[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 72 (Wednesday, May 23, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2659-H2665]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GLOBAL WARMING AND THE KYOTO PROTOCOL
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I thank the Speaker for this
opportunity to address the House and join my colleagues to talk about
global warming, to talk specifically about the Kyoto Protocol and the
language that is currently in the bill of the Committee on
International Relations, the authorizing bill for the State Department
to implement the Kyoto Protocol.
I am disappointed that there was not an amendment on the floor to
take that particular amendment out of this legislation, because I think
the consequences of implementing the Kyoto Protocol are so dramatic
that it deserves a discussion before this House. That is why we have
joined in this special hour to talk about the consequences if America
was to implement the Kyoto Protocol. It is a bad deal for America, and
the conferees should examine the implementation language in this bill.
Let me just say that, under this protocol, by 2008 to 2012, the U.S.
would be required to slash emissions of greenhouse gases to 7 percent
below the 1990 level. That level was last achieved in 1979. Based on
projections of the future growth in U.S. energy use, this would require
a real cut in emissions of over 30 percent. In the meantime, major
greenhouse gas emitters, such as China, India, Mexico, Brazil, would be
able to continue business as usual.
Let me just review the numbers of the total income in this country.
The GDP in 1979, it was four trillion eight hundred sixty-nine. Today
the GDP, or the total income, the total production of this country is
nine trillion one hundred ninety-three.
So based on that kind of efficiency that we had back in 1979, we
would have to cut the gross domestic product, the output of this
country in half. Of course we have increased our energy efficiency a
little bit so, not totally half. But a dramatic change.
So what we are going to be discussing tonight is how scientific is
the evidence of global warming, how good is the scientific evidence of
how much man contributes to that global warming.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), one
of the experts in this area who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on
Energy and Air Quality to start off our discussion tonight.
Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I sincerely appreciate the
gentleman from Michigan having this Special Order at the request of the
leadership. I think it is important to air the issue, so to speak, as
we get into this debate.
I am an official observer to the Council of Parties operating under
the auspices of the United Nations. I was in Kyoto. I was in Buenos
Aires. I was in Hague. I am planning at the moment to be in Bonn,
Germany in July.
I think there are some things that we need to make sure that the
American people know about this. First of all, the economy that will be
most affected in the entire world community, if we would implement
this, is the United States economy.
As the gentleman from Michigan pointed out, China, whose VOC
emissions will exceed the United States within the next 10 years, would
have to make no reductions. Mexico, which is a growing economy and our
partner in NAFTA, would not have to make any reductions because they
are considered to be a developing nation. India, the second most
populous nation in the world, again with growing VOC emissions, would
have to make no reductions because they are considered again to be a
developing nation.
So when we get right down to it, the Western European community,
because the collapse of communism occurred after the base year that
they are using to calculate the reductions, would make few, if any,
because they have shut down the old coal plants in the Soviet Union and
in behind the Iron Curtain. In Western Europe, they have gone more and
more to nuclear power. So they have to make no reductions in their
economy. It would be the good old U.S. of A. that would have to make
these reductions.
Under the protocol, a steel plant operating in Pennsylvania or in
Illinois or in Indiana that would have to be shut down under the
protocol, one could take it bolt by bolt, piece by piece, dismantle it,
ship it to China or ship it to Mexico, put it back together, that same
plant with the same emissions, and would be perfectly legal under the
Kyoto Protocol.
For that reason, it is not just Republicans like the gentleman from
Michigan and I that oppose this. Good solid labor union Democrats like
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) strongly oppose this. In
fact, when they did the Byrd-Hagel amendment in the United States
Senate, it passed 98 to 2 that we cannot implement Kyoto unless certain
changes are made so that it does not negatively affect the United
States economy.
Second thing that the citizens of the United States need to
understand about Kyoto is that the science is not settled. In fact, 2
years ago, 15,000 of the most eminent environmental scientists in the
United States signed their names to a letter that I believe was sent to
the President. It may have been sent to the Members of Congress.
Fifteen thousand scientists said do not implement Kyoto because the
science is not settled.
Just within the last 6 months, research based on actual data in the
Atlantic Ocean has come out that says the whole concept of global
warming may be exactly wrong, could be totally 180 degrees wrong.
