[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 142 (Tuesday, October 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10871-S10876]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GLOBAL WARMING
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, this week, representatives from over 160
nations are meeting in Bonn, Germany, for the final negotiating session
prior to the climate change conference scheduled in Kyoto in December.
It is a critical meeting, the culmination of several years of
international cooperation on this extraordinarily important global
issue.
Over the past several months I have had an opportunity to discuss
global warming with scientists and representatives from the United
States and abroad and, indeed, we have had one brief discussion on the
Senate floor in the context of the Byrd-Hagel amendment.
Last week, I met in London with a number of officials of the
Government of Great Britain, but most importantly on this subject with
Foreign Minister Robin Cook, to discuss our mutual concerns about the
climate change problem and how best to address this issue from a global
perspective. As our U.S. negotiators continue their work in Bonn and
the President finalizes the U.S. position for the Kyoto conference, I
wanted to share with my colleagues some views on the science of global
warming, on the international process, the U.S. role, and the next
steps that the United States and others should undertake to address
this issue in a responsible manner.
Last July, I joined with Senator Byrd and others in the Chamber to
discuss global warming and to debate Senate Resolution 98 which
addressed some of the Senate position on the Kyoto treaty. The Byrd-
Hagel resolution called for the United States to support binding
commitments to reduce greenhouse gases only if: One, all nations,
developed and developing, participate in addressing this global
problem; and two, if the commitment did not adversely impact the U.S.
economy. In addition, the resolution created a bipartisan Senate
observer group of which I am pleased to be a member. Our task is to
continue to monitor this process.
I supported the Byrd-Hagel resolution, Mr. President, which passed
the Senate 95-0 after we worked out in colloquy some of the
interpretations of definitions contained therein. I supported it
because I believe that there has to be a universal effort to tackle
this ever-growing problem, and that the United States, while taking a
lead role, need not jeopardize its economic viability in order to meet
our international obligations.
The resolution language, in my judgment, provides enough flexibility
to address the concerns of growing economies of the developing world
even as we encourage them to join in this global effort.
The resolution was silent, however, as to the science of global
warming. It addressed only the U.S. role in the Kyoto negotiations.
During the debate over the resolution, there was some discussion by a
few Senators over their interpretation individually of the science. But
there was no broad debate about the science, and there was certainly in
the resolution no judgment by the U.S. Senate whatsoever as to the
foundations of science which might or might not be applied to the
negotiations in Kyoto. From the statements in the Record by the
resolution's chief sponsor, Senator Byrd, it is clear that he agrees,
as I and others do, that the prospect of human-induced global warming
as an accepted thesis is beyond debate, and that there are many adverse
impacts that can be anticipated as a consequence of those theories in
fact being found to be true. We are joined by many of our colleagues in
thinking that there is sufficient scientific consensus that human
activities are exacerbating climate changes.
The vast majority of scientists and policymakers who have examined
this issue carefully have concluded that the science is sound and that
it is time to take additional steps through the established
international theory to address this issue in a more systematic way. A
small but extremely vociferous minority continue to assert that the
science is not yet convincing. They advocate a wait-and-see approach.
They believe that continued review and inaction is best for the U.S.
economy and for Americans in general.
Given the money that the very vociferous minority has been expending
in trying to promote their view, and given the fact that shortly we
will be engaged in some discussions based on the factual foundations of
this issue, I would like to address the issue of science for a few
moments on the floor of the Senate.
Mr. President, the vast majority of the scientific community--the
vast majority of those who have taken time to make a dispassionate,
apolitical, nonideological determination based on lifetimes of work,
and certainly on a lifetime-acquired discipline in their particular
areas--the vast majority of consensus of those who have been so engaged
is that the science regarding global warming is compelling and that to
do nothing would be the most dangerous of all options.
In the late 1980's, a number of our Senate colleagues--among them
Vice President Gore, State Department Counselor Tim Wirth, Senators
John Heinz and Fritz Hollings--and I, and a few others became
increasingly concerned about the potential threat of global warming. It
was at that time that I joined as an original cosponsor of Senator
Hollings' bill, the National Global Change Research Act, which
attracted support from many Members still serving in this body,
including Senators Stevens, McCain, Cochran, Inouye, and Gorton. After
numerous hearings and roundtable discussions, this legislation to
create the global change research program at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration became law in 1990.
As a Senator from a coastal State I take very seriously parochial
implications of global warming. As a United States Senator and a member
of the Foreign Relations Committee, I am also concerned about the
crafting of a workable international response that treats all parties--
including the United States --fairly.
