[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 92 (Thursday, June 5, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5147-S5149]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, the Senate is engaged this week in a great
debate, an important debate, on the vital issue of global climate
change. I join that debate in order to find the best and most practical
ways to ease our dependence on foreign oil, reduce pollution, and
encourage clean energy.
Climate change is real. It is a problem, and it needs our response--
for the sake of our economy, our environment, and our national
security. Our country's energy future is one of the greatest challenges
we will face in the coming decades. Addressing climate change is about
what is good and what is right for our country, for our future. It is
about how we reduce our reliance on foreign oil, develop a new sector
in the American economy that will spur domestic manufacturing, and
create millions of new jobs, all while reducing harmful greenhouse gas
emissions.
These challenges are too great and the stakes are too high--America
cannot take a backseat or sit on the sidelines. We simply must lead on
this issue. We must make fundamental changes, and we must start now,
today. We put a man on the Moon. We defeated communism. We even created
an Internet world. Many thought the Internet was a fad, but look how it
has changed our world in a decade. A renewable energy economy can and
will do the same thing.
America is an exporter of our thoughts, our ideas, our dreams, our
ideals. On the great challenges facing us today, we must reach high,
challenge our thinking, and deliver results such as only the American
people can deliver.
We are on an upward path with the emergence of green, renewable
technologies in the State of Oregon--wind, solar, wave, and geothermal.
Today, in Oregon, we are leading the way, from innovative biomass in
Umatilla, to geothermal in Klamath Falls, to our long-lived hydropower
dams and wind farms in eastern Oregon.
Jobs are being created in Oregon by companies that research and
manufacture these new energy sources, boosting our economy, addressing
climate change, and cutting our dependence on foreign oil.
Oregon and the Northwest already enjoy one of the best sources of
green energy--our hydroelectric dams--a source of 100-percent carbon-
free energy. These dams are not only critical to our economy but are a
perfect example of existing sources of green energy.
In Oregon, we are leading the way in training the next generation
workforce for green-collar jobs. Schools across Oregon--Oregon State
University, Oregon Institute of Technology, Lane Community College, and
Columbia Gorge Community College--are creating programs that will help
supply our State and Nation with a vibrant and skilled workforce to
accommodate a future of renewable, independent, and clean energy
facilities.
Through a combination of Federal and State tax incentives, Oregon has
been able to attract solar panel manufacturers, geothermal developers,
fuel cell manufacturers, biomass facilities, and significant wind
energy facilities.
Oregon has become a hub of investment in solar facilities. For
example, SolarWorld, one of the biggest solar manufacturers on Earth,
is investing over $650 million in a manufacturing facility in
Hillsboro, Oregon, that will employ over 1,000 people.
As the lead sponsor of legislation to provide for the long-term
extension of the investment tax credit for solar and fuel cell
facilities, I am encouraged by the investments solar and fuel cell
companies are making in Oregon and across the Nation.
We must provide for the extension of these and other renewable energy
tax incentives in order to avoid the boom-bust cycle we see in these
emerging technologies every time the tax credit is allowed to expire.
That is an action we can and should take now that will produce results
now.
We must set ourselves on a path to energy independence and reduce our
oil consumption. That is why I fought successfully to increase our
investment in renewable fuels such as those thriving back in Oregon.
That is why Senator Obama and I passed a bill to raise the fuel
efficiency standards for the first time in two decades for our
automobiles in this country.
We have been making small strides. Now we need to make big ones.
Renewable energy sources and less oil consumption will benefit not only
our environment but our economy and our national security--energy
sources, clean ones, produced here at home instead of imported from the
Middle East.
The private sector in America is already visionary about a clean,
strong economy. We in Congress must help and not hinder. This
transformation will not happen overnight, but we can start now. We must
start today. Right now, the sources of our fuel-efficient vehicles and
renewable energy manufacturing too often come from foreign countries.
If we do not take the lead going forward, these foreign countries will.
To do so would put our country and our economy behind the eight ball,
reliant upon others and not ourselves.