{time} 2145
So there are all kinds of reasons for us to take a go-slow approach
on this. And I think that President Bush, when he said the Kyoto
agreement would not be ratified, did exactly the right thing. I think
the President and Secretary of State are going to work with
Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to develop
a new mechanism for environmental negotiations, not based on Kyoto, but
based on sound science and based on economic interests of the United
States vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
I would think within the next year or so we will come up with a
different mechanism that actually will enhance the environment and will
enhance the world community. But the Kyoto agreement, as it is
currently structured, is totally flawed. It would be very
disadvantageous to the United States. And unless we want to go back to
the economy like it was in the 1970s, as the gentleman pointed out,
this is exactly the wrong agreement and should not be implemented in
this country.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. I joined the gentleman from Texas at the
Hague, and what the Kyoto Protocol did is it left a lot of the details
of implementation to further negotiations. One of the questions at the
Hague was the so-called ``sinks,'' the sequestration of the CO2, and
this chart, I think, demonstrates why the United States was trying to
insist that sinks be a consideration in emissions. As we see by this
[[Page H2660]]
chart, this is North America, and the red indicates the amount of CO2
emissions. The blue at the bottom displays the sequestration, or the
sinks, how much of the CO2 we capture by our corn and our sorghum and
our field crops and our woodlands. And when we compare that with Europe
and the whole Eurasian and North African area, we can see that the
amount of emissions of CO2 greatly exceeds the amount they sequester.
It seems to me this was one of the reasons that Europe said, well,
no, we cannot allow you any credit for sequestering those.
Mr. BARTON of Texas. If the gentleman will continue to yield, this
whole concept of sinks was something that back in the mid 1990s, when
we began to negotiate Kyoto, was not even a variable. People had not
even thought of this. And then, when it became apparent that our
forestlands and our grasslands actually consumed CO2 and that we could
be a country that on a net basis emitted no CO2 because we had large
pinewood forests in the south and hardwood forests in the north and the
grasslands and the cornfields in the Midwest, this caused consternation
in the international environmental community, because under the very
mechanism that they had negotiated, the United States, in their mind,
walked away free.
So as the gentleman pointed out, at the Hague this was the subject of
intense negotiations to minimize the impact of sinks. But again, the
sink is an issue that, using their terminology and their models and
their variables, the United States should get tremendous amounts of
credit, which is, again, one of the reasons this is a flawed process,
because they have not really thought the science through.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. It seems to me that rather than negotiating in
good faith, a lot of the countries of the world, but maybe particularly
in Europe, seemed to be more willing to use the treaty as a way to
reduce our competitive position. Do you think there is merit there to
that?
Mr. BARTON of Texas. There is a train of thought that this would be a
surrogate system to put the United States at a competitive disadvantage
vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
Now, do not hold me specifically to these numbers, because I do not
have some of my briefing books before me as we engage in this special
order, but my recollection is that of all the nations in the world that
are involved in the Kyoto agreement, and it is around 160 to 170, there
would be only 13 that would have to make any significant reductions in
their emissions, and of that, the United States would be a huge
majority.
So nations like Iceland would have to make some reduction, Japan,
Great Britain, Australia, the United States, there were a total of 13
out of 162, but over half the reduction would come from the United
States economy.
I have to exit, but I want to tell the gentleman I appreciate his
taking this special order, and I think it is very timely and very
important that the American people understand some of the facts and
figures the gentleman is going to present.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Let me add my birthday wishes to your
daughter, where I understand you are going.
Mr. BARTON of Texas. Kristen Barton is 19 today. Her birthday party
is going on as I speak. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. The gentleman from Texas mentioned that a lot
of individuals, Republicans and Democrats, questioned moving ahead with
the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, in July of 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol
was agreed to, the U.S. Senate passed what they called the Byrd-Hagel
resolution, which says that the U.S. should not be signing any treaty
that, one, would mandate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions for
developed countries but not developing countries; and, two, would
result in a serious economic harm to the Nation. And of course the
Kyoto Protocol moves in both of these directions. It does not include
countries for any reduction, such as China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and
many other developing countries. It seems to me this common sense
resolution, which was approved by a Senate vote of 95 to 0, set the
minimal parameters for Senate ratification of any treaty.
And with no realistic idea that a treaty was going to be signed and
eventually ratified by the Senate, which it has to be ratified for it
to work, the Bush administration said let us move ahead and make sure
we reduce our CO2 emissions, reduce our greenhouse gases,
but let us be very careful about signing on to a treaty that is
demanding almost the impossible. And although many European governments
have expressed bitter disappointment about the U.S. decision, it should
be pointed out that Romania is the only developed country in the whole
world that so far has ratified the treaty.
At this time, Madam Speaker, I am going to yield to another leader in
this area, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), who was a
leader in trying to introduce an amendment to take this language out of
this particular authorizing legislation for the State Department.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Michigan and
am delighted to join him here this evening. This has been an
interesting issue, because during the last administration, and my
friend from Michigan will agree with this, each and every department of
government almost had a budget to promote global warming in the Kyoto
Treaty. It was very cleverly done. Billions of dollars were spent
selling the concept of global warming; that it was a fact, when, in
reality, it has been based on computer models. It has not been sound
science.