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I have stated that I would be happy to engage any of my colleagues in
the debate on the science of climate change here on the Senate floor,
or elsewhere. And I have sought on numerous occasions--as yet not
successfully--to try to get an adequate airing of the science within
the Senate observer group. And it is my hope that, before that group
reports to the Senate, a broad-based review of the science will be
undertaken in a bipartisan, nonpolitical way.
But, Mr. President, before we even proceed further with
that analysis, I want to take this opportunity to at least lay out some
precursor truths with respect to the science as we know it.
Whether by nature or experience, we know that scientists are a
fundamentally cautious group of people. That is why I find it
particularly compelling that over 2,000 scientists who participated in
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the most comprehensive
and thoroughly reviewed assessment of any environmental problem ever
undertaken--concluded that global climate change is currently under
way. The 1995 IPCC report concludes that the Earth has already warmed
about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century, and that ``the balance
of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on
global climate.'' The IPCC estimates that the global surface air
temperature will increase another 2 to 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the
next century. Their ``best guess'' is that we will experience warming
of about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That would be a
faster rate of climate change than any experienced during the last
10,000 years of the history of this planet. And we have to recognize
that the human history as we have recorded it and, therefore,
understand its impact on ourselves and current human endeavor is within
a span of about 8,000 years.
The conclusion that the observed warming trend is not simply a
natural fluctuation is affirmed by the research of several
institutions. Basing their conclusions on climate model calculations,
scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg,
Germany, concluded that the warming of the Earth over the past 30 years
goes far beyond natural variations. Indeed, there is a judgment that
there is only a 1-in-40 chance of that variation being natural. So we
are dealing with a 1-in-40 prospect in terms of odds.
The United States and other governments have been collecting at
ground-based and ocean-based sites global surface temperature
measurements since the year 1880. Remarkably the 11 warmest years this
century have all occurred since 1980, with 1995 the warmest on record.
Some will argue that there are discrepancies between our long-term
surface record and recent satellite observations. But that fact--by
again nonideological dispassionate and nonpolitical scientists--has
been determined to be not surprising at all because the two
techniques--measurement at the surface and measurement by satellite--
are entirely different. They measure temperature at different parts of
the Earth's system--the surface and various layers of the atmosphere.
In addition, other factors, such as the presence of airborne materials
from the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo volcano, affect each record in a
very different way.
The natural ``greenhouse effect'' has made life on Earth possible.
Without it, our planet would be about 60 degrees colder. Water vapor,
carbon dioxide, and other trace gases, such as methane and nitrous
oxide, trap the solar heat, and they slow the loss of that solar heat
by the reradiation back into space. That is a natural process.
But with industrialization and with population growth, greenhouse gas
emissions from human activities have consistently increased.
Anthropogenic climate changes, most importantly the burning of fossil
fuels--coal, oil, and natural gas--and deforestation, have tipped the
very delicate balance of nature. We all know that the forests of the
planet play a critical role in the recycling of carbon dioxide. The
forests in the Amazon, all through Central and Latin America, and all
through Asia have been disappearing in entirely measurable and
discernible ways. As we have seen by satellite photography over the
last 15 or 20 years, all of the areas of the Earth's green are
beginning to shrink in those satellite photographs; we understand that
we are diminishing our capacity to do the recycling of the
CO2.
Therefore, more gas is trapped. More gases have the impact of
diminishing the amount of reradiation that takes place. This natural
climate variability alone, including the effect of volcanic eruptions
and solar variability--that is, sunspot activity--would not have
changed carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. However, the manmade
addition, presently about 3 percent of annual natural emissions, is
sufficient to exceed what is known to be the balancing effects of
``carbon sinks.'' As a result, carbon dioxide is gradually accumulated
in the atmosphere, until, at present, its concentration is 30 percent
above preindustrial levels. Existing data of other greenhouse gases
show increasing concentrations of methane, nitrous oxide, and
chlorofluorocarbons over recent decades. While ice core data show that
concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide have increased in the past
few centuries, after having been relatively constant for thousands of
years, chlorofluorocarbons are absent from deep-ice cores because they
have no natural sources and were not manufactured before 1930.
So I want to emphasize for those who try to doubt the science, for
those who come and say there is no indicator of this change and that we
have only been recording the temperature since 1880, the fact is that
both in the Arctic and the Antarctic we have accumulations of thousands
of years--tens of thousands of years--of ice. And we have to be able to
bore down into that ice. In the bores that we bring out--just as we
have tested and found geological formations which have allowed us to
drill for gas--we have been able to come up with ice cores. And as the
scientists look at those ice cores, they have been able to measure the
degree of carbon dioxide that was trapped in those ice cores. By
measuring that, and, indeed, by measuring the absence of
chlorofluorocarbons, we have been able to trace thousands of years of
climatic activity and change that we otherwise would not have knowledge
of.
