[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 85 (Thursday, June 25, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7164-S7166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     KYOTO PROTOCOL IMPLEMENTATION

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Last week, the administration's climate change 
negotiators returned from Bonn, Germany.
  These negotiators were in Bonn from June 2 through the 12 with their 
counterparts from many other countries, working out the details of how 
to implement the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework 
Convention on Climate Change.
  Mr. President, people often say ``the devil's in the details'' and I 
think we have a case here with this Kyoto Protocol where the devil is 
definitely there--in the details.
  So, that is just what I want to talk about today--the details.
  Back in October of last year, President Clinton outlined his climate 
change proposal during a speech. If it seems strange that I have to 
refer to the text of a speech to describe the administration's climate 
change proposal, I have to do that, because the speech is all we have.
  Last year, I, along with Senators Craig, Hagel, and Helms, asked the 
General Accounting Office to review the administration's climate change 
proposal. The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing 
earlier this month on GAO's results so far.
  The Office of Management and Budget told the GAO auditors that the 
Administration has no documentation of its climate change proposal, 
beyond the President's speech last October. The speech is the plan. I 
must admit, I was amazed by this.
  The administration is asking for an increase of $6.3 billion over the 
next five years for its climate change program, and the documentation 
of that program is a speech that is about 3 or 4 pages long. Out in the 
business world, you don't get $6.3 billion in financing based on a 
three page proposal.
  So, in this brief climate change proposal, what do we find? We find a 
statement of the administration's principles for addressing climate 
change.
  One of the administration's principles on climate change is: 
``Developing Countries Must Participate.''
  The President's climate change proposal says: ``The President has 
committed that the United States will not adopt binding obligations 
without developing country participation.''
  Take note that this statement came from the Administration prior to 
the Kyoto negotiations, when the administration conveniently abandoned 
that principle, in order to come home with some kind of agreement to 
show everyone how successful they were.
  The administration still claims to be committed to ``meaningful 
participation''--whatever that means--by developing countries. In fact, 
Mr. Dirk Forrister, the chairman of the White House Climate Change Task 
Force, told me during our hearing on June 4 that ``meaningful 
participation'' does include China and India.
  So, the President's climate change proposal says you must have 
developing country participation. Mr. Forrister tells me just three 
weeks ago that we must get China and India to participate.
  But then, what happens in Bonn, Germany? Over 1200 negotiators met 
there to start negotiating the details for the Kyoto treaty. The U.S. 
negotiating team had over 25 members.
  I wasn't at the Bonn meeting, so let me read from a report of what 
happened in Bonn. This is from the Washington Times, June 13, 1998. The 
headline is: ``Third World, EU knock U.S. effort on global warming. Two 
week talks in Bonn end in impasse.'' The article says:

       Third World and European nations dealt a blow to President 
     Clinton's effort to make the global warming treaty more 
     palatable to Americans at a negotiating session . . . in 
     Germany.
       China and India, speaking for a group of 77 developing 
     countries, opposed even discussing proposals that would 
     require them to drastically cut so-called greenhouse gas 
     emissions as the United States and industrialized nations are 
     required to do under the treaty.

  Let me repeat that: China and India . . . opposed even discussing 
proposals . . . that would require them to . . . cut . . . emissions.
  What are we to make of this? The administration says China and India 
must participate. Yet, in Bonn, China and India led an effort by 
developing countries to oppose even talking about their participation.
  Let me point out another disconnect. President Clinton's climate 
change proposal says:

       The President is committed to a market-based emissions 
     trading system, both domestically and internationally, that 
     will har- ness the power of the market to reduce emissions . 
     . .

  The administration's climate change proposal states that an emissions 
trading system will allow the United States to meet its reductions 
targets ``with minimal economic costs.''
  In fact, Janet Yellen, Chairman of the President's Council of 
Economic Advisors, has testified before Congress that according to the 
administration's economic analysis--the details of which, by the way, 
almost no one is allowed to see--that Kyoto targets can be met for 
minimal costs.
  We are just finding out how you meet the Kyoto targets so cheaply. 
Apparently, the administration relies on achieving 85 percent of 
emissions reduction through emissions trading. They think we can ``buy 
our way out'' of the problem.
  But let's see what happened in Bonn. What did the rest of the world 
have to say about extensive use of emissions trading?
  Again, let me quote from the Washington Times article:

       The European Union said it would oppose extensive use of a 
     complicated [emissions trading] scheme Mr. Clinton devised to 
     ensure that Americans pay only modestly higher energy prices 
     under the treaty, saying the

[[Page S7165]]

     United States should bear the brunt of such costs, which 
     could total in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

  So, here are the results of Bonn.
  1. Developing countries are still saying ``not interested'' when it 
comes to signing up for binding reduction targets.
  2. Our European friends are saying, ``Hey America, you can't buy your 
way out of your commitments through emissions trading. We want you to 
take more expensive action at home.
  What kind of actions might we take to reduce emissions, if we can't 
rely on emissions trading? To answer that question, I think it's 
helpful to look at the current situation.
  Where do we currently get our electricity from? We generate 53 
percent of our electricity from coal. The administration says coal 
pollutes so we have to cut back on dramatically on how much we rely on 
coal. We generate 18 percent of our electricity from nuclear power. 
This is our largest emission-free source of power. I've talked about 
this issue over the years and the percentage of nuclear keeps falling. 
A few years ago we were 22 percent nuclear, last year this figure was 
about 20 percent. I think we should be clear about why this number is 
falling.
  We have an administration that won't deal with the nuclear waste 
problem. We have a President who says he will veto our nuclear waste 
bill, which has passed both this Congress by wide margins. The bottom 
line is that we are at risk of losing our nuclear power.
  We generate 14 percent from natural gas, but the administration has 
issued OCS moritoria and won't provide access to public lands for gas 
production, so there are limits to what gas can do.
  We generate 10 percent from hydroelectric power--another emissions-
free source of electricity. But again, the Admin opposes hydropower and 
we have a Secretary of the Interior who brags he will be the first 
Interior Secretary to tear down a dam.
  We generate about 3 percent--a little bit under 3 percent--from waste 
or ``biomass''. This is electricity from burning wood, garbage, old 
tires. This isn't exactly a carbon-free activity, so we will have to 
curtail our use of biomass for power production.
  We generate 2 percent of our electricity from oil. Again, this is 
something unpopular with the administration. They are opposed to fossil 
fuel use, and they won't allow access to public lands for further oil 
exploration.
  The remaining less than 0.1 percent comes from wind and solar. This 
is a very small percentage, yet the administration claims these are the 
technologies that will make-up for reductions in all the other sources. 
How realistic is this?
  The Sierra Club refers to wind turbines as ``cuisinarts for the 
birds.'' Wind power also depends on a limited number of sites, with 
strong, dependable winds.
  Solar technology has many obvious shortcomings. First of all, the sun 
doesn't shine at night. Also, solar panels take up a tremendous amount 
of space. It would take about 10,000 square miles of solar panels to 
replace the 18 percent of our electricity generated with nuclear power. 
This is about the size of the entire states of Vermont and Delaware, 
combined.
  So there are obvious limits to renewable resources, but there are 
places where they make sense. For instance, remote villages in Alaska, 
where electricity is now generated with diesel fuel for 30-40 cents per 
kilowatt hour. But for large populations these renewable technologies 
probably are not feasible.
  How does the President say we will meet our Kyoto targets? In 
addition to buying carbon credits from Russia and Ukraine, the 
President says we should increase energy efficiency . . . and ``pay the 
bill'' by deregulating electricity. I'm all for efficiency and rational 
deregulation . . . but if you've endangered your major sources of 
generation, efficiency and generation aren't much help.
  The President is clearly pushing this issue off onto somebody else's 
watch. So, where does this leave us? Well, we are headed into larger, 
higher-level negotiations in Buenos Aires, Argentina this fall. Should 
we be hopeful that we will have any better success than we did in Bonn?
  Don't get me wrong. I happen to think that principles are a great 
thing to have. The point is you have to stick to them.
  I fear that in Buenos Aires, the administration will once again be 
desperate for the appearance of success. In their desperation, the 
administration might conveniently abandon more of the principles they 
claim to hold regarding what the U.S. should demand of the rest of the 
world in a climate change treaty.
  Mr. President, I have been watching these events unfold for some time 
now. I have watched this climate change deal become more and more of a 
raw deal for Americans.
  But to sum up, I don't think I can put it any better than one of my 
constituents, Sam Tatum from Wasilla, Alaska. He wrote me a letter 
saying ``this climate change treaty is bad news for our country.'' 
Well, Sam, hold on to your pocketbook and let's see what comes out of 
Buenos Aries.
  I ask unanimous consent that an article from the Washington Times be 
printed in the Record, plus a table.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Times, June 13, 1998]

