[Senate Hearing 117-114]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-114

                      COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE IN
                       EAST ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                       SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIA,
                     THE PACIFIC, AND INTERNATIONAL
                          CYBERSECURITY POLICY

                                 OF THE

                     COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                              __________

                            JULY 21, 2021

                               __________

       Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
       
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]       


                  Available via http://www.govinfo.gov

                              __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
46-388 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2021                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------   

                 COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS        

             ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman        
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland         JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire        MARCO RUBIO, Florida
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware       RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut      MITT ROMNEY, Utah
TIM KAINE, Virginia                  ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts      RAND PAUL, Kentucky
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon                 TODD YOUNG, Indiana
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey           JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii                 TED CRUZ, Texas
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland           MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
                                     BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
                 Jessica Lewis, Staff Director        
        Christopher M. Socha, Republican Staff Director        
                    John Dutton, Chief Clerk        



            SUBCOMMITTEE ON EAST ASIA, THE PACIFIC,        
             AND INTERNATIONAL CYBERSECURITY POLICY        

           EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Chairman        
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware       MITT ROMNEY, Utah
CHRISTOPHER MURPHY, Connecticut      TED CRUZ, Texas
BRIAN SCHATZ, Hawaii                 RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon                 MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
                                     BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee

                              (ii)        

  
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

Markey, Hon. Edward J., U.S. Senator From Massachusetts..........     1

Romney, Hon. Mitt, U.S. Senator From Utah........................     2

Buangan, Richard L., Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public 
  Affairs and Public Diplomacy and Regional and Security Policy, 
  Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of 
  State, Washington, DC..........................................     4
    Prepared Statement...........................................     6

Pershing, Dr. Jonathan, Senior Advisor to the Special 
  Presidential Envoy for Climate, Office of the Special 
  Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, U.S. Department of 
  State, Washington, DC..........................................     8
    Prepared Statement...........................................    10

Hart, Craig, Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for 
  Asia, United States Agency for International Development, 
  Washington, DC.................................................    13
    Prepared Statement...........................................    15

Dalton, Melissa, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for 
  Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities, U.S. Department of Defense, 
  Washington, DC.................................................    20
    Prepared Statement...........................................    22

Powell, Richard, Executive Director, ClearPath, Washington, DC...    38
    Prepared Statement...........................................    40

Ubaldo, Marinel Sumook, Youth Climate Activist, The Philippines..    49
    Prepared Statement...........................................    52

Goodman, Sherri, Secretary General, International Military 
  Council on Climate and Security, Washington, DC................    55
    Prepared Statement...........................................    57

                                 (iii)

 
                     COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE IN 
                       EAST ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

                              ----------                              


                                         WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2021

                           U.S. Senate,    
Subcommittee on East Asia, The Pacific, and
                International Cybersecurity Policy,
                            Committee on Foreign Relations,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:09 p.m. in 
room SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Edward J. 
Markey, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.
    Present: Senators Markey [presiding], Coons, Merkley, and 
Romney.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY, 
                U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS

    Senator Markey. Welcome to a hearing of the Senate Foreign 
Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and 
International Cybersecurity Policy.
    The hearing will come to order, and it is a pleasure to 
chair this hearing on combating climate change in East Asia and 
the Pacific.
    I have had the opportunity to meet with a variety of 
leaders and activists from all over the region, and no matter 
where they are from, at some point in the conversation, every 
leader, every activist, in this region raises the same issue--
the threat that the climate crisis poses to their country, 
their health, their economy, and their future, and it is 
uniform.
    To that end, this year I reintroduced legislation to create 
both a global climate resiliency strategy and a new 
humanitarian program for those who have been displaced by 
environmental situations, and that is only going to increase as 
each and every year goes by.
    Earlier this year, I authored a provision included in the 
Senate-passed Innovation and Competition Act calling on the 
United States Government to facilitate a robust interagency 
Indo-Pacific climate resiliency and adaptation strategy, which 
passed unanimously out of this committee and is included in the 
innovation bill, because we do not have any time to spare.
    The United States has a moral imperative to lead in the 
fight against climate change. We have got to go big to meet the 
scope and the scale of this moment because the world needs our 
leadership, and we need to be doing our fair share.
    After all, around 40 percent of all the excess CO2 in the 
atmosphere right now is red, white, and blue. The rest of the 
world knows that we started sending up that CO2 in the 19th 
century and it is cumulative over the years. It stays up there 
for a long time.
    But despite that, too often we have abandoned our 
responsibility to those who have been impacted by fossil fuel 
development and scientific recklessness. We have been reaping 
the economic benefits while saddling others with the deadly 
consequences.
    Take for example, the case of the Marshall Islands. We have 
a photograph here of a situation which we are responsible for 
because that dome stores the nuclear waste from 67 American 
nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, along with 130 tons of 
radioactive soil brought over from a testing site in Nevada. It 
fills a huge crater, covered by a cement dome on Runit Island.
    The Runit Dome is at sea level and is at risk of a full-on 
collapse due to rising sea levels and other effects from 
climate change. This region is rife with stories of climate-
fueled danger and instability.
    We are going to hear testimony from a young activist in the 
Philippines who lost her family home in Typhoon Haiyan, as 
super typhoons become the norm in this region.
    In the United States, we need to resume our leadership role 
against climate change. We must remain committed to supporting 
and assisting partners and allies in adapting to urgent climate 
threats and avoiding future emissions.
    This is the central tenet of the Green New Deal. It is the 
central tenet of what the rest of the world wants from the 
United States, to be the leader and not the laggard, to be able 
to go to Glasgow and say, here is what we are going to be doing 
and we expect reciprocal action from you as well.
    That is our challenge, and this is our warning. This is a 
situation where the United States used the Marshall Islands as 
human guinea pigs to test our nuclear weapons, and we just 
stored all of that nuclear waste right there on the Marshall 
Islands.
    Now they are saying to us that not only are they in danger 
from climate change and rising sea levels, but they are also in 
danger of seeing nuclear testing create a catastrophic 
situation.
    We have responsibilities historically and we have to 
discharge them, and that is a big part of what today's hearing 
is all about.
    We welcome all of our witnesses, and let me turn and 
recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee, Senator 
Romney from Utah.

                STATEMENT OF HON. MITT ROMNEY, 
                     U.S. SENATOR FROM UTAH

    Senator Romney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I appreciate the panelists being here today, and the topic 
that we are discussing is, obviously, of great significance to 
each of us in this room and the people around our country and 
around the world.
    It is my view that 50 years from now, as people look back 
to our generation and ask what our legacy might have been, that 
upon which they will be most critical was our failure to act to 
prevent the warming of the planet and the climate change 
associated with that warming and that the political winds that 
prevented us from acting will be seen as an extraordinary lapse 
in America's judgment, and that this is a time for us to come 
together and to find solutions that will actually help protect 
our planet for future generations.
    I note, of course, that the challenge we are dealing with 
is global, not simply regional. It is not simply, obviously, an 
Asian issue, even though that is the topic for today--climate 
change as it relates to much of Asia--but also climate change 
here in the United States is of significance and around the 
world.
    I will also note, Mr. Chairman and members of the 
committee, that my own perspective is that the only effective 
way we will have in dealing with climate change is through the 
advance in technology, technology which will be adopted not 
just here but around the world, and adopted because it is 
effective in reducing emissions and also lower cost than some 
of the carbon-based alternatives, because I think it is 
unlikely that poor nations in particular that are becoming 
developed will adopt technologies that are far more expensive 
even if they reduce CO2. They will move to those things which 
are less expensive.
    So it is incumbent upon nations that have the resources we 
have to invest in technology as, fortunately, our colleagues 
have recently voted to do, invest in technology which will help 
not only us reduce our emissions, but also help others in the 
rest of the world.
    I know that sometimes we are tempted to politically get 
behind initiatives that sound good, doing things here that that 
people here feel like, boy, we are doing green things here, is 
not that wonderful.
    The reality is that those things will not make a hill of 
beans worth of a difference to reducing global emissions. They 
will cost us a lot of money, sometimes cost us jobs. Maybe not. 
Maybe they will actually create jobs in some cases. They will 
not actually reduce emissions.
    What will reduce emissions is adopting technologies and 
developing technologies which will be used around the world. I 
fully concur with the view that America is responsible for a 
huge slug of the CO2 that is in the atmosphere, as the chairman 
indicated, beginning of the 19th century.
    This, of course, was at a time we did not know we were 
doing anything wrong. Now we understand the consequence of this 
CO2 going into the environment and not acting would be 
extraordinarily shameful.
    I would note that in the future the growth in emissions of 
CO2 and other warming emissions is going to be driven not by 
the United States, because, of course, over the last decade our 
emissions have been coming down as have those of the EU, but 
instead the developing nations, which, understandably, are 
getting washing machines and more automobiles, more electricity 
in the home, air conditioning, and as a result, China and 
Brazil and Indonesia and India are expected to dramatically 
increase their emissions of greenhouse gases.
    So it is incumbent on us to take a close look at those 
places in particular and to see how we can help and encourage 
them to take action that does not add to the extraordinary 
burden that is in our environment.
    I am concerned that China is hiding their CO2 plans by, if 
you will, exporting the production of facilities through Belt 
and Road and putting infrastructure in place in other countries 
that will be emitting vast amounts of greenhouse gases, and 
they will say, see, we are not doing it. It is just being done 
in that other country, which, by the way, we happened to put 
that coal power plant there.
    So understanding China's role and how we can work together 
is important. At the same time, I would note, and I know that 
the chairman and I agree on this, it is critical as we deal 
with China that, yes, we want them and other nations to reduce 
their emissions in their plans, going forward.
    At the same time, we will not forget or look away, rather 
from the predations of their economic activities, their 
military activities in the South China Sea and elsewhere, and, 
of course, their extraordinary human rights abuses.
    With that, Mr. Chairman, I turn back to you and our panel.
    Senator Markey. Thank you, Senator Romney.
    We have got just a great panel today, two panels actually.
    This first panel consists of Richard Buangan, who is the 
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Public 
Diplomacy, and Regional and Security Policy in the Bureau of 
East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department.
    He has served in several assignments throughout his career. 
We welcome you, sir.
    Next will be Dr. Jonathan Pershing, who is the Deputy 
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the office of the 
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change.
    Prior to his current post, Dr. Pershing was the program 
director of environment at the William and Flora Hewlett 
Foundation, and he served as the Special Envoy for Climate 
Change at the Department of State in the Obama administration 
where he coordinated the joining and implementation of the 
Paris Climate Agreement. We welcome you, Dr. Pershing.
    Next will be Craig Hart, who is the Deputy Assistant 
Administrator for East Asia and the Pacific at USAID, a 
position he has held since August of 2020. He is a career 
member of USAID. We thank you, sir, for being here.
    Finally, Melissa Dalton is the Acting Assistant Secretary 
of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities, and prior to 
her appointment as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of 
Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities, she was a senior 
fellow at CSIS.
    So we welcome you here as well, Ms. Dalton, and we thank 
you for your service during the Bush and Obama administrations 
at DOE as an intelligence analyst. We thank you so much.
    So let us begin then. Let us recognize you, Mr. Buangan. 
Each of you will have 5 minutes to make an opening statement, 
and then we will go to questions from the Senate panel.
    Please begin whenever you feel comfortable.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD L. BUANGAN, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR 
 PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND REGIONAL AND SECURITY 
    POLICY, BUREAU OF EAST ASIAN AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS, U.S. 
              DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Buangan. Thank you very much, Chairman Markey, Ranking 
Member Romney, members of the subcommittee.
    Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. 
It is my honor to speak with you about the importance of 
addressing climate change in the Indo-Pacific.
    I am here to testify on behalf of the Department of State's 
bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, which works closely 
with the office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate 
in the interagency to tackle the climate crisis in the region.
    The Indo-Pacific region is a critical focus for U.S. 
climate policy and strategy. It is home to the world's largest 
greenhouse gas emitters and some of the countries most 
vulnerable to climate change. It is the nexus to global 
economic growth and recovery.
    The Indo-Pacific is a top priority for the Biden/Harris 
administration, and our strategy for engaging the region on 
climate is very much aligned with our broader national security 
and strategic interests.
    U.S. efforts to foster economic prosperity, uphold 
security, revitalize alliances in the Indo-Pacific region are 
deeply integrated with our climate strategy.
    I would like to talk about three objectives that we are 
integrating and prioritizing--where we are integrating and 
prioritizing climate change issues.
    The first is economic prosperity. U.S. economic prosperity 
is inextricably linked to the Indo-Pacific region. Climate 
change poses risks to property, infrastructure, human health, 
agricultural systems, and labor productivity, all critical to 
ensuring our people prosper.
    The Indo-Pacific has the fastest growing energy use in the 
world, and it is projected to grow 60 percent by 2040. The 
right government policy decisions will be critical if the world 
is to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and a global net 
zero future by 2050.
    In order to help Indo-Pacific partners meet their growing 
demand for energy, promote economic prosperity, and support our 
climate goals, the State Department, in coordination with the 
interagency, is sharpening the focus of our foreign assistance 
programs.
    For example, we are realigning the Asia Enhancing 
Development and Growth through Energy, or Asia EDGE Initiative 
to support renewable energy development, energy efficiency, and 
advanced energy technology and policy.
    The second objective is upholding security. Our approach to 
climate change has lasting implications for peace and stability 
in the Indo-Pacific region. At least 94 million in the Indo-
Pacific were affected by climate-related disasters in 2019.
    Pacific Island nations, many of them close partners of the 
United States, are threatened by rising sea levels and more 
severe tropical cyclones.
    In the vulnerable Mekong region and the resource-rich South 
China Sea, changing climate could lead to disruption of 
historic food stocks, shortages of water, and climate-related 
migration.
    In order to prepare for and respond to the security threats 
posed by climate change, the State Department is engaging 
vulnerable partners in the region to increase their resilience.
    The third objective is restoring alliances. I would like to 
talk about the importance of restoring our alliances and how 
that relates to climate change.
    The State Department is engaging at the bilateral, 
regional, and multilateral level. On the bilateral level, I 
would like to highlight the important work the U.S. interagency 
has done with Japan and the Republic of Korea on climate 
technology innovation.
    I would also like to point to our partners in the Pacific. 
Addressing climate change is the single most important issue 
for Pacific Island countries who are critical partners for 
deterrence of adversaries in defense of the U.S. homeland.
    We are elevating our engagement with Pacific Island 
countries to enhance their ability to adapt to the impacts of 
climate change and build resilience.
    In coordination with the National Security Council and our 
interagency colleagues, we are expanding quadrilateral 
consultations with Australia, India, and Japan to incorporate 
discussions on climate ambition, clean energy transitions, and 
climate adaptation.
    Climate can also be an area where our interests align with 
the People's Republic of China. It is the largest emitter. The 
world cannot successfully address the climate change challenge 
without significant additional action by China.
    Although the climate crisis is a critical global challenge 
requiring increased and urgent action by all, the world is 
looking particularly to the actions the PRC will take in the 
near term, to the long term goals it sets and, importantly, to 
the plans it puts forward to achieve those goals.
    The United States also recognizes that young people should 
be and many already are active leaders and working towards 
implementing climate change solutions. The Young Southeast 
Asian Leaders Initiative, or YSEALI, with more than 150,000 
members and 6,000 alumni is the U.S. Government's signature 
program in Southeast Asia to educate and provide leadership 
skills to young people. YESALI members play an outsized role in 
tackling the climate crisis.
    In summary, responding to the climate crisis is critical 
for our national security interests, our leadership standing in 
the region, and the long-term stability and prosperity of our 
allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
    Now, I would like to give the floor to my colleague, 
Jonathan Pershing, from the Office of the Special Presidential 
Envoy for Climate.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Buangan follows:]

               Prepared Statement of Mr. Richard Buangan

    Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Romney, and Members of the 
Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. 
It is my honor to speak with you about the importance of addressing 
climate change in the Indo-Pacific. I am here to testify on behalf of 
the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP), 
which works closely with the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy 
for Climate, the Office of Global Change in the Bureau of Oceans and 
International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, and interagency 
partners such as USAID to tackle the climate crisis in the region.
    The Indo-Pacific region is a critical focus for U.S. climate policy 
and strategy. It is home to the world's largest emitters of greenhouse 
gases and some of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The 
Indo-Pacific is also the fastest-growing region on the planet, with 
more than half of the world's population and nearly as much of global 
GDP. It is the nexus of global economic growth and recovery. The Indo-
Pacific faces intensifying geostrategic competition among major powers 
including the United States and the People's Republic of China, as well 
as shifting power dynamics among India, Australia, Japan, and the 
Republic of Korea. It is home to five of our seven alliance partners, 
seven of the world's largest militaries, and at least a third of all 
the world's military personnel.
    For these reasons, the Indo-Pacific is a top priority for the 
Biden-Harris administration, and our strategy for engaging the region 
on climate is very much aligned with our broader national security and 
strategic interests. U.S. efforts to foster economic prosperity, uphold 
security, and revitalize alliances in the Indo-Pacific region are 
deeply integrated with our climate strategy.
    Economic Prosperity: U.S. economic prosperity is inextricably 
linked to the Indo-Pacific region. The United States conducted $1.75 
trillion in two-way trade with Indo-Pacific countries in 2020, and 
cumulative investment between the United States and partners in the 
region at the end of 2019 stood at approximately $1.9 trillion. In 
2020, U.S. exports to the region accounted for approximately 28.8 
percent of total U.S. exports, and imports accounted for 40.4 percent 
of total U.S. imports. The well-being of the American people and those 
in the region is tied together, and the climate crisis threatens our 
shared economic prosperity. Climate change poses risks to property, 
infrastructure, human health, agricultural systems, and labor 
productivity--all critical to ensuring our people prosper. Inclusive 
opportunity and prosperity built on strong commitments to address 
environmental and climate challenges will be integral to addressing the 
climate crisis and ensuring the economic security of the United States.
    The Indo-Pacific has the fastest growing energy use in the world, 
and it is projected to grow 60 percent by 2040. A critical challenge 
will be how Indo-Pacific economies transition from an over-reliance on 
fossil fuels to clean energy while sustaining the region's dynamic 
economic growth trajectory. The right government policy decisions will 
be critical if the world is to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement 
and a global net zero future by 2050.
    In order to help Indo-Pacific partners meet their growing demand 
for energy, promote economic prosperity, and support our climate goals, 
the State Department, in coordination with our interagency partners, is 
sharpening the focus of our foreign assistance programs. For example, 
the Asia Enhancing Development and Growth though Energy (Asia EDGE) 
initiative is a whole-of-government effort to expand sustainable and 
secure energy markets throughout the Indo-Pacific. We are enhancing 
this program to support renewable energy development, energy 
efficiency, and advanced energy technology and policy. The 
Infrastructure Transaction and Assistance Network (ITAN) similarly aims 
to advance the development of sustainable, transparent, and quality 
infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region and can also advance our 
climate goals through a greater focus on climate-smart infrastructure. 
The U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Smart Cities 
Partnership also aims to promote sustainable solutions in 
transportation and renewable energy and is strengthening its focus to 
address sub-national climate challenges.
    Upholding Security: Our approach to climate change has lasting 
implications for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. As 
noted in this year's report to Congress on Indo-Pacific Climate 
Security, ``geo-political and strategic competition--coupled with 
evolving economies, booming populations and urbanization, strong 
reliance on natural resources and capital, and impacts from climate 
change pose security risks with the potential to destabilize the 
region. Climate change has the potential to cause a significant and 
prolonged disruption to the ecosystems, infrastructure, and economies 
that support stable and prosperous societies in the Indo-Pacific.''
    At least 94 million people in the Indo-Pacific region were affected 
by climate-related disasters in 2019. Adverse impacts include more 
frequent and intense droughts, ocean acidification, increasingly severe 
cyclones, changes in the monsoon cycle, extended heat waves, 
catastrophic wildfires, devastating flooding and landslides, increased 
water insecurity, and rising sea levels. Pacific Island nations, many 
of them close partners of the United States, are threatened by rising 
sea levels and more severe tropical cyclones. In the vulnerable Mekong 
region and the resource-rich South China Sea, changing climate could 
lead to disruption of historic food-stocks, shortages of water, and 
climate-related migration.
    In order to prepare for and respond to the security threats posed 
by climate change, the State Department is engaging vulnerable partners 
in the region to increase their resilience. One program, the Mekong 
Water Data Initiative, promotes good governance of transboundary water 
resources and timely sharing of essential data to improve hydrological 
and climate forecasting to mitigate impacts of severe floods and 
droughts. Announced by President Biden in March, the Small and Less 
Populous Island Economies Initiative will support climate initiatives, 
sustainable energy development, natural disaster response and 
resilience, and other critical environmental and sustainability issues.
    Restoring Alliances: Finally, I would like to talk about the 
importance of restoring our alliances and how that relates to climate 
change. President Biden and Secretary Blinken have made clear that our 
network of alliances and partnerships is our greatest strategic asset. 
They enable us to combine our strengths to advance shared interests and 
deter common threats. Addressing the climate crisis in partnership with 
others can serve to restore our alliances in the region, and in turn, 
restoring our alliances will allow us to better address the climate 
crisis.
    In order to achieve this, the State Department is engaging at the 
bilateral, regional, and multilateral level. On the bilateral level, I 
would like to highlight the important work the U.S. interagency has 
done with Japan and the Republic of Korea. The Administration is 
particularly enthusiastic about how we have broadened and deepened our 
cooperation with these allies beyond our traditional security agenda, 
and climate change has been a bright example. We are working closely 
with both countries on climate technology innovation.
    I would also like to point to our partners in the Pacific. 
Addressing climate change is the single most important issue for 
Pacific Island Countries, who are critical partners for deterrence of 
adversaries and defense of the U.S. homeland. Pacific Island Countries 
have been instrumental advocates for ambitious global climate action. 
We are elevating our engagement with Pacific Island countries to 
enhance their ability to adapt to the impacts of climate change and 
build resilience, from investing in early warning systems to managing 
coastal resources. The Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs 
continues to work closely with the interagency and engage our partners 
in the Pacific and plans to use bureau funds to support climate 
adaptation and projects for the Pacific islands.
    In coordination with the National Security Council and our 
interagency colleagues, we are expanding Quadrilateral consultations 
with Australia, India, and Japan (``the Quad'') to incorporate 
discussions on climate ambition, clean energy transitions, and climate 
adaptation. We also work closely with multilateral organizations such 
as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific 
Economic Cooperation Forum, and the Secretariat of the Pacific 
Community to address climate and energy issues. By engaging with others 
on climate adaptation and mitigation, we forge links between our 
peoples.
    Climate can also be an area where our interests align with the 
People's Republic of China. China is the world's largest emitter, and 
we cannot successfully address the climate challenge without 
significant additional action by China. Although the climate crisis is 
a critical global challenge, requiring increased and urgent action by 
all, the world is looking particularly to the actions the PRC will take 
in the near term, to the long-term goals it sets, and--importantly--to 
the plans it puts forward to achieve those goals. We will continue to 
engage with China as we address the climate crisis. All countries, 
including the United States and China, must raise their ambitions on 
the road to COP26 in Glasgow.
    In summary, responding to the climate crisis is critical for our 
national security interests, our leadership standing in the region, and 
the long-term stability and prosperity of our allies and partners in 
the Indo-Pacific. Moving forward, EAP will continue to seek ways to 
incorporate climate goals into our regional policies and programming.
    Now, I would like to give the floor to my colleague Jonathan 
Pershing from the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. 
He will further explain U.S. climate strategy in the region.

    Senator Markey. Dr. Pershing, whenever you are ready, 
please begin.

