[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 19, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H2134-H2139]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EARTH WEEK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to address the Chamber today on Earth 
Week. This is the 35th anniversary of Earth Day, something that is 
quite a significant event and something that has been very successful 
in American history.
  I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America 
with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and 
water, and we have had some real successes. I think it is appropriate 
once in a while to reflect on success in our Nation.
  I live in the Seattle area and on an August day in Seattle, you look 
south where on a clear day you see Mount Rainier. It is quite a 
beautiful 14,600-foot peak. In August, it was invisible. You could not 
see it through the yellowish haze, except maybe the top 1,000 feet or 
so. As a result of some bipartisan efforts to reduce particulate matter 
and others in our air, we have been successful and I report you can see 
Mount Rainier very clearly as long as it is not raining, which once in 
a while it does in Seattle, of course.
  We have had successes all over the country in improving our air 
quality as a result.
  Just another little story: When I look out at Puget Sound just in 
front of my house, 35 years ago you may not have seen any bald eagles. 
They were an endangered species and had considerable problems because 
of some pesticides in our food chain. Now, just yesterday before I flew 
out here, I saw a great bald eagle soaring. It is a real joy to watch 
him fishing, they are joined by the ospreys frequently, and we have had 
success with the bald eagle and now people are enjoying and our 
grandkids and great grandkids are going to enjoy. We have had success.
  The third success: I want to point to some of our policies that this 
Congress has adopted have been successful in bringing more efficiencies 
so we do not waste as much oil and have the pollution associated with 
oil.
  In fact, if you will look at the graph here, this is a graph of the 
auto efficiency that we have had over the last several decades, and the 
top line here is for cars. The bottom line is for trucks, and the 
middle line is the average of both. You see back in 1975 our trucks 
were getting about an average of 12.5, 13 miles a gallon. Our cars, on 
average, were getting about 14.5 miles per gallon.
  Back in the mid-1970s, we adopted some fairly ambitious goals to 
improve efficiency of our cars. What did we get? We got a tremendous 
boost in efficiency. If you look at these rising lines both for trucks 
and cars, very, very steep curves going up, so that in about 1984-1985 
we got our cars up to an average of 24 miles a gallon, our trucks up to 
about 17 or 18 miles a gallon.
  We had some major successes and we did so because the country 
embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have 
to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy 
policy in this country.
  In sort of one of those ironies of life during Earth Week, we are 
going to have the energy bill up here before the House, which has 
major, major environmental impacts as well as security impacts and job 
and economic impacts.
  I wanted to address tonight the impacts on our jobs, on our security 
and on our environment of the energy bill that the House will consider 
this week. I would like to start with some of the difficulties of that 
bill and some of its failures, and then I would like to move to the 
good news about the vision that we have to create a new energy future, 
a visionary energy future for this country. In fact, what we call it is 
the new Apollo Energy Project, and many of us believe we need an 
entirely new visionary, over-the-horizon plan for energy efficiency in 
this country that will do three things: first, break our addiction to 
Middle Eastern oil.

[[Page H2135]]

