[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 17, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3497-H3502]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, I enjoyed listening to my colleague 
from Illinois. In fact, this is the second time today I have heard him 
speak on the floor and I have seen him point to the picture of the coal 
miners and talk about the problems of the Clean Air Act. And I hope 
every American was listening to that because that is exactly what we 
are talking about today.
  We had, for decades, people burning dirty coal, turning rivers and 
lakes in other parts of the country, acid rain, destroying forests, 
posing problems to people's health. And what this Congress did, in a 
bipartisan effort, was create a mechanism to make it so that it was no 
longer free to pollute the air with dirty coal that created acid rain 
and destroyed lakes and forests.
  My friend didn't want to talk about the problems to health, didn't 
want to talk about the issues that relate to the damage to the 
environment, or the fact that we were able to create the most effective 
market system in history that was able to solve a real problem to the 
environment, to health. Life went on. Yes, there were some changes in 
terms of the economy. There were some people who didn't--when it became 
too expensive for them to foul the air, spoil our lakes, and destroy 
our forests, then they shifted. Well, I would suggest, Madam Speaker, 
that any independent observer would suggest that that was a solid 
program and a good tradeoff.
  I don't hear my friend from Illinois coming to the floor and saying, 
repeal the Clean Air Act so we can have a few more miners at work 
creating dirty coal that is going to ruin our environment and destroy 
health. That issue is over.
  We are facing a very real challenge today about what we are going to 
do to protect the future of the planet. I will get into, in a moment, 
talking about some of the discussion that we have heard from our 
friends on the other side of the aisle, but one of the things that is 
very, very important to note is that they have no answer in terms of 
what we do to the slow cooking of the planet. They ignore the costs 
that are being incurred right this minute. Temperatures in Alaska have 
already gone up several degrees, permafrost is no longer permanent, 
roads are buckling, coastal villages washed away. These are costs and 
consequences that we are already seeing as the ocean levels slowly, 
imperceptibly to most of us, but very clear to scientists when they see 
the fabled Inland Passage in the Arctic Ocean free of ice, when we 
watch the habitat shrink for arctic animals, when we watch diseases 
shifting from vector control--West Nile disease, for instance, popping 
up in places where it shouldn't be, where invasive species are 
infesting our forests. These are costs and consequences that we are 
seeing now that my friends on the other side of the aisle refuse to 
come to grips with.
  But we are not going to be able to have the same head-in-the-sand 
attitude that we saw from the Bush administration alone--of all the 
major governments in the world, alone--denying the imperative of global 
warming, withdrawing from opportunities to be collaborative on a 
national scale.