   STATEMENT OF DR. JONATHAN PERSHING, SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE 
 SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE, OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL 
   PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF 
                     STATE, WASHINGTON, DC

    Dr. Pershing. Thank you very much, Chairman Markey, Ranking 
Member Romney. It is a pleasure to see you and all the members 
of the committee.
    It is really an honor to be here and have a chance to talk 
about this issue today. The agenda for the Indo-Pacific, as my 
colleague has said, is one of the most important that we are 
seeking to address on the climate file.
    I have got some longer remarks, which I passed forward. I 
just want to make a couple of critical points that, perhaps, 
would amplify some elements of that.
    As we look around the world, particularly at the Asia 
Pacific region, we can see significant and mounting costs of 
global warming, including more volatility in the climate. It is 
coping with severe typhoons.
    It is coping with more intense and frequent droughts. It is 
coping with ocean acidification, with extended heat waves, with 
emergencies stemming from those from flooding, from landslides.
    I saw in the paper today that more rain had fallen in one 
city in China in 1 hour than normally falls in 6 months.
    This kind of intensity is unprecedented and driven by 
climate. It impacts economic growth, food production, disease. 
It leads to regional displacement. We had a chance to visit 
Bangladesh.
    There are 20 million people in Bangladesh within one meter 
of sea level, and they are going to be displaced. That kind of 
an outcome is extraordinary.
    As my colleague has said, the Indo-Pacific countries 
comprise about 45 percent of global emissions. China is the 
world's largest. India, Japan, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, 
all in the top 10. Australia, number 16.
    The United States, with its climate diplomacy with these 
governments, is urging them and other major emitters worldwide 
to strengthen mitigation and to better align their 2030 
greenhouse gas emissions reductions toward a net zero target by 
2050.
    China is the top priority. We have to find ways to work 
with China to drive the necessary action or we cannot keep the 
temperature at or below--well below--2 degrees Celsius with the 
hope of keeping it to 1.5.
    President Xi Jinping said he would strive for carbon 
neutral emissions by 2060. We are pressing them to do more, to 
invest not in a coal-powered future but in a clean future.
    I want to be clear on our approach and, Senator Romney, 
this is something that you have also mentioned as has Secretary 
Blinken and Presidential Special Envoy Kerry has said.
    Other aspects of the U.S.-China relationship will not be 
traded for the climate discussion.
    India and Indonesia are also top priorities for engagement. 
While I realize that India is not one of the jurisdictional 
members of this committee, it is a central player in the 
solution.
    I just want to note that Prime Minister Modi's focus on 
driving clean energy is, perhaps, a harbinger for what we might 
do around the world with others. He is seeking to install 450 
gigawatts of renewable energy, which would be an extraordinary 
achievement.
    In Indonesia, the destruction of forests and the planting 
of crops on peat lands is the main source of national 
emissions, along with coal for electric power. To help, the 
Administration has launched a bilateral climate policy.
    We have been working with our Indonesian colleagues on 
consultations focusing on mitigation, on nature-based 
solutions, on clean energy program, and on mobilizing financing 
to support climate mitigation.
    Japan and Korea, also central players, large emitters but 
key partners in the region. Each has committed to 2050 net zero 
greenhouse gas emission goals. They have also committed to 
action in the 2020s. This is not a delaying tactic.
    Japan announced a target of 46 to 50 percent carbon 
emissions reductions by 2030 from 2013 levels, and both the 
Japanese and Korean governments pledged to end public financing 
for new overseas unabated coal, a step agreed by all G-7 
members.
    Emissions are not our only priority. We have to help 
vulnerable countries build resilience to climate impacts, and 
the vulnerabilities are an acute risk in this region.
    Six of the top 10 countries most affected by climate were 
in the Indo-Pacific: Myanmar, the Philippines, Bangladesh, 
Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal. For many Pacific Island 
countries, it is actually an existential threat. It is their 
single most important issue.
    Climate finance is going to be a critical tool for us to 
achieve these resilience goals. Enhanced resources will build 
domestic as well as diplomatic influence. We wish to build 
infrastructure cooperation in our foreign partnerships through 
the Build Back Better World, through the Blue Dot Network, and 
through bilateral programs.
    We would like to deepen our cooperation with you in 
Congress to build U.S. resources and capabilities, particularly 
with the DFC, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, as well as 
enhanced support for USAID.
    Our regional investment represents huge commercial 
opportunity. The global clean investment opportunity is between 
$78 and $130 trillion in low carbon power, grids, hydrogen, 
transport, and other sectors. Upfront investment from the U.S. 
is going to be critical to de-risk and align climate projects 
with what we need to see.
    Achieving solutions to the Indo-Pacific mitigation and 
resilience challenges is the linchpin to solving the climate 
problem. We and our partners in the Indo-Pacific have to 
address the crisis which threatens regional growth and 
development.
    Thank you very much. I look forward to the questions and 
the discussion with the committee.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Pershing follows:]

              Prepared Statement of Dr. Jonathan Pershing

    Thank you, Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Romney, and 
distinguished Members of the Committee. It is my pleasure to appear 
before the committee today to discuss the Biden administration's 
climate agenda for the Indo-Pacific region.
    President Biden has identified climate change as one of the four 
``historic crises'' facing our country, alongside COVID-19, the 
economic crisis, and racial inequality.
    President Biden and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Kerry 
have made raising global climate ambition a key pillar of the 
Administration's international climate strategy. The ambition strategy 
has three elements:

   Mobilizing a global effort to reduce emissions urgently;

   Helping developing countries build resilience and adapt to 
        climate change impacts; and

   Catalyzing public and private finance to tackle the first 
        two pillars.

    In fact, the Indo-Pacific has a critical role in each of these 
three fronts. And the United States is working with counterparts in the 
region on all three.
    We've seen the mounting costs and risk--economic, security, 
social--imposed by a warming and more volatile climate. This is evident 
across the United States and around the world. We see it in stark terms 
in the Indo-Pacific. Our allies and partners see it, are confronting 
it, and seek our partnership to find solutions.
    The scale of the challenge is daunting. As Richard Buangan noted, 
the region is coping with increasingly severe typhoons, more frequent 
and intense droughts, ocean acidification, extended heat waves and heat 
emergencies, devastating flooding and landslides, and more. For 
example, India and Bangladesh were struck by one of the world's worst 
climate-related disasters in 2020, Cyclone Amphan, which caused $14 
billion in damage according to reinsurance company MunichRE. These 
dollar figures give a sense of the scale of the issue but are 
insufficient in capturing the loss of life and disruption to 
communities that these disaster events cause, and which are projected 
to become more costly, disruptive, and deadly without action.
    These phenomena all create consequential impacts for the region in 
economic growth, food production and malnutrition, infectious disease, 
and regional displacement of affected populations. In turn, these 
developments have implications for the United States--most notably for 
our own economy and national security.
    Today, the science is unequivocal: we need to keep the Earth's 
warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid catastrophe. To get there, the 
science says the world needs to get to a state of net zero greenhouse 
gas (GHG) emissions by around mid-century. Achieving that goal will 
require bending the emissions curve downward significantly by around 
2030--making this the decade for decisive action. The United States is 
seeking enhanced action around the world, particularly this decade, to 
keep a 1.5 degrees Celsius limit within reach. That could take many 
forms, including net zero goals, enhanced Nationally Determined 
Contributions (NDCs), or sectoral initiatives.
    And the Indo-Pacific will be a critical focus for that effort. 
Indo-Pacific countries comprise about 45 percent of global greenhouse 
emissions. China is the world's largest CO2 emitter, with India, Japan, 
the Republic of Korea, and Indonesia ranking in the top ten. Australia 
is the 16th-largest emitter. The United States, in its climate 
diplomacy toward these governments, is urging them and other major 
emitters world-wide to strengthen their NDCs to better align their 2030 
GHG reductions targets with a net zero future by 2050.
    The challenge is strong. According to the World Resources 
Institute, in 2018 the Indo-Pacific region's energy and industrial 
sectors alone accounted for roughly 38 percent of all global GHG 
emissions. The policies, measures, and investments the region takes to 
direct their economic growth to a climate-aligned pathway will be 
critical to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and a global net 
zero future by 2050.
    China is the top priority in our global mitigation strategy. China 
represents almost 30 percent of global emissions, in addition to its 
carbon-intensive investments abroad. President Xi Jinping pledged to 
``scale up'' its NDC and strive for carbon neutral emissions by 2060, 
among other mid- and long-term climate policy goals. But as the world's 
largest emitter, a 1.5 degrees Celsius future is not possible without 
the PRC increasing and accelerating its emission reductions for the 
2020s.
    Special Presidential Envoy Kerry made China one of his early 
overseas visits. He traveled to meet Vice Premier Han Zheng and Special 
Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua in April to identify areas for 
engagement.
    The two sides issued a joint statement on how they would address 
the climate crisis, a first step in our engagement on climate. Notably, 
the PRC acknowledged for the first time that the world now faces a 
climate crisis. Both sides committed to take enhanced climate action 
that raise ambition in the 2020s, and to develop, by the time of the 
Glasgow COP this November, their respective long-term strategies aimed 
at net zero GHG emissions/carbon neutrality.
    We have no illusions on the challenges we face, for the climate and 
for U.S. competitiveness. China is making enormous investments in 
carbon-intensive infrastructure both domestically and overseas. We must 
and will press China to limit its investment in a coal-fired power 
future. Simultaneously, China is moving aggressively to develop and 
deploy Chinese clean energy technology, both at home and abroad. Here, 
we must and will compete with China to assure U.S. clean energy 
technology and companies can compete in the lucrative and growing 
global clean energy market.
    We must find a way to work with the PRC to drive the action 
necessary for the world to keep 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach. But 
our approach will be clear. As Secretary Blinken and Special 
Presidential Envoy Kerry have stated--climate is a critical standalone 
issue, and other aspects of the U.S.-China relationship will not be 
traded for enhanced climate action.
    India and Indonesia are our other top priorities in the Indo-
Pacific for engagement. We welcome Prime Minister Modi's continued 
focus on driving a clean energy transformation in India, 
notwithstanding the extreme challenges posed by the COVID crisis there.
    The United States and India are committed partners on climate. In 
April, the two governments signed the ``U.S.-India Climate and Clean 
Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership.'' Under the partnership, the two sides 
identified a 2030 agenda for clean technologies and climate action.
    A key focus will be cooperation to create the regulatory and market 
conditions to spur the required investment to achieve India's goal to 
deploy 450 GW of renewable energy. If achieved, India would realize 
transformative changes in both its energy security and GHG emissions 
trajectory.
    Indonesia, the world's eighth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, 
is also a significant priority for Special Presidential Envoy Kerry. 
The destruction of forests and planting of crops on peatlands is the 
main source of Indonesia's emissions. The draining of peatlands results 
in ongoing release of methane into the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas 
with warming potential 80 times more powerful than CO2. Land clearing 
has also resulted in massive forest fires that impacted air quality as 
far away as Singapore. Coal also generates a significant portion of 
Indonesia's emissions, and energy demand continues to grow.
    Indonesia has taken some positive actions. President Joko Widodo 
issued a permanent moratorium on clearing of primary forest and 
peatlands, which has resulted in decreased deforestation rates and 
drainage of peatlands. He also created the Peatland Restoration Agency 
to rewet peatlands and stop the release of methane.
    Indonesia also declared it would build no new coal-fired power 
plants after 2023, although approved but not-yet launched projects may 
proceed. Indonesia will be critical in achieving the necessary emission 
reductions to achieve global net zero emissions by 2050, but it will 
face significant challenges. The Administration has launched a 
promising bilateral climate policy consultative process with Indonesia, 
focusing on cooperation on mitigation ambition, nature-based solutions, 
clean energy, and finance mobilization to support its climate 
mitigation efforts.
    We are pursuing similar cooperative agendas with other Southeast 
Asian countries. We aim to assure a clean energy transformation in 
these regions to mitigate the climate effects of the expected strong 
economic recovery and long-term economic growth trajectories.
    A key challenge will be providing incentives for these countries to 
choose climate-friendly infrastructure options. Through its Belt and 
Road Initiative, the PRC often provides investments in carbon-heavy 
infrastructure to third countries, exacerbating the problem of 
economies making long-term investments that risk locking them off the 
path of the global clean energy transition, exacerbating the climate 
crisis and creating potential stranded assets.
    Let me also note the role of Japan and the Republic of Korea--both 
large emitters but also key partners for us on our climate agenda. Each 
has committed to a 2050 net zero greenhouse gas emissions goal, which 
will be challenging given the nature of their economies, but 
achievable.
    At President Biden's Leaders Summit on Climate in April, Japan 
announced a target of 46-50 percent carbon emissions reduction by 2030 
from 2013 levels, a significant increase from its previous target. At 
the Summit, President Moon also announced the Republic of Korea would 
strengthen its NDC for 2030 in line with its 2050 net zero goal.
    Importantly, both governments pledged this year to end public 
financing for new overseas unabated coal-fired power-plants (i.e. 
plants without carbon capture and storage technology). Their actions 
were a critical step in decarbonizing power systems worldwide. 
President Moon acted early in announcing this policy change at the 
April Climate Summit. Japan joined all G7 governments in declaring the 
same at the G7 in June at Cornwall.
    We are also working with Quad countries through the Quad Climate 
Working Group where we are taking actionable steps on sectoral 
decarbonization, clean energy innovation and deployment, and on climate 
adaptation, resilience and preparedness.
    Emissions reduction is not our only priority. Helping vulnerable 
communities build resilience to climate impacts is critical to our 
national security interests, our leadership standing in the region, and 
the long-term stability and prosperity of our allies and partners in 
the Indo-Pacific.
    Climate vulnerabilities are an acute risk in the region--six of the 
top 10 countries most impacted by climate change from 2000-2019 were in 
the Indo-Pacific, according to the 2021 Global Climate Risk Index 
(Myanmar, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, and Nepal). 
For the Pacific Island countries, climate change poses an existential 
threat and is their single most important issue. Flooding caused by 2-4 
inch sea level rise and more frequent, more severe tropical cyclones 
will challenge the sustainability of low lying islands and coastal 
communities.
    The State Department will support a unique island-led partnership, 
the Local2030 Island Network, a Hawaii-based initiative that links U.S. 
island jurisdictions with those in the Pacific and around the world in 
developing common solutions in a shared island context. This initiative 
will deepen relationships with critical Pacific Island allies with our 
own Islands providing solidarity and solutions. The National Oceanic 
and Atmospheric Administration and the Department of Energy will work 
with this network and other partners to enhance the capacity of island 
nations to integrate climate data and information, develop early 
warning systems, support net zero emission strategies, and apply 
effective coastal and marine resource management strategies to support 
sustainable development. This will complement the ongoing efforts of 
the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) to support 
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the region and around the 
world to better prepare for and respond to climate impacts and 
disasters.
    The Administration would like to deepen our work with Congress to 
build U.S. resources and capabilities, particularly a strong 
Development Finance Corporation and Millennium Challenge Corporation--
and enhanced support for the U.S. Agency for International Development 
(USAID) to work with partner countries to implement climate mitigation 
and adaptation solutions on the ground. We wish to deepen our 
infrastructure cooperation with our foreign partners through the Build 
Back Better World initiative and Blue Dot Network, to offer inviting, 
climate-aligned options in this strategically critical region.
    U.S. climate finance will be a critical tool for us to achieve our 
resilience and mitigation agenda. Enhanced climate finance resources 
would also bolster our diplomatic influence, particularly to advance 
our objectives on country actions to mitigate emissions.
    According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the global clean 
electricity and hydrogen investment opportunity is at a scale of 
between $78 and $130 trillion in low-carbon power, grids, 
electrolizers, hydrogen storage, and transport globally. The good news 
is that there is a wealth of private and institutional capital seeking 
climate investment opportunities, and U.S. technology and companies 
could take a strong share if they are positioned right.
    In many cases, upfront investment and involvement from the U.S. 
Government, other bilateral partners or the multilateral banks is 
necessary to help de-risk certain climate-aligned projects and unlock 
the flow of private investment. A critical infusion of U.S. official 
financing and facilitation could contribute essential direct investment 
toward a clean energy transformation pathway.
    The combination of vast investment resources in the region and 
committed governments offers opportunities for partnership to drive 
climate transitions and realize investment returns. In the Indo-
Pacific, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore have been 
positive contributors. The PRC, as noted earlier, has not.
    Achieving solutions to the Indo-Pacific's mitigation and resilience 
challenges will be the linchpin to addressing the broader climate 
crisis. Assuring the stability, prosperity and sustainable development 
of the region is central to U.S. national interests. The United States 
and its partners in the Indo-Pacific must address the challenge of the 
climate crisis, which threatens regional growth and development and 
U.S. economic and security interests.
    Thank you Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. I would be 
prepared to respond to any questions.

    Senator Markey. Thank you, Doctor, so much.
    Mr. Hart, you are up next.

STATEMENT OF CRAIG HART, DEPUTY ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR OF THE 
    BUREAU FOR ASIA, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL 
                  DEVELOPMENT, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Hart. Thank you, Chairman Markey, Ranking Member 
Romney, and distinguished members of this committee. Thank you 
for the opportunity to testify about the important role that 
U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, plays in 
addressing climate crises in East Asia and the Pacific.
    It is our honor to be here today. USAID is grateful for the 
ongoing collaboration with the Senate Foreign Relations 
Committee as we work to align our efforts on climate change 
with a scope and complexity of the challenge.
    Climate change is a global crisis that threatens our 
health, economic progress, and lives. It threatens development 
progress and exacerbates global inequities, increases water and 
food security, the need for humanitarian assistance and 
displacement, it worsens the quality of air we breathe, our 
health outcomes, and contributes to conflict.
    The climate crisis fosters instability and threatens to 
undo the progress we have made and the taxpayer dollars that we 
have invested in global development, prosperity, and security.
    The Biden administration is elevating climate as a core 
priority for U.S. foreign policy and national security. The 
United States is moving forward with an integrated whole-of-
government approach to climate change that includes 
strengthened bilateral and multilateral partnerships to address 
this challenge at home and abroad.
    We will work with other countries and partners to put the 
world on a sustainable climate pathway. USAID is developing a 
new agency wide climate strategy to target resources 
strategically, ramp up our change mitigation and adaptation 
efforts, and further integrate climate change considerations 
into international development and humanitarian assistance 
programs across all sectors.
    We will look forward to continuing to engage with our 
congressional stakeholders as this strategy takes shape.
    In East Asia and the Pacific, USAID is well positioned to 
support the Administration's bold climate change agenda and the 
implementation of the Paris Agreement by our partner countries.
    USAID partners with countries to implement ambitious 
emissions reductions measures to reach the global goal of 
dramatically reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 
achieve net zero emissions by mid-century.
    USAID expertise and programs protect critical ecosystems, 
promote better forest and land management, and build resilience 
to the efforts and effects of climate change.
    Our assistance helps countries improve food security, 
reduce emissions, and transition to renewable energy as well as 
promote sustainable climate investments.
    To further the USG's shared vision for a free and open 
Indo-Pacific, USAID helps our partners to understand how to 
conduct open, competitive, tenders as well as to evaluate 
proposals to identify those which fit the country's needs.
    USAID assistance helps our partner countries to identify 
climate solutions that do not saddle them with unsustainable 
debts but, rather, identify sustainable solutions.
    To achieve our climate ambitions, USAID is focused on our 
comparative advantage, our field presence, and our ability to 
partner with key stakeholders.
    This includes large corporations whose commitments to 
achieve net zero have doubled in the last year, government 
ministries and local communities most impacted by the effects 
of climate change.
    This approach has allowed USAID to mobilize over $28 
billion in climate finance since fiscal year 2016 worldwide.
    To close, USAID is accelerating the scale of our climate 
change and environmental efforts to meet the urgency of this 
great challenge. We will engage with our partner countries, 
international donors, and the private sector to build local 
capacity and identify innovative approaches from green 
technologies, sustainable practices, and access to finance, and 
apply them with solutions on the ground.
    USAID's climate investments abroad have a direct impact 
here at home. Climate change presents an immense challenge, one 
that we can and will meet.
    USAID is a global leader in promoting climate adaptation 
and mitigation solutions, and will continue to support the 
Biden/Harris administration's bold climate agenda.
    We are eager to work with Congress, our partner countries, 
and the private sector to achieve bold climate action across 
the countries and sectors in which we work.
    Thank you very much, and I welcome your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Hart follows:]

