Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse will convene a hearing Wednesday on how climate change is posing a threat to national security and military preparedness.
It will mark the 17th time the Rhode Island Democrat has used his chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee in the 118th Congress to hold a hearing that directly links the instability of one sector of the global economy to the worsening climate crisis.
It will also come two weeks after Whitehouse presided over the splashy release of thousands of pages of internal documents from leading oil and gas companies appearing to acknowledge the role of the fossil fuel industry in perpetuating the dangerous warming of the planet over several decades.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Budget Committee ranking member, scoffed that the episode proved that “Democrats would rather accuse oil companies of conspiracy and raise gas prices than work with Republicans to write a budget or acknowledge the unpopularity of their many climate policy proposals.”
