Pennsylvania lawmaker subject of removal petition over climate change views
(The Center Square) – Butler County Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, one of the General Assembly’s most conservative members with a habit of sponsoring impeachment resolutions, now faces a removal petition of his own.
The Better Path Coalition asked House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, to remove Metcalfe as majority chairman of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee this week over his views on climate change.
“A minimum qualification of the person who wields the most power on climate policy in the legislature is that they accept climate change,” said the coalition in a letter signed by 42 other groups opposed to his chairmanship and delivered to Cutler this week. “Metcalfe is an unabashed climate denier.”
Karen Feridun, co-founder of the coalition, said 70 percent of residents support climate action as the toll of weather-related disasters grows more severe each year. In 2020 alone, such natural disaster have cost the country $16 billion, the coalition said.
“Speaker Cutler has no choice but to seize this opportunity to name a chair who has the skills and the basic understanding of science needed to address the unfolding climate crisis,” she said.
Diane Sipe, of Marcellus Outreach Butler, lives in Metcalfe’s district and calls him “a fringe outlier” who’s been afforded a platform “to elevate his out-of-touch views as if they were mainstream.”
“Speaker Cutler would best serve his party as well as the Commonwealth by installing a mainstream Committee Chair to replace Metcalfe,” she said, referencing former Republican Gov. Tom Ridge’s comments from May that described climate denying as “medieval” and summed up his party’s abandonment of environmental issues as “a great detriment, politically.”
The coalition first asked former Speaker Mike Turzai to remove Metcalfe in February with a letter and a petition boasting more than 5,500 signatures. That same petition has grown to more than 7,600 since in the 10 months since, the coalition said.
Mike Straub, Cutler’s spokesperson, said Tuesday that “committee chairs and assignments are still being finalized for the upcoming session.”
An attempt to reach Metcalfe for comment was unsuccessful, though he’s made his views clear on climate change in the past.
“I enjoy my vegetables and plants need CO2, so I want to make sure we still have plenty of CO2 out there so we have green grass and green vegetables growing,” he said during a February 2019 committee meeting. “We need CO2. We can’t eliminate all CO2, so I think we are going to have interesting debate for those who want to reduce something actually needed by our environment, thinking they are going to improve our environment.”
Under Metcalfe’s tenure as chairman, the committee has worked to stall Pennsylvania’s entry into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a 10-state coalition that caps carbon emissions for power producers. The program’s many critics, including some Democrats on the Pennsylvania’s western edge, argue that it amounts to little more than a tax on one of the state’s most lucrative industries and will only drive energy companies west into Ohio and West Virginia.
Pennsylvania, a top power exporter in the region, has also seen reductions in carbon emissions as natural gas plants replace coal-powered facilities. Proponents of RGGI hope the program will usher in the state’s clean energy era and ease the transition away from fossil fuels.
“Governors do not have the authority to enter us into these types of agreements,” Metcalfe said during a committee meeting in June. “There is no tax unless we authorize it. We are not going to sit idly by and kill these jobs.”
Wolf vetoed the measure in September. The state Department of Environmental Protection is more than a year into its rule-making to join RGGI, slated for official entry in 2022.