                              {time}  1915

  What we had to have in the last 8 years, where the other side of the 
aisle simply accepted that sort of behavior from their administration 
and, in fact, aided and abetted and supported it, we had over 900 
cities across the country come forward and say wait a minute, we're not 
going to wait for the Bush administration and the Federal Government. 
We are going to take it upon ourselves to deal with climate change and 
global warming and move to change our local economy, to prepare it for 
the future, and to help slow this damage to the environment by carbon 
pollution.
  I come from a community in Portland, Oregon, where we have actually 
reduced greenhouse gas emissions for 4 years in a row. We're very close 
to being Kyoto compliant. It gave us an opportunity, frankly, to create 
new green jobs. We were competing with Houston and Denver for being the 
wind energy capital of the United States because we've been serious 
about energy conservation, transportation choices, land use, all of the 
things that are going to be part of a comprehensive solution to the 
threat of these changes to the climate and the carbon pollution. We've 
actually been able to make some progress and be positioned to deal with 
a carbon-constrained economy.
  We need, Madam Speaker, for people to reflect on what is happening 
now. Just like my friend from Illinois didn't talk about the cost of 
acid rain. It didn't matter to him. He was concerned about a few miners 
in his district and didn't care about the damage to forests and human 
health and lakes and fishing. But we are already seeing the damage that 
is occurring as a result of climate change.
  Speaking of acid rain, one of the things we are seeing is that the 
ocean is slowly becoming more and more acidic. This increased acidic 
content of the ocean is having a consequence in terms of damaging coral 
reefs. I mean these are the rain forests of the ocean. This is where 
billions and billions of different animals and plants reside up the 
food chain throughout the ecological system of the ocean that makes a 
difference in terms of how people on this planet are going to be fed. 
We are watching what has happened. There may be consequences in terms 
of the Earth's climate because of the change in the ocean's current and 
acidic level.
  We are seeing across the country increases in extreme weather events, 
exactly what the scientists told us would happen. Yes, the world's 
atmosphere is increasing in temperature. Yes, we're seeing an increase 
in the sea level that could be 2 to 6 feet by the end of the next 
century. But we are already seeing vast stretches of this country in 
the flame zone being subjected to increased forest fires, to drought. 
In your areas in the Southeast, you have seen drought where it has not 
been a problem for years. In the Southwest, Lake Mead that supplies the 
city of Las Vegas is going down, causing massive disruption. We are 
watching changes that are taking place in terms of snowpack. My good 
friend and colleague from the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Inslee, and I 
depend on snowpack for water supply and energy production. This makes a 
great deal of difference.
  Madam Speaker, one of the concerns I have as I am listening to our 
friends on the other side of the aisle make things up about what is 
going to happen with a proposal to reduce carbon pollution and put a 
price on it, they assume somehow that this is going to result in money 
disappearing, that somehow this is just a tax that goes into the great 
government maw and there is nothing that comes out the other end. Well, 
as a practical matter, and I'm confident that in the course of this 
hour as I work with my friend Mr. Inslee, who I see poised here in the 
front of the Chamber and I am hoping that he's willing to enter into 
this conversation with me because he knows a great deal about it, we 
hope that we will be able to encourage, if not our Republican friends, 
at least the American people to look at the President's budget. Look at 
what he has proposed to begin a comprehensive approach to transform our 
energy supply and slow global warming.
  Yes, he recommends putting a price on carbon pollution, but he also 
recommends that this money would be generated by having the carbon 
polluters pay for the privilege, just like we did with acid rain so 
successfully that my friend from Illinois now is against. There are 
opportunities to be able to put this back into place because the 
program, and I'm just quoting from the President's budget, would be 
implemented through a cap and trade, like we did with acid rain, that 
will ensure that the biggest polluters don't enjoy a windfall. The 
program will fund vital investments in a clean energy future, which I 
think my friend Mr. Inslee may have some thoughts about, $150 billion 
over the course of the next 10 years. The balance of the auction 
revenues are to be returned to the people, especially vulnerable 
families, communities, and business, to help the transition to the 
clean energy economy.
  You know, there's a great NRDC blog that talks about Newt Gingrich's 
assertion that climate change will result in a $1,300 tax per 
household. And they point out it's simply voodoo economics.
  First of all, he ignores the value of the carbon market. It just 
disappears.

[[Page H3498]]

He assumes that the money doesn't get returned to the taxpayers. Well, 
based on what New Gingrich and the Republicans did with their bridges 
to nowhere, with their profligate spending in Iraq, with their driving 
up the budget deficits and giving benefits to a few taxpayers at the 
expense of the many, I can understand the skepticism. He assumes that 
it won't be invested in energy conservation, saving us money. He 
assumes that communities aren't being helped. He assumes that it's not 
going to address regional differences in the cost of cutting global 
warming. He just assumes that somehow it's locked up someplace in a 
vault. Well, that's wrong. The President has outlined an approach that 
captures the value and makes America stronger, more energy reliant, and 
allows families the tools to reduce their escalating energy costs.
  And I will conclude on this point and then yield to my colleague from 
Washington State if he's interested in joining in. But I want to say 
that we are facing now the consequences of an energy policy that was 
designed looking in a rear-view mirror for failed fossil fuels, lack of 
energy conservation, and not dealing with the technologies of the 
future. And as a result, energy bills are going up. As a result, we saw 
$4.11 a gallon gasoline last summer. We saw $700 billion leave this 
country to petroleum potentates when there's a different vision of the 
President and of those of us who want to do something not just about 
global warming but to retool and revitalize our green economy.
  And with that I would like to yield to my colleague Mr. Inslee, who's 
an author in this arena, a noted spokesperson who has been working for 
years in Congress before, as they say, it was fashionable, to talk 
about how our economy and our environment could look different.
  Congressman Inslee, welcome.
  Mr. INSLEE. I appreciate, Mr. Blumenauer, coming forth to talk about 
this issue because we're about to really make a pretty big decision 
here, whether we're going to just continue doing nothing about our 
energy problems, this sort of inaction model. Some of my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle basically are saying everything is hunky-
dory and we should do nothing about the energy challenges we have. Or 
should we take a real step forward to try to move to transform our 
economy, to build millions of green collar jobs, to wean ourselves off 
of Middle Eastern oil and at the same time reduce the amount of global 
warming that is occurring?