                  Prepared Statement of Mr. Craig Hart

    Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Romney, Distinguished Members of 
this Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify about the 
important role that the U.S. Agency for International Development 
(USAID) plays in addressing the climate crisis in Indo-Pacific. It is 
an honor to be here with you today. USAID works closely with the Office 
of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, the Office of Global 
Change in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and 
Scientific Affairs, and the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at 
the Department of State to tackle the climate change challenge in the 
Indo-Pacific region. USAID is grateful for the ongoing collaboration 
with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as we continue to align our 
efforts on climate change with the scope and complexity of the 
challenge.
    The world faces a profound climate crisis. This is a global, 
existential crisis and we can no longer delay action or do the bare 
minimum to address climate change. It threatens lives, health, economic 
progress and livelihoods. Climate change threatens development progress 
and exacerbates global inequities; increases water and food insecurity, 
natural hazards, the need for humanitarian assistance, and 
displacement; worsens the quality of the air we breathe as well as 
health outcomes, and contributes to conflict. The climate crisis 
fosters instability and threatens to undo the progress we've made and 
the taxpayer dollars we've invested in global development, prosperity, 
and security.
                  biden-harris administration priority
    The Biden-Harris administration is elevating climate as a core 
priority for U.S. foreign policy and national security. The United 
States is moving forward with an integrated, whole-of-government 
approach to climate change that includes strengthened bilateral and 
multilateral partnerships to address this challenge at home and abroad. 
We will work with other countries and partners to put the world on a 
sustainable climate pathway.
    The United States must work closely with partner countries to 
support their efforts to ambitiously reduce emissions, while ensuring 
that there is a ``just transition'' that also prioritizes the 
sustainable growth of the least developed countries. This will require 
large-scale private and public investments to transform economies, 
including the reshaping of energy, food, and transport systems. It 
requires creating incentives to reward stewardship and spur restoration 
and the conservation of ecosystems, forests, and other carbon-rich 
landscapes. It also requires addressing climate injustices and 
historical inequities by empowering local communities and groups, 
including women and Indigenous Peoples, to be change agents on climate 
and the environment. USAID leads international cooperation in these 
efforts. For example, within the quadrilateral partnership between the 
United States, India, Japan, and Australia (the QUAD), USAID leads the 
adaptation and resilience pillar of the group's climate efforts. We 
have already reached agreement on critical areas of collaboration like 
urban resilience, climate-smart food, agriculture, and the Coalition 
for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI).
    While climate change is an existential threat for the Pacific 
Islands on the very frontlines of its impacts, addressing climate 
change is a major strategic imperative for the United States. As the 
United States is a Pacific nation, USAID's climate change investments 
in the Indo-Pacific have a direct impact here at home. Particularly as 
the world fights the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a global green economy 
offers a massive investment opportunity for U.S. businesses; new 
markets for American science and technology; new jobs in cutting-edge 
sectors; and a cleaner, safer world.
    As requested by President Biden, USAID is developing a new agency-
wide climate strategy that aims to be bold, ambitious, and 
transformative as it guides our efforts to address this crucial 
challenge. As this strategy takes shape, USAID looks forward to 
continuing to engage with our stakeholders, including Congress, to 
identify priorities and recommendations. We also welcome this 
committee's bill on restoring much needed U.S. leadership on climate 
change and clean energy.
                   usaid indo-pacific climate efforts
    Across the Indo-Pacific, USAID is well-positioned to support the 
Administration's bold climate agenda and assist our partner countries 
to implement the Paris Agreement. USAID partners with countries to help 
them: prepare for and adapt to climate disasters; improve sustainable 
water, forests, and land management; reduce emissions; increase food 
and water security and transition to clean energy. USAID also works 
with the private sector and international donors to help our partner 
countries leverage additional resources for climate change investment 
and identify sustainable alternatives to the People's Republic of China 
(PRC) non-transparent development model.
Adaptation and Disaster Response and Risk Reduction
    The Pacific Island countries are among the most vulnerable to 
extreme weather events and other climate impacts, including increasing 
frequency and intensity of droughts and storms, rises in the sea level, 
and ocean acidification. Some countries are no more than 15 feet above 
sea level. Working with our partner governments, other donors, and the 
private sector, USAID continues to build the resilience of Pacific 
Island communities so they can prepare for, respond to, and recover 
quickly from these challenges. This is done by strengthening early 
warning systems for climate hazards including access to real-time data, 
helping to take early action, and strengthening the capacity of 
institutions, communities, and governments to proactively address risk 
to reduce exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards. For example, 
in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), USAID has responded to 
three major disasters since 2008, providing more than $78 million to 
help meet immediate needs, including of remote island communities, and 
to build back better.
    In March of this year, USAID announced it will award up to $9.2 
million, pending the availability of resources from Congress, to 
support the CDRI, led by India, to help foster disaster and climate 
resilient infrastructure. Physical infrastructure, such as roads, 
airports, and power grids is integral to any country's development, 
resilience, and ability to reduce the risk of disasters and respond to 
them. USAID will support CDRI to develop and share innovations, policy 
recommendations, and best practices in developing disaster and climate 
resilient infrastructure. USAID will also help countries incorporate 
best practices into their infrastructure planning, as well as foster 
partnerships between governments and the private sector to scale up 
disaster and climate resilient infrastructure development. USAID is 
proud to support CDRI, which is currently comprised of the governments 
of Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bhutan, Chile, Fiji, France, 
Germany, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Maldives, Mauritius, Mongolia, 
Nepal, Netherlands, Peru, Sri Lanka, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the 
United States; multilateral organizations including the European Union, 
United Nations, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank; and two 
private sector associations representing more than 400 companies.
    USAID partners with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration (NASA) to strengthen the capacity of Mekong countries 
such as Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to better predict and 
respond to climate change effects. We help address information gaps for 
our partners to improve drought and flood forecasting, and to use 
customized data, decision-tools, and best practice guides. For example, 
SERVIR-Mekong has recently been effective in pioneering digital rain 
gauges to predict rainfall in rural areas, estimate levels of dangerous 
short-lived climate pollutants that exist in air pollution, and 
forecast changes in river height and flooding. As climate-related 
disasters become more frequent and intense, these kinds of data and 
support from SERVIR-Mekong decision-makers can apply science and 
technology to manage environmental resources and improve disaster 
resilience and response.
Leveraging Investment
    To achieve our climate ambitions, the United States will need to 
mobilize financing from many sources. USAID is focused on our 
comparative advantage: field presence and ability to partner with the 
key stakeholders. This includes large corporations, whose commitments 
to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions have doubled in the past 
year, government ministries, and local communities most impacted by the 
effects of climate change.
    This approach has allowed USAID to mobilize more than $28 billion 
in climate finance since FY 2016 worldwide. We have done this through 
facilitating billions of international commercial finance through 
structuring renewable energy auctions, and supporting local small and 
medium enterprises through programs like Green Invest Asia, a blended 
finance mechanism that allows small and medium enterprises to operate 
climate-smart agriculture and forestry businesses. USAID boosts the 
capacity of government counterparts and other stakeholders to access 
larger amounts of financing from international adaptation funds, as 
well as strengthen the skills and systems within each country to better 
manage and monitor adaptation projects. Under the Biden-Harris 
administration, we look to expand and accelerate these efforts in the 
Indo-Pacific.
    For example, since 2016, USAID has helped Pacific Island countries 
mobilize nearly $200 million from various international climate finance 
funds. USAID has also helped our partners identify and prepare bankable 
project proposals, valued at nearly $30 million, that have been 
submitted as final applications to leading international climate 
finance entities, including the Global Environment Facility, the Green 
Climate Fund, and the Adaptation Fund. USAID continues to support the 
preparation of additional proposals that will target access to more 
than $390 million in international adaptation funds for programs in the 
Pacific Islands.
Sustainable Water, Forest, and Land Management
    Too much and too little water all too often bedevil countries 
impacted by climate change. USAID partners with countries to deliver 
climate-resilient drinking water and sanitation services, and improve 
the management of water resources so that people and economies can 
better cope with sea-level rise and rising water scarcity. USAID also 
works to protect our oceans--and the billions of people who depend on 
them for food and livelihoods--by mitigating climate impacts and 
addressing other critical threats, like ocean plastic pollution and 
illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
    For example, the Mekong River Basin is a vital biodiversity area 
and the source of livelihood and nutrition for an estimated 70 million 
people. The PRC and other actors are increasing infrastructure 
investments in the region. However, without sound environmental and 
social safeguards, many infrastructure projects are developed at the 
expense of the surrounding environment and communities. The USAID 
Mekong Safeguards activity provides policy makers, government 
regulators, major financiers, and contractors with the information and 
tools they need to apply environmental, social, and governance 
standards for infrastructure development in the Lower Mekong region. 
This activity helps Lower Mekong countries build locally-developed 
solutions, improve transparency in infrastructure decision-making, and 
accelerate the role of the private sector as a driver of development. 
The Mekong Infrastructure Tracker is a prime example of a resource 
developed for tracking and monitoring of energy, transportation, and 
water infrastructure projects and the social, economic, and ecological 
changes they bring to the Indo-Pacific region.
    USAID assistance in the Indo-Pacific results in greater public 
spending on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for the poor. For 
example, more than 80 percent of Indonesia's 265 million people still 
struggle to access piped water. With USAID support, the Government of 
Indonesia increased public spending in 2020 for WASH services targeting 
the poorest Indonesians. As a result, WASH services reached three-
fourths of the poorest 40 percent of the population, compared to just 
one-fifth a year earlier.
    In addition to access to clean water services to improve health 
outcomes, the health of our oceans is also critical. Pollution 
reduction, especially from mismanaged plastic waste, as well as proper 
resource management, will be necessary to ensure food security and 
economic prosperity for the Indo-Pacific communities reliant on the 
region's seas for their livelihoods. USAID will utilize the newly 
expanded Ocean Plastics directive to initiate the Save our Seas Blended 
Finance Platform, which will include a mix of technical assistance 
programs in key countries and private sector and donor partnerships to 
leverage greater funding. The ambitious goal of the new initiative is 
to reduce the flow of plastic into the oceans by 50 percent by 2030. It 
will demonstrate U.S. leadership by: (1) taking immediate action where 
it's most needed to maximize impact; (2) addressing key gaps to unlock 
existing and future large-scale funds, and (3) harnessing global 
partners for much needed action. USAID's new ocean plastics programs 
will target coastal urban populations in key Indo-Pacific countries 
that are major contributors to the world's mismanaged plastic waste, as 
well as those, such as small island developing states, that face unique 
waste management challenges for which good solutions do not yet exist. 
This work will build on the successes of USAID's Clean Cities, Blue 
Ocean program, which is already working to combat ocean plastic 
pollution in key countries, including Indonesia, Vietnam, the 
Philippines, and Sri Lanka.
    USAID works with our partner countries across the Indo-Pacific to 
reduce emissions by combating deforestation and improving conservation 
and management of carbon-rich forests, landscapes and seascapes. USAID 
partners with the private sector to increase market access for carbon 
credits, climate-smart agriculture, and sustainable forest products; 
and enhances finance opportunities for sustainable land management. For 
example, in Vietnam USAID develops local solutions with partner 
governments, communities, and the private sector to reduce greenhouse 
gas emissions and air pollutants, which in turn improves public health, 
reduces poverty and inequality, and lessens climate change impacts.
    Indonesia remains one of the top greenhouse gas emitters from land 
use in the world. Unsustainable land management practices also lead to 
loss of biodiversity and unsustainable economic growth. Since 2015, 
USAID has strengthened Indonesia's ability to achieve its sustainable 
land management goals. As a result, we have helped reduce CO2e \1\ 
emissions by over 76 million metric tons since 2015, or 16.4 million 
cars driven for an entire a year.\2\
    In Papua New Guinea, USAID is supporting a new program to improve 
forest governance, increase the sustainability of the forest industry, 
and protect the land and resource rights of communities to reduce 
emissions, enhance carbon sequestration and increase sustainable 
natural resources management. Papua New Guinea is home to part of the 
world's third largest expanse of tropical forest, the majority of which 
is community-owned. However, it experiences high rates of deforestation 
and forest degradation, due to unsustainable and illegal logging. This 
new program will allow USAID to prioritize work in a country with high 
climate mitigation potential.
    USAID is helping the Government of Vietnam expand a program that 
mobilizes millions of dollars for forest and watershed protection 
through payments-for-forest-environmental-services by local businesses 
and utilities that benefit from these services. This work builds on 
years of cooperation--USAID initiated this program with Vietnam's 
Government in 2007. The program now mobilizes $127 million in 
Vietnamese domestic revenue annually for forest protection and is 
expanding to cover 6 million hectares of forest.
    USAID has launched two new projects worth $74 million to help 
Vietnam mitigate the impacts of climate change. These new projects 
launched this year on Earth Day will help conserve a forest area nearly 
the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Healthier, fuller 
forests, coupled with strong biodiversity, are critical to reducing 
greenhouse gas emissions.
    USAID, in partnership with the Government of India, is improving 
the rehabilitation and management of more than 1 million hectares of 
India's forests to increase carbon sequestration, enhance water yields 
from forests, and strengthen the livelihoods of forest-dependent 
communities in three states, refining techniques that India will scale 
nationwide. USAID/India's new program, Trees Outside Forests in India, 
will incentivize more tree cover on private lands at scales from 
household to commercial.
Improving Air Quality
    To improve air quality and reduce climate pollutants, USAID 
launched Clean Air Catalyst, a new flagship program to combat air 
pollution, alongside a global consortium of organizations led by the 
World Resources Institute and the Environmental Defense Fund. Through 
this program, USAID and our partners, including Columbia University, 
work with local communities in the region to better understand local 
pollution sources and identify, test, accelerate, and scale solutions 
for cleaner, healthier air. This scalable program will make the air 
cleaner and healthier, and it will also reduce emissions of short-lived 
climate pollutants like black carbon and methane, which must be reduced 
in order to meet the Paris Agreement targets.
    The Building Healthy Cities (BHC) project is working in Indore, 
India to increase community participation in air pollution mitigation. 
In partnership with local stakeholders, BHC installed 20 low-cost air 
quality sensors across Indore to collect quantitative data, and trained 
and continues to support 20 local Clean Air Guides (CAGs), who work 
within their communities to raise awareness and develop solutions for 
the air quality issues they face.
    USAID helped India launch a national program for retrofitting 
commercial buildings to enhance energy efficiency and improve air 
quality, and in doing so opened up tremendous business opportunities 
for U.S. companies in a country whose air conditioner market is growing 
at 15 percent a year. For example, USAID's support prompted India's 
lead implementer of energy efficient programs to solicit a $10 million 
contract--ultimately awarded to the United States-based Carrier Global 
Corporation--to install and maintain filtration systems and monitors in 
existing air conditioning systems in buildings in and around New Delhi.
    The Mekong Air Quality Explorer Tool was launched last year in 
collaboration with USAID, NASA, the Royal Thai Government's Pollution 
Control Department and the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology 
Development Agency. The tool uses satellite data and computer models to 
provide an accurate air pollution forecast up to 3 days ahead of time. 
This allows the Royal Thai Government to fill data gaps and see air 
quality projections across the country, not just in urban centers like 
Bangkok.
    As part of their ongoing efforts to combat pollution, USAID-Vietnam 
launched the Collective Action for Clean Air in 2019, with the goal of 
mobilizing and connecting its current network with more than 50 
additional local actors and by providing more than 500,000 citizens, 
including more than 100 youth groups, schools and universities, access 
to information and educational materials to improve air pollution 
awareness and action.
Green Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure
    Energy demand in Asia is expected to increase dramatically in the 
next decade. Without a concerted effort to promote a low-emissions 
power system, the region will continue to rely heavily on conventional 
energy sources such as coal and large-scale hydropower. USAID 
assistance helps increase access to more affordable, reliable, and 
sustainable energy that spurs economic growth, powers health systems, 
and reduces emissions.
    The Infrastructure Transaction and Assistance Network (ITAN) is a 
whole-of-government initiative to advance sustainable, transparent, 
high-quality infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific region. Under ITAN, 
USAID plays a leading role helping its Indo-Pacific partners to 
catalyze private sector investment--including from the United States--
by strengthening their ability to implement and manage sustainable, 
transparent, and high-quality infrastructure projects.
    USAID leverages private sector investment and expertise across the 
Indo-Pacific to help our partner countries deploy renewable energy and 
transition to greater energy efficiency. To that end, USAID's Clean 
Power Asia program has helped mobilize more than $7 billion in 
renewable energy investments across Southeast Asia since 2016. The 
program has helped Thailand B. Grimm Power and Vietnam solar developer 
TTVN to close a $283 million deal to construct one of Vietnam's first 
solar farms designed to generate 257 MegaWatts (MW)--enough energy to 
power more than 50,000 homes. In Thailand, USAID Clean Power Asia 
worked with six Thai Union factories to procure and install 7.6 MW of 
rooftop solar projects valued at more than $10 million. USAID Clean 
Power Asia also helped retail giant Big C Thailand close a $4.8 million 
deal to launch a 3.6 MW solar rooftop program.
    In India, USAID programs help support the country's transition to 
renewable energy. To meet rising energy demand and decarbonization 
goals, India is aggressively pursuing large-scale integration of energy 
from variable renewable sources, which poses challenges to power grid 
stability. USAID efforts helped inform the Government of India's 
roadmap for deploying renewable energy solutions and technologies. 
Specifically, USAID programs have helped India integrate 5 GW of 
renewable energy into the power grid, which reduced 30 million tons of 
greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, and is enough energy to power 3.3 
million households.
    In Indonesia, USAID helps the country diversify and expand its 
energy market to deliver electricity to more Indonesian households and 
create investment opportunities for the private sector, including U.S. 
companies. USAID has introduced tools to improve national and 
provincial energy and electrification planning, advanced grid 
modernization to absorb more renewable energy, introduced innovative 
smart-grid solutions for remote islands, improved energy efficiency 
practices, and supported the development of electric vehicles. Since 
2011, USAID has mobilized $1.78 billion in renewable energy investment, 
representing an additional 667 MW of new energy supply, enough to reach 
5.7 million Indonesians.
    In Vietnam, USAID has supported the Government of Vietnam to design 
a strategic plan to guide the country on energy generation and 
transmission to meet energy needs as Vietnam moves away from a coal-
based power system to a cleaner system based on renewable energy and 
natural gas. USAID assistance provided the software, hardware, 
training, and a data-sharing process to facilitate first time 
involvement of multiple stakeholders to create a power plan that has 
also been transparently shared with the public. USAID also worked with 
government regulators, banks, investors, and private sector developers 
to facilitate solar investments totaling more than $300 million.
    In recent years, Vietnam's solar energy production has grown 
exponentially--from less than 10 MW in 2017 to 16,500 MW in 2020, with 
solar power now making up nearly 25 percent of the country's power 
capacity. USAID activities will continue to support Vietnam to improve 
government energy planning practices, increase competition and private 
sector involvement in energy service provision, deploy advanced, clean 
energy systems, and improve grid planning to incorporate clean energy 
transmission. USAID will also focus on helping Vietnam attract 
qualified investors for advanced energy projects and advise private 
firms on developing high quality, bankable projects. By continuing to 
work with the Government of Vietnam and the private sector, USAID will 
help accelerate Vietnam's transition to a clean, secure, and market-
driven energy system.
    Achieving global net-zero emissions will require rapid phase-out of 
international support for coal power plants, but currently the PRC and 
Chinese firms are estimated to be pursuing 24,270 MW of new coal 
projects in emerging markets around the world. It is important to 
understand the underlying drivers that make PRC-financed coal appear 
attractive, and to identify more appealing and sustainable 
alternatives. This is especially relevant in the Indo-Pacific. USAID 
partners with countries to ensure they have the tools necessary to 
pursue least-cost generation options, which in most cases is renewable 
energy (RE). This includes structuring RE auctions that help to drive 
down the cost of wind and solar, and working with countries to overcome 
real or perceived barriers to integrating variable renewable energy 
sources into their grid. USAID helps our partner countries to 
understand how to conduct open, competitive tenders, as well as to 
evaluate proposals to identify those from predatory lenders or which do 
not fit into the countries' power sector plans.
                               conclusion
    To close, USAID is accelerating the scale of our climate change and 
environmental efforts to meet the urgency of this great challenge. We 
will engage with our partner countries, international donors, and the 
private sector to build local capacity and identify innovative 
approaches--from green technologies, sustainable practices, and access 
to finance--and apply them to solutions on the ground. USAID's climate 
investments abroad have a direct impact here at home. Climate change 
presents an immense challenge. One that we can and will meet. USAID is 
a global leader in promoting climate adaptation and mitigation 
solutions, and will continue to support the Biden-Harris 
administration's bold climate agenda. We are eager to work with 
Congress, our partner countries, and the private sector to achieve bold 
climate action across the countries and sectors in which we work.
    Thank you, and I welcome the opportunity to answer your questions.

----------------
Notes

    \1\ https://www.epa.gov/moves/how-do-i-get-carbon-dioxide-
equivalent-co2e-results-nonroad-equipment
    \2\ The standard measures/equivalents are: 17.6M U.S. tons / 3.4M 
cars and 83.77 U.S. tons / 16.4M cars

    Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Hart.
    Ms. Dalton.

  STATEMENT OF MELISSA DALTON, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF 
DEFENSE FOR STRATEGY, PLANS, AND CAPABILITIES, U.S. DEPARTMENT 
                   OF DEFENSE, WASHINGTON, DC

    Ms. Dalton. Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Romney, and 
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the 
opportunity to testify today.
    May I request permission to submit my written statement for 
the record and provide brief opening remarks?
    Senator Markey. Without objection.
    Ms. Dalton. Thank you.
    It is my pleasure to talk to you about how the Department 
of Defense is thinking about the implications of climate 
change, particularly with respect to the Indo-Pacific and the 
impacts on planning, assets, and strategy in support of a 
whole-of-government approach.
    The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance identified 
climate change as one of the most significant threats the 
country and the department faces.
    As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said, no nation 
can find lasting security without addressing the climate 
crisis. He described it as an existential threat that poses a 
variety of risks for U.S. national security.
    The challenges posed by climate change are not simply about 
increased demands for humanitarian assistance. They are also 
hard security challenges, not least of which are the climate 
risks to military installations themselves.
    In the Pacific, the secretary alluded to the particular 
risks low-lying island countries face from sea level rise and 
storms.
    For example, the Marshall Islands has an average elevation 
of just 6 feet above sea level. The country hosts the Ronald 
Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense test site and the Space Fence 
Facility on Kwajalein Atoll. These are examples of critical 
national security sites located in climate-exposed parts of the 
Pacific.
    As the secretary noted, the department has felt the impact 
of climate change in recent years as extreme weather events 
have wreaked havoc on a number of our facilities, including 
billions of dollars in damage to Tyndall Air Force Base in 
Florida from Hurricane Michael, the effects of flooding on 
Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and threats to military 
installations in California from wildfires.
    In the Pacific, Secretary Austin mentioned that an 
unseasonal typhoon in February 2019 forced the pause of 
humanitarian relief and disaster response training exercises 
with Australian and Japanese allies.
    Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks has noted the effects of 
climate change are a national security issue impacting DoD's 
missions and operational plans, readiness, our installations, 
and the department's budget. It does this by simultaneously 
increasing demands on the force while impacting our capacity to 
respond to those demands.
    In light of these concerns, the deputy secretary identified 
two priorities for the department.
    First, we are inculcating a culture of climate-informed 
decision-making and incorporating climate change into threat 
assessments, budgets, and operational decision-making.
    In addition, we are taking care of our people, including 
members of the armed forces and the civilians who serve with 
them by buttressing the resilience of our installations and the 
structures where people work and live.
    Addressing these priorities involves a number of concrete 
steps. The President's executive order of January 27 tasked the 
department to lead the interagency in the creation of a climate 
risk analysis that would assess the security implications of 
climate change and integrate those findings into strategic 
documents, notably, the National Defense Strategy.
    We are currently finalizing the risk analysis that will 
meet the objectives of the executive order and inform the 
ongoing NDS review.
    We anticipate that implementation of the climate risk 
analysis will allow regional combatant commands like INDOPACOM 
and regional office like OSD Policies Indo-Pacific Security 
Affairs to assess their vulnerabilities and opportunities for 
engagement with allies and partners.
    DoD is also focused on improving installation resilience. 
DoD has developed a climate assessment tool, or DCAT, which 
relies on historical data and future climate projections and 
will enable personnel at all levels of the department to 
understand installations' exposure to climate-related hazards.
    Within INDOPACOM we have also committed to sharing the DCAT 
with our South Korean and Japanese allies. We have also 
recently completed a climate adaptation plan which is intended 
to integrate climate adaptation and resilience efforts across 
the department and align these efforts with its warfighting 
missions.
    We have considerable national defense equities in the 
Pacific related to missile defense and domain awareness, 
including the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the U.S. territory 
Guam.
    Our integrated air and missile defense system is designed 
to protect the United States from missile attacks and the 
freedom to test new technology.
    These systems not only contribute to strategic stability 
and deterrence between the U.S. and China, but also defend 
against North Korean capabilities and reassure other Pacific 
allies such as South Korea and Japan.
    We also recognize that many of the sovereign states in the 
region, particularly low-elevation atoll states like Kiribat, 
Tuvalu, and others face considerable vulnerabilities due to 
climate change.
    We continue to collaborate with our partners in the Pacific 
to backstop disaster preparedness and humanitarian response to 
climate-related emergencies through efforts such as ADMM-Plus, 
the Pacific Islands Forum, and the FRANZ Agreement with France, 
Australia, and New Zealand.
    Going forward, we will be integrating climate concerns into 
our planning assets and strategy. What form these will 
precisely take will depend on the outcome of ongoing reviews.
    Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by thanking the subcommittee 
for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Dalton follows:]

                Prepared Statement of Ms. Melissa Dalton

                              introduction
    Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Romney, and distinguished Members 
of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the 
Department of Defense's role in supporting the State Department, USAID, 
and allies and partners to address the effects of climate change in the 
Indo-Pacific region.
    The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance identified climate 
change as one of the most significant threats the country and the 
Department faces.
    As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated in April at President 
Biden's Leaders Summit on Climate: ``No nation can find lasting 
security without addressing the climate crisis.'' The climate crisis 
poses a variety of risks for U.S. national security, beyond increased 
demands for humanitarian assistance. Hard security challenges, stemming 
from climate change can threaten the stability of U.S. allies and 
partners.
    Close to the equator, the effects of rising temperatures and 
extreme weather events are contributing to hunger and displacement in 
Africa and Central America; exacerbating conditions that can make 
vulnerable populations susceptible to recruitment and radicalization by 
extremist groups.
    In the Pacific, Secretary Austin has alluded to the particular 
risks low-lying island countries face from sea-level rise and storms: 
``In the far reaches of the Pacific, rising sea levels and more 
frequent and intense storms put individuals, families, and whole 
communities at risk--while pushing the limits of our collective 
capacity to respond.'' Notably, the Marshall Islands has an average 
elevation of just six feet above sea-level. The country hosts the 
Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site and the Space Fence 
facility on Kwajalein Atoll. These are examples of critical national 
security sites located in climate-exposed parts of the Pacific.
    The Department of Defense has felt the direct effects of climate 
change in recent years, as extreme weather events have affected several 
facilities, including billions of dollars in damage to Tyndall Air 
Force Base in Florida from Hurricane Michael, the effects of flooding 
on Offutt Air Base in Nebraska, and threats to military installations 
in California from wildfires. In the Pacific, an unseasonal typhoon in 
February 2019 forced the pause of humanitarian relief and disaster 
response training exercises with Australian and Japanese allies. These 
delayed multinational exercises impair building interoperability with 
key allies in the region.
                   presidential executive order 14008
    The President's Executive Order of January 27, 2021, tasked the 
Department to lead the interagency in the creation of a Climate Risk 
Analysis that would assess the security implications of climate change 
and integrate those findings into strategic documents like the National 
Defense Strategy (NDS).
    The Secretary appointed a senior climate advisor, and tasked him in 
March 2021 to lead a Climate Working Group across the Department to 
coordinate the Department's response to the January executive order and 
track implementation.
    The Department is currently finalizing the Climate Risk Analysis to 
meet the objectives of the Executive Order and inform development of 
the National Defense Strategy, which will likely be completed early 
next year.
                        dod's climate priorities
    In the interim, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has 
previewed how the Department is thinking about and addressing climate 
concerns. In a May 2021 speech, she noted, ``The effects of climate 
change are a national security issue, impacting DoD's missions and 
operational plans, readiness, our installations, and the Department's 
budget. It does this by simultaneously increasing demands on the force 
while impacting our capacity to respond to those demands.''
    Particularly germane to the Pacific region, climate change puts our 
national security at risk by increasing demands for U.S. military-
supported relief activities, alongside increased risks of conflict. 
While management of international river basins has historically been 
settled peacefully, climate change will stress management of major 
rivers in the region, such as the Indus, the Brahmaputra, and the 
Mekong.
    In light of these concerns, the Deputy Secretary identified two 
priorities for the Department:

  1.  First, the Department is inculcating a culture of climate-
        informed decision making and incorporating climate change into 
        threat assessments, budgets, and operational decision-making. 
        Our efforts to train, test, and equip the force have to be 
        ``climate ready,'' meaning taking into account climate extremes 
        into training, ensuring that weapons systems can operate under 
        those conditions, and thinking about the logistical challenges 
        of supplying the force amidst changing climate conditions and 
        wider geo-strategic competition with China for energy resources 
        of the future.

  2.  Our second priority is taking care of our people, including 
        members of the armed forces and the civilians who serve with 
        them by buttressing the resilience of our installations and the 
        structures where people work and live.

    The Department anticipates the Climate Risk Analysis will help 
various DoD components, notably regional combatant commands like 
USINDOPACOM, to assess their vulnerabilities and to inform cooperation 
with allies and partners.
    The Department is also focused on improving installation 
resilience. DoD has developed a Climate Assessment Tool or DCAT, which 
uses historical data and future climate projections to enable personnel 
at all levels of the Department--from installation planners to 
leadership--to understand installations' exposure to climate-related 
hazards. To that end, the Department has also recently completed a 
Climate Adaptation Plan, which will integrate climate adaptation and 
resilience efforts across the Department and align these efforts with 
its warfighting missions. The DCAT currently assesses a pilot set of 
global facilities. The Department is working to expand the tool's 
coverage and functionality. Within the Indo-Pacific region, the 
Department has also committed to sharing DCAT with our allies, Japan 
and the Republic of Korea.
    The Department is developing additional plans to fulfill other 
anticipated presidential directives. For example, the Department is 
writing the 2021 Sustainability Report and Implementation Plan. Since 
2010, the Department has conducted an annual sustainability assessment 
to improve military readiness through resilient infrastructure and 
business reforms to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
    For example, between 2018 and 2020, DoD supported construction of 
an energy-efficient facility on Wake Island to support test mission 
management and monitoring which will reduce the environmental 
footprint--and operational costs. Misawa Air Base will be building a 
$206 million cogeneration plant, smart grid, and solar arrays to build 
in redundancy and strengthen resilience in the wake of disasters and 
dramatically reduce energy use and costs.
    The Department has postured considerable defense capabilities 
forward in the Pacific region, such as missile defense and domain 
awareness assets in the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the U.S. territory 
Guam. Our Integrated Air and Missile Defense systems (IAMD) are 
designed to protect the U.S. homeland from missile attacks. The 
Department also depends on forward basing in Oceania and the Western 
Pacific to test new technology. This forward U.S. posture contributes 
to strategic stability with China, but also supports our allies Japan 
and South Korean to defend against potential North Korean aggression.
    In 2019, in response to the National Defense Authorization Act, the 
U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps identified several bases in the Indo-
Pacific region among their most vulnerable sites, including Marine 
Corps Base Camp Butler in Okinawa, Japan; Marine Corps Base Hawaii, 
Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, and Wahiawa Annex in Hawaii; and Naval 
Base Guam and Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.
    Additionally, many of the sovereign states in the region, 
particularly low-elevation atoll states like Kiribati and Tuvalu, face 
considerable vulnerabilities due to climate change. The Department 
continues to collaborate with our allies and partners in the Pacific to 
prepare for a combined response capability for climate-related 
emergencies, through efforts such as ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-
Plus (ADMM-Plus) working groups on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster 
Relief, the Pacific Islands Forum, and the FRANZ agreement with France, 
Australia, and New Zealand.
                               conclusion
    Moving forward, the Department anticipates the analysis on 
vulnerability of U.S. installations and wider operations to climate 
change will inform the Department of Defense's strategy, planning, 
assets, investments, and activities. We anticipate the 2022 National 
Defense Strategy will help the Department to better understand its role 
in addressing the effects of climate change on the U.S. joint force and 
through its work with allies and partners.
    Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by thanking this subcommittee for the 
opportunity to testify. I look forward to your questions.