But just to back up for a few years, in 1977, when we were at the
height of some cold weather, there is an article here in Newsweek,
about seven or eight pages long, called ``The Deep Freeze.'' They talk
in here about the beginning of the Ice Age. Because we had a couple of
real cold winters in a row, they were talking and they were predicting
here that by the year 2000 how the colder climate was going to be
moving further south and limiting agricultural ability in this country.
The same people are now the ones that are screaming global warming and
the oceans will rise as the ice melts and all will be catastrophe.
It is interesting in the last couple of years, and we know most
Americans get their news from television, but according to a recent
media study, the major networks are biased in their coverage on this
subject. And if we think about it, they really are. The study of Media
Research Center's Free Market Project states for the three big
networks' nightly newscasts, not a single comment from a global warming
skeptic for 3 months. That is beyond bias, because this issue has been
getting a lot of ink. The numbers clearly show that, with the exception
of Fox News Channel, the nightly newscasts have become advocates for
the environmental extremist cause. Our findings come as scientists with
impeccable credentials, and no particular political axe to grind, such
as Dr. Sally Baliunas of Harvard, Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
or Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, concur that the science of global
warming is very much unsettled, flawed, and, in many cases,
exaggerated.
During this same time, I am pleased that two people from my district
have written me in the month of May. A gentleman here who says, ``I am
not sure whether or not you have taken a position on this matter, but
my letter is to ask you to give support to the administration's
decision to withdraw U.S. support from the Kyoto Protocol to help
protect the country's citizens, including those who are retired and on
fixed incomes. We already have an energy mess that is crippling the
economy in California. Enacting the Kyoto Protocol would have put the
whole country in danger of a California-style crisis.''
He goes on and discusses that there is not agreement in this country.
And that is true.
Another gentleman I know quite well, Mr. Sam Smith, the Whip of the
House in Pennsylvania government, wrote me another letter: ``The Kyoto
Treaty would devastate mining communities unnecessarily because it
really attacks the use of coal.''
I am here to say that if we are going to deal with the energy crisis
in this country, and we own 40 percent of the world's coal and 2
percent of the world's oil, clean coal technology needs to be a very
strong part of our future energy policy.
It says here, ``Mr. Bush got a lot of flack recently for opting to
pull out of
[[Page H2661]]
the Kyoto Treaty, but it was the correct decision and he did it for
some very good reasons. Tens of thousands of those good reasons work in
American coal fields and in our factories every day. The harsh
realities of the treaty drawn up by international bureaucrats in Japan
in 1987 would have its most devastating impact on small towns in States
like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.''
And it goes on here to talk about many of the things that have
already been spoken about, that countries like China and our
competitors, who have already stolen a lot of our light manufacturing,
would force us to give them our heavy manufacturing, because that would
be the only place in the world you could do it.
Let me come back to another issue that has been talked about a lot,
the scare tactics of the ice melting and the oceans rising. Here is
what it says. ``As many know, the United Nation's Panel on Climate
Change publishes a report on global climate change every 5 years.
Chapter 11 of the most recent report addresses sea level rise, a
favorite scare scenario of the media and radical climate warmers.
Professor Morner is president of the International Commission
representing the scientific community of sea level researchers. These
are the best scientists in the world on this subject. This is what he
had to say about Chapter 11 and the dire predictions made about
catastrophic sea level rise:
``The IPCC Chapter 11 is a very inferior product, written by 33
persons in no way being specialists on the task. The real sea level
specialists would never give these statements, figures, and
interpretations.'' He says, ``I have finished a seven-page review
report. It is most shocking reading. Lots of modeler wishes but very
little hard facts based on real observational data by true sea level
specialists. I allow myself a few quotations from the report. It seems
that the authors involved in this chapter were chosen not because of
their knowledge on this subject, but rather because they would say the
climate model that had been predicted.
This chapter has a low and unacceptable standard. It should be
completely rewritten by a totally new group of authors chosen among the
group of true sea level specialists. My concluding position is to
dismiss the entire group of persons responsible for this chapter, form
a new group based on real sea level specialists, let this group work
independently of a climate modeler.''
So much of this global warming concept has been computer models, and
we know what they can do with computer models.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. If the gentleman from Pennsylvania would
yield, there is no question, and I totally agree the treaty lacks a
firm scientific basis. And while there is no disagreement that carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases are in our atmosphere, before the
industrial revolution they were there, they are there now, but
scientists disagree about the extent of man-made gases and how much
they contribute to global warming.
{time} 2200
The amount of warming or if the planet is warming at all, and like
the gentleman from Pennsylvania suggests, some scientists have even
come to the conclusion that maybe we are in a cooling-off period.
I think nowhere is this more evident than in the divergence between
atmospheric conditions, the data collected from satellites and weather
balloons, and surface temperature data collected from ships which tell
a different story. Highly accurate satellite measurements do not note
any warming over the past 2 decades.
