[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 14 (Thursday, February 14, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Page S850]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 PRESIDENT BUSH'S CLEAR SKIES PROPOSAL

  Mr. ENZI. Mr President, I rise to speak in support of the President 
Bush's Clear Skies proposal that he announced earlier today. The 
president's proposal is a plan that would use our nation's greatest 
resource, the ingenuity of our private industries, to ensure our 
children and grand children can inherit, not just a healthy 
environment, but a healthy economy as well.
  The President has made this possible by giving industries a clear 
target to reduce emissions but will allow them to find the means and 
the method to reach those targets without following the traditional 
command and control environmental policies that have proven to be such 
a big failure in the past.
  The goals are not going to be easy to reach. His proposal to reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent over the next ten years is going 
to require Industry stretch if it is going to measure up to the 
President's yardstick. But the goals are attainable, and, more 
importantly can be reached without bankrupting rural communities that 
rely on energy development, or by hurting those people who will suffer 
most by rising energy prices--people like seniors or low income 
families who could be forced to chose between paying their heating 
bills or buying food.
  I also want to applaud the President for his willingness to reach out 
to developing nations to help work with them in developing a truly 
global effort to address global warming.
  I have had the privilege of representing the United Senate at a 
number of Global Warming Conferences, starting with Kyoto, Buenos 
Aires, Seattle and more recently at the Hague. Those meetings provided 
me an opportunity to meet with global warming experts and 
representatives from other nations to discuss the role of the U.S. 
Senate in ratifying any treaty signed as a result of the United Nations 
negotiations.
  Based on a 1997 Byrd-Hagel resolution, that passed the Senate on a 
final vote of 95 to 0, my message at each conference has included two 
important mandates that the Senate feels must be present in any global 
agreement affecting the United States. First, developing countries 
currently excluded from the framework protocol must be included in any 
final agreement; and second, the agreement could not result in serious 
harm to the United States' economy.
  This is an issue that I have also been privileged to work on in my 
new capacity as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 
where last year we passed an amendment proposed by my distinguished 
colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry, to the Department of State 
Reauthorization Act that encouraged the President to do exactly what he 
has done today. The President's new proposal reengages the United 
States as major player in the international global warming debate, this 
time not as the country that will bank roll all of the programs, but as 
a leader that will show other nations the way to improve the 
environment without destroying the economy.
  Under the President's proposal, US companies will be able to invest 
in technologies to offset greenhouse gas emissions without fearing that 
they will not get credit for their innovations, or that they will have 
even greater or more difficult requirements imposed on them because of 
their voluntary effort. They will no longer have to worry that they 
will be penalized for having done the right thing.
  Once again, Mr. President, I applaud the President Bush for his 
proposal and for his vote of confidence in the people of the United 
States. American know-how and ingenuity has fueled the technological 
advances we are already using today to make steady improvements in air 
and water quality. The President hit the nail right on the head when he 
said that it is our strong economy that makes it possible for us to 
make those necessary technological advances.

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