A Breakdown of 2020 Climate and Environment Congressional Hearings | Article

In 2020, Congress convened a total of 79 hearings on climate and environmental topics. This was down from 134 hearings during the first year of the 116th Congress (2019), in part reflecting the disruptions caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Congress convened 50 hearings from January through July, but only 29 from August to December. Nevertheless, Congress continued to demonstrate its commitment to climate progress by examining a wide array of topics within these issue areas in these challenging circumstances.

Hover over any hearing to see its topic coverage. *Note: “T&I” stands for “Transportation & Infrastructure.” Many hearings are marked as having more than one topic area.

Of these 79 hearings, 51 were in the House and 28 in the Senate. The Senate slightly increased its number of hearings from 24 in 2019, but the House experienced a sharp reduction, dropping by more than half from its 2019 height of 110 hearings. The Senate Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee held the most hearings this year with a total of 15, but it was closely followed by House Natural Resources (14 hearings) and Energy and Commerce (E&C) (13 hearings). With a total of 11 hearings, the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee was not far behind.

The House continued to explore climate and environmental topics in a more diverse array of committees than the Senate. 11 House committees touched on climate and environmental topics in 2020, including committees such as Foreign Affairs and Armed Services. In the Senate, only four committees covered these topics: Environment and Natural Resources, Environment and Public Works, Appropriations, and Commerce, Science, and Transport.

In contrast to 2019, when the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis rivaled the standing committees by holding a total of 15 hearings, the Select Committee held only 3 hearings in 2020 as it prepared its comprehensive staff report, Solving the Climate Crisis, for release in June.

Clean and renewable energy and conservation and natural resources remained at the center of discussions in 2020, as the House held 15 hearings covering each of these respective topic areas and the Senate held 10 for each. The House continued to demonstrate strong interests in environmental justice, resilience and adaptation, and climate impacts, while the Senate did not hold any hearings in these areas. The Senate, meanwhile, placed a greater emphasis on mitigation technologies and transportation and infrastructure than the House.

2020’s hearings mirrored the major historic events that unfolded throughout the year. Paralleling the nationwide racial justice movement, environmental justice leaped to the forefront of the House’s agenda with a total of 10 hearings, ranging from Energy Infrastructure and Environmental Justice: Lessons for a Sustainable Future to Environmental Justice for Coastal Communities: Examining Inequities in Federal Grantmaking. Meanwhile, the extreme wildfires that raged across the western United States in late summer sparked an intensified discussion of both climate impacts and resilience and adaptation in the House, with hearings such as The 2020 Wildfire Year: Response and Recovery Efforts held in the Agriculture committee and Out of Control: The Impact of Wildfires on our Power Sector and the Environment held in Energy and Commerce.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, public health became a key concern for both chambers of Congress: the House held nine hearings with a public health focus and the Senate held four. These were split between hearings focusing on the health impacts of climate change, such as The Devastating Health Impacts of Climate Change held by the House’s Oversight and Reform Committee, and hearings focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic, such as Hearing to Examine the Impact of COVID-19 to U.S. Territories in the Senate’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee. One hearing in the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Coping with Compound Crises: Extreme Weather, Social Injustice, and a Global Pandemic, brought together these themes by examining the mental health impacts of the year’s events.

Finally, while the economy was not a top-ranking topic, several hearings discussed green investment options to aid in recovery from the economic recession caused by the pandemic. These included Building a 100 Percent Clean Economy: Opportunities for an Equitable, Low-Carbon Recovery in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Better, Faster, Cheaper, Smarter, and Stronger: Infrastructure Development Opportunities to Drive Economic Recovery and Resiliency in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

This year’s hearings demonstrate that while 2020 has brought profound challenges and crises, it has also presented major opportunities to build a greener, more resilient, and more equitable society. Seizing these opportunities will be a crucial task for the next Congress.

Author: Joseph Glandorf