Stefanik votes 'astonishingly hostile' to environment'

Letter to the Editor: Rep. Elise Stefanik is funded by gas, oil, fracking, coal interests, Koch brothers and Karl Rove's American Crossroads, yet she claims she takes climate change seriously. She invokes her "all-of-the above" position—a phrase as un-informing as it was when President Obama used it. It indicates nothing about priorities. Stefanik joined with Rep. Charles Gibson last September in co-sponsoring a non-binding (aka "do-nothing") resolution acknowledging the reality of climate change. She lauds the beauty of the Adirondacks. She also touts her call for "comprehensive" efforts to combat invasive species. All this sounds green. It is climate change that encourages invasive species. Was Stefanik, therefore, preparing to support comprehensive efforts to combat climate change and buck her party's climate change deniers and her fossil fuel funders and vote in an environmentally friendly manner? Or was she just setting up green fig leaves to mask her overall, anti-environmental voting record? Stefanik claims transparency, yet she does not post the lion's share of her votes in Congress regarding major environmental issues, either on her websites or in her press releases — a total of 78 votes from 2015 to July 14, 2016. They are published, however, by the League of Conservation Voters. The League's data shows that Elise Stefanik's environmental record in 2015 was among the worst in Congress. As has been reported elsewhere, she ranked 9 on a scale of 1-100. I suspected her overall environmental record was not great, but I did not expect it to be so astonishingly hostile to the environment. Space limitations preclude detailing all Stefanik's environmentally-related votes. They can be detailed at a later time. What follows, therefore, is only a percentage tally of her votes in 2015 using four key LCV's headings: "Climate Change" votes in 2015 = 0% pro-environment; "Fossil Fuels - Dirty Energy"= 0% pro-environment; "Clean Water" = 0% pro-environment; "Clean Air" = 0% pro-environment. These include her vote to stifle the Clean Air Act protections against carbon emissions, protections that have been so beneficial to the Adirondacks. She has also been unwilling to address the dangers of the Bakken Oil trains which threaten Lake Champlain, the Hudson Valley and the Hudson River. She wrote me she helped by voting for the Keystone XL pipeline. This answer makes no sense. Support of the Keystone XL pipeline would not reduce the flow of Bakken Oil by train through New York because the Keystone XL pipeline was designed not for Bakken Oil, but for Alberta tar sands to be shipped through the mid-west to Texas. Stefanik's environmental score card in 2016 is a bit better (election season?) but her votes still are 100% favorable to dirty energy. No, Elise Stefanik has not bucked her party's climate change deniers and her fossil fuel funders. Her votes are clearly not those of someone who takes climate change seriously. Moreover, she supports Donald Trump who contends that claims of climate change are a hoax. And she has not disavowed Trump's pledge to tear up the Paris Climate Accord (an act that would encourage other nations to back out of it too), nor his promise to free up fossil fuels from regulation—positions promising catastrophic, climate-destructive policies. Monique Weston Clague Keene

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Stefanik votes 'astonishingly hostile' to environment'

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