[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 162 (Friday, December 16, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H12040-H12041]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2345
             AMERICAN RESPONSE TO GLOBAL WARMING INADEQUATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Schwarz of Michigan). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized until midnight as the designee of 
the minority leader.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, in the last week there has been a collection 
of relatively extraordinary events in the future of not only our 
country, but the entire planet, when it comes to our ability to 
maintain a climate to which we have been accustomed, and in fact that 
climate is now threatened by global warming, and during the last week 
some extraordinary things have happened that demand comment here in the 
House.
  I have come here tonight to suggest that the U.S. Congress needs to 
act with vigor and vision to lead the world in dealing with global 
warming. What precipitates my comments is a collection of scientific 
information that has become available to the world in the last week, 
together with the recently concluded conclave of world leaders in 
Montreal, Canada, that just concluded without meaningful participation 
by the executive branch of the United States, which I think is most 
disappointing to my constituents and I think much of America.
  So what I want to do tonight is address some of the new science that 
has come forward just in the last week about global warming and 
contrast that with the abject failure, unfortunately, of the executive 
branch of the United States to fulfill the leadership role of the 
United States, which has historically been on a bipartisan basis as the 
technological leader of the world, which this chief executive has 
abdicated in refusing to lead the world to a resolution of the problem 
of global warming.
  If I can first just briefly summarize some of the things that have 
happened in the last week regarding global warming.
  The Goddard Space Science Center, one of our preeminent scientific 
institutions, in the next few days will announce that 2005 remains on 
track to be one, if not the, hottest year in global history since 
records have been kept, which continues a trend of many of the hottest 
years in recorded history being in the last decade. British scientists 
this week announced that their records are similar to the findings of 
the Goddard Space Laboratory.
  We are in an unprecedented period of increases in global 
temperatures. This is confirmed by a huge majority of the scientific 
measurements. The Earth is warming, and it is warming faster probably 
than it has been ever in the last 1,000 years, at least. This is new 
and appropriately disturbing evidence.
  The same week, if we read the Wall Street Journal, a publication not 
known for its certainly being far out there on environmental issues, 
reported on December 14 that scientists for the first time have 
documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely 
drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of 
the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of the time hunting and 
raising their young on ice flows, but the problem is the ice flows are 
disappearing.
  That leads to the third bit of information that we have received in 
the last couple of months, which has found that the Arctic ice shelf 
has melted to an extent previously never seen before in human history 
and probably never seen before for thousands of years.
  These are an amazing continuation, where one cannot open up a 
newspaper or a scientific journal in any given week and not see a 
continued cascade, an avalanche of scientific information, nailing down 
the coffin of any remaining doubt that we are now facing significant 
global warming as a result of increased concentrations of carbon 
dioxide, which we all, Republican and Democrat alike, are putting into 
the atmosphere. We are experiencing this with our own eyes.
  If we take a look at a picture here in Glacier National Park, one of 
our most treasured jewels of our crown of our national park, we have 
already lost 30 percent of the glaciers in the last 75 years in Glacier 
National Park. If we look at the Grinnell Glacier, a picture here in 
1938, you will see the glacier coming off this cliff band and extending 
down into the valley. This is 1938, one lifetime ago. In that one 
lifetime, the lifetime certainly of my mom and dad, we now see the 
Grinnell Glacier is probably less than 40 percent of its preexisting 
size. You see this entire area, it used to be a glacier, is now a lake 
where the glacier has melted.
  The sad fact is that when my mom and dad took me to Glacier National 
Park in my youth, I got to see these glaciers. If this trend, according 
to scientific evidence continues, at least my great-grandchildren will 
not be able to go to Glacier National Park and see glaciers because the 
glaciers will be gone, extinct, period. I suppose some wag would 
suggest we will have to rename it as ``the Park Formerly Known as 
Glacier.''
  The fact of the matter is that as we speak, the world and the United 
States is undergoing a significant change from that which we grew up 
with. Glaciers, polar bears, fields of wheat that support one of the 
greatest food baskets in the world, where we are going to have 
significant change in our ability to produce agriculturally in the 
Midwest.
  With irrigated agriculture, the science shows, we just had a 
conference of this up in Seattle, Seattle is known for our rain, but in 
fact we depend on irrigated agriculture for a good part of our 
agriculture, and that irrigated agriculture depends on snow pack. I 
just returned from a conference in Seattle

[[Page H12041]]

