[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 84 (Wednesday, May 21, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4610-S4612]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, both the international community and 
experts from across our country have come to a definite consensus. 
Climate change is not a theory. It is a reality. We may not like it, 
but we have to confront it. Rising temperatures, melting icecaps, and 
extreme weather show the increasing effects of global warming in the 
United States and especially around the globe. Without action, we will 
be unable to avoid dangerous consequences for our children, 
grandchildren, and subsequent generations. We risk the health of our 
citizens, the

[[Page S4611]]

well-being of our coastal areas, the productivity of our farms, 
forests, and fisheries.
  There is solid support in this institution and around the country for 
a mandatory cap-and-trade approach to reducing carbon emissions. All 
three Presidential candidates--Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain--and 
both political parties have agreed on this philosophy. The Senate 
passed the Lieberman-Warner bill out of committee in December. It is 
likely to reach the floor of the Senate in the next few weeks. I am not 
saying a climate change bill will pass this year. I am saying a climate 
change bill will pass. No more burying our heads in the sand, no more 
ignoring the issue and putting it off for another day. It is not a 
question of whether; it is a question of when and a question of what it 
will look like.
  As a manufacturing State reliant on coal--not too different from the 
State of the Presiding Officer--Ohio is going to be significantly 
affected by the climate change bill regardless of its specifics. I am 
working with Senators from other industrial States--Senators Casey, 
Bayh, Lugar, Durbin, Stabenow, Levin, and others--to ensure that the 
effects on manufacturing jobs are considered as this legislation is 
drafted. We can't shut our eyes or turn our backs or hope that global 
warming goes away and becomes someone else's problem. That is not going 
to happen. But we can maximize Ohio's gains, Pennsylvania's gains, the 
gains of other States, and minimize those losses, looking first at the 
opportunities presented to us by global change legislation.
  The mandatory cap-and-trade approach to climate change will create a 
market for clean energy and green jobs. By creating markets for clean 
energy, we can stabilize our Nation's energy supply, reduce greenhouse 
gases, and bolster manufacturing in Lima, Zaynesville, Toledo, and 
Ashtabula. It has been estimated that in terms of a global market, the 
advanced and alternative energy sector will double several times over 
in the next decade, from a $55 billion industry to a $226 billion 
business. Wind power alone, it is estimated, will grow from $18 billion 
to a $61 billion market. In the last 15 months, I have conducted 
roundtables in Ohio, bringing together 15 or 20 people to talk about 
problems, about their communities. You can see what is happening in a 
State such as mine.
  The Cleveland Foundation, in conjunction with Case Western Reserve 
University, is going to build a field of wind turbines in Lake Erie, 
the first time wind turbines have ever been placed in a freshwater 
lake.
  I have seen the Composite Center in Dayton which makes new, lighter, 
stronger materials, initially for airplanes, now for fuel-efficient 
automobiles and wind turbines. The University of Toledo is doing some 
of the best wind turbine research in the United States. In Columbus and 
Ohio State, there is the Center for Automotive Research, the work they 
are doing for more fuel-efficient automobiles. Today I talked with 
someone who was visiting Washington from Battelle Institute. They are 
doing astonishing things on a whole range of issues; Stark State and 
Rolls-Royce on fuel cells. Oberlin College has built the largest 
building of any college campus in the country fully powered by solar 
energy. The problem is those solar cells and panels are not made in 
this country because we don't make them. They were bought from Germany 
and Japan.
  At the same time, we are seeing the largest solar company in the 
country producing near Toledo in Perrysburg. In Ashtabula, right across 
the border from Erie, we are seeing components for wind turbines. In 
place after place, Ohio is helping to lead the way to make my State the 
Silicon Valley of renewable energy.
  Ohio has the potential to create 20,000 new jobs through renewable 
energy projects. That puts Ohio second only to California in terms of 
potential job creation. But we have a lot of work to do. Any climate 
change legislation must invest in the deployment of renewable energy 
technology and promote green job growth. That is why I introduced 
legislation called the Green Energy Production Act last month. It is an 
energy bill, an environment bill, and a jobs bill. The bill creates a 
government corporation that will set up loan programs and grant 
programs for green energy manufacturers, mostly small businesses, to 
get them to develop products and get them to market.
  Over 5 years, the bill would invest $36 billion with no political 
strings attached, no Government picking winners and losers but 
companies that need capital that are just taking off, small businesses, 
businesses that need to grow, businesses that need to expand. Some $36 
billion will be invested in green energy manufacturing. We have great 
R&D in my State, but the big problem is commercialization, the key to 
creating jobs in my State.
  Speaking of jobs, we can't overlook the tremendous challenges the 
industrial Midwest will face under climate change legislation. My State 
is the seventh largest in the country by population. We are the fourth 
largest carbon-emitting State, behind California, Texas, and New York. 
In the past year and a half, I have held roundtables all over my State 
in some 60 of the 88 counties. They have given me an opportunity to be 
with workers and business people and civic leaders and local government 
officials.
  One thing is crystal clear: Ohioans are anxious about their 
communities' futures, and the statistics match their anxiety. More than 
40,000 manufacturing plants have shut down in the United States since 
2001. More than 3.3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost, about 
one-sixth of all U.S. manufacturing jobs. My State has lost more than 
200,000 jobs. Pennsylvania is comparable. The simple fact is, our 
economy cannot prosper unless we manufacture and sell goods as a State 
and a nation. Manufacturing is too important to the prosperity of this 
country and to our economic and national security. Manufacturing is too 
important to ignore, as this Government has done in the last few years.
  I know, given a level playing field, our companies can outcompete any 
around the globe. Any climate change legislation must be developed in 
conjunction with manufacturers to ensure U.S. competitiveness with 
other growing industrial giants in the world, particularly China and 
India. We must work together to ensure that domestic manufacturers are 
protected from imports that come from countries without comparable 
climate change legislation. That means working together to provide 
appropriate transition assistance to our energy intensive industries. 
My State, in some sense, specializes in energy-intensive industries--
steel, chemicals, glass, cement, aluminum. We must work together to 
minimize any economic harm while ensuring the environmental integrity 
of the climate change legislation.
  The bill that came out of committee needs to do a better job. It has 
made progress from the original bill to the substitute bill brought 
forward by Senator Boxer. It has made major progress, but it has to do 
a better job of addressing the need, particularly in people's own 
personal electric bills and the cost of energy to manufacturers. The 
bill needs to help low- and middle-income consumers who will face 
higher energy costs and must help communities and workers who are 
displaced due to a shift from coal power. It means providing support 
necessary to create green jobs in Ohio and across the Midwest, and it 
means helping those energy-intensive manufacturers I was talking about 
with their energy costs and with unregulated international competition. 
Some environmental groups quote economic models saying that business 
under a cap-and-trade program will be all wine and roses. They are on 
one side. Some business groups are touting economic models that predict 
climate change legislation will send us all back to living in caves. 
Both sides are wrong. It is not going to be that easy, but it is also 
not going to put American business out of business.