What we have in the red, for those individuals that can make out the
small details, the red is the surface temperature. The blue is the
satellite-measured temperatures, and lower are the balloon-measured
temperatures. If you take the satellite along with the weather balloon
temperatures, they are almost on an even keel, and they show no global
warming. The only global warming that is portrayed is the surface
temperatures, and they could be caused by a lot of changes, such as
expanded populations in some of the areas.
In terms of the potential contributions of ocean, you see a big peak
over here in 1998. That was actually credited to the impact of El Nino.
I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania is totally correct. These and
other shortcomings make climate models unreliable tools for predicting
future climate change and for making energy policy.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is
absolutely right. In debates I have had with people who believe
opposite of I, I say give me data. Give me facts and true measurements,
and they cannot. They keep using these models. We have cycles of
weather, but if my memory was correct, there was not much talking about
global warming when we had the coldest temperature months in a hundred
years this past winter. Temperature hours, we had a cold year overall.
But you do not hear people talking about that.
A year or so ago when we had unusually warm summers brought on by El
Nino and other air currents, everything was global warming.
I think it is very important that we also mention about the sinks
that were earlier discussed. A lot of our scientists are amazed when
our air currents hit the ocean after crossing the eastern part of the
country because from Michigan to Pennsylvania we have tremendous
forests that are great sinks that suck up the carbon dioxide, and when
the air currents reach the ocean, they have a lot less carbon dioxide
than when they left because of the combination of farm country and our
forests. This country may not be a contributor because of our sinks, as
indicated on the charts that here.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Let me put that chart back up. Just to review,
Europe and the North Africa area, the red indicates the amount of CO2
that they are putting into the air. The blue at the bottom indicates
how much they sequester or capture of CO2. And of course all living
organisms live on CO2. Our plants collect that as part of their
growing.
Because our agriculture is so intense and expansive in the United
States and our forest lands are so abundant, we capture about the same
amount of CO2 as we emit. Unlike the European countries, as you see on
the right, the tropics and the southern hemisphere capture more because
of the forests and the growth of biological products in that area. We
see a great sequestering.
But the point needs to be made strongly that that has to be part of
the consideration. And it has to be part of our research in the future.
How do we increase our ability with technology to capture some of that
CO2 just in case it might be causing a greenhouse gas out there.
I am chairman of the Subcommittee on Research in the Committee on
Science, and all of the scientists in the field on this issue agree
that we need more research on global warming because there is so much
that we do not know. We are basing so many conclusions on incomplete
research. There is a lot of shooting from the hip. If we are going to
make this dramatic change such as what is described in the Kyoto
treaty, I think it behooves us to move ahead more aggressively with the
same kind of scientific research and that is what we are going to do in
the Committee on Science and that is what this administration has
suggested.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. The Kyoto treaty, that chart says it
all about this country. If the Kyoto protocol was implemented, would it
reduce global warming if it were a proven fact? The answer is ``no''
because it would only restrict emissions in our country. It has minimal
impact in Europe and all of the developing countries that are stealing
our manufacturing, like Mexico and China, who would not be living up to
any agreement. They would be doing nothing.
So we would be pushing manufacturing out of a country that has the
best pollution control equipment in the world, taking that
manufacturing to parts of the world that have little or no control over
emissions, and would actually be adding to air pollution in the world.
The Kyoto treaty was not written by a friend of the United States. It
is probably one of the worst documents signed and brought back to this
country because it would destroy our economic base. If global warming
was a fact of life, it would do little or nothing.
[[Page H2662]]
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to at least
mention the tremendous political influence that some of the
environmental community has. We all want a cleaner environment. We are
all going to move ahead to develop renewable-type resources that can
minimize the CO2 emissions, but a tremendous political
influence that I think has caused maybe some in the previous
administration to agree to these kinds of protocols because it was so
strongly supported by a strong political group.
I think the bottom line is that if we are going to make reasonable
policy decisions, we are going to have to get emotion away from that
policy table and scientific evidence on the table to make the kind of
decisions that are going to have a tremendous impact on the economy of
this and other countries.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. One of the things that I have found
distressing, the scientists that have had the courage to speak out on
this issue have often been called to task by the college presidents by
saying we want you to tone down your discussion of this issue. We are
going to lose research dollars.
Mr. Speaker, that is not what science is about. Science should be
seeking the truth and the facts. When you have a university president
telling real scientists that they should not be talking about their
findings in a real scientific way, you are cooking the books. In my
view, a lot of that happened in the last few years. There was a huge
influence from the White House and the Vice President's office, and
there was intimidation at the university level that if you wanted
grants and further studies, you better give them the message that they
want.
