Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted By the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to ``Oil and Natural Gas Sector: Emission Standards for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources Review''

Floor Speech

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Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this bill.

I would like to point out to my colleagues and anyone watching at home that I actually think that, today, the difference is not really between business and labor; it is not between regulation and nonregulation; it is really not even between Democrats and Republicans. I think what separates supporters of today's bill from its detractors are those who are thinking in the long term versus those who are thinking in the short term.

In the long term, climate change truly is a threat to American national security. The Marine Corps, in which I served, has already had to consider whether it should move some of its historic bases, including Parris Island, perhaps the soul of the Marine Corps, simply due to sea level rise.

The number of $1 billion catastrophic events in our country last year was 22. The average is seven over the last 40-year period.

This is getting more expensive and more dangerous every year. In the long term, businesses that have to compete for capital and compete for market share in markets all around the world understand this, that this is our world now, that decarbonization is an absolute requirement to compete successfully both as the United States and as an individual business in the world that we are going into.

The businesses that are thinking long term have already taken steps to do this, and the businesses that are thinking short term are pointing to the costs, the drawbacks, and the requirements, all of which are real.

None of us stand here today to causally make anything more difficult on an American company that is trying to preserve jobs and succeed in this economy, but there are some things we just have to do.

To use the words of an executive at Southwestern Energy Company:

What some in the industry do not get is that we are transitioning to a low-carbon economy. We need to show the climate benefit of our product.

Or, you could take the word of the chairwoman and president of BP America: ``We have to reduce methane emissions for natural gas to realize its full potential.''

And in my own hometown of Pittsburgh, we are happy to have headquartered the largest producer of natural gas in the United States, EQT. And even though under the Trump administration the EPA came to Pittsburgh to announce this absurd rollback of a rule that's good for business and good for the environment, EQT's president and CEO just 2 days ago said that tackling methane represents an opportunity for the United States because our natural gas, American natural gas, can become the decarbonizing commodity of choice.

So I have heard some of my friends on the other side point out, that, yes, the United States has done quite a lot already to reduce emissions and is doing more, and not all our competitors, like Russia and China, are doing the same.

That is okay. Our market opportunity will come from attracting businesses among our allies, South Korea, Japan, the European Union. And if you just picture now a politics of the near future where the European Union is placing carbon tariffs on every product that comes in and out, lower carbon, American L&G will simply out-compete Russian products, or Iranian products, or any other product. That is the world that we live in now and that is what it will mean for us to compete.

Today's bill is about one thing and one thing only: the national interest of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support it.

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