[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 75 (Wednesday, June 8, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H4290-H4294]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        ANNOUNCING INTRODUCTION OF THE NEW APOLLO ENERGY PROJECT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mack). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) 
is recognized for half of the remaining time until midnight.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight both to talk 
about a serious challenge of our country and some very optimistic news 
in that challenge. The challenge is to adopt an energy policy that will 
really be up to the problems we today face; and the optimistic news is 
that tomorrow with 15 of my colleagues, I will introduce the New Apollo 
Energy Project. The New Apollo Energy Project is a project that will 
really create a vision for this country's energy future that is up to 
the technological prowess of this country, that recognizes our can-do 
spirit, that recognizes the three challenges that I will talk about 
tonight, and will step up to the plate and solve those challenges. And 
it is about time for the New Apollo Energy Project because, indeed, we 
have challenges.
  The New Apollo Energy Project of the bill we will introduce tomorrow 
will face three distinct challenges that we have in this country. It 
will face them head-on, and it will solve them. The first challenge 
that we face is somewhat related to the problems in the Mideast, the 
oil-producing region of the world that my colleagues were just talking 
about for the last hour. We know on a bipartisan basis that it is 
unhealthy for our personal national security; it is unhealthy for our 
ability to advance the cause of democracy, to be addicted to oil from 
the Mideast. It is unhealthy for any party who is in control of the 
White House. It is unhealthy for us across this country to have to make 
judgments about our foreign policy based on the politics, for instance, 
of the Saudi royal house.
  Our addiction to Middle Eastern oil has cost this country dearly, and 
we must break that addiction. As I will talk about later, there is one 
way to do it and that is to adopt new technological fixes to wean 
ourselves off of oil so that this country can experience a new burst of 
democracy and spread it around the world, not afflicted and shackled to 
this pernicious addiction to Middle Eastern oil. The New Apollo Energy 
Project, I am happy to say, we will introduce it tomorrow, and it will 
take, I believe, the strongest, boldest, most ambitious step that this 
Congress has seen to try to deal with that problem.
  The second problem: we are losing manufacturing jobs in this country 
by the thousands. We had a 14 percent reduction in manufacturing just 
in the last several years, since this last President took office. That 
is unconscionable. We need to adopt a new high-tech, new energy vision 
in this country that will make sure that the jobs associated with the 
efficient use of energy and the new production of energy are grown here 
in the United States. It is a sad commentary that the most fuel-
efficient cars now are being built in Japan. The jobs of the future, 
building fuel-efficient cars, need to be in the United States of 
America. Those jobs need to be here.

                              {time}  2230

  Why are the jobs associated with the production of wind turbine 
technology which is actually the fastest-growing energy source in the 
United States, why are those jobs going to Denmark? Those jobs ought to 
be here. Why are the jobs associated with the solar cell industry going 
to Germany? Those jobs need to be in the United States.
  The New Apollo Energy Project will seize on the basic can-do spirit 
of America to grow our homegrown technologies to bring those high-tech 
jobs and manufacturing jobs and construction jobs. We need to lay a lot 
of steel and copper to wire this country for the new sources of 
technologies that we need. Those jobs need to be in the United States 
of America. As I will talk about in a little more detail, the New 
Apollo Energy project will address that problem by growing over 3 
million jobs in the next 6 years in this country associated with these 
new energy resources and efficiency systems.
  So, first, we have a security concern. Second, we have a jobs 
concern. And the third concern is a global one, and that is the 
challenge of global warming. As we know from the National Academy of 
Sciences today, which came out with another report, another nail in the 
coffin of those who urged to take no action based on global warming, it 
is a fact. Arguing it would be like arguing gravity at this point. 
There are uncertainties of how significant it will be, but we need to 
step up to the plate and address global warming, and the New Apollo 
Energy Project is the most ambitious bill that has ever been introduced 
in this House to deal with that issue in ways that we will address.
  So this New Apollo Energy Project will address three problems: A 
security problem associated with our addiction to Middle Eastern oil; a 
jobs problem associated with the loss of jobs going overseas due to 
other countries being advanced and getting ahead of us in this game; 
and, third, the need for our Nation to stop global warming. Rarely do 
we have a trifecta in one bill that will address three separate issues. 
But this needs to be done.
  The reason we define our bill as the New Apollo Energy Project is it 
draws some inspiration from John Kennedy, who stood behind me here May 
9, 1961, and said that America was going to put a man on the Moon in 10 
years and bring him back safely. When he challenged America to do that, 
it was a very audacious, bold challenge. We had not even invented Tang 
yet. Rockets were blowing up on the launch pad. Many thought Kennedy 
had really engaged in a hallucinatory plan. But Kennedy recognized 
something that we should now recognize, which is that Americans, when 
they are challenged to invent new responses to problems we have, 
Americans come through.
  In my district, we understand the power of innovation. Boeing 
Company, I represent the area north of Seattle,