  The security needs of this Nation to do that are obvious. The need to 
help spread democracy and the ability to do that will be much greater 
if we break this addiction to oil, which gives the oil princes and 
sultans the power in the Mideast. The security need for this is 
obvious. This is the first goal of the new Apollo Energy Project.
  The second goal is to stop global warming. We have real problems with 
that. I will address that later. We need to have an energy policy that 
will stop this freight train right now that is building to 
significantly change our climate.
  The third goal of the new Apollo Project is to grow jobs right here 
in the United States rather than allowing job loss to go overseas. Many 
of us feel that we should be building fuel-efficient vehicles here and 
not just in Japan. Those jobs, building fuel-efficient cars, should be 
here in America and not overseas by necessity. We think the solar cell 
technology, which was originally developed here, those jobs building 
those solar cells ought to be here, not Germany.
  We feel that the people who are building the wind turbines, those 
jobs ought to be here, in Washington State and other manufacturing 
centers around the country, rather than in Denmark, that is now leading 
the world in that technology.
  So we think we can bring those high-tech, visionary jobs home, and 
that is the very package of the new Apollo Energy Project.
  I want to contrast that just for a moment with what the bill that 
will be voted on the floor consists of. Basically, the best way I can 
describe the bill that the majority party is bringing to the floor is 
pretty much a large transfer of taxpayer money to the oil and gas 
industry, and it is nothing more and really nothing less.
  It is about $7.5 billion out of the $8 million that will go in direct 
subsidies in one form or another, sometimes through the Tax Code, some 
through direct subsidization to the oil and gas industry. That is over 
85 percent of the entire amount to be invested in this that will go 
from taxpayers to the oil and gas companies.
  It is interesting; I read a quote today by a gentleman who may 
surprise you, who said this, commenting on the relative wisdom, or lack 
thereof, of transferring $7.5 billion from taxpayers, who just got done 
filling out their tax reports, to one of the most profitable industries 
in America. In fact, last week I just read that one of those companies, 
I will not name their name, they are a fine company, good people work 
for them, but they had $8 billion in profits the third quarter last 
year, the largest quarterly profit of a corporation in American 
history. Yet, the bill the majority party is bringing to this Chamber 
will take $7.5 billion, roughly, of taxpayer money and give it to the 
oil and gas companies.

  It was a very interesting quote I saw in this morning's newspaper. I 
thought I might share that. I thought it was a very sage comment on 
whether that made sense. This gentleman said, I will tell you, with $55 
oil, a barrel, we do not need incentives to oil and gas companies to 
explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a 
strategy in place that will help this country over time become less 
dependent.
  That quote was by a fellow who knows the oil and gas industry quite 
well. That was a quote from President George Bush, who I think very 
pointedly asked, What are we doing giving the oil and gas industry $7.5 
billion of taxpayer money when they have got $55, $56, $57, maybe $58 a 
barrel of oil now? If that is not an incentive, what else would be 
needed?
  As President Bush pointed out, what we really need is some more 
technological solutions to deal with a way to break our addiction to 
oil of any nature, foreign or domestic, so that we can move forward and 
no longer be a slave to big oil. I thought that was an interesting 
comment, one that I hope some of my colleagues can ask when we debate 
this issue.
  I was talking to one of my constituents the other day, and I told him 
this; and he just looked at me and said with incredulity, he said, That 
cannot be true, Congress could never do such a bizarre thing as to hand 
over taxpayer money like that to an old technology. A mature industry 
does not need that sort of pampering to get out of the crib of 
technology and get on its feet to become market-based. It has been 
around since the late 1800s. What are we doing with a $7.5 billion 
subsidy to an old industry?
  Good question. I do not have an answer for it, but we will have a 
debate on this floor in this regard.
  So the bill that is now before us is sadly lacking. It is a perfect 
energy policy for the early 1900s. In the early 1900s it might have 
made sense to help subsidize an industry just developing new 
technology, beginning to grow, a huge burst in the industrialization of 
America; but not now, not here. And we think we need a significantly 
different approach.
  So we believe that we need an approach that will really use America's 
creative genius to develop the technologies to break our addiction to 
oil. And by the way, let me make sure people understand. As long as we 
are dependent on oil, we will be subservient to the international oil 
marketeers even if we increase our domestic production, and the reason 
is geology.
  We consume about 25 percent of the world's oil every year, but we 
only have reserves, including that which has not been pumped, of about 
3 percent of the oil reserves in the world. The simple fact is we 
cannot plant dead dinosaurs underneath our continental United States to 
create oil. It is simply not there. We are dependent on foreign oil, 
and even if we increase our domestic production to some degree, if we 
doubled it, if we doubled our domestic production, we would be at 
capacity. We would be having 6 percent of the world's oil, but still be 
consuming 25 percent of the world's oil.
  The fact is that we cannot drill our way to independence. We cannot 
drill our way to freedom, and we cannot drill our way to create jobs in 
this country.
  We need to largely invent our way out of this pickle. We need to use 
American ingenuity, the kind of ingenuity that created the software 
system, the Internet, the aerospace industry, biotechnology, putting 
the man on the moon. That is the kind of technology we need. In fact, 
that is why we named this project the new Apollo Energy Project, 
because President Kennedy stood right there actually May 9, 1961, and 
he spoke to America and he said America needs to put a man on the moon 
and bring him back safely within the decade.
  That was a dramatic thing to say at the time. I mean, we could hardly 
launch a softball into space; we had not even invented Tang yet. It was 
a dramatically bold, audacious challenge. He made it because he 
understood how good we are at invention in the United States of 
America, and we need that same kind of spirit now, a new Apollo Project 
that will call on the innovative spirit of Americans to solve these 
technological challenges.
  This is not going to probably happen this Wednesday when we debate 
this matter, but I can say optimistically that the planets are aligning 
to really come up with a new energy policy in this country. Let me 
suggest some of the reasons here.
  One is that the people are starting to understand that we can be very 
successful. This is a note of optimism. We are optimistic, and the 
reason we are optimistic is because we have already understood how we 
can achieve success. And if we will go back to this graph for a moment, 
we will take a look at this graph that showed what we did in the late 
1970s, early 1980s, when we set ourselves on a course to improve the 
efficiency of our cars, we almost doubled the efficiency of our cars 
and some of our trucks by using new technology that we developed here 
domestically in America. With a bipartisan effort in Congress, we 
called for a higher fuel efficiency and we got it.