When you buy scientific information and you tell them what you want
to be in the answer, you are not getting anything for your money
because all you are getting is somebody to state what you want stated.
Mr. Speaker, real science is about searching for the scientific
facts. I think a lot of that was veered from in the last recent years.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. There is no question that making sense of
climate variability is a hugely complex challenge, but one that we can
make progress on, at least before we commit to onerous regulations.
In a 1999 study, the National Research Council made recommendations
for a research strategy focusing on unanswered scientific questions.
The NRC identified over 200 questions that need answers if we are to
understand and predict climate change. That is exactly what the
gentleman from Pennsylvania is suggesting; we need real science and
real answers to some of these questions.
But in the meantime, there are things that we can do to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. We can improve energy efficiency, and we are
doing that. We are developing new energy sources, sources that do not
emit CO2; and certainly the research to expand the
sequestration of CO2 must be encouraged.
I have one chart that I think is dramatic. This is a model by the UC
National Center for Atmospheric Research. What this diagram shows, the
red line is what is going to happen to global warming without the Kyoto
treaty. The orange line that we see coming up slightly underneath it in
the years 2040 to 2050, represents the possible reduction in
temperature. And even if all of the Kyoto treaty was implemented, the
reduction in climate is 0.07 degrees centigrade, almost unmeasurable in
its extent. We still have scientists that came before me in my pursuit
of what is the right answer suggesting that a little global warming
might be good for agricultural expansion in this country. So with that
small a degree in warming, I think it is very important that the
Members of this Chamber, Madam Speaker, understand that we could go
into grave consequences by the implementation of this. That is why I
certainly want to encourage the negotiators on the conference committee
that are taking up this State Department authorization bill to review
this.
I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Another factor, around 1440, there was
7 degrees of warming temperature. The negative impact was the
agricultural belt in this country expanded immensely. They were growing
grapes further north than ever grown before. The food basket grew.
There was no measured real evil force from the temperature rising 7
degrees, which has not happened in recent centuries.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, the historical consequences of
such a modest warming, I mentioned have shown to be beneficial. An
example I was looking at was during the Medieval climate optimum.
During that optimum period of slightly warming temperatures from 800 to
1200 A.D., improved agricultural production linked to warmer weather
led to economic expansion throughout Europe.
There are many things that we need to give priority to to get answers
to the 200 questions that the scientific community have suggested that
we need answers to before we proceed in this type of venture.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I welcome scientific
facts, not computer models, but the real facts. That is what we need to
deal with. I think it is very important that we do get this language
taken out. We have had enough promotion and sales pitch on global
warming and the Kyoto protocol in the last 8 years. It is time to get
back to sound science.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I put the last chart up to show
some of the accomplishments that we have achieved in the last 35-40
years especially in terms of increased energy efficiency.
The top black line represents the energy use at constant 1972 GDP.
How much GDP does one unit of energy achieve.
What has happened is our actual energy use to achieve this greater
GDP, which has almost doubled since 1979, is way down below what we
have expected. That shows this country has been very aggressive in
trying to achieve the greater economy. It takes 30 percent less energy
to produce a dollar of GDP than it did in 1970. So we are moving ahead.
That greater efficiency means less emissions. That greater efficiency
means less energy use that is also compounding our problem right now.
It is an appropriate time to discuss this issue of the Kyoto protocol
when we are looking at high energy prices because if we were to follow
that protocol and reduce our energy use back to the 1979 levels, we
would have to ration the amount of home heating fuel and gasoline and
coal; and the way to ration it would be dramatically increasing price
or some kind of law that says you can use only so much.
{time} 2215
Either way, there is a dramatic implication on the economy of this
country, and that means on the standard of living of this country,
because what other companies are going to do if energy prices were to
go up in the United States, they are going to look at these countries
like China and Mexico and the other ones that were impacted by this
protocol and look at the energy price there that is going to be much
lower, and they will say, hey, we are going to move our business and
our factories and our production to those other countries. Of course,
when that happens and those other countries start developing, it is
very unlikely that they are going to sign a similar protocol some time
in the future to impede their economy. So I think it behooves us all to
make sure that we think very carefully before we emotionally move ahead
on something that might cause more damage than it does good.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think it is pretty
outstanding when we have been increasing the efficiency of
manufacturing and processing by more than a percent a year. The
gentleman talked about 30 percent. I was reading something today that
was 40 percent, I do not know what the time span was, but we have made
tremendous progress in the efficient use of energy.
Now, it is my belief that the reason we are in an energy crunch today
is number one, we did not have an energy policy and we had very cheap
oil and very cheap gas for an extended period of time that kind of
shifted us in the wrong direction. But, there was a real move in this
country away from coal, away from nuclear, and the Kyoto protocol
concept had us trying to phase out fossil fuels with a false
assumption.