That is what has given us this capacity to make a determination about
the rapidity with which changes are taking place today relative to what
we knew or can discern was taking place thousands of years ago.
While we have no control over sun spots or volcanoes, we, obviously,
can control human activities.
Then the question will be, ``Well, why should we do that? What is the
showing that somehow this really represents a danger sufficient to
require a response from Government?'' Well, the essential issue here,
Mr. President, is one of compounding emissions over time. We know that
the emissions we put into the atmosphere today have a life that goes on
and on and on. It is like nuclear material that has a half-life. So
does this material have a half-life. And the fact is that, even if we
were to stop our activity today, what is already in the atmosphere will
continue to do the damage that it does. And the models have to measure
the rate at which we might be able to reduce today in order to
guarantee that you have turned off the spigot sufficiently to be able
to control what will happen in the future. But anyone who follows the
stock market or even your back account, obviously, understands the
miracle of compounded interest. It means that a small amount set aside
becomes a big amount over time.
That is what is happening to the Earth's accumulation of greenhouse
gases. Many of these gases reside in the atmosphere for years to come--
hundreds to thousands of years. Even constant emissions of the gases
can cause atmospheric concentrations to build up rapidly.
So, unlike the stock market, when it comes to emissions, the small
amounts don't necessarily bring a miracle. But they could bring
enormous calamities.
So why would we care if the Earth warms a few degrees? I have
actually heard people say it really doesn't matter that much if all of
a sudden North Dakota or South Dakota became a little more attractive,
and they don't have as long a winter, or somehow you have a longer
hiking season in a particular State. Well, Mr. President, it isn't that
simple. It just isn't reduced to that kind of simplistic judgment about
the overall impacts.
[[Page S10873]]
The IPCC scientific assessment of climate change estimated that the
average surface temperature will increase by 1 to 3.5 degrees with an
associated rise in sea level of 6 to 37 inches. These changes are
projected to lead to a number of potentially serious consequences with
incidence of heat waves, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and other
extreme events affecting human health and natural ecosystems.
Americans will experience more health problems and there will be an
increase in health-induced deaths from future warming. Heat waves of
the type in the 1995 Chicago heat wave which killed 465 people will
occur more frequently, and increased warming will exacerbate existing
air quality problems such as smog that aggravate asthma and allergic
disorders, especially in children and the elderly. Warmer climates
breed diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fevers, encephalitis,
and cholera due to the expansive range of mosquitoes as a consequence
of increased warmer climates and other disease-carrying organisms.
One key aspect of climate change that is important to remember is the
slow capacity of any corrective action to have an impact. Harvard
professor and member of the President's Committee of Advisors on
Science and Technology, Dr. John Holdren, shared his analogy at the
White House Round Table on Climate Change. He said:
The world's energy-economic system is a lot like a
supertanker, very hard to steer and with very bad brakes * *
* and we know from the science that the supertanker is
heading for a reef * * * it's a bad idea to keep on a course
of full speed ahead.
The oceans are going to continue to expand for several centuries even
after the temperatures stabilize. We are currently dealing with rising
sea levels that are already eroding beaches and wetlands, inundating
low-lying areas and increasing the vulnerability of coastal areas to
flooding from storm surges and intense rainfall.
We know how costly droughts, flood control, and erosion mitigation
efforts can be to the taxpayers. We constantly, every year, are facing
requests from one community or another to do a beach-erosion project or
to undertake some kind of erosion mitigation, and we spend literally
millions of dollars in insurance as a consequence of those anticipated
problems already.
Damages from the southern plains drought of 1996 were estimated at $4
billion; the 1993 Mississippi River flood damages were $10 billion to
$20 billion; the Pacific Northwest floods of the winter of 1996-97 were
$3 billion; the 1997 Ohio River flood was nearly $1 billion; and the
1997 river flood in the Northern Plains was another $2 billion. And
this is just the impact of the changes perceived in the United States
in the last few years.
Scientists have not definitively said that any one of these events I
just listed is absolutely tied to global warming. And I am not going to
suggest that that is in fact true if they are not willing to suggest
that that there is that linkage. But the scientists have issued a
warning. The scientists have issued a warning--not the politicians, the
scientists. And their warning is that these disasters collectively show
precisely what we are likely to see if we do not reverse the current
trend lines of global warming. And we will see them with greater
frequency, with more destruction under global warming.
