Lowenthal Comes Out Blazing on Climate Change

In contrast to newsworthy congressional town halls that are at best confrontational, all the way to disruptive, with occasional unwanted touching and shoving, a recent town hall styled meeting conducted by Fifth District Councilwoman Stacy Mungo on May 20 with Democratic 47th District Congressman Alan Lowenthal was polite and informative, thanks to perhaps to the laid back attitude of local residents or the strategy of making it the windup to a bus tour of Douglas Park.

During that final better-part-of-an-hour event, Lownenthal who serves as ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, gave a tactful response to a question about the newly appointed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, which he tied to the president’s upcoming decision on the Paris climate accords. In just over a week and a half, on June 1, Lowenthal dropped the tact, issuing a sizzling critique of Trump’s withdrawal decision made just hours before.

“President Trump, in a short-sighted and infantile move, has now set the U.S. against the world,” wrote Lowenthal in a letter to his constituents. “We are now the outsiders. We are now isolated. And while I am sure President Trump would have it no other way, his cowardly decision to leave the Paris Agreement does nothing to help anyone. Quite the opposite.”

Lowenthal, a one-time CSULB professor and psychologist and a well known advocate on environmental issues, served on the city council, in the state legislature and currently in his third congressional term. “The ports of L.A. and Long Beach claim to the world to be the cleanest, and they are. It took the efforts of all those people in that district who told me, ‘Alan you better do something about that because that’s why we elected you.’”

As with all members of Congress, who serve two year terms, Lowenthal was returned by the voters in the same general election that voted in Donald Trump.

“We’re in a very difficult time in Washington,” said Lowenthal at the May 20 meeting. “Everybody knows. It’s a very stressful time because we have a crisis by the hour. We need some stability and calming down. I think that will happen. All new administrations go through some adjustment, this one even more so, because the person, Mr. Trump, never really was in government, never really dealt with the other branches of government. He came in with the same style he used in business.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, that’s why he was elected, but it doesn’t really work. Like the rest of us, he’s going to have to figure out how we’re going to work this stuff out. No one branch controls the government, that’s the history of our democracy, that’s who we are as Americans and I’m real hopeful we move forward.”

“It’s great to have a psychologist in Congress,” Lowenthal commented, to some laughter. “With Scott Pruitt as EPA head, it’s a good thing as a psychologist I can handle stress. It’s a very tenuous situation. Scott Pruitt sued the EPA and sued the Obama administration about the clean power plants and the actions of the president. Obama tried to implement the clean power plan, the power agreement on climate change. Every country in the world signed that agreement because of the leadership of the Paris agreements to reduce their environmental pollution.

“Pruitt was then put in charge of the agency that has to administer all of this. It’s a very tenuous situation,” said Lowenthal on May 20. “It’s really not clear yet whether the president wants to honor the Paris agreement. Mr. Pruitt will have a much larger role if we pull out,”

“Our major way of (fighting climate change) was to change out our power plants. Not necessarily those in California as we do not have any coal fired power plants in California,” he explained. “It’s cheaper to use less polluting, more environmental friendly alternative energy and renewables.

“I’m going to promote alternative energy. It was not policies in Washington that ended our dependence on coal, it was marketplace that did it. Natural gas is now cheaper than coal, and alternative energy is now getting to be cheaper. We’re moving in that direction, not because Washington wanted it, it’s because the marketplace is moving in that direction. We’re going more and more solar and wind on our national and federal lands and doing less drilling on our outer continental shelf.”

Lowenthal concluded his June 1 statement. “It is clear that there will be no help or concern from the White House for our planet or for our future. This is a complete abdication of leadership. I will continue to hold this administration’s feet to the fire on the issue of the environment. States like California will also. Cities like Long Beach will continue to fight. I know a great many Americans will also. This cannot stand. This is not who we are as a nation.”

steve@beachcomber.news