[[Page H4291]]

where we are going to build the most fuel-efficient jet in the world, 
the Boeing 787. It is going to have 20 percent more fuel efficiency. It 
is going to be one of the most comfortable jets ever. I am looking 
forward to riding in it. That is the power of innovation.
  My district includes the Microsoft campus. We understand the power of 
innovation. America has the greatest innovators the world has ever 
seen, and now it is time to harken back to the Kennedy spirit of 
putting a man on the Moon, to say we need to adopt a new energy policy 
that is equally ambitious and equally optimistic, and this is a very 
optimistic plan.
  If I can, I would like to say that we have good news, too. We are 
developing a more bipartisan, I think, and across the ideological 
spectrum viewpoint that we have to deal with these issues: security, 
jobs, and global climate change.
  I want to address the security issue. I happen to be a Democrat, but 
this is not just a Democratic issue. I am very interested in a letter 
sent to President George Bush on May 24, 2005, signed by a whole host 
of past Cabinet officers in Republican administrations and Democratic 
administrations, people who have been involved in the security 
challenges of the United States: Robert McFarland; James Woolsey, 
former official in the Bush and Clinton administrations, former chief 
of the CIA; C. Boyden Gray, former chief of the Agency in the Bush 
administration; Admiral William Crowe, U.S. Navy retired; Honorable 
David Oliver, former Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. A 
whole score of folks involved in the defense of the security of this 
Nation.
  Basically, their message to President Bush was simple, that we have 
to develop alternatives to oil and that our addiction to oil presents a 
security risk to the United States. They said very pointedly, I 
thought, that with only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves but 25 
percent of the current world consumption, the United States cannot, 
cannot, eliminate its need for its imports through increased domestic 
production alone. They understand that the dinosaurs went to die 
somewhere else, mostly in the Mid East, and we need to develop 
alternatives to oil.
  They went on to urge the President to adopt improved efficiencies and 
rapid deployment and development of advanced biomass, alcohol, and 
other available petroleum alternatives. They said that action to 
prepare for the day that when we need to wean ourselves from oil will 
pay dividends for our national security, our international 
competitiveness, and our future prosperity.
  They made some really specific proposals, these security experts. 
They said that we should make it a national top security priority to 
significantly reduce our consumption of foreign oil through improved 
efficiency and the rapid substitution of advanced biomass, alcohol, and 
other available alternative fuels; and this effort should be funded at 
a level proportionate with other priorities for the defense our Nation. 
They look at this as a defense issue, as does our New Apollo Energy 
Project. They said the Federal Government should consider mandating 
substantial incorporation of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and flexible 
fuel vehicles into Federal, State, municipal, and other government 
fleets.
  The New Apollo Energy Project that we will introduce tomorrow does 
these things and much more because it recognizes the security threat to 
the United States that these security officials recognize and it takes 
action today.