The areas of greatest vulnerability are those where quality and
quantity of water are already problems such as the arid and semiarid
regions in the United States and the world. If warming trends were to
continue, then water scarcity in the Middle East and Africa will become
even more pronounced, exacerbating tensions among countries that depend
on water supplies that originate outside of their borders.
Another key area of concern will be the dramatic alteration of
geographic distributions of vegetation. The composition of one-third of
the Earth's forests would undergo major changes as a result of a
doubling of preindustrial carbon dioxide levels. Over the next 100
years, the range of some North American forest species will shift by as
much as 300 miles to the north, far faster than the forests can migrate
naturally. For example, in my region of the country, New England, we
could lose the most economically important species, the sugar maple.
Other areas of the country would be hit economically as well. The
tourism industry, for instance, surrounding the Glacier National Park
could literally evaporate along with glaciers which we already know
have receded steadily for decades. Since the park's founding, over 70
percent of the glaciers have already melted. Model projections indicate
that all of the park's glaciers will disappear by the year 2030 unless
temperatures begin to cool. One-third to one-half of the world's
mountain glacier mass could disappear by the year 2100, thus
eliminating a natural reservoir of water for many areas.
Let me give an example. In Lima, Peru, the entire water supply for 10
million people depends on the annual summer melt from a glacier that is
now in rapid retreat. These are just some of the predictions,
predictions made by scientists, predictions made by various models
where they have taken the data which scientists have agreed on--not
speculated about, but agreed on.
The facts about global warming are beyond reasonable scientific
doubt, and they ought to be beyond reasonable policymaking doubt.
Mr. John Browne, CEO of British Petroleum, in a recent speech at
Stanford University said:
The time to consider the policy dimensions of climate
change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and
climate change is conclusively proven but when the
possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by
the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that
point.
That is the CEO of British Petroleum saying that they have reached
the point of concluding that linkage exists.
Efforts to rein in and reduce manmade contributions of such emissions
are now warranted. Worst case scenarios under current business-as-usual
practices are catastrophic.
So let me turn for a moment to the international efforts and the role
of the United States at this point.
In 1992, it was precisely because of those scientific conclusions
that I have just enumerated that President Bush at the Earth Summit in
Rio signed a climate-change agreement, and it was ratified later that
year by the Senate. That agreement pledged that nations would reduce
their gas emissions to their 1990 levels by the year 2000. Regrettably,
the vast majority of nations, including the United States, have failed
to achieve this goal. Today, the United States has increased emissions
about 8 percent above 1990 levels. Much of that increase has been tied
to our economic expansion.
However, it should also be noted that industry during this remarkable
growth period was also engaged in a voluntary program to reduce
emissions. While not achieving its objective completely, the voluntary
effort did meet 70 percent of the original targets at a time when the
American economy grew and wherein the American jobs machine was rolling
along at as high a rate as we have seen in recent years. The relative
success of voluntary industry effort ought to encourage confidence that
more comprehensive efforts under a global regime can result in greater
progress at far less cost than Cassandras allowed for.
However, the question is now for all countries, developed and
developing, to step forward to support binding commitments to reach an
acceptable level of human-induced emissions. That is why the United
States is engaged in negotiating a legally binding climate-change
agreement to be finalized in Kyoto this December.
Our challenge is to shape an agreement which sets tough, realistic
global emission standards and goals while harnessing the market forces
to lower costs, foster technological development, and ensure economic
growth.
The climate change problem is global. It requires a solution,
obviously, that includes a global response--participation from all
nations, industrialized countries and those countries in the developing
world. The best approach is to establish a global economic incentive
program in which the free market and not Government intervention is
driving the reductions.
The goal of universal participation via an international treaty with
binding commitments ought to be undertaken now, not with delay, not
with an effort to try to have subterfuge diminish what we can
accomplish in Kyoto. The United States, with 22 percent of global
emissions, is the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And
today
[[Page S10874]]
the industrial world comprises nearly three-quarters of all of the
global emissions. But that does not mean that we are the only ones who
should deal with this problem. The reason for that is clear. China is
currently the world's second largest emitter, and it is expected to
displace the United States as the largest emitter by the year 2015.
Over the next few decades, 90 percent of the world's population growth
will take place in the developing world. Given the projected economic
and population growth statistics of China and other quickly developing
countries such as India, Mexico and Brazil, the developing world will
exceed the industrialized world in emissions by the year 2035.