                              {time}  2030

  And we got all the way up to about 1985, when you see something 
happened. We had this just absolute cessation of any progress in 
efficiency in our cars. You see, we had this very rapid buildup for car 
efficiency that literally stopped and became a plateau from 1985 to 
2005. On trucks, we saw it stop in 1985 and plateau and absolutely go 
down a little bit. So today the average fuel efficiency of our fleet is 
actually less today than it was in 1985.
  So you have to ask yourself, what happened in 1985? Did we just get

[[Page H2136]]

dumb? I do not think so. Since 1985, we invented the Internet, we 
mapped the human genome, and we have built several new generations of 
jets at Boeing, in my neck of the woods in Washington State. We have 
had all these tremendous technological advancements, but in the 
efficiency of our cars we have actually gone down.
  Why is that? We just forgot how successful we could be, because 
Congress and the White House, for reasons I never agreed with at the 
time, stopped calling for more fuel efficiency in what are called our 
corporate average fuel economy standards, and so they stopped progress. 
So we are now still dependent on foreign oil, have a problem with 
global warming, and are losing jobs rapidly to the Japanese in fuel-
efficient vehicles as a result of that very shortsighted progress.
  Now, that is bad news; but it is also good news because it shows what 
we are capable of if America sets its mind to it to use its creative 
genius to move forward, and that is what we need to do today. And one 
of the things the new Apollo Energy Project will do is to call for new 
improvements in the efficiency standards of our fleets. But the project 
also recognizes that we need to help our manufacturers achieve that. So 
we dedicate a significant sum, several billion dollars, to our domestic 
manufacturers, people who manufacture cars within the United States, of 
whatever manufacturing company it is, to assist them in retooling their 
factories to build these new fuel-efficient vehicles.
  And that is an important part of our package, because it recognizes 
that we need to help our domestic industry find a way to finance the 
changes to continue improvements like that which we know we can obtain. 
We think that there is going to be enormous money made and jobs created 
in fuel efficient vehicles. Today, I must say, a car that gets 42 to 44 
miles a gallon, one of these hybrid cars, in Seattle, Washington, now 
you can sell it for more than you bought it for because of the 
attractiveness of this fuel-efficiency standard. Safe, comfortable car. 
We can do this in this country. We need to set our minds to it, and 
that is one of the things we have suggested to do in the new Apollo 
Energy Project.
  Coming back to this idea about an alignment of the planets, about why 
we can achieve this, I think what we are seeing in this country is a 
rather unprecedented combination of people who normally might have some 
different viewpoints on various policy matters who are coming together 
to understand why we need a visionary high-tech future for our energy 
world. I want to read some comments by these folks who sort of suggest 
we need to go in that direction.
  Dealing with global warming, for instance, I think you might be 
surprised at some of the statements that have been made. The CEO of 
British Petroleum, Sir John Browne, who has provided remarkable 
leadership on some new high-tech solutions to global warming said: 
``There is a discernible human influence on the climate and a link 
between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in 
temperature.'' That is the CEO of British Petroleum.
  He is not alone. The CEO of Shell, Sir Philip Watts, on March 12, 
2003 said: ``We cannot wait to answer all questions on global warming 
beyond a reasonable doubt. There is compelling evidence that climate 
change is a threat.''
  You then have James Baker, former Secretary of State for the first 
President Bush, who said: ``When you have energy companies like Shell 
and British Petroleum saying there is a problem with excess carbon 
dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen. I think we need to go 
forward with some sort of gradual resourceful search for alternative 
sources.'' This is a gentleman who was intimately involved with the 
first Bush administration, who recognizes that many people in corporate 
America are seeing a need for a real visionary change.
  You see folks in the faith community who are now addressing the view 
that we have obligations to the Earth that are spiritual as much as 
