Senate Republicans Just Promised to Undermine the Paris Climate Negotiations

At a hearing Wednesday, Senate Republicans said that any financial commitments made by the United States to help other countries curb carbon emissions would not be approved by Congress, effectively promising to undercut the Paris negotiations before they even begin.

In the lead-up to the Paris climate conference beginning at the end of the month, nearly every nation has submitted a plan for reducing its carbon emissions. Many of those plans include asking for help — mostly technical and investment assistance, and one mechanism for that help is the Green Climate Fund.

“Congress has the power of the purse,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said in her opening remarks at the Environment and Public Works Committee meeting.

President Obama has said that the United States will contribute $3 billion towards the fund and requested $500 million in his budget for next year.

Capito, who also sits on the Appropriations Committee, said that the Senate has allocated “zero dollars.”

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