  Now I would like to, if I can, talk about the threat of global 
warming. That is one of the reasons we need to take action associated 
with the New Apollo Energy Project. There are some very interesting 
things that happened this week on the front of new energy. The National 
Academy of Sciences essentially yesterday came out with a report which 
concluded, as have the International Panel of Sciences previously 
studying this effort, that the earth is warming. A substantial portion 
of that is caused by human activity, that warming will occur even if we 
stop today because the carbon dioxide that causes global warming stays 
in the atmosphere for decades, and called for action now, not 10 years 
from now, to deal with this threat. This is the National Academy of 
Sciences, one of the most nonpartisan, prestigious groups in America. 
It joined other academies across the world actually yesterday in 
issuing this manifesto.
  The reason they are saying that is quite clear. Global warming is a 
well-understood principle. Energy light, an ultraviolet spectrum can 
come through the atmosphere. When it bounces back, it is in the 
infrared spectrum. Unfortunately, in part, carbon dioxide traps 
infrared energy and does not allow it to radiate back to space.
  Actually, it is a wonderful thing. If it was not for this aspect, we 
would have a frozen planet on our hands. But the fact of the matter is 
too much carbon dioxide causes global warming. We know that is 
happening. As the Academy of Sciences said today, we know it is 
happening through melting glaciers, changes in biological standards up 
and down the coastline, melting tundra in the Arctic, the 
disappearance. Glacier National Park will not have glaciers in 75 years 
at this rate due to global warming.
  So how do we know this is occurring? If I can refer to a couple of 
charts here, we see with our own eyes some changes, and I will get to 
the theory of why this is happening. But we have seen with our own eyes 
some very substantial changes in our world as a result of global 
warming already.
  This is a picture of the ice sheet in the Antarctic. And if I can 
refer to the glacier, it is the Pine Island Glacier as it comes down 
into the sea. It shows pictures on September 16, 2000; November 4, 
2001; November 12, 2001. It shows a breakup of the ice coming down into 
the Antarctic. This piece of ice here is roughly 26 miles long and 11 
miles wide. That is a substantial piece of the Antarctic breaking off, 
and this phenomenon we have now seen in substantial places across the 
Antarctic.
  Now, obviously, one piece of ice does not the puzzle make, but what 
we are seeing now is these things with our own eyes. This is not a 
hypothetical issue.
  If one travels to the Glacier National Park, they may say, where did 
the glaciers go? They melted. If they travel to Alaska and they see 
some buckled housing, it is because the tundra is melting. If one goes 
to Denali National Park and ask why trees have moved up, it is because 
the weather is getting warmer. We see this with our own eyes. The 
reason this has happened is because of carbon dioxide.
  I actually stumbled across a pretty amazing chart today, disturbing 
and amazing. What this chart shows is the carbon dioxide and 
temperature levels going back from today, which starts here at zero, 
going backwards 400,000 years. So, basically, this chart shows carbon 
dioxide and temperature levels over the last 400,000 years.
  Scientists know this because they find trapped particles of air, air 
bubbles essentially in glacier ice going back during that period; and 
they can analyze the air to determine both the carbon dioxide in these 
bubbles when they were trapped 400,000 years ago and the temperature by 
looking at the isotopes of oxygen and the concentration of trace 
materials. So we have a very good unarguable, all the scientists agree 
on this, record of what the earth has done.
  There are three salient things from this record.
  Number one, we see that there is a very close correlation between 
deviations in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and global 
temperatures. The CO2 levels as shown in the red line, we 
will see deviations over the last 400,000 years up and down. These are 
parts per million from about 180 at the bottom to 380 at the top of 
this yellow section.
  So what we see is carbon dioxide levels have gone up and down, in 
some cycles, over the last 400,000 years. But it is pretty interesting 
because the temperatures, if the Members notice the blue line, pretty 
much follow in a regular path the red line. And what we see is that 
temperatures have followed changes in carbon dioxide levels. It is a 
very close correlation, as we are seeing now. Because what we are 
seeing now is an explosion of carbon dioxide. It is sort of human-
caused volcanic of carbon dioxide which is sending CO2 
levels through the roof.
  The second thing that was interesting in this chart is that when we 
come to today, which is this spot right here on this graph, this red 
line shows CO2 levels, and it shows the CO2 
levels

