[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 151 (Tuesday, November 15, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12774-S12775]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: A 21ST CENTURY IMPERATIVE

  Mr. SALAZAR. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss an urgent problem 
that continues to confront this great Nation. The problem is simply 
stated. Today, America is held hostage to our overdependence on foreign 
oil. That dependency is continuing to grow at an ever-alarming rate. 
America deserves better.
  The problem is a result of the malignant neglect of the United States 
of a meaningful national energy policy for the last three decades. From 
the formation of OPEC and President Carter's national statement that we 
must embrace energy independence with ``the moral imperative of war,'' 
Washington has been stuck in the swamp of inaction. It is time to 
change this neglect and, for the sake of ourselves and for our 
children, find our way out of this swamp of inaction.
  Ever since 1970, America's domestic production of oil has been 
dropping. And ever since, many speeches have been given in Washington 
about the importance of achieving energy independence. Many of us 
remember the speeches of Richard Nixon and President Carter in the 
1970s and the 1980s.
  In 1973, following the formation of OPEC, President Nixon gave a 
speech to the Nation where he said:

     our overall objective . . . can be summed up in one word that 
     best characterizes this Nation and its essential character. 
     The word is ``independence.''

  Then again in 1980, President Carter spoke to the Congress at his 
State of the Union address. In that speech, President Carter said:

       Our excessive dependence on foreign oil is a clear and 
     present danger to our Nation's security. The need has never 
     been more urgent. At long last, we must have a clear, 
     comprehensive energy policy for the United States.

  That was President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Well, here we are in 2005 
and the Nation has miserably failed to achieve any meaningful reform 
and any progress toward energy independence. Instead, we have retreated 
and gone backward. We have become more dependent on imports of foreign 
oil. The words of President Nixon and President Carter today in 2005 
sound hollow because there has not been action to follow the words that 
have come out of Washington. I am sure both President Nixon, if he were 
alive today, and President Carter today would be frustrated with the 
refusal by Washington, the refusal by the White House, to move this 
great Nation toward energy independence.
  I, too, am tired of this talk, and I believe many of my colleagues in 
this Chamber are tired of this talk. I am tired of the maneuvering of 
Congress to protect the special interests, and it is time for us to 
take action.
  The facts do not lie about the national energy crisis that we are in 
and how we are being held hostage to the whims of foreign governments. 
The conclusion is inescapable when one reviews the facts. Let me review 
just a few of those important facts. One, Americans today consume one-
quarter of the world's oil, but we only stand on top of about 3 percent 
of the global reserves. So we consume one-quarter of the world's oil, 
but we only have 3 percent of the world's reserves.
  Currently, the OPEC member countries produce about 40 percent of the 
world's oil, but they hold 80 percent of the proven world reserves. 
That is a second fact that should be alarming to us because 85 percent 
of those reserves are in the greater Middle East in countries such as 
Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

  Third, 22 percent of the world's oil is in the hands of state 
sponsors of terrorism under U.S. or U.N. sanction, and only 9 percent 
of the world's oil is in the hands of free countries.
  Today, as we debate the Department of Defense authorization bill to 
make sure that we remain a strong America, this ought to be something 
in the back of our minds and in the front of our minds, that we cannot 
really have a strong America unless we address this most fundamental 
national security threat of our overdependence on foreign oil.
  In the 1970s, this Nation imported about a third of our oil needs. 
Today, we import almost 60 percent, and the projections are that 20 to 
25 years from now we will be importing 70 percent of our oil from 
foreign countries.
  Fifth, we are importing more oil at a time when other growing nations 
such as China continue to grow in their importation of oil from other 
countries. China, today, has become the No. 2 petroleum user on the 
entire globe. Experts predict that China's 1.2 billion people and its 
large and rapidly growing demand for oil will have serious implications 
for the United States and for oil prices and supplies at home.
  Fully one-quarter of the U.S. trade deficit today--those of us like 
my colleague from Oklahoma who is here today, who is concerned about 
the growing deficits that we have in America today, understand that 
one-quarter of the U.S. trade deficits are associated with oil imports. 
The problem that we face for sure is due in part to dwindling resources 
in America. Domestic reserves of oil and natural gas are declining 
although our demand continues to grow. However, the reality is that 
there has been a deliberate unwillingness to address this problem in 
America.
  As proof, the average American vehicle gets fewer miles per gallon 
today than it did in 1988. That is right. Even though transportation 
fuels represent about two-thirds of our demand for petroleum products, 
our current fuel economy is worse today than it was 17 years ago. 
According to EPA estimates, back in 1988 passenger vehicles in America 
had an average fuel economy of 26 miles per gallon. Today, in the midst 
of this national crisis, we have 50 million more passenger vehicles on 
the road and the average fuel economy has declined to less than 24 
miles per gallon. That is going in the wrong direction. How is it 
possible that the world's biggest economy with the world's best 
scientists and engineers, we, the United States of America, are doing 
worse today on fuel economy than we were 17 years ago?