aesthetic. Reverend Rich, and I am sorry if I mispronounce his name, 
Cizik, who is Vice President of National Affairs For the National 
Association of Evangelicals, said just this last month: ``There is a 
feeling that global warming, or climate change, is real and the result 
of human impacts that impact other humans.'' The association itself 
issued a statement that said: ``We affirm that God-given dominion is a 
sacred responsibility to steward the Earth, and not a license to abuse 
the creation of which we are part. We are not the owners of creation, 
but its stewards, summoned by God to `watch over and care for it,' '' 
citing Genesis.
  You are starting to see a parallel thinking of folks from the fossil 
fuel industry, from former members of the Bush administration, from 
James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, from a group of the 
neoconservatives, many of whom supported the war in Iraq, from members 
of the faith community that we have a constellation of challenges that 
we need to have a new approach to; that demands us to use the asset 
above our shoulders, namely our brains, rather than just the assets 
below our feet, namely our fossil fuels. This is a gift from the 
creator, and we need to use it.
  If I can turn for a moment about why we need to use this in regard to 
global warming, I would like to refer to a graph that is pretty 
unquestioned evidence of why we need to have a new energy on policy 
that will address global warming. You heard the comments from the Shell 
and British Petroleum CEOs, and they are doing some hard-headed 
thinking because we are facing some hard-headed facts.
  There are some uncertainties about global warming: the extent to 
which it will occur, how it will affect the specific climates of 
regional areas. There is much uncertainty. But there is also much 
absolute clear facts, and I want to go over a couple of those. As folks 
may know, global warming is caused by carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide 
works like a pane of glass: it traps heat, just like a greenhouse. 
Hence the term ``greenhouse gases.''
  Now, I actually had a scientist explain this to me a while ago. The 
way it works is that glass, like carbon dioxide, will allow ultraviolet 
radiation to come through it. When radiation comes from the sun, it is 
largely in ultraviolet ranges. And as you recall the spectrum of 
frequencies, this energy comes in at the ultraviolet frequencies. That 
can pass through glass. When it bounces back, when that energy is 
reflected back, it comes back at a different frequency. It comes back 
in infrared ranges. A different frequency. That cannot pass through 
glass, and it does not pass through a layer of carbon dioxide as much 
as it would in the absence of the carbon dioxide. So you have 
ultraviolet rays coming in, they bounce back as infrared rays, and they 
are trapped.
  And that is a good thing, because if we did not have a CO2 
layer, we would be on a barren planet. You could not exist here no 
matter how thick your down coat was. So we need that layer to some 
degree of heating gases. The problem is if you have that CO2 
layer increase in density.
  So has it? Well, the facts are very, very clear. This is a chart that 
shows a red line that goes back to the year 1000. It comes up in 100-
year increments, coming up to zero, which is today, showing our 
concentrations. On the left of the chart are the concentrations in 
parts per million that are measured. And these are absolutely 
unquestioned measurements. Scientists do an assessment of the parts per 
million of the molecules in the air, and it is a direct measurement. 
Nothing speculative about it. No hypothesis. Every scientist in the 
world will agree to this.
  And we know what the records are because we have air bubbles trapped 
in glaciers and ice cores that we have taken out thousands of feet down 
in the Antarctic, in Greenland, and other places. So we know what the 
CO2 layer was back in the year 1000, which is pretty 
amazing, with just as much as we know it today, because we had the air 
trapped a thousand years ago in these air bubbles. We knew it was 278, 
maybe 280 parts per million, and it was very stable for just under a 
thousand years. Then you start seeing it going up just over 100 years 
ago, which of course coincides with the Industrial Revolution and 
burning coal and oil and gas. And then it starts to come up at a fairly 
rapid rate over the last 100 years. And during the last 50 years, it 
has gone up approaching a vertical level of increase.
  So we are now up to, and I should have the number specifically, but 
in

