(CNSNews.com) - As one of the top priorities on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) agenda, the House voted Thursday to create a select committee on global warming.

The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming was passed by a bipartisan vote of 269 to 150.

In announcing her idea, Pelosi said, "Its purpose will be to communicate with the American people on this important issue. I promise to do anything in my power to achieve energy independence within ten years, stop global warming, and this select committee is to further those goals."

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources Committees, which has historically had jurisdiction over climate change, has reportedly been picked to head the new committee.

Markey praised the creation of the 15-member committee.

"We are facing an issue which will test the capacity of democracy to respond in time to affect the fate of the planet," he said. "We have the technology, the ingenuity, and the experience to reverse the inexorable buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses."

"The Speaker is moving boldly and quickly so that we have time to take steps proportionate to the threat now, in the 110th Congress."

But Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the global warming committee "is for grandstanding, not legislation."

"Apparently we're going to create a Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming today," he said in a statement. "To quote my good friend, Mr. Dingell of Michigan [chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee], that's like putting feathers on a fish.

"By design, the select committee is going to have no legislative jurisdiction," Barton said. "It's only going to exist for two years and it cannot report bills, then it goes out of existence.

"I don't believe the select committee will serve any intended purpose other than serving as a platform for some members to grandstand and play to the constituencies that are so insistent that we destroy our economy in the name of political correctness," he added.

"It will do nothing but muddy the waters and waste a lot of resources and the valuable time of the members who are selected to serve on it," Barton said. "In my opinion, all that adds up to mistake."

But Markey argued that Congress has "lost a decade watching the President and the Republican leadership play the politics of climate change denial; now it is time to play catch-up, before it is too late."

See Earlier Stories:
Pelosi Keeps Top Dems in the Dark over Global Warming Committee (Jan. 18, 2007)
Pelosi Targets Global Warming (Jan. 18, 2007)

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