  We think we need to move. We think we need action. We don't think the 
current state of the economy is good enough for America. We think 
America is better than this for ways I'd like to talk about a little 
bit. And I don't think it's good enough to adopt this sort of approach 
some of my colleagues earlier were talking about to just say it's okay 
to be addicted to Middle Eastern oil, it's okay to allow the jobs of 
building electric cars to go to China.
  It's not okay to let the jobs building wind turbines to go to 
Denmark. It's not okay to let the job of building solar cells go to 
China. We don't think that's okay. We want an American response to 
build those products here, to build those green collar jobs here.
  Now, I meet with a lot of groups about energy. I was very heartened 
last weekend. I went to the Boston area to go to the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, the MIT Conference on Energy, and there's a 
group up at MIT of students, mostly post-graduate science and 
engineering students, and they have an energy club, and and once a year 
they have a meeting about energy. So I went up there to address their 
group. There were about 150, 200 students, and about 300 entrepreneurs 
and business people. And I was so excited to listen to what they saw as 
a vision for this country.
  And for those who think we can just stay in the status quo, I wish 
they could meet these MIT students. These folks were telling me about 
the jobs we can create in the solar industry with concentrated solar 
energy power, like the Ausra Company that just built the first 
manufacturing plant for concentrated solar cell energy in Nevada. Just 
2 months ago they opened up this plant. And these MIT students are 
chomping at the bit to start working in that technology. We were 
talking about the AltaRock Company, a company that's now exploring 
engineered geothermal up in the State of Washington. These MIT students 
just can't wait to start going out and start businesses around 
technology like that. We talked about the Sapphire Energy Company, a 
company that now is building production facilities to use algae to make 
biofuels. We talked about the A123 Company in Boston, which makes 
lithium-ion batteries so we can power our plug-in electric hybrid cars.
  And what these MIT students told me is, Mr. Congressman, you build a 
structure to drive investment into these new technologies, and we will 
build the companies of the future and the jobs of the future to deliver 
a clean energy transformed economy for the United States.
  And for anybody who is a pessimist about our ability to wean 
ourselves off of fossil fuel and wean ourselves off of Saudi Arabian 
oil, you ought to go out and meet these MIT students.