[[Page H2663]]
Now, we are all for renewables, but when we look at the charts, and I
have read all the charts recently of energy usage in this country and
growth, and when they are projecting into 2010 and 2020, renewables are
still a very narrow line. I mean, there is not a lot of growth there
whether it is solar or whether it is wind, and, of course, hydro has
been stuck at the same amount. The chart showed, hydro, questionable in
the ability to relicense; nuclear, questionable in the ability to
relicense.
Those are discussions we are going to have to have. Because the
phaseout of the use of fossil fuels, the phaseout of coal, except for
power generation, has put a heavy load on other energies and has us in
a position where we are very dependent on oil from foreign countries
that are not our friends. I have a personal fear at the moment, and I
heard on this floor just a couple of nights ago why we were even
thinking of building coal power plants when we can build these clean
natural gas ones. I believe personally we have overloaded natural gas.
I do not think we can drill wells fast enough, because what we are
going to do is we are going to endanger home heating costs. We are
going to have people who now mostly depend on gas for their home
heating; most of our factories, our schools, our hospitals use gas. We
are going to have a huge shortfall of gas in this country.
Gas prices doubled last winter. I am afraid they could double again
this winter. If that is the case, we are going to have people unable to
pay their energy bills, seniors unable to stay warm. When we talk about
a ripple effect in our economy, natural gas will make one far worse
than gasoline, because when we drive, we can drive the vehicle that
gets the best mileage, we can drive a little less, give up the pleasure
trips. But when it comes to heating a home and running a business,
there are not too many options.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman opened the
door to a short discussion as we conclude on energy. Let me briefly go
through a couple of the charts that I think describe the predicament
that we are facing in energy.
This chart simply shows the top red line is energy consumption, and
the bottom green line is energy production at the 1990-2000 growth
rates, and so the middle is the projected shortfall. That means we are
becoming more and more dependent, like the gentleman said, on other
countries, especially OPEC countries.
In 1970, I was asked to go on the Presidential Oil Policy Commission,
and so we went over to the White House with Bill Simon every morning at
6:30 to find out where the available supplies were and how we could
distribute them. At that time we were very nervous because we were in a
Cold War situation, so we gave agriculture a top priority for fuel.
So two decisions were made. Number one, put a price ceiling on the
price that could be charged for gas and petroleum products. Number two,
give agriculture a top priority. I was assigned the task of sort of
substituting for the market economy in trying to find out what farmers
were low on fuel.
So we set up a computer in every county of the United States, every
agricultural county of the United States, and they would call in if
they were out of fuel and we would go down to the chart and say, look,
under law, you are required to deliver to this area so this farmer can
have fuel. We learned then that price controls, from the long gas lines
to the fact that we were doing a very poor job in allocating this
scarce resource; computers were not good enough then, they are not good
enough now, so rationing is a predicament, but this chart shows the
increased dependency, and most of this is on the OPEC countries, as the
gentleman from Pennsylvania suggested, that we need to not only expand,
reduce our dependency totally, but certainly we need to look at some of
those other countries, the Caspian area countries and others that might
have a better attitude towards the United States.
This chart shows an average of what goes into a gallon of gasoline.
So the crude oil price, which is which has usually been the basis, 58
cents of the price of $1.81 which was May 1, I think; 18 cents Federal
tax, State tax is 27 cents, refining costs, 58 cents; distributing and
marketing costs, 20 cents. Gasoline has gone up.
Mr. Speaker, I introduced a bill to suggest that the Department of
Energy review all the regulations, especially the boutique fuel
regulations. This chart shows the 15 different boutique fuel
regulations in different parts of the United States, and if we multiply
that by 3 for the regular, the midgrade and the premium, one can
understand, with all of those different fuels, the tremendous
inefficiency that is required by complying with those kinds of
regulations. So we have to have separate holding tanks, separate
pipelines, or we have to clean out our pipelines before we ship another
variety through, so we need to review those. This is old data. We need
to make sure that we can protect the environment, but review these
kinds of regulations to see what the new technology can contribute.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think we will find where
we see those bright colors where the prices have been in the last year
or two where we had spikes in the central part of the country; the year
before in California; two years ago was up the East Coast where truck
fuel prices were exorbitantly high. But where these special fuels are,
our national system of pipelines does not work, because we have a
different type of fuel than most of the country is using, and if one of
our refineries goes down, then there is just not enough to go around,
and so the price is going to go up for that marketplace. So this has
really complicated the gasoline and truck fuel delivery system.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, this chart shows, I think,
something that we can be very proud of. The increase in gross domestic
product in this country has been plus 147 percent, where U.S. coal
consumption has increased 100 percent, but U.S. energy consumption in
total has only gone up 42 percent, and the key air emissions have
actually gone down 31 percent.