[[Page H2137]]

the 370 parts per million range. There is no doubt about this. We can 
see that we have gone up a factor of at least a third over 
preindustrial times, and the scary thing about this chart is you will 
notice the rate of incline. It is almost vertical. So at the end of the 
century we will be at twice the levels of carbon dioxide as we were in 
preindustrial times. That is disturbing when you know carbon dioxide 
traps heat.
  We know it has a close relationship to Earth temperatures, as these 
blue lines mark Earth temperatures. And of course for about the last 
200 years, they are observed temperatures, and you can see they are 
going up with some deviation up and down during the last 150 years. 
Now, before that, they are not observed temperatures. They are worked 
out through a formulation of using a variety of mechanisms. If you go 
back for geological times, the temperature is gradient. It matches 
fairly closely this CO2 curve.
  So we know without a doubt that we are causing a spectacular increase 
in the CO2 levels of the planet. The planet has never seen 
this before, ever, as far as we can ascertain through looking at these 
old air bubbles. We are doing something to the planet that has never 
happened before, and we are the ones responsible for it. The question 
is what is this Congress going to do about it.
  Unfortunately, this Congress has done absolutely zero about this 
problem. It has wallowed in the fog of indifference and ambiguity and 
has refused to show any leadership whatsoever. And it is disturbing to 
me because, as you know, the consequences of this carbon dioxide is 
trapping energy in this Earth, and we are experiencing global warming 
already, and the vast majority, and I reiterate, the vast majority of 
the Earth's meteorologists and geophysicists believe that this is now 
causing and will continue to cause an increase in the general 
temperatures of the Earth.
  Now, there is some variety as to how much that is predicted to be; 
but all of them, even the lower estimates of 2 to 3 degrees can cause 
very significant climactic effects. The differences between us and the 
last ice age were just under 10 degrees, even just Fahrenheit. So we 
have some very significant issues to deal with with global warming.
  We have seen it already affecting our lives. Glacier National Park is 
predicted not to have glaciers in the next 50 to 70 years. When you 
want to take your grandkids there, you will say, This is where the 
glaciers used to be, Johnny. We are seeing melting tundra in Alaska. My 
son only had 3 days' work as a ski patrolman this year because there is 
no snow in the Cascade Mountains, a condition which is predicted to be 
much more frequent when this spike goes up higher. We need to deal with 
this problem.
  So we have suggested, and I will introduce shortly and have 
introduced an amendment this evening to the energy bill to adopt the 
substance of this new Apollo Energy Project. Because we believe we have 
to reduce our contributions of carbon dioxide to the Earth's 
atmosphere. And we can do that. The clearest most short-term things we 
need to do are to improve the efficiency of our cars, and we need to 
have a limitation on the carbon dioxide that we put into the 
atmosphere.
  Senators McCain and Lieberman have introduced a bill in the Senate, I 
and some of my Republican colleagues have introduced a bill here in the 
House which will set a cap on carbon dioxide emissions from the United 
States.