Universal participation, therefore, does not mean we have to all
begin at the same time. It does not mean you have to embrace the exact
same commitment at the exact same implementation moment. Clearly, if
one country is doing more than another, there is room for us to be able
to negotiate an agreement where we all meet at the appropriate point.
But it does mean that it is quite reasonable for the industrialized
nations, those nations that have put most of the greenhouse pollution
into the atmosphere, initially to take the lead, as long as in so doing
they do not simply fall into a trap of disadvantaging themselves
economically. A scenario where the industrialized world acts alone will
not be enough to prevent the costly implications of global warming in
the future.
I want to emphasize that. The developing nations cannot go to Kyoto
and suggest that it is up to the developed world simply to bear the
burden of reductions, because even if we reduce to the greatest degree
possible, we cannot alone avert the problems that will come from global
warming. It is absolutely essential that China, India, Brazil, Mexico,
and other countries join in the effort with an understanding that we
are moving down this road together.
Currently, many of these developing nations are not inclined to join
in an international treaty. Some believe it is not in their immediate
economic interests to do so. Others believe that as long as the biggest
contributors to the problem, the industrialized nations, are not taking
sufficient effective steps to cut back on greenhouse pollution, it is
not in the interest of their nations to do so either. One could well
understand how they would make that kind of determination. Some of them
cite the language of the 1995 ``Berlin Mandate,'' calling on the Annex
I countries, the developed countries, to be the ones to complete a
treaty with binding commitments by December 1997 but to leave excluded
the developing world from an established binding reduction target.
Let me say that in my reading of the ``Berlin Mandate,'' I do not
believe that we are precluded from proceeding to Kyoto in an effort to
come up with a two-stage arrangement which would have the developed
countries enter into an agreement while simultaneously bringing the
developed countries along. I don't believe it is in any nation's
interest to thwart international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in
as expeditious and as economically feasible a manner as possible. The
remaining option is the option of doing nothing, and nothing would, in
most people's judgment, be ultimate mutual devastation.
The only viable solution is a global treaty which provides economic
incentives for all nations. I believe such a treaty can be crafted, one
that would include all nations but permit flexibility in the targets
and flexibility in the timing of compliance for developing nations,
while at the same time requiring all countries to agree to make legally
binding commitments by a date certain. If the United States signs such
a treaty, it would be reasonable for the President to refrain from
transmitting that treaty to the Senate until the developing world signs
its binding commitments. In that way we can make Kyoto a success,
coming up with the binding agreements necessary but still maintain and
keep good faith with the approach we have thus far deemed to be the
roadmap to the achievement of this treaty.
In this Chamber I previously shared my concerns with a component of
the European proposal as it currently stands. The Europeans continue to
argue for a treaty that would enable the European Union to secure an
exclusive bubble emissions policy. This is tantamount to a regional
emissions trading program. They want Europe to be contained under one
bubble, whereby they can trade their emissions within the European
bubble, a license, in effect, to increase emissions in some European
countries by relying on the trendline decreases that are already in
place in others. Such a posture is helpful only to the European Union.
It fails to address the essential need to engage those rapidly growing
economies of the developing world, and it excludes other industrialized
countries which could be left to meet target reductions in a more
costly manner.
The European proposal would provide the Europeans with a competitive
advantage over the United States by creating this collective emissions
cap as opposed to country-by-country reduction targets. Some European
countries could actually increase their emissions by up to 40 percent.
This approach, coupled with their opposition to joint implementation
with developing nations, seems to be aimed almost exclusively at
beating the United States out of economically sensible emissions
reduction activities in Eastern Europe, Russia, the Far East, and
elsewhere. I think they should know that is not acceptable under most
people's definition of fairness.
Therefore, it is my feeling that we should approach Kyoto in the
following way. I believe President Clinton and his advisers have been
developing a U.S. position for these negotiations that moves mostly in
the right direction. I have shared views with the administration over
the course of these last months and in recent weeks, and there are a
number of different options that are currently rumored to be under
consideration by the President. It is my hope the President will
announce a U.S. position that is aggressive in curbing the projected
business-as-usual trendline.
I believe the President ought to press for a proposal that will seek
at least a target of 2010, rather than the outyear options of 2020 or
2030 that we have heard discussed. The Europeans, given the protection
of their European bubble proposal, have proposed a 15 percent reduction
below the 1990 levels by the year 2010. Perhaps without the bubble this
level may prove to be too ambitious to achieve without significant harm
to their economies. However, I believe it is realistic for the United
States and other nations to stabilize their emissions at 1990 levels by
the year 2010, remembering, of course, that our original goal was to do
so by the year 2000. With additional economic incentives such as early
credits for reductions and joint implementation and a market-oriented
emissions trading system, perhaps additional reductions could be
undertaken.