    Senator Romney [presiding]. Thank you, Ms. Dalton.
    I think it is obvious to you that people are coming and 
going. That is not a sign of disrespect or lack of courtesy. It 
is the reality that we have votes going on, and so we have to 
pull out one by one to make sure that we are able to vote.
    Let me begin with a couple of questions, first to you, Mr. 
Buangan, and that is President Xi, during President Biden's 
April meeting on climate, reiterated the country's intent to 
peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality 
before 2060.
    How committed do you think President Xi is to those targets 
and what actions are Chinese leaders taking to actually achieve 
them?
    How much of this is actually been just pushed off to a much 
later time when all these folks like me will be gone and what 
is being done now, and how much is being avoided, China 
reaching these goals by simply offloading their carbon demands 
onto other countries in the Belt and Road Initiative?
    Mr. Buangan. Thank you for your question, Senator.
    Yes, that is certainly, something that we are definitely 
tracking with great interest at the State Department.
    It is the fact that China represents almost 30 percent of 
global emissions in addition to its carbon-intensive 
investments, we think that it is important to put expectations 
on the PRC in particular that they back up what they say, what 
they promise, and what they pledge with concrete actions.
    That goes not just for the PRC, but for any country they 
pledge and they meet the long-term goals that they set.
    At the end of the day, we are going to be looking at what 
Beijing does and not what it says it will do or will not do.
    Certainly, President Xi has made many commitments to 
address the climate challenge on behalf of the PRC that we have 
yet to see materialize. Those are, certainly, topics of 
discussion at senior levels in our engagement with the PRC.
    Senator Romney. From your perspective, is China continuing 
to build coal power plants at home and/or abroad?
    Mr. Buangan. Yes. We certainly are seeing that and I think 
that given China's reluctance to follow through on many of its 
pledges. I think the key here is to hold them accountable and 
to set very specific expectations to follow through on what 
they pledge and calling out actions that are contrary to what 
they what they have pledged.
    Senator Romney. I simply cannot imagine having an objective 
that President Xi set for 2030 and, again, for 2016 and at the 
same time building new coal power plants.
    I mean, there are alternatives. Natural gas alternatives. 
Obviously, nuclear is not one that they are going to seize 
upon.
    Building new coal plants, particularly, ones that not only 
add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere but also add other 
pollutants without the kind of scrubbing that we are used to 
here.
    It seems to be incompatible with the objectives that they 
are setting and it does seem that what they are saying is 
designed to create a political win for them.
    In reality, they do not seem to have much intent to 
actually make the kind of changes that would result in a 
reduction in CO2 or growth of CO2 emissions.
    Mr. Buangan. I think that is right, and I think the 
responsibility is on us to ensure that as the PRC has pledged, 
that they follow through on their commitments, as I have said, 
and that they do not get a pass, which I think they have, 
certainly, expected.
    They are, certainly building the narrative that they are 
leaders in climate change and reduction of greenhouse gases, 
and I think the proof is in the pudding.
    As you pointed out, the actions that they have taken are 
contrary to what they have pledged.
    Senator Romney. Thank you.
    Mr. Pershing, Secretary Kerry has called for climate change 
to be treated as a compartmentalized issue in the U.S.-China 
relations.
    Yet, I think it is clear to us that that in some respects 
they cannot be compartmentalized, in part because of China's 
human rights abuses in the production of solar panels, fuel 
cell batteries, and even the procurement of raw earths.
    So I am wondering can they be separated and treated as 
separate areas or are they inextricably linked in a way that 
that we cannot ignore?
    Dr. Pershing. Thank you very much, Senator.
    Just a quick comment on your previous question before I 
answer this one. It does seem that there is some history where 
China has, in fact, met its commitments, and so I do not want 
the committee to be thinking that it is only bad.
    I agree with you. There is no way they get there if they 
keep building coal. No way. There is no way they get there if 
they keep investing in overseas coal.
    Historically, they have done more than they have said they 
would do and they are on a trajectory that would suggest they 
could still meet their target, this commitment. They exceeded 
their intensity targets. They exceeded their renewable targets, 
and it looks like they are not actually using all the coal 
capacity they are building.
    It is kind of an expensive program if you are not ever 
going to use it, but they are not using it and so it does not 
lead to very many emissions.
    So there is a good question you are raising, but I think 
there is more nuance that is worth exploring.
    With regard to the human rights issues, we completely agree 
with you it is an appalling state of affairs, and the objective 
that we have got is absolutely centered on how we address that.
    These are not necessarily things that have to be brought 
together, though. They are things we can distinguish and we can 
separate out.
    We want them to do their climate work and we also want them 
to stop with the human rights violations and abuses, and we 
want them to stop with other things they have been doing on 
other interference globally.
    So I think, as we see it, those two things can be pulled 
apart and we can have a policy in which China moves 
aggressively and appropriately on climate but also does not 
have these violations.
    Senator Romney. How do you do that with regards to 
batteries, for instance, and solar panels where we are buying 
these things like crazy, we are planning out the automotive 
market, which will be overwhelmingly powered by electric 
vehicles, and yet these are being produced in places with 
minority, if you will, slave labor? I will say internment camp 
labor. How can you compartmentalize those two things when they 
are so linked?
    Dr. Pershing. So I think there are two parts to that. The 
first one is that I think we can put in place standards that 
assure that the places from which we are purchasing those 
commodities and those goods do not have that labor. It is going 
to require some work on our side.
    The second is to extend the supply chain so it is not 
reliant on a single player like Xinjiang Province or others who 
have those constraints. Those could be American jobs. Those 
could be jobs in our allies' countries. That could be a supply 
chain that we build out.
    So I think there is an opportunity for us to seize as well 
as assuring that the chain itself is cleaned up so that we can 
actually get to the place we want to be.
    Senator Romney. Thank you, Mr. Pershing.
    Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Markey [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Romney.
    The chair will now recognize himself for a round of 
questions.
    I would like to follow up on Senator Romney's line of 
questioning, going off of the supply chain issue in terms of 
these vital component parts that are important to the United 
States.
    We already have a semiconductor crisis in the United 
States, and if we do not put together a plan and we 
dramatically expand, as does the rest of the world, in the 
production of the clean energy sector, we are going to wind up 
with more problems.
    Do you have a recommendation as to how we should handle 
this supply side--supply chain issue, Dr. Pershing?
    Dr. Pershing. Thanks very much, Senator.
    Yes, I think that this is a critical question and I do not 
think it is a question only for us. I think we have a lot of 
allies in this agenda.
    We are not the only ones who are actively promoting solar. 
Our European colleagues are doing it. Our Japanese and Korean 
colleagues are doing it. I had a conversation this morning with 
our colleagues in Indonesia, who are really interested in this.
    All of us want to see opportunities for the access to solar 
without these kinds of damaging supply chains. We are hearing a 
lot of interest in expanding those capacities.
    At one end, the United States itself has got some dormant 
capacity. We could bring that online. We could produce some of 
the things that we need at home.
    We are also seeing--and we had some consultations when we 
were in Saudi Arabia with the Saudis. We have been talking a 
bit to the Japanese who are looking at other options for 
financing these things in third countries.
    There could be an enlarged supply chain at a global level 
that would, potentially, compete with or replace the Chinese 
chain. It will take a few years to get there. We have to do 
that quickly. We have to invest immediately.
    Senator Markey. Thank you.
    When Speaker Pelosi and I went to China in the immediate 
aftermath of the Waxman-Markey bill passing, we met with 
President Hu and Premier Wen. We went through the entire 
country's leadership for about 8 days.
    The key takeaway I took was from one of the key advisors 
who said to me, the perfect formula is United States innovation 
and Chinese manufacturing efficiency, and together we will 
partner to save the planet.
    Which sounds very idealistic, but I could see them getting 
all the jobs and us getting a pat on the back for being so 
innovative.
    We know that we have a problem and it has been there the 
whole long sad story of all these issues, including 
semiconductors.
    So my question to you is, I know that the Europeans right 
now are talking about a border adjustment tariff, and just 
wondering, Dr. Pershing, where you think that fits into a U.S. 
strategy, especially if we partnered with the Europeans and 
sent that signal to China and other countries that might seek 
to exploit the fact that we are going to put very high 
standards in place.
    Dr. Pershing. So thanks very much for that. I think, as you 
probably saw, the Europeans have announced the first draft of 
their strategy. I think it is going to take a lot of work 
before it is final.
    It is so much easier in the context where you either have a 
domestic price or a cap and trade structure, which you yourself 
are trying to work on. It makes it simpler to execute.
    In the U.S. context where there is a series of complicated 
and varied measures across the country, it will be somewhat 
harder to assess how you assign the price and the value for 
commodities. I think that is work that needs to be done.
    At the same time, it is worth considering. We are not 
looking to disadvantage American companies as we develop a 
domestic program. So I think that is the balance we have to 
seek and there is work to be done to evaluate it.
    Senator Markey. Henry Waxman and I built a border 
adjustment tax into the 2009 Waxman-Markey bill and Angela 
Merkel spoke to us about how important she felt it was to have 
a signal that we were sending.
    Ultimately, we have to let them know we are serious at some 
point in terms of their exploitation of our higher standards, 
which are going to go much higher if we are able to pass all of 
the legislation that we are talking about.
    Maybe you could tell us where you think are the greatest 
areas of potential cooperation between the United States and 
China when it comes to the climate crisis.
    Dr. Pershing.
    Dr. Pershing. Thank you. I think we are seeking ones in 
which the U.S. and China are not competing in the same way 
because we do not see that is going to play well for either of 
us.
    I do not think we want to be in the position where we lose 
our technological advantage or where we see commercial 
opportunities that don't go well.
    At the same time, there are, clearly, areas of good 
practice that we could share, things like how do you manage a 
city to be more efficient? What do you do about your 
agricultural practices as you try to feed your people? Things 
that work in our Farm Belt could work for them. Questions about 
how you manage resilience, and then how do you work outside of 
China.
    China is making massive investments overseas. We could work 
on things that would give us an advantage in those third 
countries that could shape and alter the Chinese trajectory.
    Senator Markey. One quick question. The Chinese are 
dismantling a lot of their older coal-burning plants and then 
reassembling them in Africa and other places, and they are 
providing these coal-burning old jalopies as though they are 
doing a favor for those countries because they are so 
inexpensive.
    What should be the message of the United States to China, 
especially as we are heading into Glasgow, in terms of that 
kind of behavior?
    Dr. Pershing. I think there are two messages. The first one 
is that is unacceptable in the context of getting the world on 
a trajectory to avoid the climate crisis, and China recognizes 
it is a crisis for itself as well as for the world. That is 
powerful.
    The second message that I think we have to sell is to have 
some alternative to offer to those countries who are getting a 
deal from China, and unless we do that, they then look and say, 
here is a bird in the hand--a Chinese facility, and on the 
other hand, there is not an option.
    I think we have to come forward with the other option. I 
think we will be competitive with the other option, but it is 
on us.
    Senator Markey. I agree with you, but I do not think we 
should leave Glasgow without that having been resolved, because 
that is just a very cynical ploy by the Chinese and it has to 
be unacceptable from Glasgow on.
    Let me just stop there and turn and recognize the senator 
from Oregon.
    Senator Merkley.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank 
all of you for this testimony.
    I am thinking about kind of the general nature of this 
conversation, which does focus a lot on what China is doing and 
its financing of more than 200 coal plants around the world.
    I wanted to direct my questions to you, Dr. Pershing, 
because I feel like U.S. leadership is so essential in moving 
forward in partnership with the world.
    I feel there is some things that perhaps the U.S. could 
consider doing in this coming year that might strengthen our 
persuasive power, and one is to move more aggressively on our 
Green Climate Fund obligation.
    I think we initially pledged $3 billion and we deposited $1 
billion, and the budget calls for an additional, I think, 1.2.
    So that $3 billion was a pledge kind of more than 4 years 
ago and, yet, there is a lot of damage happening around the 
world from climate and we recognize that the arc of our past 
development has put a lot of the carbon dioxide into the air.
    Should we be more aggressive in striving to fund the Green 
Climate Fund and in terms of our persuasive power?
    Dr. Pershing. Thank you very much, Senator, for that 
question. I think the answer is, fundamentally, yes. I do not 
think we need to do two things.
    The first one is that we have made a commitment under 
Paris, collectively, to try to mobilize $100 billion per year 
to really work with the developing countries as they seek to 
mitigate climate and adapt to its risks. The United States 
share of that has been quite modest and I think it should be 
bigger.
    As to the budget, I think that is up to you. The question 
that we are looking at is how do we increase both, what the 
U.S. brings to the table through government funding and how we 
can leverage that government funding into the private sector, 
to generate a much, much larger sum.
    We need to work on both sides. That means a bit on the 
World Bank side, a bit on the Green Fund side, a bit on the AID 
side. It means more for the DFC. It frames a series of 
opportunities: we can succeed on the climate file while we also 
work with companies who are going to invest in this future.
    Senator Merkley. Well, you mentioned the DFC, and the DFC 
has said that it plans to continue to finance a small number of 
fossil fuel projects under exceptional circumstances.
    It seems to me like that is the sort of place where we 
could set a better example by saying we will double down on 
renewable energy solutions in place after place. It is time to 
stop financing these projects.
    Maybe that is the type of announcement that could come 
during, I do not know, the end of this year or something of 
that nature, and strengthen the sense that we are committed to 
this pivot to renewables as we try to persuade others.
    Dr. Pershing. I think there is a lot in that. We are 
working exactly along those lines. The question is how can you 
both do big new investments in clean alternatives and scale 
back on emitting options.
    We have to be there for countries on their energy supply 
side. They know that. We could do that exactly as you have laid 
it out.
    Senator Merkley. Another place where I think we could be 
more aggressive is in the World Bank. The World Bank has made 
some significant decisions regarding coal. Many diplomats point 
out that the United States is now more of a natural gas and oil 
leader and so we are criticizing China over coal.
    The World Bank has said and diplomats have told us that the 
U.S., in its presence in the World Bank, is still encouraging 
keeping the natural gas track open and it is an example kind of 
something that might help us because we have natural gas, but 
does not hold the same moral power than us saying, yeah, we 
recognize that all forms of fossil fuels you need to pivot on 
and it is time for the World Bank to stop financing all fossil 
fuel projects.
    Dr. Pershing. So just two quick comments. The first one is 
that the International Energy Agency released a report about a 
month ago in which they looked at how you get to net zero, and 
they believe that is not necessary to make any new investments 
in any of the unabated fossil fuel sources--coal, oil, or gas.
    We have enough. It also says we have to make the 
alternative investment. We have to help these countries build 
their grids, build renewable capacity, and that is the place 
the bank can go and we are trying to work on that.
    Senator Merkley. So I hope that we will hear another 
announcement sometime in a year or so that we are going to use 
our leverage at the World Bank and all international finance 
institutions to do an end to the fossil fuel investments.
    I am running out of time so I will just end on this note, 
and that is we have had two major fossil fuel decisions in the 
last few months.
    One was the Willow Project in Alaska, a 300-mile pipeline, 
massive carrying capacity of that pipeline, and doing a new 
version of Line 3, which will double the capacity of tar sands, 
which is perhaps the dirtiest form of fossil fuels in the 
world.
    I will just express my opinion here, but I think it does 
undermine our persuasiveness in the world to be trying to 
persuade China to more rapidly reduce its use and to abandon 
the strategy of doing coal projects around the world while we 
are still launching new development of major fossil fuel 
projects here in the United States.
    Dr. Pershing. Thank you. I think there is a good question 
you raised there. We do see that there is a decreasing 
willingness on the part of any of the investment houses to make 
these investments. The risk is too high.
    I think the markets will move in the direction that we, as 
governments, also want it to move. In some of these cases it is 
not a government decision. It is a private decision. So this 
kind of tension around what we can demand and what we are 
seeking to facilitate is hard.
    You are right, it makes it harder to make the case globally 
when we are making different investments at home.
    Senator Merkley. Thank you.
    Senator Markey. I just want to reemphasize what Senator 
Merkley just said. You cannot preach temperance from a 
barstool.
    You cannot be building new pipelines, bringing in the 
dirtiest oil in the world, and then be going to Glasgow and 
telling other people it is really bad. You should not be doing 
it. You have to square up your own actions with what you are 
going to ask others to do.
    Let me turn and recognize the senator from Delaware, 
Senator Coons.
    Senator Coons. Thank you, Chairman Markey, and thank you to 
this panel and for all of you for the great work you have done 
over decades, and that you are doing in the current context and 
current environment.
    From the blazing wildfires of the American West to the 
deadly floods we have just seen in Germany and China, there is 
no doubt that the need for action on climate could not be 
greater and we have to do whatever we politically can to 
address this.
    I appreciate Special Envoy Kerry and the Administration's 
focus on international climate cooperation and new commitments 
on climate finances, the chairman of the Appropriations 
Subcommittee responsible for securing funds to meet the 
commitment to the Green Climate Fund and for the MCC and for 
DFC and for our international financing commitments. I look 
forward to your advice and to partnering with you, Chairman 
Markey, as we move forward.
    In the East Asia Pacific region, as we know, as you 
outlined in your testimony, we both have some of the world's 
greatest emitters and some of the countries that are most 
likely to face harm most quickly if we do not get this right.
    China, if I understand correctly, is still financing nearly 
three-quarters of all coal-fired power plants globally and 
represents 27 percent of total global emissions, and has made a 
commitment to net zero by 2060, which many of us would agree is 
insufficiently ambitious and will leave them well behind the 
trajectory of the rest of the world.
    So Deputy Assistant Secretary Buangan, if I might, what 
tools do we have to work with China, positively, negatively, to 
provide incentives and pressure to get them to align more 
closely with our net zero goals and with the goals that most of 
the rest of the world will be announcing or moving towards in 
Glasgow?
    Mr. Buangan. In terms of what the Administration is doing, 
we have the senior leadership engagement ongoing. I think, with 
respect to China, it is, certainly an issue that we are 
addressing.
    You saw the Administration's recent actions that we have 
taken with respect to Xinjiang forced labor and the solar 
supply chain, which we talked about earlier.
    Senator Coons. Mr. Hart, if you might want to also pitch in 
on what are the tools available to the Administration to try 
and move the Chinese closer to our position, I would appreciate 
it.
    Mr. Hart. Senator, thank you. I want to comment a little 
bit about, really, working with our host country governments to 
be able to work with our partners to under--because they want 
to understand how do they go about engaging on this issue, and 
they need a lot of----
    Senator Coons. If I am not mistaken, you actually had 
experience doing this in Tanzania. Am I correct? Where this was 
actually--did I not see you previously in Tanzania?
    Mr. Hart. We sure did. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, exactly. 
That is exactly where we saw each other.
    Indeed, in Tanzania and my last 4 years in Vietnam, these 
countries need assistance in terms of being able to assess what 
is coming at them, and there is a lot coming at them in terms 
of offers.
    I think there is a lot of good, great work that we can 
engage there when it comes to being able to understand the 
technical expertise aspect of it, being able to understand the 
democracy and governance in terms of actually putting out 
tenders for these.
    That is a critical aspect, and a lot of the countries do 
want to have those high-quality infrastructure systems come in 
such as an American company could provide. The requirement----
    Senator Coons. Mr. Hart, my assessment would be that Power 
Africa actually was at its most successful, had its greatest 
impact in that space, helping design projects, helping with 
tenders, helping with transparency, frankly----
    Mr. Hart. Absolutely.
    Senator Coons. --and did not provide the robust financing 
that many countries were looking for. That is why I worked hard 
with a group of members of the House and Senate to then build 
the DFC so that there was a financing vehicle available. I 
would argue it is still under resourced, but at least there is 
now those two.
    Would you argue for expanding the Power Africa approach to 
other regions--Central, South America, and Southeast Asia?
    Mr. Hart. I think we have definitely utilized your design 
very well in terms of being able to connect and do the 
matchmaking that is required.
    Our staff are there working with folks on a day-to-day 
basis, and that is what they need to be able to develop the 
trust that is required to actually reach out and better access 
some of these financing tools.
    So we have looked at Asia Edge, for example. That is a 
great example of how we have been able to work with the private 
sector, who is very interested also in terms of meeting some of 
these clean energy goals as well, those who are producing clean 
energy and looking at direct power purchase agreements as well.
    Figuring out the complexity of it is making sure that all 
the stakeholders are at the table and that the trust is built 
over years, quite frankly.
    Senator Coons. Thank you. If I might--forgive me.
    Dr. Pershing, on a border carbon adjustment, the EU is 
actively implementing Canada and the U.K. are seriously 
discussing and preparing. I think it is likely that we will 
move forward with a border carbon adjustment in some version in 
our reconciliation bill.
    I introduced a bill on Monday with Scott Peters that would 
require the Administration to come up with an assessment over 
the next 2 years of exactly what the regulatory price is--this 
is in the interim until we have got a price on carbon--and then 
would assess that on a variety of imports--steel, iron, 
aluminum, cement, natural gas, petroleum, coal--where it is 
relatively easy to assess the carbon intensity of those 
products, and then use the revenue raised for state grant 
programs for resilience assistance to small businesses, energy 
assistance, energy innovation.
    I think it is a great way for us to pull together with 
countries that share our values, allies on both open societies 
and on carbon ambition. Some have criticized it already in the 
press. It has raised questions, both positive and negative.
    I would be interested in your views about both how we could 
most successfully implement a border carbon adjustment and how 
the Administration is approaching the reframing of trade around 
climate values and climate ambition.
    Dr. Pershing. Thanks very much, Senator. That is a lot of 
questions, all which I think are central, and we have only had 
a chance to really begin to look at the bill that you have 
proposed, the structure that you proposed in the act.
    I think there is a lot in that that is very, very much 
aligned with the thinking we have been doing.
    Two things. The first one, it is very clear you do not want 
to disadvantage American companies as you do the climate policy 
work; we do not want to be in a position where others act with 
impunity while we bear high transition cost.
    I say it is going to be a transition cost because I think 
there is a value in moving first. First, movers often get to 
own the market, and I think that market is coming. There is, 
potentially, a transition cost.
    The second, though, is one you have just outlined and it is 
around the complexity of the arrangements. They are really not 
straightforward, and I think we just had a little bit of an 
exchange with Senator Markey about some of the early work that 
he had done around a pricing mechanism, which makes it much 
easier.
    There are ways, however, in my mind (and in our collective 
thinking) where you do not need a price mechanism but you can 
still assign value and differentiate between what it costs an 
American to make something and an overseas actor.
    I think that is where your bill is proposing to go. I think 
we need to do further studies on it. I would like very much to 
follow up with you and your team as we do that work and that 
analysis.
    It is in our remit to take that forward. The President has 
asked Special Envoy Kerry to lead part of that assessment. So 
we will be working on it, and look forward to talking to you 
about your vision.
    Senator Coons. Thank you, and I look forward to working 
with you on that as well.
    As Senator Markey well knows, emissions do not respect 
borders, and he has been hard at this work for quite some time. 
I look forward to partnering with him in the months ahead as we 
get ready for Glasgow, and I appreciate the continued 
partnership with the Administration and what each of you is 
doing to help lead in this critical area.
    Thank you, Chairman Markey.
    Senator Markey. Thank you, Senator Coons. My view is that 
if we do not partner with Europe on this in our relationship 
with China in Glasgow, we just wind up as Uncle Sucker.
    We have to have a plan for what is happening in their 
production strategies and we have to understand that unless 
they know that we are firm and we have a plan that they will 
just continue to run with it.
    The United States wins whenever we have a plan. If we do 
not have a plan, they will win. So let us try to work together, 
and I am so glad that Senator Coons is working on this issue.
    There is some formulation here that can work, and if done 
in conjunction with the Japanese and the Europeans I think it 
sends a very powerful message to the Chinese.
    Let me ask you, Mr. Buangan, given the United States' 
absence in the fight over the last 4 years during the Trump 
years, what do you think is the best thing we can do as a 
nation to signal to all of those East Asian nations, those 
Pacific Islanders, that the United States is back in the game?
    Mr. Buangan. Thank you, Senator.
    I think this Administration is starting to do it by being 
present and speaking out forcefully and prioritizing the Indo-
Pacific as a national security priority for this 
Administration.
    As you see in the press, Deputy Secretary Sherman is 
currently in the region. She is engaging with our partners and 
allies, and she has just announced today that she is going to 
be visiting the PRC.
    There is a healthy amount of diplomacy going on there. I 
think that being present both in the bilateral and multilateral 
space as we are returning to many of our multilateral 
engagements is key, and it is also, I think, helping those 
countries that are most affected by climate change meet those 
demands, and matching our words with our actions and doing the 
things that we say that we are going to do and say that we are 
going to pledge.
    So you mentioned the Pacific Island countries as an 
example. A lot of these countries view climate changes as an 
existential threat. We are recognizing that many of those 
countries are hard hit by climate change.
    We have announced many initiatives to help them mitigate 
that, for example, the International Climate Finance Plan, 
which is intent on doubling our annual public climate finance 
to developing countries by 2024.
    The Administration has also launched the Small and Less 
Populous Island Economies Initiative, or SALPIE, which is an 
economic cooperation framework. So it is actions that also help 
these countries meet these challenges.
    Senator Markey. I agree with you, and that is why I brought 
this picture. If you are a Marshall Islander and you see what 
we left behind after 67 nuclear tests, just a huge dome 
carrying all of the waste from 67 nuclear blasts, transporting 
from Nevada all that nuclear waste and putting it right there, 
now you can see the rising tide sits around that dome, which is 
weakening.
    If you want to talk about recombinant environmental nuclear 
DNA being just spewed across the Pacific--that is the 
situation. They have a right to expect us not to further 
contribute to the likelihood that that day is going to arrive.
    Mr. Hart, what would be your recommendation in terms of 
what our message is to these Pacific Islanders? What more 
should we be saying to them in terms of climate mitigation and 
adaptation efforts in the Pacific Islands?
    Mr. Hart. Thank you, sir. I very much agree with my State 
colleague. I think that showing up makes a difference.
    USAID has actually increased our presence by three fold in 
the Pacific Islands in the last couple of years. We have 
increased our assistance in terms of development assistance as 
well as emergency assistance by four times, thanks to your 
support.
    I think showing up, making sure that we have that on-the-
ground collaboration, that we are developing those absolutely 
essential trust relationships, because that trust and that 
relationship is going to be the answer when there is the next 
decision to be made.
    Illustrating our presence, illustrating our connectivity 
with their priorities, not just with the host governments but 
also with civil society. As we know and as you have pointed 
out, sir, those who have to smell the air of a coal fire plant 
are quite not interested in pursuing that any further.
    Governments listen to that frequently, and so engaging not 
just our private sector counterparts, who are very interested 
in pursuing some of these green climate goals themselves, not 
just our host country governments who have their own goals, but 
also ensuring that we are engaging civil society in this 
discussion as well because they can bring a significant amount 
of influence to bear.
    Thank you, sir.
    Senator Markey. Thank you.
    Ms. Dalton, the Targeting Environmental and Climate 
Recklessness Act is something that I reintroduced, which brings 
the full weight of U.S. sanctions against those who perpetrate 
human rights abuses against environmental defenders.
    Can you talk a little bit about what the role should be for 
the United States to play as this human rights defender, 
especially when we are talking about environmental abuses that 
are occurring in countries and our moral and political weight 
that is needed to leverage the indigenous groups that are 
seeking to protect themselves and their livelihoods?
    Ms. Dalton. Senator, thank you for the question.
    I am going to request to take that question for the record 
as it relates to that specific act.
    Broadly speaking, in terms of DoD engagement in the region, 
given our strong network of alliances and partnerships, 
certainly, the Biden/Harris administration prioritizes the 
value of good governance and human rights.
    So when it comes to our security cooperation relationships, 
the provision of security sector assistance, it is a strong 
criteria that we use to evaluate whether to provide assistance 
and, certainly, to monitor how that assistance is used over 
time, sir.[CONTINUE HERE]
    Senator Markey. Let me ask you this. Corrupt authoritarians 
throughout the region, including the military junta in Burma 
and the Kim family in North Korea, use fossil fuel revenues to 
support their regimes.
    How can the United States act to prevent corrupt petro 
regimes from stymieing climate progress?
    Ms. Dalton. Senator, again, I am going to have to take that 
particular question for the record. Thank you.
    Senator Markey. Great. I would appreciate it. Thank you. I 
appreciate your expertise on this issue.
    Dr. Pershing, do you have any recommendations as to how we 
should handle that issue in terms of the corrupt nature, 
unfortunately, in too many countries of the petroleum/natural 
gas industries?
    Dr. Pershing. So I have maybe a story that is not quite a 
direct answer but a connected answer. We spent some time in the 
last month or so traveling and meeting with various other 
partners around the world, and one of the countries that we 
went to was Saudi Arabia.
    This is a country that has had some serious, long-standing, 
and probably unique requirements around fossil fuels. That 
resource pays for something like half of their entire 
government budget and there is, clearly, some degree of 
internal royal family dynamics in their operational structure.
    But one of the things that I found when we were there is 
that they are willing to think about a shift in their policy. 
They are willing to think about alternative models for 
development.
    They are working, in fact, to think more about hydrogen, 
and creating a much more diversified economy. They are thinking 
about solar, which would further diversify their economy, and 
would change the outcome in a fundamental way.
    To me, part of what we have to do is we have to wield the 
stick but we also have to have the carrot, and a carrot might 
be in the way that we can offer them an alternative model of 
growth and development.
    And if we do that, at least the experience just from this 
last trip suggests that we would have an audience and might get 
a transition.
    Senator Markey. Great. I appreciate the expertise of this 
panel. I am going to ask each one of you just to give us a 30 
seconds piece of what you want us to remember from this panel 
as we are moving forward with crafting legislation or foreign 
policy.
    We will begin with you, Ms. Dalton. What is the 30 seconds 
you want us to remember?
    Ms. Dalton. Thank you, again, for the opportunity to 
testify today.
    I think what I would stress is that while there are 
significant requirements for humanitarian assistance and 
disaster relief in supporting our allies and partners in the 
region and building their partner capacity, there are hard 
security challenges, too, that we need to keep in mind in terms 
of the ability to sustain access spacing and over flight 
requirements for warfighting and deterrence in the region.
    So the department is committed to taking a holistic look at 
how we can support a whole-of-government approach to address 
these challenges.
    Thank you.
    Senator Markey. Thank you.
    Mr. Hart?
    Mr. Hart. Oh. Thank you, sir.
    Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify.
    I would say that USAID's presence in country makes a huge 
difference. It is the relationship upon which we build our 
trust and we also are able to engage the host country 
governments.
    We are also able to work with civil society to ensure that 
those institutions are the ones that have voice in this 
process.
    We are also able to work upstream, and that is developing 
the higher education institutions that are going to produce the 
workers of the future and being able to look at some of those 
very critical business-enabling environment factors that are 
going to allow American companies to come in and compete on a 
level playing field.
    I think that is absolutely critical for the overall 
solution set within this topic and many others.
    Senator Markey. Thank you.
    Mr. Hart. Thank you.
    Senator Markey. Mr. Buangan?
    Mr. Buangan. Thank you, Chairman, for having the 
opportunity to testify before you today and engage in this 
discussion.
    I think for the State Department our challenge is trying to 
meet the Administration's goals of our Indo-Pacific strategy 
and what we are trying to do in terms of our U.S. leadership, 
asserting U.S. leadership, a positive and affirmative vision of 
U.S. leadership in the region, and that is going to require 
resources.
    We are, certainly, engaging our allies and partners and 
giving them the tools that they need to address and mitigate 
the effects of climate change. It is going to take not just 
diplomacy but public diplomacy.
    Mr. Hart mentioned engagement with civil society. We do 
that every day in the State Department through our embassies 
and our consulates in the region.
    So being able to meet those challenges with the right 
resources and the right people to be able to do that in the 
region.
    Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Buangan.
    And Dr. Pershing?
    Dr. Pershing. So three things.
    I think we have to walk the talk. You cannot just say what 
you want. You have to deliver, and that means here at home.
    The second thing, we need to partner on the ground. We have 
got to be present. That means through commercial endeavors, 
through financing, through technical assistance.
    And the third thing, we have to lead with a vision. We have 
to have a vision of the world as it could be and go down that 
pathway with allies.
    Senator Markey. I love it. Walk the talk. Partner on the 
ground. Have a vision of the future that the rest of the world 
can buy into.
    That is a big order, but the United States is up to it, and 
we thank all of you for all the great work you are doing 
towards the goal of achieving that.
    Thank you all so much. The first panel is excused. We will 
move on to our second panel.
    Senator Markey. Our second panel consists of Marinel Sumook 
Ubaldo, who is a climate activist from the Philippines, Richard 
Powell, who is executive director of ClearPath, and Sherri 
Goodman, General Secretary of the International Military 
Council on Climate and Security.
    We welcome the three of you, and I think we can start with 
Ms. Ubaldo. I know she is up on the screen and she is going to 
be testifying remotely. If we have the technological capacity 
to link us to her, then we can begin this second panel.
    [Pause.]
    Senator Markey. While we are doing that and get that set 
up, why do we not turn to you, Mr. Powell?
    Introduce yourself and then in five minutes please 
summarize your testimony.