                              {time}  1930

  But the businessmen there told us something, and this is the 
important point, I think. What the business people, these were venture 
capitalists, these were CEOs of major corporations, what they told us 
is that future will not come to pass, the green-collar jobs we are 
talking about, unless we adopt some rules of the road for a market-
based economy that will not give such an advantage to fossil fuels but, 
in fact, will level the playing field.
  And what they told me is that basically there is a couple of things 
we can do. One thing we can do is to essentially level the playing 
field between these new technologies and some of the older companies 
that have been subsidized for so long, like the oil and gas industry.
  Now, basically, we can do that through a system that will drive 
investment towards these new jobs of the future. And, by the way, those 
new jobs of the future may include what we call sequestered coal. Some 
of my colleagues were here earlier talking a lot about coal. The folks 
up at MIT were telling me that we may be able to find a technology to 
sequester carbon dioxide when you gasify coal. It may be a possibility.
  So we need some research dollars to make that come to pass. Well, we 
have a way of doing that, and President Obama has proposed a way of 
generating funds that can be used to essentially develop that 
technology, and he has proposed what's called a cap-and-trade or a cap-
and-invest system which is, basically, it's pretty simple. We would 
establish a cap, a limit on the amount of pollution that polluting 
industries are allowed to put into the air.
  We have done this to great success in acid rain, sulfur dioxide, 
which is the pollution that causes acid rain. Congress several years 
ago passed a cap, a limit on the amount of that acid rain pollution 
that we put into the atmosphere.
  Now, President Obama has proposed doing the same for the pollutant 
that causes global warming, principally carbon dioxide. And then we 
would simply have the polluting industries buy, at auction, the permits 
to do that, and use the market system to establish a price for that.
  Now, here's the important part about this approach. Number 1, it 
does, it takes action. It recognizes that the status quo is not good 
enough. And we are here tonight to say that America needs a better 
energy policy than the one we have right now. So, number one, it takes 
action.
  Number two, when you do this, what the business people have told me 
all across this country, when you do this, it starts to drive 
investment into these new technologies that can create the green-collar 
jobs that we need so much in wind power, in solar power, in enhanced 
geothermal power, in electric cars and potentially in sequestered coal 
to use coal in that way. But to do that you have to put a price on 
carbon dioxide, and you have to limit the amount of this pollution 
that's going into the atmosphere. So we are here to say that we are 
capable of building a new transformed economy.
  I want to make one other comment if I can, people have said that when 
you make an investment like this it costs some money. Well, any 
investment costs some money, when you buy a house, it costs some money. 
When you build an electric car, it costs you some

[[Page H3499]]