[[Page H4292]]

that are expected by the scientists as a result of our burning fossil 
fuels, putting CO2 into the atmosphere. And what it shows is 
today we are at about 375 parts per million. For every million 
molecules, there are about 375 molecules of carbon dioxide in the 
atmosphere. That is higher today than at any time in the last 400,000 
years on earth. Anytime in the last 400,000 years, we have more 
CO2 in the atmosphere than we have ever had in the last 
400,000 years, and it is getting hotter rapidly. Ten of the last 
hottest years we have had in the last decade. Temperatures are rising.
  But what is disturbing is that the scientists are projecting 
CO2 levels to continue to go up essentially on a vertical 
line looked at geological time. By 2050, we are expected to have 550 
parts per million. Our CO2 will be up here, almost twice the 
highest level ever in the last 400,000 years of unrecorded history. 
That is under a business as usual if things go well.
  Now, there is uncertainty in this. We do not know exactly what is 
going to happen. If things go well, the optimistic assumption, if we do 
business as usual, is by 2050, my children's lifetime, we will have 550 
parts per million, almost double the carbon dioxide we had then. By 
2100, my grandkids' lifetime, we will have 980 parts per million, 
almost three times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than has 
ever been in global history as far as we can tell. It is disturbing 
when we see what has happened already in our world to think of this 
curve exploding in this nature.

                              {time}  2245

  That is why the National Academy of Sciences is calling for action 
today.
  That is the good news. We have some scientists who want us to act. 
The bad news is the Bush administration refuses to do so. In fact, we 
read in today's New York Times that the chief of staff of the 
Department of Environmental Quality for the administration actually 
cooked the books and edited reports to change them to make it look like 
this is not such a big deal. That is very disturbing when you look at 
the real science that the National Academy of Sciences has projected.
  Well, those are the challenges we have. The fact of the matter is, we 
can take action on this. We can take action now, starting tomorrow with 
the New Apollo Energy Project.
  Basically, the New Apollo Energy Project is going to take a multiple 
approach to this. It recognizes that there is no silver bullet to this 
issue. There are many things that we all need to do and industry needs 
to help in to solve these multiple energy policies.
  But one thing it does not do, it does not do like the energy bill did 
that passed this House, that gave 94 percent of all the taxpayer 
dollars to the oil and gas industry, one of the largest obscene 
subsidies, using taxpayer money to subsidize one of the wealthiest 
industries in American history already. It does not do that. It does 
not take the money out of taxpayer dollars and give it to the likes of 
Exxon, who last quarter had $7.5 billion profits. Why do they need 
subsidies when fuel is at $55 a barrel already? It does not do that. It 
uses a host of approaches to deal with this issue.
  Now, one of the first things it does is it does what you would do if 
you want to reduce your energy consumption. The first thing is we stop 
wasting energy. The best way to create energy is not to waste it, not 
to throw it away. Unfortunately, because of some industrial policies 
that have not used efficiency, we are not using our heads when it comes 
to being efficient in use of energy. Let me show you one of the most 
discouraging things when you look at our national policy of some years.
  This is a chart of the fuel economy, fleet fuel economy, both truck 
and car, from 1975 to 2005. I think it is one of the most troublesome 
graphs I have seen, because it shows a real failure by this U.S. 
Congress and, frankly, by some folks in deciding what cars and trucks 
to make for us.
  What it shows is in 1975, this middle line basically is the average 
fuel mileage that a combination of our cars and trucks got. In 1975 we 
were getting a combination of about 14 miles per gallon, back in 1975. 
In 1975 we made a conscious decision to demand that our auto industry 
produce more fuel efficient vehicles, and they did. They were supremely 
