On Tuesday U.S. Sen. James Lankford called for an energy and climate debate on the chamber’s floor.
Oklahoma’s junior Republican said the country’s energy policy is run by environmental policy based on fears about climate change.
His remarks came just one day after the White House rolled out a new energy proposal designed to cut carbon emissions, and Lankford said the existing Clean Air Act doesn’t allow the Environmental Protection Agency to add more regulations to the existing law.
“I hope my car one day runs on a pinwheel on the hood ornament, that would be great. But that's not now,” Lankford said. “It still runs on energy that we pull out of the ground. So the foreseeable future we need to deal with the facts. Stop hurting consumers for some proposed future hope of what may happen. Let's do it clean, let's do it innovative, but let's not hurt consumers in the process.”
Lankford also advocated for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to bring Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico.
“We have 19 international pipelines currently running. 19 of them. This would be number 20. This is not something new and radical,” Lankford said. “This is irrational -- irrational energy policy that is knee jerk that says we can't add one more pipeline because it will somehow go over the top and ignores the reality of what we already have in the United States. Moving energy by pipeline is clean and efficient.”
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