            STATEMENT OF RICHARD POWELL, EXECUTIVE 
              DIRECTOR, CLEARPATH, WASHINGTON, DC

    Mr. Powell. Good afternoon, Chairman Markey, and members of 
the subcommittee.
    I am Rich Powell and I lead ClearPath. ClearPath advances 
policies to accelerate breakthrough innovations that reduce 
emissions in the energy and industrial sectors.
    An important note, we are supported by philanthropy, not 
industry. Climate change is real and industrial activity around 
the globe is the dominant contributor. We believe the challenge 
it poses to society merits significant action at every level of 
government and the private sector.
    I have spent my entire career working on climate change 
solutions, including my time working with energy companies and 
governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
    Jakarta, Indonesia, which I have called home, is a relevant 
case study. Given its proximity to low-lying rivers, extreme 
precipitation, a rising sea, rapid growth, and over extraction 
of groundwater, the city is, literally, sinking.
    Indonesia is made up of highly-populated islands and some 
of the largest remaining rain forests in Southeast Asia. It is 
rich in people and culture and quite poor in open available 
land. That makes relying heavily on land-hungry clean energy, 
like wind and solar, entirely unrealistic as it is for much of 
the region.
    To further complicate matters, Indonesia is also rich in 
coal, and developing countries continue to turn to coal as it 
remains cheap, abundant, and reliable.
    This is a microcosm of the wider region. Given your role 
and America's response to the global climate challenge, I will 
discuss three key topics.
    First, the global emissions landscape. Asian emissions, 
driven by China, could eclipse America's emissions efforts.
    Second, an innovation-driven policy agenda to cut the cost 
of clean technologies for developing countries.
    And third, opportunities to build on your strong bipartisan 
clean energy innovation priorities.
    U.S. lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, and businesses 
are prioritizing climate solutions. But while the U.S. reversed 
our emissions trajectory, much of the rest of the world is 
growing their emissions as they grow their populations, 
industries, and quality of life.
    To remain competitive with China, U.S. energy policy must 
synchronize with the global challenge. Even if the U.S. somehow 
eliminated all of its carbon emissions tomorrow, just the 
growth in emissions from today through 2050 by developing Asian 
countries would exceed total U.S. emissions today.
    Unfortunately, today's clean technology is not up to the 
task of global economy wide de-carbonization. We need to focus 
on breakthrough technologies that offer both better performance 
and lower costs than the traditional emitting technologies in 
the market.
    China is not making this challenge easier. Greenhouse gas 
emissions in China tripled between 1999 and 2019, and accounted 
for 27 percent of global emissions in 2019, more than the 
entire developed world combined.
    Looking ahead, China has only committed to stopping new 
coal by 2026, locking in those emissions for decades to come. 
China is also the largest public financier of coal plants 
globally, but its overseas support is dwarfed by its own 
domestic development.
    Last year, China brought 38 gigawatts of coal online, more 
than three times the rest of the world combined. China's Belt 
and Road Initiative makes it very cheap and straightforward for 
developing countries to electrify their economies by building 
new coal plants.
    Leaders in these nations would likely prefer to build clean 
energy, but their top priority is getting electricity turned 
on. So new subcritical coal plants and outdated extremely high-
emitting, inefficient, but very cheap technology are what they 
often choose, and China helps pay the bills.
    Meanwhile, our export credit agencies are lagging. By 
statute, Ex-Im is only empowered to prioritize clean 
investments in renewables and energy storage. As Dr. Pershing 
also suggested, we can assemble better packages that offer like 
for like substitutes to the subcritical Chinese coal plants 
like advanced nuclear or natural gas with carbon capture.
    A no-regrets policy shift would be to expand the Ex-Im 
transformational exports program to put all clean energy on the 
same footing. The United States can truly lead on reducing 
global emissions. But there is no tax or domestic regulation 
that will magically halt emissions around the world.
    We must focus on strengthening the American economy, not 
ceding ground to China or Russia. There is a path to reducing 
global CO2 emissions and creating new American jobs. It is a 
simple four-step plan: innovate, permit, build, and then 
export.
    First, we must innovate. This means developing clean 
technologies the world wants to buy that give America a 
competitive advantage.
    Second, we must eliminate unnecessary regulatory hurdles 
that slow down permitting innovative technology. To that 
effect, I would like to draw your attention to the findings of 
the recent bipartisan Aspen Institute ``Cleaner Faster'' 
Dialogue.
    Third, we must demonstrate how the technology works. If we 
do not see American innovations through from R&D through 
commercialization, our basic research here is only welfare for 
China. They have proven they will take our innovations and run 
with them, as you mentioned earlier, Mr. Chairman.
    And, fourth, we must export the proven U.S. technology and 
create new clean energy markets. Innovations must work not only 
in America but also apply to Myanmar or Malaysia, given their 
development goals.
    As you craft this agenda, and I cannot underscore this 
enough, partisan climate policy is not sustainable. It results 
in short-term uncertainty and does not provide the market 
signals we need to move to a clean energy economy.
    We can start by building on recent bipartisan wins. In 
addition to the bipartisan authorizations in the Energy Act of 
2020, the most recent fiscal year '20 and '21 appropriations 
bills are great successes.
    Investments for clean energy demonstrations for carbon 
capture, advanced nuclear, grid scale long-duration energy 
storage, enhanced geothermal, hydrogen, and direct air capture 
should remain at the core of any bipartisan policy.
    Thank you for this opportunity. We applaud the committee 
for taking on this important task.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Powell follows:]


                Prepared Statement of Richard J. Powell

    Good afternoon Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Romney and Members 
of the Subcommittee. My name is Rich Powell, and I am the Executive 
Director of ClearPath.
    ClearPath is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to develop 
and advance policies that accelerate breakthrough innovations that 
reduce emissions in the energy and industrial sectors. We develop 
cutting-edge policy solutions on clean energy and industrial 
innovation, and we collaborate with public and private sector 
stakeholders on innovations in nuclear energy, carbon capture, 
hydropower, natural gas, geothermal, energy storage, and heavy industry 
to enable private-sector deployment of critical technologies. An 
important note: we are supported by philanthropy, not industry.
    Climate change is real and industrial activity around the globe is 
the dominant contributor to it. I believe the challenge it poses to 
society merits significant action at every level of government and the 
private sector. Unfortunately, climate change is best thought of as a 
chronic condition of the planet, and will require continuous 
innovation, smart policymaking and voluntary action, and resilience 
building every decade of this century to address.
    I have spent my entire career working on climate change solutions, 
including my time living in the Asia Pacific region in Indonesia, 
Malaysia and Singapore, working with energy and resource companies and 
local governments on their sustainability goals.
    Jakarta, Indonesia, which I called home several years ago, is a 
particularly relevant case study for the need to act, and act 
thoughtfully, on climate change. The metropolitan region of Jakarta, 
the capital, is home to more than 33 million people as of 2020, making 
it the second most populous metropolitan area on Earth after Tokyo. 
Given the proximity to several low-lying rivers, a rising sea, rapid 
growth and development, and over-extraction of ground-water, the city 
is literally sinking and prone to severe flooding. More than 70 percent 
of the city was submerged during the 2007 monsoon.\1\ This year, 
thousands have already needed to evacuate the city due to flooding, 
which is part of the reason their government is in the process of 
moving the capital to a different island.
    There is no silver bullet solution for stories like this. 
Maintaining a thriving megalopolis like Jakarta will require deep 
investments in resilient infrastructure, stronger urban planning, and 
better technology to limit and eventually reverse global climate 
change. Just as importantly, better clean energy solutions are needed 
to eliminate the urban air pollution which continuously shrouds the 
city. Meeting all of these challenges, while continuing the rapid 
development of South East Asia's largest economy, soon likely to 
overtake the U.S. as the world's third most populous nation, will 
require technological breakthroughs. For one thing, 275 million 
Indonesians live across 6,000 islands in the world's most populous 
archipelago. Population density there is four times as high as in the 
U.S. The most populous islands like Java are extremely densely settled, 
and the less inhabited parts of many other islands are home to the 
largest remaining rainforests in Southeast Asia, a global treasure 
trove of biodiversity. In short, Indonesia is incredibly rich in people 
and culture and quite poor in open, available land--ensuring a clean 
energy future for Indonesia will rely heavily on power-dense clean 
technologies--advanced nuclear, fossils with carbon capture, hydrogen, 
and enhanced geothermal--only under development today. Relying entirely 
on existing high land use variable carbon free energy like wind and 
solar is entirely unrealistic in Indonesia, as it is for much of the 
rest of the Asia Pacific region.
    To make matters more complicated, Indonesia's islands are rich in 
coal. The country is the second largest coal exporter by value on the 
planet,\2\ and its share of power generation from coal continues to 
grow in both absolute and relative terms (now at roughly 60 percent) as 
it rapidly electrifies its economy.\3\ Despite the continued cost 
improvements in wind and solar, countries with high population density 
and abundant coal looking to rapidly electrify continue to turn to that 
power source as it remains cheap, abundant and reliable.
    The climate challenge for Indonesia is a microcosm of the wider 
region. Given this subcommittee's role in America's response to the 
global climate challenge and efforts to examine increasing carbon 
dioxide emissions in China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, I will 
discuss three key topics today:

   The global landscape shows rapidly increasing carbon dioxide 
        emissions. Increased emissions from China and the developing 
        world, including a number of Southeast Asian nations, will 
        eclipse all of America's efforts to decrease emissions. 
        Solutions must be globally focused and must keep American 
        competitiveness with China in mind.

   An innovation-driven agenda is the way to solve the global 
        emissions challenge by scaling up clean energy technology so 
        the developing world chooses clean energy as an affordable 
        option. The four-step strategy to achieve this and maintain 
        American energy leadership is simple: innovate, permit, build 
        and export.

   Building on the strong bipartisan clean energy innovation 
        record investments and authorizations we have seen over the 
        last several Congresses.
                          the global landscape
    There is good news and there is bad news. The good news, 
lawmakers--both Republican and Democrats--and businesses across the 
U.S. are prioritizing investments in climate change solutions.
    The bad news: while the U.S. and a few other leaders have reversed 
our emissions trajectory, much of the rest of the world is growing 
their emissions as they grow their populations, industries, and quality 
of life.
    That's why as the Committee considers policies to remain 
competitive with China, it is important that U.S. energy policy 
synchronizes with the global nature of the climate challenge. Reducing 
American emissions is essential, and we have seen a significant decline 
already. Since U.S. emissions peaked in 2005, power sector emissions 
have fallen by roughly 40 percent as of 2020, largely due to the 
abundance of cleaner natural gas and resulting coal to gas power 
switching, as well as an increase in renewables.\4\ But, even if the 
U.S. somehow eliminated all of its carbon emissions tomorrow, just the 
growth in carbon emissions from today through 2050 by developing Asian 
countries (e.g., China, India, and other Eastern Asian nations) would 
exceed total U.S. emissions today.\5\ Going forward, we expect power 
sector emissions in the United States to flatline if natural gas prices 
remain low, and more action is required to ensure emissions continue to 
decrease here at home.




    However, clean technology available today is simply not up to the 
task of global economy-wide decarbonization. As the chart below 
indicates, the global supply of clean energy has remained stagnant 
since 2005. We need to focus on breakthrough technologies that offer 
both better performance and lower costs than the traditional emitting 
technologies in the market today--only then should we expect to truly 
change this trajectory.




    China's Belt and Road Initiative--their commitment to global 
infrastructure finance and development to tie together a huge swatch of 
the developing world--is currently hugely outpacing all U.S. America 
export credit and development finance activity. Among many other 
things, including clean energy technologies, China continues to finance 
new sub-critical coal plants--an outdated, extremely high emitting, 
inefficient but very cheap, coal technology--around the developing 
world.







    We can all agree that China has a big emissions problem. Greenhouse 
gas emissions in China tripled between 1999 and 2019, and accounted for 
27 percent of global emissions in 2019, more than the entire developed 
world combined.\8\ Looking ahead, Chinese coal emissions have not yet 
peaked, and new coal plants are still under development through 2026, 
locking in those emissions for decades to come.\9\
                chinese public foreign energy investment
    China is the largest public financier of coal plants, and is one of 
the few countries financing overseas coal plants generally.\10\ As 
demonstrated below, the vast majority of Chinese energy investment 
overseas has been in emitting technologies, with only a fraction going 
to non-emitting technologies.




    The total emissions from Chinese publicly supported coal projects 
since 2000 is 433 million metric tons of CO2 per year. If the average 
life of a coal plant is approximately 40 years, this investment 
represents 17 gigatons of carbon emissions.




    Within the Southeast Asian region generally, China has been a major 
financier of coal projections. The map below shows Chinese investment 
in energy projects between 2008 and 2022 in Southeast Asia. In total, 
Chinese financial entities supported the development of 27 gigawatts of 
coal capacity in Southeast Asian countries alone.\13\




                      chinese domestic investment
    China's overseas support is dwarfed by its own domestic 
development. In 2020, while much of the rest of the world was targeting 
its covid-related stimulus spending towards clean technologies, China 
brought 38 gigawatts of coal online, more than three times as much coal 
as was brought online in the rest of the world combined.\15\




    While China may technically lead the world in solar \17\ and wind 
\18\ capacity additions (which may not be entirely accurate \19\), 
because those plants operate at only a fraction of coal's capacity 
factor, actual renewable energy generation is dwarfed by fossil energy 
generation. The graph below shows China's continuing reliance on coal 
in the electric sector.\20\




    an american innovation-focused approach to global climate change
    Too often these sobering statistics on the rise of emissions in the 
rapidly developing world have been used to argue against rigorous 
American action to combat global climate change. We argue just the 
opposite--rather than a shield against action, these realities must 
spur us to great ambition. But unless we keep these realities in mind, 
we risk pursuing a climate change and clean energy policy that will do 
more harm than good.
    The number one reason for the increase in coal production in these 
countries is very simple--China's Belt and Road Initiative is making it 
very cheap and straightforward for them to electrify their economies by 
building new coal plants. Ask a leader from any of those nations 
working hard to provide for their people, and they will probably tell 
you they'd love to build clean energy, but their top priority is 
getting electricity turned on for their citizens and their industries.
    Meanwhile, our export credit agencies are lagging far behind. The 
Program on China and Transformational Exports at the ExIm Bank, where 
I've been proud to serve on the Advisory Committee since 2019, for 
example, only authorizes a specific additional focus on renewable 
technology and energy storage. The program does not focus U.S. export 
credit on technologies that could offer a real like-for-like substitute 
to subcritical coal plants, e.g., nuclear technology or natural gas 
with carbon capture. So, because we have not provided realistic 
alternatives, these nations are naturally choosing cheap Chinese coal 
technology.
    An absolute no-regrets policy shift would be to expand the ExIm 
energy program to include all clean energy sources--like nuclear, 
natural gas and coal with carbon capture, and enhanced geothermal--so 
we put all clean energy technologies on the same footing and enable 
more financing options for key technologies. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-
ND) is working on legislation that would address this challenge and put 
all clean energy technologies on a level playing field.
    The United States can truly lead on reducing global carbon dioxide 
emissions. But, there is no tax or domestic regulation that will 
magically halt emissions in China or the rapidly developing world. We 
need a plan that can make our energy sector cleaner and more reliable 
here in the U.S., and also around the globe. And any plan should also 
focus on making the American economy even stronger--ensuring American 
energy leadership and not ceding ground to China, Russia or other 
nations looking at clean energy markets.
    This plan puts us on the path to achieve the global CO2 
reductions we need, and create new jobs around the U.S. It's a simple 
four step plan: innovate, permit, build and export.

  1.  First, we must innovate. That means developing clean technologies 
        the world wants to buy that give America a competitive 
        advantage. Big energy projects can't be done in someone's 
        basement funded by a small angel investor like a new food 
        delivery app. They are obviously large and capital intensive 
        efforts, and we must drive progress with public investments in 
        close partnership with the private sector, with very clear 
        accountability at the Department of Energy to produce huge cost 
        and performance improvements. Our recent moves towards 
        technology and performance goal-based programs, for example 
        DOE's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, and the new Earth 
        Shots initiatives on hydrogen and storage, the latter carrying 
        forward the Trump administration's Energy Storage Grand 
        Challenge, all follow this formula.