money. But the people who want us to just stay in the status quo don't 
understand that the door of inaction is going to cost us a heck of a 
lot more money.
  Go ask the people up in Alaska whose homes tonight are washing into 
the Arctic Ocean because the permafrost is melting, these are 
Americans. There is a town in America that is going to have to be moved 
at the cost of about $30 million because it's basically melting into 
the Arctic Ocean because the tundra is melting underneath them. That's 
costing Americans a lot of money tonight. We need to figure that into 
the proposition.
  Go ask the farmers in California, who are losing their farms tonight 
because we have this horrendous drought, an unprecedented drought in 
the western United States, who are losing their farms and their 
livelihoods. Ask them if there is a cost associated with global 
warming.
  Ask the folks who are losing salmon, the salmon fishermen on the west 
coast--I am from Washington, Mr. Blumenauer is from Oregon--ask them 
the cost of inaction of losing their livelihood because we lost salmon 
runs because there wasn't enough water in the rivers last year to have 
a salmon harvest.
  Americans are getting costs tonight that we cannot ignore, and we 
know those costs are going to be greater than any investments that we 
make. By the way, those investments that we make under our plan, here 
is what is going to happen, and this is President Obama's plan. 
Polluting industries are going to do what they should do, which is to 
have to pay some cost to put pollution into the atmosphere.
  You know, when you and I go to the dump, we pay $25 to dump our junk 
in the garbage dump. We can't just dump it for free. And under our plan 
polluting industries will pay some cost associated with putting 
pollution into the atmosphere, as determined by the market. They will 
bid against each other, and the highest bidder will get the permit.
  So they will get to finally recognize the atmosphere as not a 
personal dumping ground for a coal-fired plant but, in fact, something 
we share that has a market value. So they will put money into the pot 
to buy those permits.
  That money will then go back to the American people in a variety of 
ways. First it will go back to the American people in making an 
investment for America in common to build these new industries to do 
the research and development it takes so these jobs will be here, not 
China. It will go back to the American people as an investment to build 
research facilities to build lithium ion batteries here in this country 
rather than China and Korea, that's number 1.
  Number two, it will go back to the American people in a substantial 
tax cut, probably the largest tax cut America has seen for the middle 
class, to make permanent some of these tax cuts. It's going to go right 
back to the American people.
  Third, it will go back in a way, and there are several ways we can do 
this, to help some of the communities that might be disadvantaged, 
potentially, by job loss and energy-intensive industries around steel 
mills and the like. The point is it will go back to the American 
people, and it go in a way that will reduce the cost for Americans, not 
increase it.
  Now, if you think I am just making this stuff up, people can go check 
an authoritative view, an assessment of the cost of this, and it 
basically concluded as this has net positive costs. I mean, it doesn't 
have costs relative to what's going to happen to our economy if we do 
not act, and that's from an assessment done on the GNP that predicted 
we would have a 5 percent reduction.
  Lloyd Stern, a very well respected economist from England, he and his 
team did this assessment. They concluded we will have net negative 
costs relative to this inaction.
  So we are here to say we have a vision based on confidence that 
Americans still have the right stuff, that people who put a man on the 
Moon still have the right stuff. And if we go out and make these 
investments, we are going to put Americans to work building these 
green-collar jobs right in this country. If we don't, we are going to 
lose jobs.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I very much appreciate the perspective you bring to 
this discussion, and I very much appreciate you referencing the Stern 
report. This is an opportunity, we both serve on the Speaker's Select 
Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, having a chance 
to deal with the British Parliament hearing and Sir Nicholas Stern lay 
out the result of his research.
  And by a 5-1 margin, the cost, the risks, the costs that we are 
looking at were far greater than any cost of implementation, and as you 
have outlined in great detail, there are many opportunities, if we do 
this right, to revitalize our economy, to reduce costs right now to 
American families.
  Just four categories of climate damage alone, hurricanes, higher 
energy bills, property lost to rising sea level and water-supply 
impacts are predicted to cost the average family $2,000 a year by 2025; 
by 2050, that increases another 50 percent to $3,000 a year; and by the 
end of the next century, $11,000 per family, just for those elements.
  Now, those estimates ignore, because they are a little hard to 
quantify, but as you pointed out, they are real. The added cost of 
drought, flood, wildfires, the mud slides that follow, agricultural 
damage and the value of lost life. We saw thousands of people lose 
their lives a few years ago in Europe, in France. We saw hundreds of 
people die in the Midwest.
  These are real problems that our friends on the other side have no 
answers for. They are, instead, paying--I am stunned that they would 
come to the floor and argue against.
  Mr. INSLEE. I just had a thought, as you were talking. I have seen 
this movie before of those who didn't want to take action, and I am 
trying to remember where I saw it before and I just flashed on where it 
was. It was in Katrina, because if you think about some of my 
colleagues who don't want to take action to protect against natural 
disaster, it's kind of like the response of the administration to 
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans where they did not make a response to 
a natural disaster.
  And we are now experiencing a natural disaster of enormous 
implications and costs. What I think this is like is if we had come 
forward the day before Katrina with meteorological evidence that this 
hurricane is coming, and we went to President Bush and we said, if we 
make this investment, we can build these levees real fast and protect 
this city from this known damage that's coming our way.
  You know what our friends across the aisle would have said? Costs too 
much money. It's just another socialist experiment. And that's pretty 
much what the administration's attitude was in Katrina even when that 
was happening.
  Now, we have a slow-motion disaster which is a lot worse than 
Katrina. But their philosophy is the same, which is to not spend a 
dollar for investment against a known risk. And so I just want to 
suggest it's a similar situation.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Well, I appreciate your clarification and 
amplification. It is stunning to hear my friend on the other side of 
the aisle think that the Clean Air Act failed, and because a few people 
admittedly lost their jobs mining dirty coal, that somehow it wasn't 
worth stopping the damage to lakes and forests and human health. We put 
a price on a pollutant, as you pointed out, sulfur dioxide.
  People paid and pretty soon we had reversed the damage and we were 
cleaning it up. There are costs now that the American public is paying. 
There are greater, future costs that we can avoid, an opportunity to 
strengthen America and strengthen our economy.
  I see we have been joined by our colleague from Colorado, Congressman 
Polis, if you would wish to enter into this dialogue, I know you have 
been an avid supporter of a strong environment. You come from a 
community that cares deeply about this, and we would welcome your 
thoughts and observations if you would care to join us.
  Mr. POLIS. Here in Congress, and as a new Member going through the 
budget process and looking at a lot of these issues for the first time, 
I am really struck by the fact that as we discuss numbers on the cost 
side, we are not accounting for the cost of not taking action which, in 
many cases, particularly with regard to reducing our carbon emissions, 
are far greater than a