successful in responding to that congressional mandate.
  They almost, well, not doubled, but went up at least 65 percent, up 
to about 1984, when our fuel economy got up to about 22 miles per 
gallon combined. So we went from about 14 miles a gallon to 22 miles a 
gallon in less than a decade. A pretty good achievement, because we put 
our minds to it. We used our design capability, we advanced safer, 
roomier, more comfortable, more fuel efficient cars, and we did it 
because we used our brains. People designed and built cars that did 
that because we demanded through the U.S. Congress that that happen 
through something we called the corporate average fuel economy 
standards.
  Then in 1985 the government basically fell off the wagon. They 
stopped making any more requests for further fuel efficiency, and our 
fuel efficiency since that time has actually gone down since 1985. So 
today the industry as a group provides us vehicles that get less gas 
mileage than our vehicles did in 1985.
  Now, think about that. Since 1985 we have invented the entire 
Internet, we have perfected space travel, we have mapped the human 
genome, we have got cell phones for our kids coming out our ears, but 
the cars we drive get less fuel mileage than they did in 1985. That is 
a failure, and we need to do something about that.
  We need to put our heads together, and the New Apollo Energy Project 
in part takes a small step. It does not specifically increase the 
standards, but it suggests we do research, we do research in finding 
how to have more fuel efficient cars in a whole host of ways, just like 
these national security experts suggested that we do.
  It was pointed out to me by the architect of this plan, if we had 
simply continued this rate of improvement to 2005, if we had not 
stopped in 1985, we would be free of imported oil today from Saudi 
Arabia. Think how that would be a better situation.
  So the first thing we do is we do not waste fuel. We do not waste 
energy in our buildings, and our new Apollo Energy Project has new 
building research and standards to try to encourage industry to provide 
us more fuel efficient buildings, one of which is to have the U.S. 
Government adopt more advanced standards for building Federal 
buildings. That is just a start.
  States are doing this around the country. My State, the State of 
Washington, just adopted the most progressive efficiency standard for 
public buildings, and we ought to do the same. And we do this in the 
New Apollo Energy Project so we do not waste.
  We do this in a variety of ways. We give consumers incentives. We 
give advanced tax breaks. If you buy a fuel efficient car, we give a 
tax break, unlike the House bill that passed here a few weeks ago. It 
gives producers incentives.
  We want to save the domestic auto industry in the United States. It 
is in deep, deep trouble and we want to save it. There are two ways. 
Number one, we give it substantial assistance to get back on its feet 
through use of in some of its retooling expenditures and its tax 
treatment, and in a way I hope we will also assume some of the health 
care costs ultimately, the legacy costs of our domestic auto industry.
  But that is not all we have to do to save the domestic auto industry. 
We also have to grab back the market share we are losing to the 
Japanese and soon the Chinese in fuel efficient cars. We take steps in 
that direction.
  Third, we take some regulatory approaches. We realize there are 
certain things we simply have to do to get this genie back in the 
bottle. One of the things we have to do is limit the amount of carbon 
dioxide we are putting into the atmosphere. We do that by incorporating 
the standards over in the Senate. Senators McCain and Lieberman are 
leading an effort to establish a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide 
that goes into the air. We do this now for nitrogen and for sulfur. It 
is time to do it for carbon dioxide. We have learned that that gas, 
that toxic material, that pollutant, could cause us more problems than 
all of these put together.
  We have been very effective. This is one of the real success stories 
in what we have done to clean up our air. We have cleaned it up of 
nitrogen, for sulfur to a significant degree. If the administration 
does not roll back our

