March 29, 2016 12:36 PM UTC

GOP Pundits Jump Gun on "Zombie" Climate Change Bill

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• by: Colorado Pols

An editorial in last Friday’s Colorado Springs Gazette celebrates the “death” of House Bill 16-1004, legislation that would develop measurable goals and deadlines for the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

Colorado Senate Republicans were wise to kill a global warming bill in the Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy Committee on Thursday. In doing so, they showed the upside of a divided Legislature that doesn’t get much done.

House Bill 1004 would have required state government to devise an annual climate action plan “to include specific measurable goals, the achievement of which will either reduce Colorado’s greenhouse gas emissions or increase Colorado’s adaptive capability to respond to climate change.”

…Colorado could destroy its economy with an expensive energy revolution and still have mo measurable effect on stopping global warming. We could put every coal miner out of work and close every coal-fired electric plant. We could set extraordinary emissions standards that would raise the cost of cars. We could force electric ratepayers to finance more wind turbines and solar arrays. We could mandate tough household standards on heating, cooling and insulation.

Friday’s editorial in the Gazette appears to be based on a press release from the conservative advocacy group Compass Colorado, whose director Kelly Maher is now a Republican talking head at 9NEWS:

House Bill 16-1004, sponsored by Rep. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, Rep. Jenni Arndt, D-Fort Collins, and Sen. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, would have empowered a single state bureaucrat to devise and spend undefined taxpayer resources on implementing a state climate change plan. Had the bill passed, Colorado taxpayers could have been responsible for writing a blank check toward funding programs as potentially expensive as they are demonstrably useless in the conversation surrounding global warming.

Kelly Maher, Executive Director of Compass Colorado, applauded the senators who put a stop to the measure…

There’s just one small problem with all of this GOP grave-dancing: the bill isn’t dead yet.

That’s tomorrow’s calendar for the Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Energy Committee. As it turns out, Republicans were so ready for this GOP-controlled committee to kill House Bill 16-1004 that they assumed that’s what had happened–when in fact the bill was laid over for a vote tomorrow.

Of course, nobody has any delusions about the bill’s ultimate fate. But even if the vote of this one-seat GOP Senate majority committee is a foregone conclusion, it’s important to let them actually vote first. Before you crow.

Otherwise, you know…it kind of looks bad.