                              {time}  2045

  It is a cap that we know we can meet. In fact, it was absolutely 
amazing to me, the Department of Energy last week issued a report that 
concluded that the cap that we set could be met by the United States 
without any significant economic harm. This is issued by a gentleman 
who is actually appointed by George Bush.
  The Department of Energy has concluded that we are fully capable, 
using existing technology, of dealing with this issue by adopting a cap 
on the amount of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere, which will 
help spur some of these innovations.
  What will we do to achieve it? Our energy and power bill takes a 
broad-based approach. There is not one panacea to these challenges we 
have, but it does take the approach that we should be optimistic about 
it and we should recognize that we can have the same success in the new 
industries that will spring forth to deal with global warming to grow 
new jobs, as has happened in the software, biotech, and aeronautical 
industries.
  For example, number one, the United States needs to embark on a 
research and development project akin to the original project that got 
a man to the moon, the original Apollo Project, because we found when 
the Federal Government invests in basic research and development, 
amazing things can happen. We would invest significant sums in these 
emergent technologies, technologies that sometimes seem obscure but 
have tremendous capacity.
  There is a company in my district called Neah Power that is 
developing a fuel cell battery, which runs on ethanol or methanol. It 
will be four or five times as long-lived as a lithium battery with no 
emissions, completely safe, and will help to spur the development of 
fuel cells that we hope to become a significant part to the solution to 
this puzzle. They are small now, but tend to grow over time. A small 
company, but here is a place we can help, and we hope that this company 
is going to help the American military pack less wieldy, safer, and 
more effective batteries to fuel our communication systems.
  But the point is, we need to continue the research and development of 
the nature and scope that got us to the moon. Not every invention is 
going to work out and not every idea is going to come home, just like 
in the space program, but it is a worthwhile investment.
  Second, the Federal Government needs to use its procurement power to 
inspire these new industries. We need to have Uncle Sam order some of 
these new products to inspire these new products.
  Third, we need to use the power of the government to recognize 
success. I want to talk about some success and what the Federal 
Government ought to be doing. For instance, solar power.
  If I can share a success story in Virginia, this is a picture of a 
home just a few miles from here in Hillsboro, Virginia, built by Alden 
and Carol Hathaway. They built this home for $365,000, which is not 
that much more expensive for a home in this neck of the woods, and it 
is a ``net zero'' home, ``net zero'' meaning it does not use any energy 
from the electrical grid. But it is comfortable, it is nice looking, it 
is warm, and it is nonpolluting. They did this by using existing 
technologies.
  They used an integrated solar cell built right into the roof of their 
home, which creates electrical current. They used an in-ground heat 
pump which is tremendously efficient. They used very high insulation 
values in the walls and windows, and some passive solar in how they 
aligned their home; and their home has a net energy consumption of 
zero.
  That does not mean it is never using juice off the grid. At times 
there is electricity coming into their home, but other times they are 
generating more from the sun and they are feeding it back into the grid 
so the net is zero. They did this on a fairly economical basis.
  I point this out for the reason I want to show success today. This is 
not just tomorrow's sort of futuristic world from the Jetsons, if 
anybody is as old as I am and remembers George Jetson. This is today's 
technology.
  An amendment that I believe will be in the bill tomorrow or Wednesday 
does allow and call for the Federal Government to start a program to 
equip Federal buildings with solar cell technology. The reason that 
this makes sense, solar cell technology is much more economical. The 
more you buy, the price of solar cells comes down dramatically. Every 
time we increase the number of solar cells we buy by a factor of 10, 
the prices come down 20 percent. It is still more expensive than buying 
electricity from a gas turbine, but it has its place.
  We believe if we increase dramatically the number of units, we will 
continue to see a decline of that cost curve so we will be able to 
enjoy what the Hathaways are enjoying tonight in Virginia.
  Now, we have to do some things to get that done.
  I am a supporter of a bill called the Net Metering bill, which will 
require

[[Page H2138]]