[[Page H4293]]

mercury standards we hope to increase our safety for our kids from 
mercury. But we have not done it for carbon dioxide. That is the 
granddaddy of it all when it comes to changing our entire climatic 
system. So we need to add that pollutant to the list we control.
  We know this works. We do a cap and trade system and we force 
polluting industries to bid, if you will, so we have the most efficient 
way to bring efficiencies to our production and manufacturing systems. 
Then we use the money generated from that auction to pay for the 
research and application of these fuel efficiency standards.

  By the way, this is one of the great virtues of the New Apollo Energy 
Project. It is paid for. We have a $600 billion in real terms deficit, 
and we need to pay for things, and this is paid for.
  We have provided a mechanism for paying for every penny of 
expenditures in the New Apollo Energy Project through two means: Number 
one, this auction of permits to put carbon dioxide in the air, which 
will generate billions of dollars; and, secondly, by closing a couple 
of corporate tax loopholes that allow corporations to move jobs 
offshore and then get tax breaks for doing that. On a bipartisan basis 
we ought to close some of those. So we pay for this bill, it is 
fiscally responsible, and I think that is important to do.
  Now, why do we have optimism this is going to work? Well, for one 
reason, it is working. Let me tell you about some successes we are 
having in that regard.
  First off, it should be noted this is not pie-in-the-sky by any 
means. I will just show you a picture and note a couple successes. This 
is a picture of the Hathaways' home in Loudoun County, Virginia. They 
built this home for about $365,000, which is in the realm of building 
costs here, not too different from houses of this nature.
  When they built this home, they wanted to incorporate state-of-the-
art technologies to try to reduce their energy usage. They built a home 
that did just that. They built a home that incorporates solar cell 
technology in the roof, some passive solar heating in the way they 
designed the home and oriented it, an in-ground heat pump, which is 
extremely efficient. This in-ground heat pump is just amazingly 
efficient. They used additional insulation and a few other whiz-bang 
items to try to reduce their energy consumption.
  What they did is they produced, and I cannot recall the exact square 
footage, but you can see it is a pretty good-sized home, it looks nice, 
they produced a home that is attractive, comfortable and uses zero net 
energy off the grid, because they produce energy.
  First off, they use it efficiently, and they produce energy through 
their solar roof system and their net consumption is zero. The way they 
can make it zero is while they are producing more energy than they are 
using, which happens frequently, they are feeding energy back into the 
grid, so their meter on the side of the home runs backwards a good part 
of the time when they sell back to the energy utility the energy they 
are generating. When you net the two out, they have a zero consumption. 
This is today, within about 60 miles of where I am standing, and it is 
working today.
  But it is not just solar and those techniques. The good news is that 
our investments in these technologies over the last several decades are 
paying off big time, as they say. If you look at all of these new 
technologies, you find a very consistent dynamic, and that dynamic is 
that the more we build, the cheaper it becomes.
  Right now in wind power we are building the largest wind turbine farm 
in North America in the southeast corner of Washington State. Some 
farmers are going to do pretty well in the leases associated with these 
wind farms.
  These wind farms 20 years ago would have been very expensive. They 
started about 20 years ago and the electricity produced from them was 
much more expensive than gas or coal. As we developed the technology 
and produced more turbines, the cost has come down. Now in Washington 
State the cost of wind power is just about market-based with the cost 
of alternative fuel of gas turbines that you would have to produce to 
provide an alternative. In fact, I just saw some plans, one of our 
utilities is going to have 5 percent in the next decade of their energy 
produced through wind.
  This is a real functioning system. If you look at what has happened 
at the cost, in 1980, the cost was about 35 cents per kilowatt hour. 
That has come down to by 2000 to about 3, 4, 5 cents, depending where 
you are, this incredible reduction just in the last two decades. That a 
combination of new technology and the scales of production as you ramp 
up.
  What we find as we start to implement these things is they become 
much less costly. That is why a lot of people who sort have been 
naysayers of new technology say it will cost too much. Of course it 
will. The first time you build something it usually costs quite a bit. 
Look at our defense array. Guess how much the first laser beam we built 
cost for the Defense Department?
  The same thing in solar cell. PV is photovoltaic. We see it cost 
about 100 cents per kilowatt hour in 1980. That has come down to 21-23 
cents in the year 2000, and that curve is going to continue.
  The same for biomass, which we are very excited about. We have a 
plant going in we hope in Monroe, Washington, shortly for biomass.
  I met about a month ago with farmers in Eastern Washington who want 
to start an industry around mustard and grape seed to develop oils to 
fuel our cars and heat our homes. You look at biomass, 1980 again about 
12 cents per kilowatt hour. That is down to about 7 cents now, and that 
line is projected to continue down. The same with geothermal and the 
same with solar thermal, basically just heating water on top of our 
roofs, which is very efficient as well.