Mr. Speaker, the United States is leading the world in terms of
pushing the kind of research that is going to reduce CO2
emissions, but whether it is CO2 or whether it is vapor
emissions going into those greenhouse gases, or whether it is the kind
of new technology where we can develop new energy sources, the United
States is moving ahead probably more aggressively than any other
country, and we need to do that, but we do not need to sign and agree
to the Kyoto protocol, which is not based on complete science and which
would be a punishment to the United States.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will
yield, I think the head of our energy policy, as Mr. Bush and Mr.
Cheney have shared with us, is we have to conserve, we have to use
energy efficiently and be more cautious that we are not wasting energy.
I think we still have lots of progress we can make there. And we must
continue to do that. But that is down to every American citizen who can
contribute there. It does not need to be some new law, it does not need
to be some strict regulation, but I think leadership from the White
House is going to help Americans be much more conscious.
Of course, prices makes us much more conscious. As prices go up, we
are going to turn lights out when we are not using them. We are not
going to turn our thermostats to be quite as high. We will not drive
quite as fast and waste fuel. We might take a little shorter trip. We
may look at the next car we buy to be more fuel efficient. Those are
all things we can do individually, but they should be personal choices.
They should be incentives, not strict government rules and not a heavy
hand from government. The American people all need to realize that we
are all in this together.
However, on top of that, we cannot conserve our way out of this
crisis. We have been phasing out production, and $10 oil certainly
killed production in this country and $1 gas stopped all drilling.
There are a lot of people thinking there are just thousands of wells
out there capped, ready to let gas out. That is not true today. The
pipeline system is inadequate to get the gas from one part of the
country to the other. The grid that moves electricity is inadequate to
get where there is excess electricity to parts of the country
[[Page H2664]]
where there is a shortage. We need an investment in our total system.
But when we have all energies in a greater amount available in
inventory, that is what stabilizes prices.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. And the market system works. I think we have a
responsibility at the Federal level to make sure as best we can that
there is competition, and there is not the kind of gouging. But if last
year, the crude oil prices got for a little while over $30 a barrel, I
think now they are around $26, but still if we were to say, you cannot
sell crude oil for over the $8 a barrel that was a low point several
years ago, I mean there would not be exploration. They would not be
coming into Pennsylvania and Michigan doing some wildcatting. They
would not be acidizing some of the old wells to drain them dry of oil,
and there would not be the kind of research that can make sure that we
can be environmentally friendly in the smaller drilling in the fact
that we can now sit on one site and go for 4 miles in all directions to
capture some of the oil down below, rather than having the congestion
that we saw back in the 1940s and 1950s maybe in Oklahoma and Texas. So
technology is a huge change.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, we helped fund research
that they felt very close to working using ultrasound, one type of
ultrasound to clean out the old well bore, the other kind to go out and
loosen the oil from the rock crevices and let it flow into the well.
They have successfully increased production with ultrasound. Now it is
a matter of the next study is going to put it out into the field in a
number of wells, and if that works, we will be able to get more oil.
But those are the sorts of things we need to do.
I was at Penn State recently. They have a project there that has been
completed in the laboratory, and now it is moving into the refinery
where they are going to take western Pennsylvania coal and make jet
fuel and have a carbon product that will be used by Pennsylvania's
famous carbon industry. So they will take coal and turn it into two
carbon items. One is jet fuel and the other one a carbon product that
will be used in manufacturing, and they also have a fluidized bed
boiler that can be implemented and could be used by hospitals, could be
used by schools, could be used by factories, that can burn any fuel.
Because the fluidized bed process is what we are using in this country
to burn our high sulfur waste coal, in Pennsylvania we are using it,
because they use a crushed limestone slurry that takes the sulfur and
unites with it instead of sending it up to stack into the air and helps
it burn it cleanly, and they are claiming that if it can burn coal and
wood waste, it could burn coal and animal waste, it could burn coal and
animal fat, it could burn natural gas, it could burn number 10 oil or
fuel oil.
{time} 2230
This kind of burner would then give a manufacturing plant or a
university the ability to buy the cheapest energy that year.
When we get that kind of competition going out there we will not be
stuck, because this winter we are going to have businesses and people
owning homes stuck on high-priced natural gas because this country
moved strictly to making all the new power plants gas without adequate
inventory to back it up, in my view.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. I think it is worth mentioning that over the
last 8 years, we have been so conscientious or the administration was
so conscientious on the environment that we ended up closing down about
one-third of our refineries in this country with regulations and
increased costs. We ended up stopping a lot of the clean coal mining in
this country.
Right now I think the estimate is something around 250 to 300 years'
worth of energy from coal, if we move ahead on that kind of technology.