  2.  Unnecessary regulatory hurdles that needlessly slow down 
        innovation must be eliminated. There are proposals to make 
        important reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act, the 
        Nationwide Permit Program and to streamline the cumbersome New 
        Source Review process for emission reducing technology 
        retrofits. Most recently, the Aspen Institute released the 
        results of a bipartisan round table led by Bill Clinton's 
        former head of CEQ Katie McGinty and George W. Bush's former 
        head of CEQ James Connaughton.\21\ I would encourage the 
        members of the subcommittee to review this report and work 
        towards the recommended solutions. The efficient permitting of 
        projects is essential to the efficient use of scant taxpayer 
        resources and to scaling clean energy deployment rapidly. We 
        can only reduce CO2 emissions as fast as we can 
        permit new projects.

  3.  We must demonstrate how the technology works and build it. Dozens 
        of U.S. utilities have committed to reach ``net zero'' 
        emissions by 2050. Working backward from that goal, they will 
        need to build new zero-emitting 24/7 technology by 2035. Let's 
        work with them, not against them. The bipartisan Energy Act of 
        2020 was an amazing start, including authorizing bills to cost-
        share federal demonstration programs, incentivize new 
        demonstrations via tax credits, and smooth the regulatory path 
        to deploying these at scale. However, if we don't see these 
        amazing innovations through, from R&D to commercialization, our 
        basic research will be creating a welfare program for China, 
        who is happy to take our breakthroughs and commercialize them 
        in their markets. They have proven they will take our energy 
        innovations and run with them.

  4.  And finally, we must be able to export the proven technology and 
        create new clean energy markets. Everything we are innovating 
        and demonstrating must not only have a niche in our own energy 
        sector, but also apply to countries like Myanmar or Malaysia 
        that are growing exponentially--and consider what U.S. 
        technology best fits their development goals.

    To do this, we need to leverage the U.S. trade and development 
agencies, like Export Import Bank and the U.S. Development Finance 
Corporation. Each of these agencies offers robust financing options for 
technologies important to the developing world and due to the size of 
energy projects, almost every major project requires financing 
backstops from the exporting country. Cementing the mission of clean 
energy exports and development in these agencies by law will go a long 
way to building new clean energy markets globally for American 
products. This will further ensure that future energy projects in 
developing countries emit less and eliminate forced labor, particularly 
as it relates to current human rights violations throughout the 
existing supply chain in China.
    To address a massive global challenge like climate change, every 
tool must remain in the box. No country will use a single clean power 
technology--every country will need to find the right mix given its 
national circumstances, resource endowments, and pre-existing industry.
                 strong bipartisan clean energy record
    Finally, I cannot underscore this enough, partisan only climate 
policy is not sustainable. It results in short-term uncertainty and 
does not provide the market signals we need to move to a clean energy 
economy. We must work to have sustainable climate policy that includes 
the buy-in from both political parties in congress.
    We can start by building on recent bipartisan support for all these 
exciting opportunities for more clean energy innovation. In addition to 
the bipartisan authorizations in the Energy Act of 2020, the most 
recent FY20 & 21 appropriations bills are great successes, and I 
applaud the critical programmatic direction and eagle-eyed investments 
in enhanced geothermal, advanced nuclear, carbon capture, grid-scale 
storage and other clean energy technologies included.
    With these efforts, Congress sent an undeniable message that 
lawmakers are serious about keeping the U.S. in the top tier of 
countries pursuing clean and reliable energy breakthroughs. While 
steady and sufficient funding is essential, providing important 
direction and reforms to the DoE to make sure that dollars are well 
spent is equally as vital to spurring clean energy innovation.
    Investments for clean energy demonstrations for carbon capture, 
advanced nuclear, grid scale long-duration energy storage, enhanced 
geothermal, hydrogen and direct air capture are currently core features 
of the bipartisan infrastructure package that passed out of the Energy 
and Natural Resources Committee last week on July 14, 2021.
    Making investments in these programs will greatly accelerate clean 
energy innovation in America which will turn into market opportunities 
with rapidly growing nations. We are very much looking forward to 
continuing that strong momentum.
    Again, we must think globally when approaching this challenge. 
Partisan regulations will not pass the political sustainability test 
needed for climate solutions. Likewise, halting pipelines or placing 
moratoriums on oil and gas drilling on federal lands also has little to 
no impact on actual carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., let alone the 
rest of the world--particularly if we are simultaneously pushing OPEC+ 
for expanded oil and gas production globally. And none of that will 
make us more competitive with China. We agree, the cost of inaction on 
climate is high, and finding bipartisan common ground on clean energy 
innovation policy is priceless.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to provide remarks. ClearPath 
is eager to assist the Committee in developing innovative policies and 
understanding the emission threats from East Asia and the Pacific. We 
applaud the Committee for taking on this important task to help ensure 
America's energy innovation leadership is upheld by bringing more 
cutting-edge energy technologies to market in the service of a stable 
global climate.

----------------
Notes

    \1\ https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148303/as-jakarta-
grows-so-do-the-water-issues
    \2\ https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2020/supply
    \3\ https://www.iea.org/fuels-and-technologies/electricity
    \4\ Emissions data sourced from Rhodium Group Climate Deck. https:/
/climatedeck.rhg.com/
    \5\ Energy Information Administration. International Energy 
Outlook, 2019 Table: World carbon dioxide emissions by region. https://
www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=10-IEO2019&region=0-
0&cases=Reference&start=2010&end=2050&f=A&linechart=Reference-
d080819.3-10-IEO2019Reference-d080819.16-10-
IEO2019&ctype=linechart&sourcekey=0
    \6\ https://climatedeck.rhg.com/
    \7\ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57018837
    \8\ Ibid.
    \9\ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-says-china-will-
phase-down-coal-consumption-over-2026-2030-2021-04-22/
    \10\ https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2021/07/07/who-funds-overseas-coal-
plants-the-need-for-transparency-and-accountability/
    \11\ Boston University Global Development Policy Center, China 
Global Energy Finance (https://www.bu.edu/cgef/#/all/EnergySource)
    \12\ Boston University Global Development Policy Center, China's 
Global Power Database (https://www.bu.edu/cgp/)
    \13\ Chinese participation in this case takes many forms, including 
construction and contracting, foreign direct investment, finance, aid, 
or different combinations of the above.
    \14\ The height of each bar is based on electric production 
capacity, and the color indicates the resource type. Black is coal, 
dark blue in hydropower, and light blue is natural gas. Boston 
University Global Development Policy Center, China's Global Power 
Database (https://www.bu.edu/cgp/)
    \15\ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal/chinas-new-coal-
power-plant-capacity-in-2020-more-than-three-times-rest-of-worlds-
study-idUSKBN2A308U
    \16\ Global Energy Monitor, ``China Dominates 2020 Coal Plant 
Development,'' Accessed July 10th, 2021 https://
globalenergymonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/China-Dominates-
2020-Coal-Development.pdf
    \17\ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-energy-climatechange/
china-doubles-new-renewable-capacity-in-2020-still-builds-thermal-
plants-idUSKBN29Q0JT
    \18\ https://gwec.net/a-gust-of-growth-in-china-makes-2020-a-
record-year-for-wind-energy/
    \19\ https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/what-is-going-on-
with-chinas-crazy-clean-energy-installation-figures
    \20\ Data is sourced from BP's statistical review of world energy 
(https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-
review-of-world-energy.html), 2021.
    \21\ https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/building-cleaner-
faster-report/


    Senator Markey. Thank you, Mr. Powell. Thank you for being 
here.
    I think that we have made our connection. Our witness is in 
the Philippines, so there was a little bit of a technological 
glitch.
    But, Marinel Ubaldo, if you are there.
    [No response.]
    Senator Markey. Marinel, can you hear us?
    Ms. Ubaldo. Can you hear me?
    Senator Markey. Yes, perfectly clearly. So ----
    Ms. Ubaldo. Okay.
    Senator Markey. The miracle of modern telecommunications 
makes it possible for you to testify here before the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee, as an incredible human rights and 
climate activist in the Philippines.
    Welcome. Please introduce yourself and tell your story.

              STATEMENT OF MARINEL SUMOOK UBALDO, 
            YOUTH CLIMATE ACTIVIST, THE PHILIPPINES

    Ms. Ubaldo. Your honorable members of the subcommittee, 
fellow advocates, ladies and gentlemen, greetings from the 
Philippines.
    I am Marinel Ubaldo, a 24-year-old young professional who 
is trying to live a normal life after surviving the wrath of 
Super Typhoon Haiyan.
    I am currently working as the advocacy officer for 
ecological justice and youth engagement for Living Laudato Si' 
Philippines, an interfaith movement initiated by Catholic 
laypeople calling the Philippine financial institutions to 
divest from coal-related operations and other environmentally 
harmful activities and as the Philippine country coordinator 
for COY16 in Glasgow.
    I grew up in Matarinao, Salcedo, Eastern Samar, with fond 
memories of a happy childhood, playing in a white sand near the 
shore and facing the Pacific Ocean. I grew up not worrying 
about food, since we are living on the coast with abundant 
produce.
    My father is a fisherman. He did not need to sail far the 
catch fish. The ocean has always provided for us. Growing up 
near the Pacific Ocean I have been used to typhoons. It is 
nothing new to me. Our house has always endured every storm, 
and we seldom need to evacuate.
    Not until Super Typhoon Haiyan happened. The night before 
Haiyan struck, we had no more electricity. So together with my 
whole family, we were already at the evacuation center which 
was 10 meters away from our house.
    I brought an encyclopedia with me so I can just read until 
the storm passes. My bag was only filled with my phone, 
charger, notebook and pen. I did not bring any clothes with me 
because I thought we could go home immediately when the storm 
subsides.
    It has always been that way. Never did it cross my mind 
that we will have nothing left of our house but only one-fourth 
of its flooring and about three of its columns. We did not 
really know what storm surge meant until we experienced that 
ourselves.
    Around 3:00 o'clock in the morning on November 8th, 2013, 
everyone was panicking as the winds became more intense. We 
wanted to evacuate again because there might be a tsunami.
    I saw a woman carrying her child who almost had her head 
cut off because of the GI sheets blowing around by the strong 
winds. I could not fully describe what was happening at that 
moment.
    There were plenty of families with their children in tow, 
rushing to seek refuge in our evacuation center because the 
evacuation center they were in got destroyed. The roof, the 
windows, and the doors of the building we were in got also 
destroyed. Many of us got injured because of the broken glass 
windows and falling debris, and 11 people died in our village.
    Three days after Haiyan, we were left in isolation. We had 
nothing to eat but cassava. We had no food, no water, no 
electricity, and no secured shelter. We had no change of 
clothes so we were all wet and cold. I was so confused and 
devastated by the reality I was facing.
    I was only 16 years old and was about to graduate high 
school at that time, and I was not even sure if I could 
graduate, let alone continue my college education. I lost my 
books and my uniform.
    How can I continue studying when my parents cannot afford 
to send me to school anymore because we lost our livelihood? 
For three months, I was not able to go to school because it got 
destroyed.
    March 2014 came and we needed to fast track all the lessons 
if we could graduate by April 2014. After Haiyan happened, it 
seemed like my future even became more uncertain because my 
parents did not earn enough to send me to college.
    Luckily, I was able to get a scholarship for my college 
education and was able to work by facilitating training on 
climate change adaptation and mitigation.
    I had no choice but to do it so I could sustain my 
especially because our fishing livelihood stopped for months 
because my father's boat was broken and there were no fish to 
catch.
    We could not also bear the thought of eating fish that may 
have fed on dead bodies of our neighbors and the people we 
knew. My father had to sail to other places just to go fishing, 
but he would end up with little to nothing.
    There was a huge depletion of fish catch after Haiyan and 
it made surviving even more difficult. It even came to a point 
that when my mom could not handle it anymore, so she left us 
for good. We were faced with another dilemma.
    I was already in my first year of college in Tacloban at 
that time when my father told me the news. As time passed, my 
father suffered from depression. He barely ate and slept. He 
could not bear to go fishing anymore and he became suicidal. 
Being far away from home knowing that your family is in that 
painful situation made things worse, but I had to remain 
strong.
    I first learned about climate change and disaster risk 
reduction in October 2012. At the age of 15 years old, I became 
a child facilitator and I had the opportunity to visit remote 
communities and schools to educate people about the causes and 
effects of climate change and the measures necessary to adapt 
and mitigate its effects.
    Seven years later, my nerves still get the best of me 
whenever I hear the crash of the ocean waves. I get anxious and 
restless when it rains because I fear that another Haiyan would 
happen again. It took me three years before I was able to go 
into the ocean again.
    It is sad because the water was our childhood friend. I 
grew up with it. It is always providing everything we need. But 
now, whenever we look at the ocean, there is always fear 
because we can never forget how it took everything away from 
us.
    Super Typhoon Haiyan was the strongest typhoon ever 
recorded. If climate change continues, the Philippines will be 
experiencing more and stronger typhoons. Super typhoons will 
become a normal phenomenon and it would mean that my children 
will live their lives fighting and surviving super typhoons.
    These experiences motivated me to do more. Sharing has been 
the key to healing for me because I realize climate change is 
not just an issue of adaptation and mitigation, but also an 
issue of human rights.
    This is the start when I started lobbying with the 
government, delivering talks around the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
    In 2015, we submitted, along with other grassroots 
organizations like the fishermen, farmers, indigenous peoples, 
and others, a landmark petition to the Commission on Human 
Rights in the Philippines to investigate 47 carbon majors for 
their contributions to human rights violations linked to 
climate impact.
    And in 2018, I have served as a community witness during 
the public hearing in New York, and in September, I was one of 
those who did a lone protest in front of the Shell Company in 
Manila, calling them to face the people.
    Finally, after four years of ----
    Senator Markey. Ms. Ubaldo, please summarize the remainder 
of your testimony.
    Ms. Ubaldo. Okay. So to the people here today, I mean, you 
are leaders. You are known experts in your respective fields. 
You are being looked up to by so many people.
    But behind those achievements, you are fathers, mothers, 
grandfathers, mothers, aunts or uncles, sisters and brothers. 
When you go home, you go home to the kisses of your children, 
and there you have to look them in the eye and tell them you 
are burning their future in front of your own eyes.
    You should be the one asking me what the U.S. could do to 
help us. You should know the answer to that. Stop funding 
business as usual. Stop loaning developing countries large 
amounts of money for climate projects that are impossible to be 
settled.
    You need to take accountability for the suffering of 
vulnerable people from countries that are not contributing that 
much to global carbon emission like the Philippines. Stop the 
fake it until you make it tactic.
    We are in an emergency, not in a show. You are super heroes 
to your children and you should be one for the Earth. I saw the 
hopelessness the typhoon had caused and the struggle of my 
community and my family, the loss and destruction. I have seen 
the depth.
    I realize we should not just accept being vulnerable 
throughout our lives. We should not accept being only victims. 
We have the power and we have to do something, and I do not 
want my family and community to suffer again this way.
    No amount of climate denial or apathy can resurrect our 
loved ones. But I hope to waken the minds of those most 
responsible for climate change, of those who have the greatest 
capacity to act and change the current system for the 
protection of vulnerable communities everywhere.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Ubaldo follows:]

                  Prepared Statement of Marinel Ubaldo

    I'm Marinel Ubaldo, a 24-year-old young professional who is trying 
to live a normal life after surviving from the wrath of super typhoon 
Haiyan. I'm currently working as the Advocacy Officer for Ecological 
Justice and Youth Engagement for Living Laudato Si' Philippines, an 
interfaith movement initiated by Catholic lay people calling on 
Philippine financial institutions to divest from coal-related 
operations and other environmentally harmful activities, and as the 
Philippine Country Coordinator for COY16 in Glasgow. I grew up in 
Matarinao, Salcedo, Eastern Samar, with fond memories of a happy 
childhood playing on a white sand near the shore on a coast facing the 
Pacific Ocean. I grew up not worrying about food, since we are living 
on the coast with abundant produce. My father is a fisherman. He did 
not need to sail far to catch fish. The ocean has always provided for 
us.
    Growing up near the Pacific Ocean, I have been used to typhoons--
it's nothing new to me. Our house has always endured every storm and we 
seldom need to evacuate. Not until super typhoon Haiyan happened.
    The night before Haiyan struck, we had no more electricity. 
Together with my whole family, we were already at the evacuation center 
which was 10 metres away from our house. I brought an encyclopedia with 
me so I can just read until the storm passes. My bag was only filled 
with my phone, charger, notebook and pen. I didn't bring any clothes 
because I thought we could go home immediately when the storm subsided. 
It has always been that way. Never did it cross my mind that we will 
have nothing left of our house, but only \1/4\ of its flooring and 
about three of its columns. We did not really know what storm surge 
meant until we experienced it ourselves.
    Around 3 o'clock in the morning on November 8, 2013, everyone was 
panicking as the winds became more intense. We wanted to evacuate again 
because there might be a tsunami. I saw a woman carrying her child who 
almost had her head cut-off because of the GI sheets blown away by the 
strong winds. I couldn't fully describe what was happening at that 
moment. There were plenty of families with their children in tow, 
rushing to seek refuge in our evacuation center because the evacuation 
center they were in got destroyed. The roof, windows, and doors of the 
building we were in also got destroyed. Many of us got injured because 
of the broken glass windows and flying debris, and 11 people died in 
our village.
    I went back to our house even though the winds were still strong, 
as I wanted to see if we still had a home to go back to. Although it 
was still dangerous for me to go back, I wanted to save the box that 
has a sentimental value to me. This box was very special to me because 
it was filled with my personal things--my literary works, the 
certificates and medals I earned in school. For me, that box symbolizes 
who I am, my achievements, my self-worth. Nothing was left of our home. 
And losing that box felt like losing my identity, my dreams, my 
significance as a person.
    Three days after Haiyan, we were left in isolation. We had nothing 
to eat but cassava. We had no food, water, electricity, and secured 
shelter. We had no change of clothes so we were all wet and cold. I was 
confused and devastated by the reality I was facing. I was only 16 and 
was about to graduate high school at that time, and I wasn't even sure 
if I could graduate, let alone continue my college education. I lost my 
books, my uniform. How can I continue studying when my parents cannot 
afford to send me to school anymore because we lost our livelihood?
    For 3 months I was not able to go to school because it got 
destroyed. March 2014 came and we needed to fast track all lessons so 
we could graduate by April 2014. After Haiyan happened, it seemed like 
my future even became more uncertain because my parents did not earn 
enough to send me to college. Luckily, I was able to get a scholarship 
for my college education, and was able to work by facilitating training 
on climate change adaptation and mitigation.
    I had no choice but to do it so I could sustain my needs, 
especially because our fishing livelihood stopped for months because my 
father's boat was broken, and there were no fish to catch. We couldn't 
bear the thought of eating fish that may have fed on the dead bodies of 
our neighbors, and people we know. My father had to sail to other 
places just to go fishing but he would end up with little to nothing. 
There was a huge depletion of fish catch after Haiyan and it made 
surviving even more difficult.
    It even came to a point when my mom couldn't handle it anymore, so 
she left us for good.
    And thus we were faced with another dilemma. I was already in my 
first year of college in Tacloban at that time when my father told me 
the news. As time passed, my father suffered from depression, he barely 
ate and slept. He couldn't bear to go fishing anymore, and he became 
suicidal. Being far away from home knowing that your family is in that 
painful situation made things worse, but I had to remain strong.
    I first learned about Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction in 
October 2012. At the age of 15, I became a child facilitator and I had 
the opportunity to visit remote communities and schools to educate 
people about the causes and effects of Climate Change, and the measures 
necessary to adapt and mitigate its effects.
    Seven years later, my nerves still get the best of me whenever I 
hear the crash of the ocean waves. I get anxious and restless when it 
rains because I fear that another Haiyan will happen again. It took me 
3 years before I was able to go into the ocean again. It's sad because 
the ocean was our childhood friend, I grew up with it. It has always 
provided everything we need. But now, whenever we look at the ocean, 
there's always fear because we can never forget how it took everything 
away from us.
    Super Typhoon Haiyan was the strongest typhoon ever recorded. If 
climate change continues, the Philippines will be experiencing more and 
stronger typhoons. Super Typhoons will become a normal phenomenon, and 
it would mean that my children will live their lives fighting, and 
surviving super typhoons.
    These experiences motivated me to do more. Sharing has been the key 
to healing for me. Because I realized Climate Change is not just an 
issue of adaptation and mitigation but also an issue of human rights. 
This is the start when I started lobbying with the government, 
delivering talks around the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
    Last 2015, we submitted, along with other grassroots organizations 
like the fisherman, farmers, IPs and others, a landmark petition to the 
Commission of Human Rights of the Philippines to investigate 47 carbon 
majors for their contributions to human rights violations linked to 
climate impact. And, in 2018 I have served as a community witness 
during the public hearing in New York, and September last year I was 
one of those who did a lone protest in front of the Shell Company in 
Bonifacio Global City calling them to face the people. Finally, after 4 
years of battling with the carbon majors, we have won and the result of 
the first in the world Climate Justice petition is a basis for future 
actions. Now, there is already a legal document that declares that 
these highest carbon emitting companies are responsible for fueling 
climate change, and for the human rights violations linked to climate 
impacts. We are nearing the justice that we deserve. We want the carbon 
majors to acknowledge their responsibility for what they have done to 
us, to my community and other vulnerable communities around the world. 
But these companies didn't show up in any of the hearings conducted. 
They did not have the decency to hear the stories of people who have 
suffered because of their business practices.
    My international engagements gave me an opportunity to be exposed 
to different environments allowing me to experience working and 
networking with people from diverse backgrounds, and understanding 
different ways and approaches that organizations do to help young 
people become a catalyst of change in their communities. My global 
campaign with Amnesty International on Write for Rights gathered almost 
600,000 support worldwide, through organizations like Plan 
International, Greenpeace, Amnesty, and Living Laudato Si' Philippines. 
I was able to represent the voices of the youth and the marginalized at 
COPs and COYs. And, for this year, I am set to attend the Pre-COP 
YouthInClimate Driving Action in Milan Italy, and the COY16 in Glasgow.
    Also, together with my three friends, we have founded the Youth 
Leaders Environmental Action Federation that is a youth-led 
organization based in Eastern Visayas. The organization partners with 
different youth organizations in communities and schools. We give 
mentorship and training to other youth organizations on where and how 
to start with their advocacy, projects and programs. We are the first 
organization who organized the Climate Youth Strike in Eastern Visayas. 
We also have submitted a petition to the City of Tacloban to ban single 
use plastics, and we have lobbied with the city council with a policy 
on the banning of single-use plastic. Those are just some of the things 
that we have achieved so far, and we are continuing.
    Our government in the Philippines has long been deaf to the outcry 
of their people. In COP25 in Madrid, no one from our government has 
brought the voices of the Filipino people to the negotiation table. In 
2019, the Philippines is the third most deadliest country to be an 
environmental advocate, according to Global Witness.
    Friends from the U.S. who are here today, you are leaders, you are 
known experts in your respective fields, you are being looked up to by 
so many people, but behind those achievements, you are fathers, 
mothers, grandfather/mothers, aunts/uncles, sisters/brothers to the 
younger generation. When you go home, you go home to the kisses of your 
children. I dare you to look them in the eye, and tell them you are 
burning their future in front of your own eyes. You should not be the 
one asking me what the U.S. could do to help us. You should know the 
answer to that. Stop funding business as usual. Stop loaning developing 
countries large amounts of money for ``climate projects'' that are 
impossible to be settled. You need to take accountability for the 
suffering of vulnerable people from countries that are not contributing 
that much to global carbon emission like the Philippines. Stop the 
``fake it until you make it'' tactic, we are in an emergency not in a 
show. You are superheroes to your children, and you should be one for 
the Earth.
    I saw the hopelessness the typhoon had caused--the struggle of my 
community and my family, the loss and destruction. I have seen death. I 
realized we should not just accept being vulnerable throughout our 
lives; we should not accept being only victims. We have the power and 
we have to do something. I do not want my family and community to 
suffer again.
    More and more young people are fighting to reclaim our rights to 
our future. There should be no such thing as a youth climate activist, 
yet here I am and there are thousands of others like me who have led a 
life of activism not by choice but by necessity.
    No amount of climate denial, or apathy can resurrect our loved 
ones. But I hope to awaken the minds of those most responsible for 
climate change, of those who have the greatest capacity to act and 
change the current system for the protection of vulnerable communities 
everywhere.
    I'm here in front of you, not just as a climate statistic you see 
in the news, but I'm here as a human being--hoping to remind you that 
we need to value lives again.
    In his encyclical, Laudato Si--the Care on Our Common Home--
paragraph 49, Pope Francis said, ``We have to realize that a true 
ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate 
questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both 
the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.''
    My story is only one of many, and I'm here to speak on behalf of 
the vulnerable and the marginalized communities--may our voices be 
heard. Thank you!