I believe also that the centerpiece of the U.S. negotiating position
should be a worldwide emissions trading program. Emissions trading is
an important market mechanism that will benefit all countries including
the United States. But it is not only advantageous to U.S. businesses.
It will provide developing countries with incentives to sign up to
binding legal commitments that are absolutely essential to a workable
treaty.
The market-based approach of emissions trading is a sensible one that
helps businesses lower costs by promoting emissions reductions and by
giving the industry flexibility to decide how they will go about
reducing pollution. We know an emissions trading system could reduce
the cost of emissions controls dramatically, afford American industry
great opportunities to do what we do best, which is to innovate, to
develop cheaper, better ways of getting the job done. And, if the
system includes joint implementation with developing countries,
providing jobs here at home in the well-paying technology export
sectors that serve the booming demands in rapidly industrializing
nations, we would be well served.
Experiences in States such as Massachusetts or California or Texas or
Florida, States which have invested in technology and which have built
on their combined technology bases and education bases--those
experiences have proven where we invest in technology in order to solve
some of these problems, we inevitably not only create jobs for
Americans but we wind up creating an export capacity, because
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we are the leading, cutting edge of technology and we wind up greatly
reducing the costs that the original estimates are based on.
If you look at the SO2 reduction programs in this country,
I remember the automobile and other industries arguing it was going to
be upward of $1,000 per ton to reduce. In fact, because of the
technology advances, the costs have come in around $90. Therefore, the
opportunity, by virtue of pushing our technology and advancing our
capacity to transfer that technology to the developing countries, can
assist all of us in the effort to create jobs and to provide for the
gains necessary to be able to meet these targets. The United States
should contain in this effort, along with the rest of the
industrialized countries, a significant technology transfer component
in order to assist in achieving this treaty and its goals.
Economically, the best time to establish an international trading
program is now. Many developing countries are currently investing in
long-term energy programs. By excluding any discussion of joint
implementation with developing countries and early credits for
reductions prior to implementation of such a system, important
incentives to encourage developing countries to begin shifting their
development trajectory to a cleaner path would be lost. U.S. industry
and U.S. competitiveness are the winners of an international trading
system, wholly apart from any environmental gains.
Environmentally, we need to get the trading program going as soon as
possible, and world events are escalating the seriousness of the
problem. The terrible fires in Indonesia and the havoc that that
conflagration continues to wreak on the people of South Asia are
additional testaments to an urgent need for a global framework that
provides powerful market incentives for environmentally friendlier
behavior. Emissions from these fires are pumping greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere and destroying forests that could be protected and
harvested in a much more sustainable manner. A Kyoto protocol that
provides credits for protecting forests that sequester carbon dioxide,
and an income stream that would potentially be available to those who
husband the forest, would be an important step for the nations and the
peoples of the worlds.
A model for such a regime is the SO2 trading program
contained in the 1990 Clean Air Act. That program, as I mentioned a
moment ago, really contradicted what had been predicted by the
industry. According to the Wall Street Journal, some initial industry
estimates for those SO2 reductions were $1,500 per ton but
which actually came in at $90 per ton, which was 6 percent of the
original doom forecast of the industry.
I would like to emphasize one point about the sulfur program that is
key to its success. In the sulfur trading program, the Government has
resisted the temptation to intervene in the market and provide price
props or cushions, or to print new allowances and sell them at a set
price. I understand that one option before the President is exactly
such an approach. I believe other Senators would join me and strongly
urge him to resist such intervention here. When the Government
intervenes in market trading it inevitably drives those prices up.
My recommendation to the President would be that any proposal that
would make companies pay the Government for additional carbon permits
is likely to be regarded--in this institution, anyway--as a thinly
veiled tax, and would, frankly, not receive favorable reception. I urge
the President to let the market for greenhouse emissions reductions do
what the markets do best, which is to spur companies to develop better
products at a lower cost. I am very optimistic that the President will
ultimately make a judgment that would be opposed to that alternative,
significant intervention in the marketplace.
A second goal should be a framework that brings all countries into
this effort at the beginning while allowing for the developing
countries to initiate their reduction efforts at a different rate than
the industrialized world. I think this is an essential component of any
realistic approach to this effort. Even without a universal emission
reductions program, the Montreal Protocol, signed by President Reagan
during his second term, called for the phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons.