Right now, the world's fossil fuel is controlled by countries such as
Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. We cannot let our national security and
our economic security be at risk to the whims of rogue governments. Our
reliance on foreign oil has gotten us into the entanglements that many
of us wish had not happened. By investing in a clean energy future--a
skilled green workforce, investment in the next generation of biofuels,
the promotion of fuel-efficient transportation--we will depend on
ourselves, not on others.
It is also time for America and this Congress to debate the merits of
a new system to regulate carbon to reduce greenhouse gases and to
reduce this country's carbon footprint. I know we can come together, in
this Chamber and with the next President, to practically and
effectively reduce the greenhouse gases we emit in this country.
To truly reduce carbon, the response must be global. We have all the
tools. We have the will, the technology, the raw resources. It is time
to move forward for the sake of our environment, for the sake of our
economy, and for the sake of our national security. Success will only
be found in setting aside partisan agendas and focusing on common-
ground solutions.
Our country can do this, and we must lead. I have great confidence in
the will of the American people. They know this must be done. I will
help to make sure it is done.
[[Page S5148]]
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Kansas is recognized.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer for that
recognition.
I thank the Presiding Officer in this body for the chance to address
an important topic. I am glad we are discussing important topics. It is
important we get a chance to bring up these topics. I, similar to many
people, have spent a lot of time with experts and a lot of time with
people in my State talking about climate change issues and how we can
address them. I do not know of any topic that I have actually probably
met with more scientists on, more individuals about, than the climate
change topic. It is enormous, it is important, and it is something we
need to talk about and address.
When traveling across Kansas--we have 105 counties in the State, and
I have been to 57 of them now within the last 6 months, going to all
105 of them. We talk a lot about clean energy, and I talk about
balancing the three Es--the energy, the environment, and the economy.
We have to get these three Es balanced. They are like a cardboard piece
balanced on a pencil. You can kind of tilt them a little bit, you can
move it a little bit, but you cannot tank it one way or another. You
have to move these three together.
Most people across Kansas looking at the issue generally agree with
that. I want a clean environment. I want a healthy economy. I want
energy sources here at home, and I do not want to pay too much for
them. Most people are complaining bitterly today, as well they should
be, about the high price of energy. It is way too high: $4-a-gallon
gasoline that people are having to pay. It is directly out of their
pocketbooks. It is directly impacting their economy.
We are a big energy-using State. We have a lot of manufacturing,
agriculture. Diesel fuel is very important to us. It is well over $4 a
gallon, getting up to $5 a gallon in some places. This is a very high-
energy formula, and the last thing people want today is to increase the
cost of energy. At the same time, they recognize we need to deal with
the environment, and we have to grow this economy. So I wish to talk
about this in the sense of those three Es, being able to balance those
together. I think we can and we should do that.
I read a paper recently that talked about the different waves of
environmentalism. I thought it was quite good, and I think it is one
this body should look at. The title of the paper was ``The End of
Environmentalism.'' It was written by a couple of very strong
environmentalists. They were talking about what needs to take place
now. They were talking about the waves of environmentalism. They were
saying the first wave of environmentalism, if I can paraphrase them
appropriately, was a conservation wave. The second wave was a
regulatory wave. The third wave, that we are in right now, is an
investment wave. That is the way you move this forward, through
investment and through technology and for us to invest heavily in that
next wave of technology, to be able the balance these three Es I talked
about--energy, the economy, and the environment. That is the real way
forward.
This bill does not get us going forward that way. The key for us to
be able to do investment is to be able to have a very robust economy
and for people to invest in these next-wave technologies, not to load
additional costs onto the system. We can look at the cost of what they
are today, and then you can look at the projected cost of what this
bill would put on the American public and on the energy economy and, at
the end of day, still not produce the sorts of results we need to have
of strong key reductions in CO2 and, at the same time,
maintaining the economy and giving us enough energy to be able to move
forward.
I would like to point out--and a number of my colleagues have already
done this--what this bill will do on driving up the price of
electricity. The Energy Information Administration predicts electric
prices will be 64 percent higher in 2030 as a result of the bill, fuel
prices 53 cents higher by 2030. Actually, I do not think anybody knows,
other than they know it will be higher.
