Rep. Johnson Disagrees Climate Action Now Act Ahead Of Vote

South Dakota’s lone representative in the US House says he doesn’t see the Climate Action Now Act as the proper way to address climate change.
 
Republican Dusty Johnson says the Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, wants to force the US back into the Paris Climate Agreement.
 
However, a South Dakota climatologist says a climate accord helps put the world on the same page.
 
Representative Dusty Johnson says he wants to make sure the country is taking care of the environment, but disagrees with the climate accord.
 
Johnson says the US has reduced its carbon footprint by 2 percent through technological advances. He says the European Union’s carbon footprint has gone up by two percent.’
 
“It seems interesting that they’re putting pressure on us for compliance when they’re so far out of compliance,” Johnson says. “And, of course, the Paris Accord exempts China and India from any mandates until 2030. If this is really an existential threat to human kind, it seems like it should be all hands on deck, not letting China and India out of the bag. And it seems like the European Union—if they believed it was an existential threat—they’d be meeting their goals under the Paris Accord.”
 
Johnson says climate change is solved through technology, investment and good policies.
 
A Rapid City climatologist says he rejects the notion that the US should wait for China and India to reduce their total input of greenhouse gases.
 
Dr. Patrick Zimmerman is a former professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the South Dakota School of mines. He founded C-Lock Incorporated, which has developed systems that detect problems in feeding operations for cattle, as well as monitor methane and CO2 emissions.
 
He says if countries come together unilaterally to address reducing greenhouse gas emissions, investments will have a quick pay off in long term economic benefits.
 
“I think that where a climate accord works the best is where they establish the comparisons that make scientific sense,” Zimmerman says. “Then, they convert those comparisons to political realities and focus the technologies on the issues that do the most good.”
 
The US House is expected to vote on the Climate Action Now Act this week.