    Senator Markey. Ms. Ubaldo, we thank you for your opening 
statement, and during the question and answer period you are 
going to be given plenty of opportunities to be able to expand 
upon your thoughts. We thank you and we thank you for that 
powerful, opening.
    I would now like to recognize our final opening witness, 
who is an old friend, Sherri Goodman. Sherri is the Secretary 
General for the International Military Council on Climate and 
Security.
    Back in 2007, when I was the chair of the Select Committee 
on Climate Change in the House of Representatives, in my first 
hearing I called Sherri so that she could select my first 
witness, and what she surveyed the 12 three- and four-star 
generals and admirals who she had organized and were speaking 
out powerfully against climate change as a security threat.
    General Gordon Sullivan, who had been the Army Joint Chiefs 
of Staff lead, was our first witness, next to James Woolsey, 
who was George Bush's head of the CIA, next to Richard Haass, 
who is the head of the Foreign Relations Council.
    We just decided to lay out the security and foreign policy 
implications of climate change. That was 14 years ago, and 
Sherri Goodman continues to lead on these issues. We welcome 
you, Sherri, whenever our technological wizards can connect us, 
and we look forward to your testimony, my friend.
    Ms. Goodman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can you see and hear 
me?
    Senator Markey. We can hear you and it is good to see you, 
Sherri.
    Ms. Goodman. Okay. Great.
    Senator Markey. Whenever you are comfortable, please begin.

 STATEMENT OF SHERRI GOODMAN, SECRETARY GENERAL, INTERNATIONAL 
    MILITARY COUNCIL ON CLIMATE AND SECURITY, WASHINGTON, DC

    Ms. Goodman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
accommodating me virtually. I am in a very important state, 
which you know very well, as does your ranking member, and I 
plan to see General Sullivan here next week.
    We bring you greetings, and it is a privilege to appear 
before you today.
    The bottom line up front, as we say, I am going to address 
four things: how is climate change a threat multiplier in the 
region; second, what impacts will it have on regional 
stability; third, what does it--what do these changes mean for 
the U.S. military and its operations in the region; and fourth, 
what should we do about it.
    Okay. As you have just said, since the CNA Military 
Advisory Board first characterized climate change as a threat 
multiplier in 2007, national security leaders and a bipartisan 
Congress have concluded that climate change can exacerbate 
political instability where food, water, and resource shortages 
already exist, often in the world's most dangerous and fragile 
regions, as we just heard so compellingly from Marinel, and 
thank you for sharing your personal story.
    Climate change now contributes to unprecedented security 
threats for the United States here at home, as we heard today. 
The Director of National Intelligence has repeatedly emphasized 
that the United States will have to manage the negative effects 
of a changing climate.
    President Biden has not only recognized these threats, but 
elevated them by putting climate security front and center in 
his foreign policy, calling for the integration of climate 
considerations across the work of all agencies.
    Second, the specific climate security risks facing East 
Asia and the Pacific, the regions highly exposed to climate-
driven hazards including extreme hydro meteorological and heat 
events, sea level rise, acidifying oceans, across the region 
these climate impacts are exacerbating physical, ecological, 
socioeconomic stressors, leading to intensified food and other 
resource competition, societal tension, migration, and 
displacement.
    Southeast Asia exemplifies these dynamics, as we reported 
this earlier this year. In the South China Sea, countries face 
contested maritime boundaries and competition for ocean-based 
resources.
    On land, excessive heat and drought, particularly in rural 
agricultural areas, are accelerating migration to coastal 
cities, which are themselves at risk from storms and 
inundation.
    Domestic insurgent groups are able to recruit desperate 
farmers and fishermen, who are no longer earning a living due 
to climate change-related effects. These threat amplifiers, 
added to the physical damage wrought by climate impacts, are 
stunting economic growth, ecosystem sustainability, and 
impairing the ability of governments to provide even basic 
services.
    What does this mean for U.S. military operations in the 
region? Climate change simultaneously reduces the military's 
operational preparedness and expands its missions by straining 
the base infrastructure, interrupting exercises and increasing 
the need for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
    Secretary of Defense Austin underscored this point at the 
World Leaders Climate Summit in April, noting that the February 
2019 typhoon outside of the typical typhoon season forced the 
United States to pause exercises with its Australian and 
Japanese allies.
    What should we do? The United States should leverage all 
the tools in its toolbox across agencies and governments to 
address security-related climate threats. Such an approach has 
the added benefit of enhancing geostrategic and economic 
competitiveness with China.
    The U.S. Climate Security Strategy should not be separate 
from but, instead, integrated with our strategy to compete and 
align or cooperate with China as needed in America's national 
interest.
    Three types of recommendations are key.
    First, increasing U.S. investment in science research, 
development, and deployment and the innovation culture of the 
private sector. This investment across many U.S. agencies, will 
not only advance clean energy transition but advanced climate 
predictive technologies, so essential to managing for 
resilience in a warming world.
    Additionally, these investments are a source of American 
national power that enable the United States to compete with 
China and demonstrate leadership to our strategic advantage in 
the region.
    Second, we need to help our allies and partners tackle 
climate security risks. Marinel discussed them extensively. 
Using a whole-of-government approach, the U.S. is now 
developing unified interagency regional climate security 
strategies.
    As part of this effort, State, Defense, USAID, and others 
need to work together utilizing this new climate risk 
assessment framework to incorporate climate security 
considerations into all foreign and defense policy planning, 
and I think U.S. INDOPACOM is at the front of this effort.
    Finally, we need to improve the resilience of U.S. and 
allied force posture and base infrastructure in the Pacific. 
Many of our key sovereign partners and critical force structure 
in the Pacific highly vulnerable to climate risks, like the 
Marshall Islands, Kiribat, and others.
    Fortunately, DOD's Defense Climate Assessment Tool is now 
beginning to assess these risks. U.S. bases on small islands 
like Diego Garcia, Guam, Marshall Islands, need to get the 
access to this tool quickly.
    In conclusion, though climate security risks are 
unprecedented, our foresight into these risks is unprecedented 
as well. Climate proofing our collective security is essential 
to protect America's 21st century near and long-term national 
security interests.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, Mr. 
Chairman. I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Goodman follows:]


           Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sherri Goodman

    Chairman Markey, Senator Romney, and distinguished Members of the 
Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you 
today. I bring over 30 years of experience as a national security 
professional to this issue and served as the first Deputy 
Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security). I am currently the 
Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate and 
Security, Founding Board Chair of the Council on Strategic Risks (CSR), 
and as Senior Strategist at the Center for Climate and Security, an 
institute of the CSR. I am also the Founder and former Executive 
Director of CNA's Military Advisory Board, and a Senior Fellow at the 
Woodrow Wilson International Center. The views I am presenting today 
are my own.
    Let me start with a short history of how I came to determine that 
climate change is a security threat, and why it is in America's 
interest to understand the magnitude of this issue and the urgent need 
to address it.
    When I served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for 
Environmental Security in the 1990s, we were primarily focused on 
cleaning up hazardous waste from Cold War-era military activities. Over 
time, environmental issues evolved and became part of our National 
Security Strategy, when we began to consider the fact that conflicts 
over access to, or control of, natural resources compromised U.S. 
national security interests. The focus then was on regional cooperation 
between countries to reduce nuclear risks, including from nuclear 
waste, preventing transnational environmental crime such as illegal 
fishing and logging, promoting cooperation among various stakeholders 
both within and outside of government, and better understanding and 
addressing the consequences of environmental threats. The Department of 
Defense (DoD) began integrating environmental concepts into planning 
under its Preventive Defense Strategy, and in 1993 it took on the role 
of `` . . . [helping] deter or mitigate the impacts of adverse 
environmental actions leading to international instability.'' \1\ The 
U.S. Pacific Command was one of the first Combatant Commands to hold an 
Environmental Security Partners Engagement conference with ministers 
from across the Pacific and still conducts the Pacific Environmental 
Security Forum with our key allies and partners.
    These developments at DoD, along with the implications of climate 
change coming into sharper focus, led to a marked increase in concerns 
about the security risks of climate change from both the Department of 
Defense and the Intelligence Community \2\ during the George W. Bush 
administration. While at CNA during that time, I founded the CNA 
Military Advisory Board (MAB), composed of senior retired generals and 
admirals, to assess the national security implications of climate 
change. In a seminal report in 2007 we identified climate change as a 
``threat multiplier,'' amplifying existing conditions of instability. 
The CNA MAB in this Report stated, ``[t]he potential consequences of 
climate change are so significant that the prudent course of action is 
to begin now to assess how these changes may potentially affect our 
national security, and what courses of action our nation should take.'' 
\3\ We recommended that the national security implications of climate 
change be incorporated into the broad range of national security 
strategy and planning documents.
    Building from work of the CNA MAB, the Center for Climate and 
Security (CCS), where I am now a Senior Strategist, assembled an 
Advisory Board of 30 senior retired military leaders and national 
security professionals, who have served across both Democratic and 
Republican administrations, and in all branches of the U.S. military 
and the U.S. Coast Guard. Since 2011, CCS has produced a steady stream 
of reports and articles on the national security risks of climate 
change, and was the first organization to highlight the climate change 
dimension in Syria's political instability.\4\ CCS also hosts a climate 
and security ``community of practice,'' the Climate and Security 
Advisory Group (CSAG), that includes participation from over 300 
national security, military and intelligence leaders. In 2019, the CSAG 
released a Climate Security Plan for America, which laid out a roadmap 
for the Federal Government to tackle the security risks posed by 
climate change. In 2020, CCS assembled a National Security, Military 
and Intelligence Panel (NSMIP) to produce a first-of-its-kind Security 
Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change.
    With its partners in Europe, the CCS has established an 
International Military Council on Climate and Security, including 
representatives from 38 countries, to meet the growing concerns about 
climate change from our allied and partner nations' militaries. In 
addition to an annual World Climate and Security Report, the IMCCS 
Expert Group has produced a range of reports assessing climate security 
risks, including analyses of many countries in East Asia and the Indo-
Pacific, which will form the basis of my remarks today.
    Since the CNA MAB first characterized climate change as a ``threat 
multiplier'' in 2007, the national security community has concluded 
that climate change now contributes to unprecedented security threats 
for the United States--and the world. Growing evidence demonstrates 
that climate change is increasing the likelihood of conflict in key 
regions.\5\ In 2016, the Climate Security Consensus Project stated that 
``the effects of climate change present a strategically-significant 
risk to U.S. national security.'' In the Fiscal Year 2018 National 
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congress determined that ``climate 
change presents a direct threat to the national security of the United 
States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where 
United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic 
implications for future conflict exists.'' In 2018, research supported 
by USAID, further demonstrated the effects of climate change on state 
fragility around the world. The Director of National Intelligence, via 
the Worldwide Threat Assessment, has repeatedly emphasized that the 
United States will have to manage the negative effects of a changing 
climate and the National Intelligence Council (NIC) has publicly 
released papers on topics such as water security, food security, and 
overall climate change developments that have noted the national 
security implications. The most recent Global Trends Report from the 
NIC, published earlier in 2021, characterized climate and environmental 
issues as one of four fundamental trends that will shape national 
security going forward.
    The Biden administration has not only recognized these threats, but 
has elevated them by putting climate security front and center in its 
foreign policy, calling for the integration of climate considerations 
across the work of all agencies.
    This whole-of-government approach is critical, as these 
unprecedented climatic changes arrive during a time of other rapid and 
unprecedented changes in the geostrategic environment. Population 
growth, rising powers, an increase in the political fortunes of 
authoritarians, weakening norms against the use of weapons of mass 
destruction, and rapid and disruptive technological changes, among 
other major risks, are combining to challenge us in dizzying ways. The 
impacts of rapid climate change, including an array of extreme weather 
events, arrive in this already unstable and volatile world, threatening 
to further destabilize the international order. While there is no 
region of the world that will be left untouched by these changes, I am 
pleased today to provide a more detailed assessment of the risks posed 
in East Asia and the Pacific.
        climate security in east asia and the pacific: overview
    East Asia and the Pacific are highly exposed to climate change-
driven hazards, including extreme hydrometeorological and heat events, 
sea level rise and acidifying oceans. These unprecedented hazards 
arrive in a region that already faces a broad spectrum of conventional, 
unconventional, and hybrid security risks and challenges.
    Upon the release of two new reports focused on South Asia and 
Southeast Asia, from CCS earlier this year former U.S. Pacific 
Commander Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, U.S. Navy (Ret.), stated: 
``We have entered an age in which multiple, converging risks define our 
security environment. In the Indo-Pacific region, climate change is the 
biggest long-term security threat.'' Climate impacts are getting more 
potent, dialing up the threats from existing conflict patterns and 
resource scarcities. At the same time, climate projections are getting 
more precise. This combination of potency and precision translates into 
an obligation for militaries to anticipate, train, equip and prepare 
for increasingly dangerous climate security scenarios.''
    These developments affect the U.S. military mission in the region 
and increase risks of regional instability. However, they also present 
opportunities for closer collaboration with U.S. allies and partners in 
the region. Let me discuss each of these areas in turn.
Impacts on the U.S. Military Mission
    In this region, climate change simultaneously impedes the U.S. 
military's operational preparedness and expands its missions by 
straining physical infrastructure, interrupting exercises, and 
increasing the need for humanitarian and disaster relief missions. As 
Erin Sikorsky and Caroline Baxter noted in Just Security earlier this 
year:

        ``Worsening storms and overlapping typhoon seasons in Japan and 
        South Korea threaten the structural integrity of U.S. bases in-
        country and inhibit reception, staging, and onward movement of 
        forces flowing from the United States to the theater of 
        operations. Rising sea levels threaten airfields on small 
        islands like Guam, Palau, and Yap and diminish their utility as 
        locations for prepositioned U.S. equipment. Without these 
        locations, every military challenge in the region becomes 
        significantly harder.''

    Secretary of Defense Austin underscored this point at the World 
Leaders Climate Summit in April 2021, noting that the February 2019 
Typhoon Wutip--outside of the typical typhoon season--forced the United 
States to pause exercises with its Australian and Japanese allies.
    In terms of humanitarian aid and disaster relief missions, in 2020 
the International Federation of the Red Cross reported 25 climate-
related disasters in the region--a record high. In testimony before 
Congress in 2019, Admiral Phil Davidison, Commander of U.S. Indo-
Pacific Command, explained that these types of response missions are 
the most immediate and concrete way in which climate change is 
affecting operational readiness.
Climate Change and Regional Instability
    In addition to direct risks to the U.S. military mission, climate 
change is increasing financial and political burdens on already-
strained governments, heightening tensions and opening new areas of 
competition in East Asia and the Pacific, particularly vis-a-vis China.
    Across the region, climate impacts are inducing or exacerbating 
physical, ecological, and socio-economic stressors, leading to 
intensifying food and other resource competition, societal tensions, 
and irregular migration and displacement--which, in turn, can amplify 
existing security challenges or create new ones. Internal and cross-
border climate-related migration can stress densely-packed urban areas, 
particularly in areas experiencing economic or political instability, 
or both. Such migration also can increase inter-communal conflicts and 
grievances with governments.
    Southeast Asia exemplifies these dynamics, as the Expert Group of 
the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS) 
detailed in a report released in February of this year. In regional 
waters, like the South China Sea, countries face contested maritime 
boundaries and competition for ocean-based resources. On land, 
excessive heat and drought, particularly in rural agricultural areas, 
can induce migration to coastal cities, which are themselves at risk 
from storms and inundation. Domestic insurgent groups and violent 
extremist organizations are recruiting farmers and fishermen, who are 
desperate, because they are no longer earning a livelihood. Fishermen 
adept at making bombs for ``blast fishing''--the practice of stunning 
fish with an underwater explosion, then capturing them with a net--are 
particularly attractive recruits. These ``threat amplifiers,'' added to 
the physical damage wrought by climate impacts, are stunting economic 
growth, ecosystem sustainability, and impairing the ability of 
governments to provide basic services, compromising stability and 
security.
    Southeast Asia is home to about 9 percent of the global population, 
but 18 percent of the global fish catch. Overfishing and warmer, more 
acidic oceans are taking a toll on both historically rich fishing 
grounds and traditional livelihoods supporting millions. Small local 
fishing boats forced to sail farther from land are confronted with 
armed Chinese vessels. In September 2020, the Chinese Coast Guard 
reported that over the course of the preceding 4 months it had evicted 
over 1,100 fishing boats from the northern half of the South China Sea, 
while detaining 11 vessels and over 60 foreign crew members. Similar 
aggressive tactics from Chinese long-range fishing fleets, including 
involvement in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the 
Exclusive Economic Zones of Pacific Island States, appear to be 
occurring throughout the broader Indo-Pacific region and beyond.\6\ 
According to a 2017 analysis from Australian climate security 
researcher Dr. Michael Thomas, increasing competition for declining 
stocks ``could further strain the international rules-based approach to 
fishing governance and could well increase tensions, violent 
confrontations and military brinkmanship over the multiple overlapping 
and competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.''
    Climate factors are also consequential in the tense relations 
between nuclear-armed India, Pakistan and China. A joint study 
published earlier this year by the Council on Strategic Risks and the 
Woodwell Climate Research Center projects a strong warming trend near 
the disputed border between India and China, where approximately 
100,000 Indian and Chinese troops are deployed at altitudes reaching 
15,000 feet. Military patrols, which are not viable today, may become 
more frequent, setting the conditions for potential violent clashes.
    Meanwhile China--partly due to its transition to renewable energy--
is planning the world's largest hydroelectric facility just north of 
where the Brahmaputra River crosses into India. Three times the size of 
Three Gorges Dam, this newer dam project is also located in a 
seismically sensitive zone. This has caused major concerns for 
downstream India, which is also worried that the new Chinese dam could 
be used to either withhold water from or flood parts of India. In 
truth, it will be difficult to tell if a future flood is the result of 
Chinese manipulation of the dam, or climate-related factors. China's 
lack of transparency on dam projects affecting its neighbors only 
increases India's distrust.
    China is also constructing a series of dams in Pakistani-held 
Kashmir, to which India objects, due to its territorial claims there. 
These dams, when built, will be viable until the end of the century, 
due to projected glacial melt patterns. Such construction will 
contribute to further strengthening the China-Pakistan partnership 
while exacerbating both countries' tensions with India. In each of 
these disputes, universally trusted data sources, and institutions 
capable of managing resource-related disputes, are lacking.
Opportunities to Support Allies and Partners in the Region
    In this context, the United States will need to develop and 
implement more expansive approaches to maintaining and enhancing its 
regional influence, and supporting the interests of its allies, and 
current and prospective partners in the Indo-Pacific, including 
robustly supporting climate resilience efforts in the region. 
Interestingly, in a survey of ASEAN member states' top challenges in 
2021, the threat of climate change outranked the threat of regional 
military tensions by nearly 10 points. For the Philippines, a crucial 
U.S. ally in the region, the gap was almost 20 points.
    As I wrote with a colleague in The National Interest earlier this 
year, ``In some cases, the United States will need to compete for 
influence where China is taking advantage of climate change to improve 
its military posture in the South China Sea or become the relief 
provider of first resort to vulnerable Pacific Island nations.''
    In addition to integrating climate into our assessments of security 
threats, the United States can further ``climatize'' security by 
bringing climate and ecological considerations into both the State 
Department and Defense Department's foreign security assistance 
programs. Addressing the geopolitical dynamics of the risks of climate 
change and other ecological disruption requires the United States to 
step up and play a leadership role in helping allies and partners build 
resilience to climate change effects and associated security risks.\7\
    As the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) carries out its global 
posture review with the goal of aligning force posture with security 
strategy, DoD should consider how it can better enhance the resilience 
of allies and partners and work with them to help them build their 
capacity to endure future climate security and ecological security 
risks.
                            recommendations
    As the CCS outlined in its Climate Security Plan for America 
(CSPA), the United States should use all of the tools in its toolbox 
across agencies and the government to address security-related climate 
threats and enhance geostrategic and economic competitiveness with 
China by: 1) investing in scientific research and development on 
climate and clean energy; 2) helping allies and partners tackle climate 
security risks; and 3) improving the resilience of U.S. and allied 
force posture and base infrastructure in the Pacific.
Investing in Science, Research and Development
    Increased U.S. investment in science, research and development on 
climate and clean energy will not only advance the state of energy 
technology, but it will offer another way for the United States to 
demonstrate global leadership on climate issues and compete with China. 
To avoid catastrophic security risks in the second half of the century, 
the world needs to rapidly advance the state of the art in low and 
zero/net-zero-emissions technology, particularly in lowering the cost 
of developing and fielding such technologies at the scale required to 
sustain stable global economic development. Such an effort should 
include accelerating the research, development, techniques, and 
technologies in diverse fields from energy production and storage to 
agriculture, forestry, and beyond needed to ensure that net global 
emissions are reduced.
Helping Allies and Partners
    To ensure a whole-of-government approach to supporting allies and 
partners climate security efforts, the CSPA argues for the adoption of 
regional climate security strategies, or ``unified interagency plans 
that support U.S. national security, foreign policy and development 
strategies in critical regions of the world to bolster climate 
resilience and clean energy transitions in key countries, prevent 
climate stress from destabilizing fragile states, expand U.S. alliances 
and partnerships, and compete with great powers.''
    As part of this effort, the Defense Department should develop a 
``Security Forces Climate Engagement Plan'' to promote regular 
military-to-military and civil-military international engagement on 
climate change preparation, to enhance the resilience of U.S. allies 
and partners, and to enhance U.S. influence vis-a-vis its primary 
competitors. Also, the Defense Department and State Department should 
work together to evaluate whether Security Assistance and Foreign 
Military Sales programs are effective in assisting allies and partners 
in addressing the security impacts of climate change. Congress and the 
Department of Defense should also revitalize the Defense Environmental 
International Cooperation Program (DEIC) with sufficient resources to 
make military-to-military environmental cooperation a robust engagement 
tool for each geographic combatant command. Other avenues for deepening 
cooperation include sharing a modified version of the DoD Climate 
Assessment Tool with allies and partners for their use, as well as a 
version of the forthcoming risk assessment report DoD was tasked with 
completing as part of the Biden administration's Executive Order on 
tackling the climate crisis.
Improving Resilience
    Key military bases in the Pacific and those of our allies and 
partners need to become more resilient to rising sea levels and extreme 
weather events, and our forces need to be prepared to operate in the 
increasing extreme heat conditions worldwide. U.S. naval bases on small 
islands like Diego Garcia, Guam, and the Marshall Islands are 
particularly at risk, facing serious impacts of rising seas. In the 
face of extreme cyclones, other bases will be strained by response 
demands while potentially trying to recover their own capabilities. 
Climate resilience for defense forces and bases should be a standing 
component of the ASEAN Defense Ministerials and Quad meetings and be 
addressed in Track II-focused fora such as the Munich Security 
Conference, Halifax International Security Forum, the Pacific 
Environmental Security Forum, and the International Military Council on 
Climate and Security.
                               conclusion
    The U.S. must present a compelling alternative to China's Belt and 
Road Initiative to our Asian and Pacific allies and partners in order 
to regain strategic advantage in the region. The U.S. can do so by a 
combination of the three recommendations above: investing in science 
and research, which harnesses the power of America's innovation 
culture, our universities, and government labs; helping our allies and 
partners prepare for climate security risks; and improving the 
resilience of our force structure and base posture in the region.
    Fortunately, the difference between today and major global 
disruptions of the past is that we can spot impending disasters earlier 
and more easily. We do not have to wait for the next pandemic, the next 
9/11 or the next Pearl Harbor, to better prepare for the climate crisis 
we are already experiencing. Though the risks are unprecedented, our 
foresight is unprecedented as well. Technological developments have 
given us predictive tools that enhance our ability to anticipate and 
mitigate threats, to transform energy systems for improved mission 
performance, and to make the security and supporting civilian 
infrastructure of the U.S. and of our allies and partners more 
resilient and secure. Congress has strengthened, and must continue to 
strengthen, the authorities, programs, and funding available to the 
State and Defense Departments, USAID, and other agencies to address 
these threats to both the U.S. and to our allies and partner nations in 
East Asia and the Pacific and globally. In short, we have the ability 
to make the United States and our allies and partners more resilient to 
a broad range of threats. ``Climate-proofing'' our collective security 
is essential to protect America's 21st-century near- and long-term 
national security interests. Failing to address climate security risks 
now will both embolden our adversaries to take the lead and will 
undercut our national and collective security.

----------------
Notes

    \1\ Sherri Wasserman Goodman, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, 
(Environmental Security), Statement Before the Subcommittee on 
Installation and Facilities, House Armed Services Committee, May 13, 
1993.
    \2\ The Center for Climate and Security Resource Hub, accessed at: 
https://climateandsecurity.org/resources/u-s-government.
    \3\ CNA Military Advisory Board. ``National Security and the Threat 
of Climate Change.'' Report. 2007.
    \4\ ``Military Expert Panel Report: Sea Level Rise and the U.S. 
Military's Mission.'' Eds 1 & 2. The Center for Climate and Security. 
September 2016 & February 2018.
    \5\ Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich, Jonathan F. Donges, Reik V. 
Donner, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. ``Armed-conflict Risks Enhanced 
by Climate-related Disasters in Ethnically Fractionalized Countries.'' 
PNAS. August 16, 2016.
    \6\ The security implications of illegal, unreported, and 
unregulated (IUU) fishing in Southeast Asia, the broader Indo-Pacific 
region, and globally are addressed in detail in a 2016 report from the 
National Intelligence Council, ``Global Implications of Illegal, 
Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing.'' See also, ``Fisheries, 
Food Security and the Issues of Climate Change and its effect on the 
Indo-Pacific;'' ``Fisheries Partnerships;'' ``The national security 
imperative to tackle illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.''
    \7\ For more information on ecological security risks, please see: 
R. Schoonover, C. Cavallo, and I. Caltabiano. ``The Security Threat 
That Binds Us: The Unraveling of Ecological and Natural Security and 
What the United States Can Do About It.'' Edited by F. Femia and A. 
Rezzonico. The Converging Risks Lab, an institute of The Council on 
Strategic Risks. Washington, DC. February 2021.