          Third World, EU Knock U.S. Effort on Global Warming

                           (By Patrice Hill)

       Third World and European nations dealt a blow to President 
     Clinton's efforts to make the global warming treaty more 
     palatable to Americans as a negotiating session that ended 
     yesterday in Germany.
       China and India, speaking for a group of 77 developing 
     countries, opposed even discussing proposals that would 
     require them to drastically cut so-called greenhouse-gas 
     emissions as the United States and industrialized nations are 
     required to do under the treaty, said participants at the 
     Bonn talks.
       And the European Union said it would oppose extensive use 
     of a complicated scheme Mr. Clinton devised to ensure that 
     Americans pay only modestly higher energy prices under the 
     treaty, saying the United States should bear the brunt of 
     such costs, which could total in the hundreds of billions of 
     dollars.
       ``China and India pointed out that the industrialized world 
     still hasn't done anything to reduce emissions, and they 
     didn't feel it was appropriate'' to discuss requiring Third 
     World participation in the treaty until that happens, said 
     Kelly Symms of Ozone Action.
       The developing nations squelched a move to add discussions 
     about their participation in the treaty to the agenda at the 
     next negotiating session in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this 
     fall. Clinton administration officials vow to nevertheless 
     bring up Third World inclusion for discussion at the session.
       ``It was the same dynamic'' that Americans encountered in 
     Kyoto, Japan, when the treaty was drafted, with most nations 
     blaming the United States for the global warming problem, 
     since it is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and 
     saying it should bear the costs, said Miss Symms.
       But Mr. Clinton faces just the opposite problem at home: a 
     Congress that is livid that the Kyoto treaty excludes 
     developing nations, which could become major emitters in the 
     next century, and insisting that costs must be minimal for 
     the treaty to have even a change of being ratified in the 
     Senate.
       ``We all have our political situations,'' said Rafe 
     Pomerance, deputy assistant secretary of state for 
     environment, acknowledging that none of the Third World 
     nations the administration is negotiating with are ready 
     right now to voluntarily sign on to the treaty .
       The administration has more hope of winning Europeans over 
     to its emissions-trading scheme, which is designed to allow 
     American companies to lower the cost of emissions cuts by 
     buying credits from other countries where the costs are 
     smaller.
       The administration is relying on extensive trading of such 
     credits to hold down what could be significant costs for 
     Americans in its analysis of the economic effects of the 
     treaty, he said.
       Environmentalists say the administration's conclusion that 
     the treaty would impose only ``modest'' costs on Americans 
     assumes that 80 percent of the treaty's emissions reductions 
     are achieved through international trading.
       The administration only yesterday released details of its 
     controversial and closely held cost estimates to the House 
     Commerce Committee.
       Europeans stridently oppose the extensive use of emissions 
     trading saying the United States should first impose energy 
     taxes and other measures used by European countries to cut 
     emissions before ``buying'' reductions from the rest of the 
     world.
       ``Their primary goal is to cripple the U.S. economy'' by 
     quadrupling energy costs to the levels that prevail in 
     Europe, said Deborah Fidelke, spokesman for Sen. Chuck Hagel, 
     Nebraska Republican and a leading opponent of the treaty in 
     the Senate.
       The two-week-long negotiating session in Bonn--where the 
     world's nations came to agreement on only one technical 
     question involving reforestation--shows the futility of Mr. 
     Clinton's efforts to forge a treaty that he hopes can get 
     through the Senate, she said.
       ``This whole thing is going nowhere,'' especially in light 
     of the hardships on China and

[[Page S7166]]

     other Asian developing countries resulting from the Asian 
     financial crisis, she said.
       ``Why on Earth would they now sign on to a treaty that 
     would slow their growth even further?'' she asked. ``We just 
     put economic sanctions on India and now we expect them to 
     sign on to a treaty that will slow their growth? Let's live 
     in the real world.''


            Sources of electricity used in the United States


                                                             In percent
Coal.................................................................53
Nuclear energy.......................................................18
Natural gas..........................................................14
Hydro-electricity....................................................10
Other*.............................................................2.72
Oil...................................................................2
Wind...............................................................0.08
Solar energy.......................................................0.02
*=Waste (0.79%)=Biomass (2.0%)+Geothermal (0.44%)+Other (0.03%).

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