As with the SO 2 estimates, the CFC reduction costs were
grossly exaggerated by certain industry sectors. Market-type mechanisms
in the Montreal Protocol and the U.S. domestic implementation program
drove prices down, with the result that companies were spurred to bring
online CFC substitutes that proved cheaper and cleaner. A more
inclusive treaty, covering all greenhouse gas emissions, sources and
sinks would produce even more economic and environmental progress.
A final goal is to recognize the opportunity presented by technology
to help in this effort. The United States is now a world leader in the
high tech industries of pollution prevention, abatement and control.
With a global emissions reduction treaty, the faster we invest in new
pollution prevention and energy conservation technologies, the faster
we will achieve emissions reductions and the quicker we will gain
market share in the international arena. This means more jobs for U.S.
workers and more revenues for U.S. companies. If we don't, then someone
else will.
I would simply cite the example of what took place in the two decades
ago. At the end of the 1970's, President Carter had made a commitment
to alternative and renewable fuel research. Regrettably, when the
Reagan administration arrived in 1980, support for the institute in
Colorado was withdrawn. So it was that over a 10-year period of time
the great lead that the United States had built up in photovoltaics and
in alternatives and renewables was lost.
Today, as the former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe come
online in their effort to try to reduce the grotesque pollution that is
one of the longest legacies of the Communist rule, they are turning to
the Japanese and to the Germans for the technology where we once were
the leader. But since we withdrew our own investment, we ceased to be
that leader.
So I believe there is, in this effort, an enormous economic
opportunity for the United States for the future. At home, we need to
consider ways to leverage our technological leadership through domestic
tax provisions, such as a zero capital gains tax rate, or a
specifically targeted investment tax credit for companies that invest
in pollution prevention and energy conservation, or quicker
depreciation of investment in such technologies. I repeat, a zero
capital gains tax rate or faster depreciation for those companies that
invest in energy saving, energy conservation and pollution prevention.
I anticipate, Mr. President, that following the announcement the
President makes regarding a U.S. proposal, regardless of what that
proposal entails, there will be a number of colleagues on the floor of
the Senate denouncing it, arguing that the science is not yet there or
that the economic assumptions are unreliable. Some will argue it is
unnecessary and too costly for the United States to participate in an
international treaty.
On the contrary. I believe the evidence from scientists is
overwhelming, that it is far too costly to sit on the sidelines and do
nothing. Mr. President, 2,500 leading economists, including 8 Nobel
laureates tell us:
For the United States in particular, sound economic analysis shows
that there are policy options that would slow climate change without
harming American living standards, and these measures may, in fact,
improve U.S. production in the long term.
I believe that if we heed the warnings, if we plan for the future
now, if we avoid allowing this to become the political football that it
might, if we seek the involvement of all nations, we can secure a
healthy planet for ourselves and for our children and for future
generations, and we can exercise our responsibility as U.S. Senators in
the way that we ought to. I yield the floor.
Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The Senator from Rhode
Island.
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from
Massachusetts for his thoughtful comments about global warming. It is a
subject in which I am deeply interested.
I was very interested and pleased with his references and comparisons
[[Page S10876]]
with what took place with the Montreal protocol and our efforts that
were successful in controlling chlorofluorocarbons, so-called CFC's.
There is an example where the first scientific body of opinion
suggested that, indeed, the CFC's were destroying the ozone layer.
There was great skepticism, not only in this body, but throughout the
Nation. But gradually, through testimony and through powerful speeches
and articles by those who were involved, this country came to recognize
that, indeed, CFC's were destroying the ozone layer, were causing skin
cancer to our population and the population of the world.
As a result of that, we moved forward and various meetings were held,
which many of us remember, and capping it all off was the Montreal
protocol, which called for substantial reduction of the production of
CFC's in our country and the world.
At the time, it looked as though it would be very difficult to
achieve, but as the Senator from Massachusetts pointed out, the United
States' scientific and mechanical ingenuity rose to the surface and, lo
and behold, we not only met those reductions but we exceeded them.
The results are now showing that the amount of chlorofluorocarbons in
the atmosphere has been reduced, at least the increases have been
reduced, and gradually we will see a reduction in the total body of
CFC's, as it were, in the atmosphere, because all of this takes a long
time to achieve.
I also say to the Senator from Massachusetts that I think it is
important to stress not only the costs of complying with a global
warming treaty--that is always what is portrayed, it is going to cost
our farmers, it is going to cost our manufacturers, it is going to cost
our automobile industry, the coal miners, and on and on it goes. The
costs of complying. But rarely does anybody ask, what are the costs if
we don't have the treaty?
