science advisory panels. But many environmental and public health groups oppose the bill, saying it would have actually done the opposite.

Richard A. Denison, senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, an activist group, says the bill was essentially written by the chemical industry. It would have disqualified scientists who receive EPA funding from being on SAB committees and panels, on the premise that they have a conflict of interest, Denison says. And it would have lifted restrictions on industry scientists being on those same panels as long as their conflicts are disclosed, he notes.

The bill would have also required that every hazard and risk assessment conducted by EPA undergo review by SAB—a massive expansion in the scope of the board’s work. This provision would add years to the already protracted process that EPA follows in completing such assessments, Denison says. “We are fully expecting that the chemical industry will not give up on this and will continue to find a legislative vehicle to forward the concepts.”