The oil industry should pay for climate change — and Congress should decide how 

For more than 60 years, America’s response to global climate change has been like a hot potato passed from the presidency to Congress and the courts. Now, Congress should end the game once and for all. 

The potato tossing began in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson’s science advisers warned him that fossil-fuel pollution was causing a “vast geophysical experiment” that would alter the Earth’s climate and be “deleterious” to humans. Johnson told Congress, but neither he nor lawmakers acted to control greenhouse gases. 

In 1988, one of the government’s principal climate scientists informed Congress that climate change was underway in the United States, caused by human activity and likely to make weather disasters more extreme. Congress responded with several bipartisan climate bills. In 1992, the Senate ratified America’s involvement in the first international climate treaty. 

But before long, the fossil energy industry and Republican lawmakers launched a campaign to discredit and deny climate science, causing the issue to become highly partisan. Democratic presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all attempted to implement climate-action programs, only to have Congress and their Republican successors scuttle them. 

Climate change moved into the legal arena in 2004. Eight states and New York City filed the........

© The Hill