Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) wants to understand the “full cost” of Biden administration officials’ attendance at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26).
On Monday, Barrasso sent eight letters to members of President Joe Biden’s administration asking how many employees of their agencies and departments attended the conference, what the cost of their attendance is, and details of their “total carbon footprint.”
“According to Time Magazine, COP 26 will be the ‘most expensive COP on record.’ In an effort to understand the full cost the taxpayers will bear for this two-week international conference, I ask that you answer the attached questions,” he wrote.
The Wyoming senator, who is the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, continued, “In addition to the staggering cost of the conference, I am concerned that what appears to be a bloated U.S. delegation will prove counterproductive to COP’s mission.”
“The conference is intended to ‘accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.’ However, these commitments strike a tone of insincerity as a majority of COP 26 delegates will have contributed a significant amount of carbon emissions to attend COP 26,” Barrasso added.
As The Washington Post noted, “The British and Scottish governments, serving as hosts, are expecting up to 30,000 official attendees — who will be meeting indoors, huddling in tense talks, for hours and hours a day, from Sunday to Nov. 12 and potentially longer. It will be the largest summit ever hosted in Britain.”
Additionally, Barrasso noted that the conference was originally scheduled to take place in 2020, and “people all over the world have made the transition to teleconferencing.”
“It is perplexing that in this new age of digital communications and during an ongoing pandemic, executive branch departments and agencies are unnecessarily choosing to contribute directly to carbon emissions and risk exposure to COVID-19,” he said.
Finally, Barrasso suggested, “If [executive branch employees] cannot go to work here in the U.S., they should not be permitted to attend extravagant conferences across the globe.”
In his letter, Barrasso asked each recipient to identify how many employees went to the summit, how much was spent to send employees to the conference “including expenditure for travel, lodging, food and beverages, emission offset measures, and lost work productivity,” and which attendees have “worked from home more than 50 percent of their total hours worked since March 2020.”
Additionally, he asked for details about the “total carbon footprint” as a result of traveling to the conference, and what if any, effort has been made to offset “carbon emissions resulting from COP 26 travel.”