The scientific evidence, as the Senator from Massachusetts was
pointing out, is increasingly coming to be recognized that, indeed, the
world is becoming warmer, just as the Senator pointed out what is
happening to the ice accumulations, the glaciers. In every single place
in the world, the glaciers are retreating. Why is that coming about? It
is coming about because of the increased temperature, infinitesimal
though it might seem, that is occurring throughout the world.
So more and more I believe we have to say to ourselves, what does it
cost if we don't do anything? Just take Florida. I don't know what the
height of Florida is above sea level, but it must be tiny. If they get
an increase in the level of the oceans of the world, and particularly
those in the Caribbean, for example, the effects to Florida can't help
but be devastating. Indeed, in my State, likewise; Massachusetts,
likewise. In all our States, we are doing what we can to increase
seawalls. What is happening? We are not sure. All we know is, once upon
a time, our beaches were steeper and now they have been cut away. Now
we have to have breakwaters and barriers and groins, as they call them,
and so forth, to try and prevent the erosion of the soil.
The Senator from Massachusetts pointed out what one of the presidents
of one of the oil-producing countries of the world had to say. I would
like to also point out a statement by the chairman of the Ford Motor
Co. finance committee, none other than William Clay Ford, Jr. This is
what he had to say on October 11, just 10 days ago, as quoted in the
Washington Post:
Ford Motor executive William Clay Ford, Jr., called global
warming a genuine threat to the environment and said
automakers who oppose a proposed treaty to address the
problem risk being ``marginalized'' in the court of public
opinion.
This is what someone, whose family owns 40 percent of the voting
stock of Ford Motor Co., had to say.
The remarks by Ford, a leading contender to become chairman of the
No. 2 automaker, distances himself from several Detroit executives who,
in recent months, have criticized the proposed global warming treaty
saying the phenomenon might not exist or its causes are uncertain.
So that's what the leader of the second largest automobile
manufacturing company in our country had to say.
All I am saying to my colleagues, and substantiating what the Senator
from Massachusetts said, is let's examine this thing carefully. Let's
look at what the scientists have to say. We can say we don't agree with
them. I don't know how many Nobel laureates there are in that group--
are there 10 Nobel laureates in that most recent group? It is something
like that--plus a total of 2,500 scientists.
I believe this thing is serious, and I think we ought to approach it
with that attitude and not say, ``No, we're not going to have anything
to do with it because if we have anything to do with it and try and
solve the problem it will be very expensive.'' Well, that is no way to
approach things.
I commend the Senator from Massachusetts for the remarks he made, and
I hope that all our colleagues were listening. This thing is serious;
let's take it seriously. We may not agree. We may have different
scientific evidence, but let's not just trash it because it is going to
be expensive to comply with.
Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for
his generous comments and also for his substantive comments. He has
been dealing with this issue for a long period of time. As chairman of
the committee of jurisdiction with respect to the environment, as well
as a Senator from a coastal State, a neighbor of ours, he is very
knowledgeable about these impacts. He serves also on the observer
group. So I appreciate his comments particularly and his leadership on
it.
I will just say to my friend from Rhode Island, when I was in this
discussion with the British minister just last week, he was quite
dumbstruck, in fact, that Senators here are still questioning the
science or that some people want to make an issue out of the science.
There is almost a universal European acceptance among those in
Government of the science. They really have stepped beyond that debate.
The debate now is not over the science. The debate is how do you
really deal with this the best. The Senator from Rhode Island pointed
out Ford Motor Co. Let me just share with my colleague the
environmental commitment statement by the insurance industry. The
insurance industry in America is increasingly concerned about this.
Here is what they said:
Based on the current status of climate research and on
their experience as insurers and reinsurers, the member
companies of the UNEP-Insurance Industry Initiative conclude
that . . . Man-made climate change will lead to shifts in
atmospheric and ocean circulation patterns. This will
probably increase the likelihood of extreme weather events in
certain areas. Such effects carry the risk of dramatically
increased property damage, with serious implications for
property insurers and reinsurers . . . We are convinced that
in dealing with climate change risks, it is important to
recognize the precautionary principle, in that it is not
possible to quantify anticipated economic and social impacts
of climate change fully before taking action. Research is
needed to reduce uncertainty but cannot eliminate it entirely
. . . We insist that in accordance with the precautionary
principle, the negotiations for the Framework Convention on
Climate Change must achieve early, substantial reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions.
So I think that increasingly businesses are aware of the fact that
the costs of not doing something are the real measurement here.
I thank the distinguished chairman for bringing that to the Senate's
attention. I yield the floor.
Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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