Interior secretary tells Rep. Pingree tackling climate change isn’t his job

Rep. Chellie Pingree wants Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to take climate change more seriously.

Pingree, the No. 2 Democrat on the U.S. House committee that oversees the Interior Department’s annual budget, pressed Bernhardt on Capitol Hill Tuesday on whether he is adequately responding to the threat climate change poses to the public lands under his purview.

Bernhardt, whose department manages about one-fifth of the total land in the United States, has downplayed the role his agency should play in efforts to combat a warming climate.

“Isn’t this your job?” Pingree asked Bernhardt at a House appropriations hearing. It was his first appearance before the committee since his confirmation in April, which both Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King voted in support of. He took the job after former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke resigned late last year amid a flurry of ethics allegations.

Bernhardt told the Maine Democrat that his perspective on the matter is “probably a little different” than hers.

“If I were to ask for a Lexis or Westlaw search and for somebody to give me the number of times that the [Interior] secretary is directed to do something, you’d find that there are over 600 instances in law that says, ‘I shall do something,’” he told her.

“You know what there’s not is a ‘shall,’” he continued, “for ‘I shall manage the land to stop climate change,’ or something similar to that.”

Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist who worked at the Interior Department during the George W. Bush administration, has come under fire from environmental groups for his efforts to further President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda, which aims to expand oil and gas drilling on public lands while rolling back environmental regulations.

As Pingree and other House Democrats grilled Bernhardt on his climate policies Tuesday, he acknowledged, “I recognize that climate is changing. I recognize that man is a contributing factor.”

A congressionally mandated federal report issued last November by the Trump administration, known as the Fourth National Climate Assessment, paints a dire picture of the impacts climate change is already having and will continue to have on the United States. It points to humans as the dominant factor. “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities,” it states.

Bernhardt told House lawmakers that he’s “spent a good amount of time with the Fourth Assessment” and “a good amount of time” with Interior’s scientists, “trying to figure out the best practices we can utilize to factor their understanding of science as it stands into making informed legal and policy decisions.”

Pingree wasn’t satisfied with that response.

“You’re a critically important leader,” she told him, at a time when climate change is taking a toll on endangered species, national parks and tribal lands. “I want to get you to say something about being more concerned,” she told him.

She questioned whether Interior needs more scientists to shed light on the issue, asking how many science positions are vacant at the department.

“If, in fact, you still think there are some questions about this, then I’m hoping you can have all the scientists you can possibly have around you and that our departments are full of them helping us to make these good assessments as these rapid changes are happening,” Pingree told Bernhardt.

She added, “I’m not saying you have to fix the big picture, but you have to acknowledge that there is massive change going on.”

Bernhardt replied, “I’m not saying that nothing is happening.” But, he said, Interior must account for climate change in its decision-making “in a way that is robust and legally defensible.”

Pingree said she’d be interested to know where Bernhardt thinks such legal challenges exist that “you can’t move ahead.”

She told him, “if there’s something legally stopping you, then we’re Congress, we make the laws, let us know. We’ll work on that for you.”

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree speaks about the impact of climate change on farmers and agriculture. (Photo via official website of Rep. Pingree)