                              {time}  2300

  So the good news is that as we focus on these energy systems they 
become much more efficient and thereby less expensive. So this is one 
reason that we have a sense of optimism in that regard.
  Now I want to come back to, if I can just for a moment, to the 
certainty both of the reasons for optimism and the certainty for the 
need for action here. We know that we are the best innovators in the 
world, and we know we are people of science. And the science has shown 
that science works, and that is why these costs are coming down. The 
science has also shown the necessity for action.
  I do want to refer to this report that was just issued by the 
National Academies of Science yesterday. It says that there is now 
strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The 
evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air 
temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such 
as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and 
changes to many physical and biological systems.
  Here is a pivotal statement. It is likely that most of the warming in 
recent decades can be attributed to human activities. This warming has 
already led to changes in the earth's climate. The scientific 
understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify 
nations taking prompt action. Even if greenhouse gas emissions were 
stabilized instantly at today's levels, the climate would still 
continue to change and adapt to the increased emission of recent 
decades.
  It went on to talk about the negative ramifications of climate 
change, increases in the frequency and severity of weather events such 
as heat waves and heavy rainfall. Increasing temperatures could lead to 
large-scale effects such as melting of large ice sheets, a major impact 
on low-lying regions in the world. At the level that the sea is 
predicted to rise, which is .1 to .9 meters, in Bangladesh alone 6 
million people would be at risk for flooding.
  Science tells us that we need to act, and there is no excuse, no 
excuse whatsoever for this administration to dig in its heels and 
refuse to act.
  The President, it is interesting, because I have heard him say both 
publicly and to me personally that he realizes that this is an issue 
that he has to address. Yet he has refused to lift a finger to limit 
carbon dioxide emissions. He has refused to lift a finger to address 
the rest of the world, to try to engage the rest of the world in 
dealing with this issue. He has refused to lift a

[[Page H4294]]

finger to stop this Chamber from adopting an oil-soaked policy that 
might make former friends in the oil and gas industry rich but will 
impoverish the taxpayer directly through their taxes and our 
grandchildren through its climate.
  This is inexcusable. Anyone with any respect, any decent shred of 
respect for the whole nature of scientific inquiry who willfully blinds 
themselves to this great threat, to this beautiful little blue globe we 
live on, cannot be said to be acting as a steward of the Creator's 
Earth. We are stewards of this Earth for future generations. It is our 
primary reason for living, and this administration is woefully 
inadequate in its discharge of that responsibility.
  That is why I am pleased that myself and others tomorrow will 
introduce a bill that will get this great Nation engaged in using its 
talents to solve this problem. Because a country that did put a man on 
the Moon, who responded to John F. Kennedy's challenge in the 1960s, is 
equally able to respond to the challenge of energies in this century 
and much more so. Because we have seen, we have witnessed firsthand the 
incredible powers of this country when we challenge ourselves to use 
our technological prowess to invent our way out of the pickle which we 
are in now.
  So I am happy that we are going to use not just one technology here, 
and it is not just solar and it is not just wind. We should do 
research, and my bill will call for research, in clean coal technology. 
If we can find a way to burn coal and not put carbon dioxide in the 
air, we should do so.
  There are significant challenges in that: Where we will store the 
carbon dioxide if we cannot separate it from the gas stream? Those are 
big challenges, but we need to do the research, and we should not be 
blinded from those potential solutions as well.
  It has to do with simple things like using management of our 
transportation systems to try to reduce our costs. It is by maximizing 
some of our public transportation systems. It is like some of even our 
zoning requirements to try to reduce the number of miles we have to 
drive to get to work. And, fortunately, with the Internet explosion, we 
are finding ways to reduce some of those, some of those expenses as 
well.
  The point is that we have to let a thousand flowers bloom when it 
comes to energy, and our bill will do so by encouraging a whole raft of 
new research projects from soup to nuts on dealing with this issue.
  I am very pleased to say that this bill will be introduced tomorrow, 
and I would encourage my colleagues to take a good look at this. 
Because we are all, all in this together, and this should not be a 
partisan bill. We see good leadership from John McCain on this over in 
the Senate and others. We see leaders in renewable technology on the 
Republican side of the aisle here in the House. And we are hoping as 
time goes on we will adopt a bipartisan vision along the way of the new 
Apollo Energy Project. America deserves it. We are up to it.


                            LEAVE OF ABSENCE

  By unanimous consent, leave of absence was granted to:
  Mr. Menendez (at the request of Ms. Pelosi) for today after 4:00 p.m. 
and the balance of the week on account of his daughter's graduation.

                          ____________________