Or if we use some of technology that we have now, the administration
and President Bush is suggesting another $2 billion over the next 10
years to do research on clean coal technology to even do a much better
job of the nitrates and sulfur dioxide emission, besides the particle
pollution that is happening.
We are able to do a lot of that now. With a little more effort, we
can make this kind of a fuel a very efficient contribution to a
continuing strong economy in this country.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I asked the question
recently on why the question mark on relicensing hydro. Someone said,
remember, these hydro plants, where water runs through a pipe coming
out of a dam and turns a turbine, there is no environmental downside,
these dams were built without adequate environmental impact statements,
and we might want to have to tear them down.
That is where we are coming from on this whole issue. That is at a
time when we are looking at shortages.
There are some very new interesting pebble bed nuclear plants that
are built in small units that can be built right alongside of existing
plants that have very little fuel waste and solve a lot of problems.
They are being built all over the world.
Our whole energy issue, if we want to become more self-sufficient and
not dependent, the thing we must not forget, the Far East countries
that are providing so much of our oil today, and that is just one of
our energy sources, they could double the prices again tomorrow by just
restricting how much they will give us. They set the price. They have
the ability, because of the amount we are buying from them, they can
set the price.
If we can lower that, that is why some of us are even supporting ANWR
drilling, because we need to do anything we can do to take away that
control that these countries that are unfriendly to us have over us,
because they could cause us to have $40 oil in the next month.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talks about the
national security of this country, of our country. Certainly there is
power that a few countries in the world now have over our ability to
produce.
And look, we have changed. We are a new world. We are not where we
were back in the thirties. We now have high-rise office buildings where
we need the elevator to get up to that 15th or 20th floor; where the
windows do not open, so we need the air conditioning in hot weather and
we need some warming up in cold weather. We are a new society.
We have got so many older individuals that are on the kind of life
support system where it is actually a matter of life and death. We
cannot be a government that accepts brownouts, certainly not blackouts,
as a regular order of business.
That means moving ahead aggressively with conservation, but
conservation cannot do it all. It means expanding, and I am biased as
chairman of the Subcommittee on Research, but it means dramatically
expanding our research efforts.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I just talked to my local school
district, who paid $2.80 for gas last year. They have now purchased
this winter's gas for $5.40. Last year they paid as high as $12 one
month because they had not purchased ahead.
When people this winter start paying $10 per thousand for gas, they
may think, is it smart to lock up the whole West Coast for gas
drilling? Is it smart to lock up the whole East Coast for gas drilling?
Is it smart to lock up all of our shoreline except Texas and Louisiana?
Those are the only two places I believe they are allowing drilling to
happen. Is the environment compromised there? I do not think so.
We have the technology to get gas out of the ground today in a very
environmental-friendly way. In a country like Norway, they drill all
the way around themselves. They do not have their coastlines ruined.
They have not ruined their environment. But natural gas is what they
use, and I am told they have the model system of drilling offshore.
We are going to have to look at all of those things. Prices will
force people to take a broader look at this issue, because $10 gas will
be painful when we are heating our homes.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. As we conclude this special order session,
certainly I would like to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton)
and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).
If the gentleman from Pennsylvania would like to give a wrap-up
conclusion.
Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I just say to the American public, to
[[Page H2665]]
Members, and to those listening, I just believe that we need to support
the President's comprehensive energy plan. There is no quick fix to our
energy needs.
As we talked, I think a lot of it has been brought up by the hysteria
of the Kyoto Protocol and the concept that the Kyoto was something
special that we had to do. If global warming was a fact of life, the
Kyoto Protocol was not something that made it better. It was a bad deal
for this country, and would not have changed what the situation was in
the world, because it would have allowed all the countries to steal our
employment, steal our factories, where they do not have strict
pollution laws.
In this country, where we have the strictest and the best technology,
we would have lost the business, so it would not have improved the
world's atmosphere, it would have destroyed the economic base. The poor
people in America would have lost their jobs.
That, and the energy issue as a whole is one that the American people
had better be very wise about. I think the Bush-Cheney administration
on the Kyoto Protocol made the right decision, and having a broad-based
energy where we improve our ability to have the energy we need for this
country, and allow the marketplace then to work from supply, not from
shortages, is what is needed.
I thank the gentleman tonight for allowing me to join in on his
special hour.
Mr. SMITH of Michigan. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. In
the authorizing bill for the State Department that went through the
Committee on International Relations, there was an amendment in there,
and that is what we have been talking about tonight, to go ahead with
implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.
It is interesting, that vote was very close. I think it was 20 to 22
that the amendment succeeded in going on that bill with something like
14 members absent, so it is a real question that needs debate.
I would certainly encourage the conferees from the House and Senate,
when they meet to reconcile the differences between the House and
Senate, that they seriously look at the consequences of that language
and consider removing it from the final bill.
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