But I think the biggest stat came yesterday, for me, from Western
Resources. It is a utility in my hometown of Topeka, KS, that provides
electricity through much of the State. They are saying, at a $20-a-ton
cost for CO2, that is going to raise their fuel costs. It is
going to more than double the cost of their fuel as compared to what
they are looking at presently. We are getting the actual statistics. We
are going to put that, later, in the Record. But this is going to be a
dramatic increase in the price of electricity for people in Topeka, KS,
and across my State.
We are a strong coal user, using coal out of the Powder River Basin.
I think, as we look forward to the future, the answer is not: No, we
are not going to use particular types of energy. It is how you use
energy and you reduce your CO2, how you build the next
generation of coal-fired plants and reduce the CO2
footprint.
A very innovative project is being put forward in the western part of
my State. There is a coal-fired plant, where they take the C02 stream--
because we don't know how to do CO2 sequestration on a
massive scale yet--they take that C02 stream and run it through algae
reactors and have the algae harvest, of sorts, the CO2; and
they are building in their biological photosynthesis process and then
taking the algae and making biodiesel out of that.
Yes, it is experimental, but it is on a large scale experimental, and
it is the sort of thing we ought to be looking to for us to invest in
that next wave of environmentalism, being an investment wave, to see if
we can make these things work in the interim, where we do not know how
we are going to be able to sequester, and we cannot drive up too fast
the cost of energy because energy prices are so high right now and
people are very sensitive to energy prices, as well they should be. We
should be sensitive to their sensitivity of energy prices.
I think the way we move this forward is with innovation and
technology and investment rather than loading a lot of cost on a system
that, at the end of the day, could well--and in all probability, from
some of the projections, will have huge, substantial impacts and,
indeed, may well have the adverse impact of driving things overseas. I
think there is a lot in this bill that has unpredictable consequences
other than, we know, an increased cost in the United States. That piece
we do know about. But what will happen? How will industry react to
this? Where will it go? We do know costs will go up for American
consumers at a time when we can ill afford to do that; at a time when
we would be better off taking those increased costs of investment and
putting them into the next wave of technology. That is the route
forward. That is the route to stabilize. That is the route to move us
and to balance the three ``e''s in this process as we move forward.
I am going to be putting forward different amendments and proposals
to do just that; to see if we can put forward ideas, particularly in
the agricultural sector, to help with carbon sequestration projects, to
help with ethanol and biodiesel and wind and solar power, soybean and
algae as an investment, as a way of storing it through a natural
process, but not putting on a hard cap and trade that adds costs in the
system. I think that is the sort of pioneering spirit--that is the sort
of investment type of way--that we need to go forward.
I am pleased that an amendment I am working on with Senators Stabenow
and Crapo has the backing of the American Farm Bureau on a more robust
effort on CO2 sequestration via agriculture. I think that is
a key way we can move forward and have some success.
Finally, I wish to note to my colleagues as well that we are woefully
behind on getting judges approved for the circuit court. That was a
subject that stalled this body yesterday and I predict to my colleagues
that it is going to stall us a lot more if we don't start getting on
track to increase the number and get to even a minimal number of
circuit court nominees to be approved during the remainder of this
Congress. We are at eight for this session of Congress. The low
watermark was 15. We are not anywhere near close to getting that. It is
a requirement of this body for us to be able to clear
[[Page S5149]]
judges through who get nominated by the President, and then let's vote
up or down one way or the other. Let's consider them and let's get a
minimum number. We had an agreement for three by the Memorial Day
break. One was approved. There are several highly qualified judges in
the system. For us to be able to get our business done, if we are going
to get it done, we have to get some of these circuit court judges
approved. If we don't, it is going to stall the body and we are going
to stall it a lot, until we can get circuit court judges approved in
some minimal number.
I know there is a lot of dispute about this. It is a need of this
body. We need to do this and if we don't do it, things are going to
slow down a lot. They are going to get jammed up a lot and it is going
to be early and it is going to be very difficult for us to accomplish
any other of our business.
I urge the leadership to come together and let's say: Here is the
number we can approve by this date, and let's get that done or there
are going to be a lot of things that are going to stop happening in
this body until we can get those approved.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, it is my understanding that we are in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. And that we will go on the bill, I understand, around
noon?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. It will be
approximately noon.
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