  We find ourselves in this mess because we have not taken our energy 
consumption problem seriously. Since most of the known oil reserves lie 
in one specific region of the world, the Middle East, our addiction to 
foreign oil means that we will continue to be held hostage to the whims 
of despotic or increasingly unstable regimes. Ominously, the money we 
pay today for foreign oil helps pay for the activities of extremists 
and terrorists around the world who hate the United States and the West 
in general. We only need to recall the horrors of 9/11 to know how real 
that hatred is.
  Even worse, the money pit grows deeper because we as a world consume 
more oil and that oil becomes more expensive and the money that keeps 
some of these regimes in place gets more concentrated in the hands of 
these few countries. So, yes, America is held hostage and in a tighter 
and tighter grip.
  There is only one way for us to fix this. America must stop the 
rhetoric, and we must embrace a true imperative of energy independence.
  I wish to say a word about the work of this body, this Congress, in 
the last year with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. I wish to say two 
things about that legislation. It was the first time in 13 years that 
any significant energy legislation came out of Washington, DC, again, 
demonstrating the malignant neglect. There are two important lessons we 
should take from the act. The first is it was a good template of 
bipartisan cooperation. In this body, with more than 80 votes, 
Republicans and Democrats coming together saying we need to embrace a 
new National Energy Policy Act, we are making a statement that this is 
an important issue for the American people. We ought to find more 
places where the American people can get that kind of

[[Page S12775]]

bipartisan action on the part of the Senate, the Congress.
  Second, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 did some good things in making 
us move forward toward energy independence. It embraced an ethic of 
energy conservation, of which all of us should be proud, and included 
in that are efficiency standards for the 14 appliances that are most 
commonly used in our homes. That is an important step for the United 
States of America to take because we know from the experts at the 
Department of Energy that we currently waste about 62 percent of the 
energy we consume.
  Second, the 2005 Energy Policy Act also took some major steps forward 
with regard to renewable energy. We embraced an ethic that said we can 
start growing our way toward energy independence. We increased the 
amount of ethanol that will be produced in America so we will have 7.5 
billion gallons of ethanol being produced by 2012. That is only 5 years 
away. That will be very helpful to us as we move toward energy 
independence.
  Third, the new technologies that were embraced in this law are 
important. When we look at the possibility of coal gasification, we 
know the huge reserves we have in America can be used in a way to help 
us fill up that menu board that we must fill up if we are going to find 
our way toward energy independence.
  Finally, there are approaches in the legislation that will help us 
with the balanced development of our current natural resources, 
including the appropriate development of oil shale within my State of 
Colorado.
  While I have been a fan of our 2005 legislation, I believe there is 
more that we must do to set America free from the overdependence on 
foreign oil. We need to do more. There is a hard winter ahead for many 
Americans. Gas prices remain very high. Diesel prices remain even 
higher. This directly affects the pocketbooks of people across America.
  In Colorado, as across the Nation, high fuel prices affect everyone, 
and they also hit our agricultural producers and perhaps hit them the 
hardest. Farming and ranching equipment uses diesel fuel. When you have 
to tend to hundreds of acres, you use a lot of it.
  Americans are in for a one-two punch on energy prices this winter 
because home heating prices are going to be high as well. The cost of 
natural gas is at an unprecedented level and, similar to the high 
prices at the pump, the resulting high heating costs will affect every 
American. We should take action.
  Back in August I remember traveling around in places where I saw gas 
prices hit $3 for the first time around. Yet through the ravages of 
Katrina and Rita and the escalation of gas prices over the last several 
months, we in Congress have had a few hearings but we have not taken 
action to deal more effectively with the crisis at hand. We must do 
more. We must begin now. I suggest we start in the following three 
ways.
  First, we should embrace a national price-gouging law. That is a law 
which was discussed by Senator Bingaman and Senator Stevens in a 
hearing that was held in the Senate last week. The oil companies should 
have nothing to be afraid of with respect to price gouging because they 
say they have not engaged in price gouging. But we need to have a 
definition of what price gouging is so in the future we can make the 
determinations as to whether price gouging has occurred on the backs of 
the American people. We ought to be able to pass a price-gouging law in 
America today.

  Second, we need to immediately embrace conservation emergency efforts 
for the year 2005 and for this winter. The years of malignant neglect 
have suddenly caught up with all of us, and we need to conserve energy 
for this winter. I believe we need to pass an Emergency Energy 
Conservation Act of 2005. I have promoted a number of proposals on the 
floor of the Senate, as have several of my colleagues. On the House 
side, the story is the same. There are many good ideas available to 
this Congress that will encourage conservation. But we do not have time 
to wait. We need to act now, before the cold days of winter are upon 
us.
  Finally, we need to continue to put the spotlight on the 
possibilities and opportunities of renewable energy. Today, the nation 
of Brazil produces about half of its energy supply from renewable 
energy. They have truly embraced and achieved a goal of energy 
independence. If Brazil and other countries that are less prosperous, 
Third World countries, can in fact achieve energy independence by 
looking at renewable fuels, why can't we in the United States do the 
same? I believe we can. More production of renewable fuels combined 
with more development of wind, solar, biomass, and other renewable 
resources will move the United States closer to energy independence. At 
the same time, renewable energy production will directly benefit those 
agricultural and rural communities hardest hit by high energy prices. 
Harvesting renewable energy from our Nation's farmlands and wide open 
spaces is perhaps the most important opportunity to come to rural 
America in the last 50 years.
  A group called the Energy Future Coalition, composed of leading 
conservatives and leading progressives--from across the political 
spectrum--is working toward harvesting 25 percent of America's energy 
demands by the year 2025. I believe we can do even better than that, 
and there are experts within the Department of Energy who believe that 
we can do that.
  There is a lot of work ahead of us as we deal with what I believe is 
one of the two most important domestic issues that face America and 
that is energy and how we get to energy independence. It ought to be at 
the forefront of the work of this Senate and this Congress.
  In conclusion, this country has an Energy bill and it is a good first 
step. However, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 does not do enough to 
prepare America for the future. The events of the last several months 
prove that. We can do better with a more comprehensive long-term energy 
policy that hammers home on two simple points: energy efficiency and 
developing renewable resources. America can do better. America deserves 
better. America can do better with true deeds that move us to energy 
independence, with deeds that transcend the rhetoric of Washington and 
the stalemate of Washington for the last 30 years.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma is 
recognized.

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