in the last several weeks where the scientists predicted that our 
irrigated agriculture in the State of Washington, upon which our apple 
crop, the best apple crop in the world, depends, will be jeopardized 
because the snow pack is disappearing. It is projected we will have 
less than half the snow pack we have had historically in the next 
several decades, which jeopardizes our apple industry in Washington 
State and many of our irrigated products. So the disturbing fact is 
that the scientific evidence is becoming overwhelming.
  By the way, it is just not Glacier. I will show you a picture of 
Argentina, one of the large ice sheets. In 1928, this photograph is of 
this enormous ice sheet down in Patagonia, in the southern tip of South 
America. You see in the same picture in 2004, and I was there several 
months ago, where you can see where these glaciers have been. This 
enormous ice sheet that existed in 1928 is knew essentially gone, 
replaced by water where the ice sheet has melted.
  These are in very blinks of geologic time that we are seeing these 
changes take place, in one lifetime seeing these changes take place, 
and this has never happened before at these rates. We have had ice ages 
and had melts, but scientists will tell you this has never happened 
before in world history, as far as we know, with this rapidity to have 
this enormous change.
  Very briefly, the reason it is occurring is that we are putting into 
the atmosphere gasses that trap infrared radiation. Light comes in. As 
ultraviolet radiation it can pass through the atmosphere. When it 
bounces back it is at a different spectrum, at infrared frequencies, 
and carbon dioxide and methane that comes out of our tailpipes and 
smokestacks trap ultraviolet radiation.
  We look at this chart and it shows levels of COG. These are parts per 
million, the amount of COG in the atmosphere. We go to pre-industrial 
times in 1000, it was about 240 parts per million. When we started to 
burn coal and gas in about 1800 it starts to go up, and in the 1800s 
and 1900s it goes up dramatically. Now in 2000 we see it is going up 
like a rocket, and it is projected that by the close of this century we 
will have parts per million in the 780 to 800 range, at least two times 
higher than it has ever been in human history. It is predicted to 
continue to skyrocket after that.
  This is a fact. No one, no scientist in the world, disputes these 
conclusions. Global warming is a fact, and it is a fact that we are 
responsible for and need to act as leading the world to deal with this 
problem, to adopt energy technological solutions to this problem, which 
we can do if we have the same vision that John Kennedy had when we had 
the first Apollo project. I have introduced a bill to do that.
  But in light of this science, what has the Bush administration done? 
In light of this cavalcade of information demanding a response, what 
has the Bush administration done to fulfill our destiny to be the 
leader in the world when it comes to technological innovation?
  Well, what it did is it sent an emissary named Watson to Montreal 
last week to basically tell the rest of the world, when the rest of the 
world is working together to try to find a solution to global warming, 
to try to come up with a post-Kyoto agreement that is better than 
Kyoto, that is fairer, that is more effective than Kyoto, what did the 
President send our emissary to do? The greatest country in the world, 
the most technologically-oriented country in the world, the country 
that has led in the growth of democracy, that led in the effort to 
solve the problem of the ozone layer, which we have done some very good 
work in on a bipartisan basis, what did the President's emissary do?
  He went to Montreal and told the rest of the world essentially to go 
fish; the United States was not going to participate in any meaningful 
discussion to come up with a global solution to this global problem. 
This is most embarrassing for our country, the greatest country on 
Earth, to refuse to take any meaningful position to advance some global 
solution to this problem.
  In fact, the President sent our emissary to adopt the posture of the 
ostrich with the head in the sand and the tail feathers in the air. We 
should be adopting the posture of the American eagle, leading the rest 
of the world to a solution of this problem by using the technological 
creativity with which America has been blessed with for centuries. 
Instead, our emissary went there like this, where over 200 countries 
agreed to continue discussions about how to deal with this known 
problem.
  Now, I have to admit there was some small success. The President's 
emissary on the last day of the conference picked up his papers and 
literally walked out on the rest of the world, literally walked out on 
the rest of the world, making this comment which no one to this day 
understands about walking like a duck, and, frankly, it was relatively 
embarrassing.
  The good news is the administration was so embarrassed by the world's 
reaction to that and by America's reaction to that following an address 
by President Bill Clinton suggesting that we need to work in a 
bipartisan fashion on this issue that the next day apparently they got 
a cable from the White House, I am assuming, and the emissary walked 
back and said, well, now, we will at least agree to continue some 
informal talks. Not real talks, not formal talks that could actually 
lead to an agreement, but something called ``informal talks,'' which 
would at least not allow the administration to be humiliated.
  This is not good enough to fulfill our mandate as the greatest Nation 
on Earth. This is not good enough. It does not respect the ability of 
the geniuses in America who are going to adopt the new energy 
technologies so that we can continue to grow our economy and solve this 
problem at the same time. It is well below what we should expect of 
ourselves and it is well below what we should expect of our President.
  We are calling on the President of the United States to finally adopt 
some measure of teamwork with the rest of the world to solve this 
problem.
  Now, why should we do that? Well, one reason is we put 25 percent of 
all the carbon dioxide on this graph, where we see it is now 
skyrocketing, we in America put it in the atmosphere. We are a very 
small percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of all the COG 
in the atmosphere comes out of our pipes. So that is one reason why we 
really as a matter of moral responsibility need to be part of this 
solution, as does China, and we need to demand that China participate 
in these talks as well.
  But as important, we are the country who is going to develop the new 
energy sources, clean energy, renewable energy, that are going to solve 
this problem and not destroy the climate of the Earth, because, 
frankly, we are the great tinkerers. We invented the light bulb, we 
perfected the Internet, the jet airplane, a man on the moon. The list 
needs to go on when it comes to clean energy. If we have leadership we 
will get that done.
  So tonight I would like to say the science is clear, the destiny of 
this Nation is clear. We need to lead the world forward on global 
warming, rather than hiding from it. This is not a Nation that cowers 
in fear and from challenges. And this president ought to understand the 
confidence that this American country has in doing something about 
global warming. We hope that it will have a new attitude beginning 
tomorrow.

                          ____________________