    Senator Romney [presiding]. Thank you, Ms. Goodman. 
Appreciate your perspective. Thank you to the panelists today.
    I have explained before and you probably heard it already 
that we have voting going on, on the floor of the Senate.
    So members of this committee keep disappearing for long 
periods of time. It is getting over to the Capitol, getting our 
votes recorded, and then getting back.
    So this is no display of disrespect or lack of interest. It 
is, instead, just the reality of votes that we had not 
anticipated coming at this particular time.
    Mr. Powell, good to see you again. Appreciate your being 
here. I am interested in your perspective on how we are going 
to deal with a real threat, which is the rising temperatures on 
the planet, the climate change we are seeing, the obvious 
consequence of that, which is already being borne out in some 
ways.
    And yet at the same time, we have the nations that are 
emitting more and more and that are growing their emissions are 
nations that are not as wealthy as us, whether it is Indonesia 
or the Philippines or India.
    China, obviously, has an economy almost the same size as 
ours--it will pass ours within the next decade--but not a 
wealthy country on a per capita basis relative to us, and how 
to get these countries to adopt emission-saving technologies it 
strikes me as being a very high lift.
    And so I am wondering how do we address this issue? We can 
all talk about goals. But if we establish goals that are 40 
years out, then the reality is these politicians that establish 
them recognize they will be long gone and someone else is going 
to have to deliver on them.
    So what can we do that that actually has some prospect of 
reducing the emissions on our planet?
    Mr. Powell. Thank you so much, Ranking Member Romney. Thank 
you as well for your leadership on this issue, for your 
membership in the bipartisan Solutions Caucus for working so 
hard on this bipartisan infrastructure deal, which would have a 
significant, I think, implication on what we are discussing 
here today.
    Goals are terrific. When I was in the private sector 
working with very large organizations, we often found it very 
helpful to set aggressive goals.
    But as you said, those goals need to be in the moderately 
near term. They need to be very specific and you need to have 
at least some idea that you have a toolkit in place that you 
can take action on to achieve those goals.
    I think right now the problem is that we are asking the 
rapidly developing countries of the world to change their 
trajectory and to do something very different than the way we 
developed our own economy.
    But we have not given them the tools in order to do that. 
So much of the rest of the world sits on, literally, 
effectively infinite coal reserves.
    If you look at Indonesia, South Africa, India, China, 
right, as long as that remains the most economical technology 
to use, they are very likely to continue to use those reserves, 
and that is how we developed our economy. It is hard to blame 
them for that.
    We need to provide a better like for like substitute to 
very cheap, very reliable, high-performing quick to build coal 
technologies, especially the subcritical coal technologies that 
are the older, less efficient things that are being built in so 
much of the world.
    The good news is we know many of the candidate technologies 
to do that. We know that that is probably some combination of 
continued use of fossil fuels.
    But with carbon capture that turns that CO2 into either a 
commodity or that safely stores it underground, or it is 
advanced nuclear energy that is also very power dense and could 
be sited on a small footprint of land where it is enhanced 
geothermal, or it is some combination of other renewable 
resources but combined with really long duration storage 
technologies.
    So we know it is some combination of those. It is probably 
a portfolio of those things. And the good news is in the Energy 
Act of 2020 that you passed back in December, you established a 
moon shot program to demonstrate those technologies.
    We now here in the United States have very aggressive 
statutorily-mandated goals to demonstrate that whole suite of 
technologies. Some are between 2023 and 2027, based on the 
technology. You all are in talks right now about, potentially, 
funding those demonstration programs.
    Once those are stood up and developed and demonstrated here 
in the United States, then we really need to focus on 
assembling realistic financing packages and technological 
expertise to get that into the developing world.
    Right now, China will offer those developing countries 
virtually anything they want to build. That is usually the 
cheapest technology.
    We have got to have a realistic alternative package and we 
have got the development finance and export credit agencies to 
do that. But we could do a lot more with what we have and we 
could do a lot more to beef up the resources of those agencies.
    Senator Romney. So China is adding to the problem by 
building new coal facilities around the world. People want coal 
plants. They will build a new coal plant and that will be 
spewing CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the environment, no 
friend to the planet, despite what they say they are going to 
be doing themselves.
    It sounds to me like you feel that the answer for the world 
is technology, not necessarily some breakthrough, you know, 
cold fusion or something that we cannot even imagine but 
instead saying, okay, how do we take known technologies--or 
some perhaps we do not even know yet--how do we take these, 
commercialize them in a way that is inexpensive such that a 
country like Indonesia that has ample coal reserves would say, 
okay, I will use this other technology because it is about the 
same cost.
    Is that what you are saying?
    Mr. Powell. That is exactly what I am saying. The good 
news, again, is that we have things that are near the finish 
line.
    But, unfortunately, that first breakthrough, that first 
pilot or small-scale demonstration is a long way from having 
something that is actually cost effective enough to deploy it 
at global scale.
    You know, energy planners around the world and I have 
worked with them in Southeast Asia--they are very conservative, 
just like they are here in the United States.
    They are responsible for electrifying their economies, for 
keeping the lights on as often as possible, for keeping 
hospitals and cold chains and all of these very, very important 
facilities up and running in their economies. They need to see 
something that they can believe in.
    They need to see something that they have a reasonably good 
chance is going to be built and developed in a presidential 
cycle, in many cases, in their home country, so that they can 
also get the credit for having built the thing.
    And they need export credit. No large facilities are built 
anywhere in the developing world without the sovereign backing 
and guarantee of someone on the creditor and vendor side.
    And so if that is not going to be the China Belt and Road 
Initiative, that needs to be some combination of the United 
States and our allies and some combination of our collective 
export credit.
    Senator Romney. Let me ask you in that regard with regards 
to carbon capture, where are we in carbon capture? I understand 
that the Chinese are doing a major facility in carbon capture.
    Where is the technology here? Do we have companies that are 
actually making real progress there? What more should we be 
doing there? What kind of hope do you attribute to carbon 
capture technologies?
    Mr. Powell. Just like China has taken the lead in solar 
photovoltaic cells, I think it is fair to say the United States 
has taken the lead in carbon capture technologies.
    We have one of the largest best developed carbon capture 
industries here in the United States. We already capture and 
safely sequester or use for enhanced oil recovery, literally, 
millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year.
    We have got 5,000 miles of carbon dioxide pipeline. That 
sounds like a lot, but it is not a lot compared to the rest of 
our infrastructure for hydrocarbons in this country.
    The key now is further deployment to bring down the cost. I 
would say carbon capture is today, perhaps, were wind or solar 
were 10 years ago. So we now fully understand the technology. 
We understand how it works. We have piloted a lot of things.
    But we have got to deploy a lot of it to bring it down the 
learning curve so that it is actually ready to go for the 
really challenging conditions in the developing world.
    Senator Romney. Thank you.
    Ms. Goodman, you heard from Mr. Powell that, at least from 
his perspective, that the answer to reduce global emissions 
really focuses on developing technologies and further applying 
technologies that would be adopted in the parts of the world 
that are growing fastest, that are adding massive amounts of 
CO2 to the environment--China, Indonesia, Brazil, India.
    Is that an approach that makes sense to you? Ms. Goodman, 
do you subscribe to Mr. Powell's perspective?
    Ms. Goodman. I subscribe to the perspective that we can 
best lead in a race to the top by seeking our own American 
competitiveness with those technologies that Rich Powell 
mentioned.
    I think they are all very good and I think also, from a 
national security perspective, many of them are very useful to 
enhance and make more secure the defense mission.
    Where there is an alignment between the needs for the 
military mission and opportunities to lead by example in a 
broader commercial sphere you get a double benefit.
    So, for example, the Defense Department leases over 150,000 
vehicles a year from GSA and those can be electrified, and that 
can lead to greater electrification of the vehicle transport 
system in the U.S.
    We use micro grids and other renewable technologies at 
forward operating bases in remote places. Many of those are 
similar to small villages around the world that also need 
similar technologies that can operate off grid, and that is 
going to be extremely valuable.
    So I think there are many ways, from small modular reactors 
to various types of advanced micro grids and energy storage 
technologies to climate predictive analytics, that are going to 
be useful to enable various sectors such as agriculture, 
transportation, and defense planning to have better analysis 
and climate prediction at the granular scale to plan future 
security risks and prevent them, that there are opportunities 
both to lead by example that enhance the defense mission and at 
the same time provide commercial and global competitiveness and 
benefit.
    Senator Romney. Thank you. I will ask one more question and 
then turn to the chairman, who just got back. I will give him a 
chance to look at his notes here.
    If I had $1 trillion to spend or $2 trillion to spend, if I 
were, deciding all by myself how we, as a nation, would spend 
funds relating to climate change, and I will not say over what 
period, but I guess there is a question as to where would that 
money be most effective in reducing the emissions into the 
planet?
    Would it be that we, for instance, do a better job 
insulating old buildings and getting people to drive vehicles 
that are more fuel efficient here in the United States?
    Or would it be investing in new technologies, carbon 
capture, perhaps small-scale nuclear power plants, other 
sources of energy generation, cement manufacture, technology 
innovations, and so forth, that would be adopted here and 
around the world?
    I am not telling you that you have to put all your money in 
only one bucket. You might say, well, I would take 80 percent 
and put it in one and 20 percent in the other. But how do you 
see that priority and where we should be investing our 
resources?
    And I know my Democrat friends may be tempted to say, we 
will just spend as much as we need in all the categories. But I 
know there is some limit as to how much you can spend.
    So assuming that, where should we devote the bulk of our 
resources if we are really interested in reducing the CO2 going 
into the environment and other greenhouse gases and actually 
seeing the global temperature kept at a 1.5-degree Celsius 
target?
    Yeah, I will start with Mr. Powell. Thank you.
    Mr. Powell. Unsurprisingly, Senator, I think I would put 
the vast majority of the resources in the latter bucket, which 
would be to really effectively demonstrate a whole suite of 
these technologies, and as you mentioned, not just in the clean 
power sector but also thinking really seriously about how do we 
rethink steel production and concrete production.
    How do we think about retrofitting all the fuel in the 
world and replacing it with clean hydrogen over time as opposed 
to the existing traditional hydrocarbon fuel over time?
    So I think there is a significant pool of resources for 
that demonstration program. I think there is another 
significant pool of resources for smart incentives so that we 
deploy all of those things and sort of test them and 
demonstrate them in our markets while we rapidly bring down the 
cost.
    And then there is a third major pool of incentives around 
export credit and development finance investment in the rapidly 
developing world to scale those things up.
    The last thing I will say is that you can magnify all of 
those investments if you reform the permitting structure within 
the United States so that the same pool of resources gets you 
further because it does not have the same cost in time and 
permitting costs in actually developing and demonstrating all 
that here in the U.S.
    Senator Romney. Thank you, Mr. Powell.
    Ms. Goodman, do you want to answer the same question?
    Ms. Goodman. Well, I agree with much of what Rich said. I 
think that we have to be able to walk and chew gum. We have to 
show leadership here at home in our own transition at the same 
time that we want to move markets overseas and show American 
competitiveness in these areas and help those.
    It may be a race to the top, but we have to help those who 
are at the bottom as well. And so I think that we can lead with 
technology, demonstration tests, and deployment and enabling 
our own private sector to compete better commercially and have 
a viable alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative.
    I think that is going to be much to our strategic advantage 
because our security in the region depends not only on military 
security, but now, as we see, commercial energy and 
environmental security.
    They, in fact, all go together, and we have to keep in mind 
also that there are many opportunities in nature-based 
solutions in all of these sectors that we are talking about 
that need technology advancement and rapid development as well.
    Senator Romney. Thank you.
    Now having taken advantage of three rounds of questions for 
myself, I turn to the chairman.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Markey [presiding]. Those were all great questions, 
and I agree with much of what you are saying.
    And I think that this panel really can help us a lot, and I 
want to go back again, if I could, to you, Ms. Goodman.
    Back in 2007 when General Sullivan was testifying, he 
talked about being the general in charge of making the decision 
to send in U.S. military to Mogadishu and that the ultimate 
result was Blackhawk down.
    And that as he, by 2007, had a chance to reflect back on 
1993, he realized that it was a drought that had led to a 
famine that had left different groups in that country now 
fighting over scarcer resources.
    And now we are 14 years further along in this storyline and 
we really have not begun to come to grips with what the 
national security implications will be for our country because 
our country is the one that has to move out to try to make sure 
that there is stability on the planet.
    So can you talk about what has happened in the last 14 
years, from your perspective, to the planet that makes it even 
more dangerous than it was back in 2007 when you had General 
Sullivan so graciously testify before that climate committee?
    Ms. Goodman. Well, thank you, Senator Markey.
    We have seen the unprecedented accelerating risks and 
threats of climate change since 2007 where temperatures in the 
Arctic, for example, we knew were already warming then.
    We said they were warming at twice the rate of the rest of 
the planet, and now sometimes it is almost three times the rate 
of the rest of the planet. We will have ice-free summers in the 
Arctic and open shipping seasons within the next decade or so.
    And then we have seen these typhoons that Marinel talked 
about, Haiyan. But, we now see even more of them on a regular 
basis, and the confluence of the three major hurricanes across 
the Atlantic just a few years ago also is evidence that extreme 
weather events are fueled by climate change, and the 
unprecedented heat in the Northwest so devastating to people 
who are unprepared for it. We have seen major deaths and now 
the flooding across Europe, in Germany, in particular.
    So we are living it on a daily basis. In 2007 we called it 
predicted climate change. But now we know it is here. It is 
here and happening every single day.
    We see it just here in the coast of Massachusetts. We have 
lost a lot of the beachfront area from warming temperatures and 
sea level rise.
    We know that it is happening, and now finally, it is being 
developed into plans and strategies that can be acted upon by 
the Biden administration.
    So they have taken the work that we and you and others have 
done over the last decade and a half and put it into this very, 
very ambitious climate executive order with many different 
requirements, from a climate risk analysis to climate 
assessments by every agencies to the first national 
intelligence estimate on climate change.
    So many, many wheels are turning and I think it will be 
very useful for this committee to hear later this year and next 
year about the results of those analyses, and then also to see 
how the actions recommended are being financed.
    Because, as we say, a strategy without resources is 
hallucination. So, you have to have the funds committed to 
actually make those wheels turn and enable, for example, a very 
constructive, let us say, Pacific engagement strategy which 
will enable us to work with our allies and partners in the 
region, perhaps in advance of the next typhoon or to make more 
resilient their communities, but also to enable better disaster 
risk response and preparedness.
    Senator Markey. You are up on Cape Cod right now, and with 
the exception of the Arctic, it is the second fastest warming 
body of water on the planet. The Gulf of Maine, which is where 
Cape Cod is, is the second fastest warming body of water.
    We can see it with the cod moving north. They need cold 
water. The lobster moving north. Good news for Canada if they 
want to completely capture the lobster and the cod industries, 
but bad news for Massachusetts. Mother Nature is sending us a 
warning and it is impacting us economically.
    The Arctic is affecting us from a strategic perspective. 
There are tremendous implications the longer we ignore this 
issue.
    So let me move back over to you, Mr. Powell. I had dinner 
last week with the head of the International Energy Agency. 
What he said to me was this, very simply.
    We have off-the-shelf existing technologies that can meet 
our international goals over the next 10 years. We do not need 
any innovation breakthroughs. We just use off-the-shelf 
existing technologies, we can meet all of our goals.
    After that, we need big innovation breakthroughs if we are 
going to meet the 2050 goals. But between now and 2030, 2035, 
we can do it with existing technologies.
    Do you agree with that framework in terms of what the 
sequencing has to be if we are going to meet our 2050 goals?
    Mr. Powell. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, 
by the way, for your longtime leadership on this. I actually 
happened to be at that same dinner and I thought that Dr. 
Birol's comments were very, very insightful, especially in the 
wake of the really interesting and somewhat troubling analysis 
that they conducted at the International Energy Agency.
    I think it depends a lot on what our goals are by 2030. I 
do agree that there is an enormous amount that can be done with 
existing technologies.
    We have seen an enormous improvement in the cost profile 
and the performance profile of solar and wind technologies, of 
efficiency technologies, electric vehicles, et cetera.
    That said, if we start to look at deep de-carbonization, 
especially outside the power sector, we are, obviously, a lot 
further off.
    Let us just look quickly at the industrial sector, you 
know, so the challenge of clean steel, clean concrete, clean 
petrochemicals, finding some way to supply a cross-cutting 
source of heat for heavy industry, for glass, and pulp and 
paper and all these things.
    We are not even near having something that can be deployed 
across all of that within the next decade, and so I think it 
goes sector by sector, and for some sectors we are a lot 
further behind than in others.
    Senator Markey. But in general, to meet the 50 percent 
reduction goal by 2030, and including the utility sector, the 
vehicle sector, but knowing how difficult it is in cement, in 
other technologies, I think what he was telling us was that in 
order to make the breakthroughs in those areas we are going to 
need big innovation breakthroughs, and that would be 2030 to 
2050.
    Do you agree with that framework, in general?
    Mr. Powell. I think I agree that the one place I would have 
concerns, especially going very, very large with variable 
renewables, especially in the United States, is really more on 
the permitting side than on the economic side.
    If you look at the recent analysis that was released by the 
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab just at the interconnect cues 
for new renewable projects across the country, you know, 
average time to interconnect three years, in California eight 
years.
    So if you are thinking, what are California's goals in 
2030, well, they better have applied for the interconnects for 
all the projects for that two years from now.
    I think if we can find some way to radically speed up the 
progress of deploying the existing technology, I could align 
with that. But I think that does remain a hurdle.
    Senator Markey. But those are not technology innovation 
breakthrough issues. Those are ----
    Mr. Powell. Very true.
    Senator Markey. Can we make our system work, please? Can we 
do permitting coordination amongst states and get the 
interconnectivity issues resolved? That is not a technological 
breakthrough. I think that is what we were being told.
    It is not a technology problem. It is a political problem 
that we have been facing. If we can just get the politics 
right, get out of the way, and deploy what we have already got, 
get half the problem done and then the breakthroughs can 
happen.
    I think there will be an incentive for companies all across 
the country to make the breakthrough in these other areas 
because the momentum will have built to such a point where it 
will be clear to the cement industry, to the steel industry, to 
others, that they are going to have to move as well.
    Therefore, there is a huge opportunity to become extremely 
wealthy if you make the breakthrough in the new technologies 
that will help them achieve it. Ultimately, those market forces 
will drive that technological change.
    So let me let me come back to Ms. Ubaldo and talk to you 
because you are there in the Philippines suffering from the 
worst, most catastrophic consequences of this incredible change 
which has taken place in terms of typhoons and other climate 
and ocean impacts upon your country.
    What do countries like the United States have to do in 
order to support still-industrializing nations to fight against 
climate change?
    Ms. Ubaldo. Thank you so much for the question and for 
allowing me to talk.
    In the Philippines, we call for the centralization of 
technologies and develop local capacities to understand and 
access technology for both broad mitigation and adaptation 
purposes.
    We also call for support for local technologies as well as 
the freeing up of critical technology, intellectual property 
rights to help communities, and also we call for end on false 
solutions such as carbon capture and storage, geoengineering, 
among others.
    We also call on governments, not just actually the 
Philippines but also our global leaders to stop the financial 
institution and all investing institutions to divest from dirty 
energy and enhance their investment portfolios with renewable 
energy. We also call to phase out existing coal plants and 
resist from building new coal-fired power stations.
    In the context of climate justice, any replacement such as 
hydro or nuclear power must take into consideration the impacts 
they have on the environment. I also have noted that in climate 
negotiations, especially with the global leaders, the 
implementation and operationalization of the Paris Agreement 
should also be highlighted and to support the developing 
countries in terms of climate finance to reach the ambitious 
targets of our nationally determined contribution.
    As the representative of the youth sector and from a 
vulnerable country like the Philippines, I strongly believe 
that coming up with strong action points at the climate 
negotiation is greatly important.
    While we recognize that there are so many issues that our 
global leaders need to iron out, but it is equally important 
that we have concrete ways forward after such event like this, 
and we can implement in our countries and local communities.
    We heard all the amazing plans of our leaders in achieving 
net zero, but these remain--if these remain as ideas and in 
papers, all our efforts will be futile. We need these to be 
operationalized and be funded to increase the resilience of our 
local communities and reduce their vulnerabilities.
    If we continue to remain at the negotiating table without 
implementing these plans on the ground and also consulting the 
women, the children, and all those vulnerable sectors, we fear 
that this will jeopardize our future.
    Senator Markey. Thank you. Thank you for that great answer 
and thank you for just being an inspiration as an activist not 
just in your own country but across the planet. It is really 
young people who are rising up. They are the ones who have 
created this energy around this issue.
    Back in 2009, as the chair of the Climate Committee, I was 
partner with Henry Waxman, to pass a law through the House of 
Representatives that reduced greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 
the year 2050. It was killed over here in the Senate.
    But we did not have a movement at that time, and we now do 
thanks to people like you, Ms. Ubaldo, and young activists all 
across our country and all across the planet. The Europeans now 
call their climate plan the Green Deal. We have just had a 
change, a sea change, politically.
    We have a chance to do something big right now, inspired by 
courageous young people, like yourself. Thank you so much for 
all you are doing.
    Let me finish up here by asking each of you to give us the 
one minute piece that you want the subcommittee to remember 
about what we have to do in order to deal with this question 
responsibly, and historically.
    So we will begin with you, Mr. Powell.
    Mr. Powell. I am going to use part of my minute to 
reiterate something that Ms. Goodman said, that a strategy 
without resources is hallucination.
    We need to develop a strategy to combat climate change but 
we need to establish the tools to actually do that and to get 
the entire global economy to much lower emissions.
    We do think that the way to do that is to start by 
innovating that new breed of advanced clean energy technologies 
across all the sectors for our global economy, including things 
that are very relevant for the rapidly developing world.
    We need to reform the permitting process so that we can 
quickly demonstrate them in the United States, and then we need 
to build them here and build enough of them to rapidly bring 
down the costs.
    And finally, we need to do much more to export those into 
the rapidly developing world to push back against the coal 
finance of the Belt and Road Initiative, and to make it an 
actual realistic solution for so much of the rapidly developing 
world to choose clean, as opposed to traditional, emitting 
technologies.
    Thanks very much.
    Senator Markey. Beautiful. Thank you.
    Ms. Goodman, your final piece of advice for us, please.
    Ms. Goodman. Well, thank you, Chairman Markey.
    I think we need climate-informed decision making across all 
of our foreign policy and defense strategies, and I know you 
and others on this committee will be asking those direct 
questions, and it is so clear in the Indo-Pacific we are so 
vulnerable. We absolutely need that.
    Second, we need to work even more closely with our allies 
and partners to show them that we care about their needs and 
their climate risks, and that we are working together so they 
are less vulnerable both to the climate risks and to China's 
encroachments.
    And third, we need to improve the resilience of our force 
and base structure throughout the region and in the U.S. 
because that is going to be key to enabling us to continue to 
perform our missions in the region.
    Senator Markey. Thank you, Ms. Goodman.
    And, Ms. Ubaldo, you have the final minute of this hearing.
    Ms. Ubaldo. Thank you so much. So in his encyclical Laudato 
Si' on Care on the Common Home, paragraph 49, Pope Francis 
said, ``We have to realize that a true ecological approach 
always becomes a social approach. It must integrate questions 
of justice and debates on the environment so as to hear both 
the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.''
    I am here in front of you virtually, not just as a climate 
statistic you see in the news, but I am here as a human being 
hoping to remind you that we need to value lives again.
    And I am also here to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and 
the marginalized communities. May our stories motivate you in 
prioritizing climate actions?
    We should be part of the negotiation table, not just 
someone telling a sad story but not really listened to, to make 
our voices be heard.
    Thank you.
    Senator Markey. Beautiful. I think that is just the right 
sentiment for us to end this hearing.
    I think that, ultimately, the United States has to be the 
leader. We are the technological giant of the plan, and when we 
set our minds to ensuring that we were going to move from no 
one with a flip phone in their pocket to everyone with a flip 
phone in their pocket, to everyone having a device in their 
pocket equal to the computer on the Apollo mission, we did it, 
and in villages in Africa, in Asia, in South America, people 
now have that computer in their pockets, transforming the way 
in which they live.
    We can do the same thing in the energy sector. But the U.S. 
has to lead. We need a plan, and if we lead this plan then I 
think the rest of the world will follow, and China will either 
partner with us or the rest of the world will just have to move 
on without them, ultimately, lose this opportunity.
    So all of you have given us, like, Cassandra like warnings 
of what happens if we do not move, and it is going to be heeded 
by this committee and others across this city.
    We cannot thank you enough for all your great testimony 
today.
    With that, this hearing is going to be adjourned but not 
before I tell all of the members that the record will stay 
open, and they will have until the close of business Friday, 
July 23rd, to revise and extend their remarks and submit 
questions for the record.
    And with that, this hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:24 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]


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