On the Markey on Energy
Veteran Member at Center of Debate on Global Warming
CongressNow Staff
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When President Barack Obama took the oath of office last month, the dozens of new Members of Congress who braved the cold witnessed the historic swearing-in of a long-shot Democratic reformer, elected in part on a pledge to wean the United States off foreign oil.
For Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who was also in the crowd, it was a familiar scene.
In 1977, as a 30-year-old freshman lawmaker, Markey attended the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, the underdog former Georgia governor who promised a new national energy policy in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo.
But the mix of renewable and conservation policies at the heart of Carter’s energy plan failed to survive the Reagan presidency. And as public outrage over the oil shocks of the 1970s diminished, so did the hopes of those people seeking a transformative energy strategy.
Thirty-two years later, the United States is once again on the cusp of an energy revolution, propelled not just by oil fatigue but also global warming.
This time around Markey — who at 62 has spent half his life in the House and ranks among its most senior Members — will play a leading role in seeing the new clean energy agenda to fruition.
He emerged last month from a shakeup of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee holding the reins of the new Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, which will be the House’s starting point for sweeping climate legislation that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants to pass before the year is out. The new role also gives Markey the legislative authority that the Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, which he’s chaired since its creation in 2007, lacks.
While his newfound clout was unforeseen in the early days of George W. Bush’s presidency, when Republicans dominated Washington, D.C., Markey in a recent interview called it inevitable that energy would re-emerge as a top issue for Congress.
“I’m not surprised it’s come back,” he said in his Rayburn office, where a large solar panel salvaged from a Congressional exhibit has hung since the 1980s. “I am surprised it has taken this long.”
He’s anxious to get to work after what he calls the “lost years” of the Bush administration, which opposed regulating greenhouse gases. Making up for that lost time and getting a cap-and-trade scheme up and running has replaced the former president’s obstinacy as the chief obstacle for tackling global warming, he said.
“We’re behind the rest of the industrialized world in debating, thinking about and implementing these policies,” he said.
It has not been for a lack of effort on Markey’s part. He’s been an outspoken fixture in the environmental arena since the start of his Congressional career, shaping policy from his seats on the Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources committees.
He quickly established himself as a nuclear watchdog after winning his seat in 1976, and he was an early advocate for energy efficiency as chairman of the now-defunct Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power during the 1980s. Markey has been a passionate opponent of oil and gas drilling on public lands, and he spent a decade pushing for the increase in federal fuel-economy standards that was signed into law in 2007.
His oratory skills are legendary, though for one frequent legislative foe — Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking member on the Energy Committee — something of a running joke.
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