The United States increased the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere every year over decades. But emissions began to decline in 2007 with the great Recession. That trend might have continued, because at the end of the Obama Administration last year, the Bureau of Land management enacted stiffer rules that require oil and gas companies to capture methane emissions on federal and tribal lands. However, a U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee met in late January to discuss rolling back the venting and flaring rule. House Joint Resolution 36 was sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop, a Republican from Utah. It was co-sponsored by 33 other Republican representatives, including NM Representative Steve Pearce. The New Mexico congressman also published an editorial in the Albuquerque Journal recently praising the rollback. Deborah Begel put Pearce’s assertions supporting the rollback of the Venting and Flaring Rule to Jon Goldstein, who is Senior Energy Policy Manager at the Environmental Defense Fund in Boulder.