utilities to buy back your power from you so your meter runs backwards 
when you feed electricity back into the grid. Unfortunately, that will 
not be in the bill Wednesday. It is one of those long-term things that 
we have to do.
  Third, we have to give incentives to Americans to help them make 
these choices. For some of these technologies that are still just a 
little bit above market base, we need to increase the amount of a tax 
break we give to Americans who drive fuel-efficient cars. We need to do 
the same thing for the manufacturers of fuel-efficient vehicles. For 
the retooling investments, we need to give an assist to our domestic 
auto industry when they do the retooling that they need to do for fuel-
efficient cars.
  We need to have better tax breaks when you buy an energy-efficient 
home, and a way to get a better mortgage lending rate for energy-
efficient homes. We need to use all of these multiple tax levers to 
help Americans when they take that step up to better fuel- and energy-
efficient appliances. Unfortunately, that is not in the bill that we 
will have Wednesday.
  Instead of helping Americans move forward to these new technologies, 
technologies that we have today, fuel-efficient cars we have today, the 
energy bill we will consider Wednesday will go backwards to give the 
subsidies to these old industries that started to reach fruition in the 
late 1800s. That is most unfortunate.
  Fourth, we need to do some things on the regulatory side, one of 
which is the CO2 cap that I talked about. Another is the 
CAFE standard to improve the auto efficiency of our vehicles. Those are 
all measures that, together, could have a significant impact. We have 
already seen some successes, such as what we have seen in the 
Hathaways' home.
  So let me talk, if I can, about the job creation aspect of this. We 
have a real problem with manufacturing industry job loss in this 
country. Since 2001, we have lost 2.8 million family-wage manufacturing 
jobs. We have had a significant number of losses in a host of 
industries, but now we have an opportunity. This might be one of the 
greatest job creation opportunities that the country has right now.
  We know, as the Creator makes little green apples, jobs are going to 
be created by the millions in the new industries that, by necessity, 
are going to be built to deal with the shortage of oil, to deal with 
global warming. And the shortage of oil, folks ought to read this book 
about the peak of oil production that is now on the market. It will 
make you very concerned about your future oil prices because it 
suggests that our oil production globally has plateaued and will go 
down in a decade or so, together with China having a demand that is 
astronomical. China will be equivalent to America's demand for autos in 
the next decade and a half. We have to find some alternative mechanisms 
of energy, both in efficiency and new systems.

  Somebody is going to get jobs doing this, and we think it ought to be 
Americans. We do not think we should give these jobs away to our 
friends in Japan, or give the wind turbine jobs to Denmark. We think 
those jobs ought to be here.
  And a very conservative estimate of our new Apollo Project, done by 
an economist in Waco, Texas, concluded that our program would create 
3.3 million good-paying American jobs in the next 5 years. That is a 
significant step in the short term to help rebuild our manufacturing 
base. It would increase $1.4 trillion in new gross domestic product, 
add $953 billion in personal income. This is an assessment done by a 
reputable economist from Texas.
  By the way, Texas has done some good things in wind energy. Wind 
energy is having some spectacular success, growing at 30 percent a 
year. In southeastern Washington, in my district, we have the largest 
wind plant farm in the United States. And we have five new wind farms 
under construction in the State of Washington.
  The other interesting thing about energy efficiency is, it creates 
more jobs than the fossil fuel-based industries. It creates 21.5 jobs 
per $1 million invested compared to 11.5 for natural gas generation.
  This is a job-creating technological solution to an old, dinosaur-
based fossil fuel-based economy. This is our destiny as Americans to 
fulfill it. We are the inveterate tinkerers. We are the best people at 
inventing solutions technologically to problems of any people in human 
history. This is now our moment when the U.S. Congress ought to be 
seizing this opportunity, just like Kennedy suggested we do in 1961, 
and bring those jobs and that bright light of creativity to our 
country.
  The environment demands it. The glaciers and national parks demand 
it. Our children, who should not be living under slavery to Middle 
Eastern oil, demand it. We should not have to worry about Middle 
Eastern politics again when we break our addiction to Middle Eastern 
oil. We should not be wrapped around the axle of the Saudi Arabian 
royal house and whatever difficulties they have. We are slaves to 
whatever is going on in Saudi Arabia, and it is not a place that we 
deserve to be.
  Lastly, we ought to use our technological prowess to make sure we are 
the number one job creator in the world for these emerging industries. 
That is our destiny and that is why I will be joining some of my 
colleagues in introducing the new Apollo Energy Project in the next 
week or so. We know at some time it is going to get done, maybe not 
this week, but the stars are aligning and those who share my view, I 
welcome you to share you views with your Member of the U.S. Congress.
  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to add my voice to those who 
would commemorate Earth Day 2005 by pledging our efforts to ensure that 
our childrens children may enjoy the same Earth we celebrate today.
  And it is those children who will pay the price if we do not.
  Children are usually at greatest risk of suffering environment-
related health problems, with race and poverty playing a 
disproportionate role, especially minority children from families 
living below the poverty line, according to EPA reports.
  Concern that minority populations and low-income populations bear a 
disproportionate amount of those adverse health and environmental 
effects led President Clinton to issue Executive Order 12898 in 1994, 
in order to focus Federal agency attention on these issues, leading to 
the establishment of the office of Environmental Justice Strategy at 
the EPA.
  The EPA defines Environmental Justice as the ``fair treatment for 
people of all races, cultures, and incomes, regarding the development 
of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.''
  This has long been a concern of the environmental community, 
especially among minority and low-income communities who have come 
together to organize and fight for equal protection under the law.
  The environmental justice movement really got its start in Warren 
County, North Carolina where a PCB landfill ignited protests and 
resulted in more than 500 arrests. These protests prompted a U.S. 
General Accounting Office study, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills 
and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding 
Communities, which found that three out of four of the off-site, 
commercial hazardous waste landfills in Region 4 (comprising eight 
States in the South) happened to be located in predominantly African-
American communities, although African-Americans made up only 20 
percent of the region's population. More important, the protesters put 
``environmental racism'' on the map.
  Since that time, attention to the impact of environmental pollution 
on particular segments of our society has been steadily growing in the 
form of the Environmental Justice Movement. This movement contends that 
poor and minority populations are burdened with more than their share 
of toxic waste, pesticide runoff and other hazardous byproducts of our 
modern economic life.
  The EPA's Office of Environmental Justice Strategy was created to 
address these issues, but thus far has done little to improve the 
situation for minority and low-income communities.
  In fact, an EPA Evaluation Report released last year found that 10 
years after its issuance, the EPA ``has not fully implemented Executive 
Order 12898 nor consistently integrated environmental justice into its 
day-to-day operations. EPA has not identified minority and low-income, 
nor identified populations addressed in the Executive Order, and has 
neither defined nor developed criteria for determining 
disproportionately impacted.'' It goes on to say that when the Agency 
restated its commitment to environmental justice in 2001, they did not 
emphasize minority and low-income populations, which was the intent of 
the Executive Order.
  The report found that even after 10 years after its implementation, 
the EPA had not developed ``a clear vision or a comprehensive