  One last point. When you talk to people about climate change, one of 
the first questions that always comes up is what do we do about China 
and India. If they are not going to, why should we, in some sense, 
unilaterally disarm as a country, putting more and more costs on Ohio 
businesses in Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati? Why should we 
put more cost on these businesses, when China and India are not doing 
that? We have three possibilities. One is do nothing. That is 
unacceptable. We have two other possibilities:

[[Page S4612]]

To work with countries around the world on bringing them to a level of 
climate change comparable to the level we want to get to; one is 
multilateral environment and climate change agreements, negotiations, 
Kyoto-type agreements among all the major industrial powers in the 
world. That will take years. That will perhaps only be as successful as 
Kyoto, which wasn't very successful, ultimately.
  The other path to walk down is what we do about trade legislation, 
about accepting those products coming into the United States from other 
countries. When we have pretty strong environmental laws, you know in 
your State what has happened with the steel industry, where they have 
put huge numbers of dollars into scrubbers and other kinds of 
environmental cleanup. China and India, frankly, don't do that. When we 
buy products from China and India, we buy steel from them, discounting 
the issue of toxic toys and contaminants in vitamins and all the unsafe 
products they send us that are ultimately consumer products, but when 
we buy steel from China and India, that steel is made by cheaper labor, 
and it is also made with very weak environmental rules.
  The only way to change that, to get China and India to the table, if 
you will, if we will not do the negotiations that will be so difficult 
and tedious and take so long, is to say, every time we import steel 
from China and India, steel where there is an environmental cost in its 
production, we charge a tariff at the border, a tariff reflecting the 
cost that they have not borne but that our manufacturers bear on the 
production of that steel. So why should a steel company in Lorain or a 
foundry in Mahoning Valley have to pay these huge additional costs 
under climate change to deal with their carbon emissions, when people 
in China and India don't? The only way to equalize that and to make 
this competitive and keep American business competitive is to figure 
out what it actually costs China and what moneys China and India save 
by not coming up to the same level of environmental protection that we 
do.
  That should always have been part of the trade debate. The Bush 
administration has never believed that. That is one of the reasons we 
have lost so many manufacturing jobs in my State, since President Bush 
took office--bad trade policy, bad environmental policy, bad labor 
policy.
  Ultimately, this climate change issue is going to be about equalizing 
the cost of making air cleaner, limiting carbon emissions, dealing with 
all the issues around CO2. The way to do that is through a 
trade policy that works for us, for China, for India, and especially 
works for our grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and those subsequent 
generations. We must work together in this institution to shape 
legislation that truly addresses global climate change while protecting 
our manufacturing jobs. That means working assiduously with countries 
around the world in reaching those goals.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I ask to speak in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada is recognized.

                          ____________________