Guardian: House Republicans cut funding to UN climate science body
America is to cut off all funding to the United Nations climate science panel under sweeping Republican budget cuts that seek to gut spending on environmental protection.
The funding ban to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – stripping $2.3m (£1.31m) from an international organisation that relies heavily on volunteer scientists – was among some $61bn (£38bn) in cuts voted through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Saturday.
If enacted, the cuts package would reduce spending on environmental protection by nearly one-third, or about $3bn (£1.85bn), advancing a key objective of the conservative Tea Party of dismantling government regulation.
The cuts also exhibit the strong hostility to climate science among the Tea Party activists with funding bans on the IPCC and a newly created climate information service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – a reorganisation which was to be funded out of existing budgets.
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Guardian: Republicans propose $1.6bn cut to Environmental Protection Agency (2/9/2011)
Republicans have launched an attack on the Obama administration’s powers to act on climate change, proposing a 17% budget cut to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In a follow-up strike, they repeatedly challenged the legal authority of the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions during a contentious hearing in Congress.
The proposed $1.6bn (£1bn) cut to the EPA was the largest in dollar terms of some 70 budgetary measures put forward by Republicans on Wednesday.