[[Page H2139]]

strategic plan, and has not established values, goals, expectations, 
and performance measurements.''
  We must continue to bring attention to the documented environmental 
health disparities suffered by low-income and minority communities 
throughout the country, raising awareness so that together we might 
seek solutions. I call upon the Office of Environmental Justice 
Strategy to make this issue a priority as it was designed to do more 
than 10 years ago.
  This is a very real threat for my constituents. The EPA has announced 
that the entire State of New Jersey is officially designated as out of 
compliance with the agency's health-based standard for ozone. The 
entire State is out of attainment for smog, and all counties that are 
monitored for soot levels are also out of attainment.
  Studies have shown that New Jersey's air pollution levels cause 2,000 
premature deaths every year. At this rate, pollution ranks as the 3rd 
most serious public health threat in my State. Only smoking and obesity 
kill more New Jerseyans each year.
  In addition, child asthma rates are on the rise--especially in our 
cities--and the threat of mercury pollution puts all of us at risk, but 
most especially infants, children, and pregnant women.
  The Bush Administration's efforts to weaken protections established 
under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts have compromised the long 
fought-for protections we have won since the Inaugural Earth Day back 
in 1970. We must stand firm in our objections to environmental policy 
that favors industry at the expense of nature and public health, and we 
must oppose irresponsible legislation, such as Clear Skies, that claim 
to protect the environment even while it is attempting to degrade it.
  As we celebrate Earth Day, I hope that all of us can pledge to do 
more than just talk about these issues and to commit to act in support 
of those things which we speak about so passionately today. We must 
dedicate ourselves to full enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water 
Acts. We must rid our lakes, rivers, and streams of dangerous mercury 
pollution to ensure the safety of all Americans. We must oppose any 
more delays and restore full funding to the clean-up of toxic waste 
sites that threaten the health and safety of our Nations children. We 
must take seriously the threat of pollution to public health and act to 
alleviate the suffering of the urban minority and low-income 
populations, as well as the 5 million American children who now suffer 
from asthma.
  These are big goals, but the stakes could not be higher. We must 
protect our precious natural resources and the health and safety of all 
Americans, especially urban, minority, and low-income populations who 
bear the brunt of our failure to do so.

                          ____________________