[[Page H3500]]

lot of the costs that we are looking at with regard to the actions we 
need to take.
  So a more comprehensive and an integral approach to kind of how we 
look at costs is absolutely critical here.
  You mentioned as well, the Clean Air and Clean Water Act. There are 
ways, economic ways to put a value, a beyond the moral value of 
preserving our rivers and preserving our trees. There is a very 
legitimate moral value, whether you derived that from a faith-based 
position or another position, there are actual economic costs of our 
value of our natural heritage and our natural assets. When minerals or 
oil and gas are extracted, they are extracted once, they are gone.
  We are losing a national asset. It's not a renewable energy source. 
And these are not looked at in terms of coming from the financial 
calculations with regard to the programs that we are proposing.
  So I think it would be some benefit in trying to apply some more 
integral accounting and economic modeling and budgetary techniques to 
looking at the real cost of doing nothing and, in fact, the real 
savings from taking action. When you are taking action to preserve our 
rivers and streams and forest, for instance, you might look at the 
direct economic cost of that to businesses, but you also have to look 
at the natural capital that is preserved, that is a true form of 
capital wealth for our great country that deserves every bit as much 
consideration as the direct dollars and cents associated with 
implementation of these policies.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I very much appreciate your observations. We have 
been joined by my colleague from New York, Congressman Tonko from 
Albany who, in a prior life, as I recall, was CEO of the New York State 
Energy and Research Development Authority. You have got some practical 
applications, both in your private sector experience and your work for 
years in the New York State Assembly. We will welcome thoughts and 
observations that you would have to add to the conversation.

                              {time}  1945

  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Congressman. I think it's absolutely important 
that we move forward with progressive policy in the energy area. I 
chaired the Energy Committee in the New York State Assembly for 15 
years. And, you're right, went on to serve as president and CEO at 
NYSERDA, where we focused on renewables, efficiency, research and 
development. The investment that we saw was tremendously powerful to 
the economy and where we worked on several projects that really 
promoted efficiency and conservation measures.
  What I think is important to note here is that this President, this 
administration, has shared a vision with a laser-sharp focus and shared 
with a very direct boldness about the opportunity we have now as a 
Nation.
  We have witnessed the last several years of conflicts in the Middle 
East, and so many believe that was over the commodity of oil. We know 
that that fossil-based dependency pollutes the environment and that we 
have an opportunity here to not only address our future and job 
creation, but our environment and greening up the outcomes, leaving not 
only this generation, but certainly those to follow much cleaner air to 
breathe and a stronger sense of environment-friendly policy.
  Where I think the significance comes here is that we can grow our 
energy independence. We can strengthen that outcome by reducing what is 
a gluttonous dependency on fossil-based fuels, oftentimes imported and 
from some of the most troubled spots in the world that have unstable 
governments. And it's why we were drawn into a conflict, I think, 
because of our dependency on that area for our energy commodities.
  While we can reduce that dependence on fossil-based fuels, we can 
strengthen our energy security, which is a good thing. It's a great bit 
of policy initiative that we should have pull us along this roadway of 
progressive politics as it relates to energy generation and energy 
usage.
  We also, when we reduce that dependency and grow the energy security, 
we grow and strengthen our national security, which is an important 
factor in the international concepts. We are able to move forward in a 
way that I think promotes a much more stable national security outcome 
for our Nation and generations, again, to follow.
  So, as we do this, I believe the investments we can make now by the 
policies that will build an investment in renewables, in shelf-ready 
opportunities to grow energy efficient outcomes, to retrofit our 
businesses, to retrofit our farms. We did projects through NYSERDA that 
spoke favorably, overwhelmingly favorably, to dairy farmers, who are 
dealing with perishable products, who are dealing with perishable 
produce, that were dealing with a very important bit of nature. They 
couldn't avoid at times the peak periods where they could perhaps avoid 
priciest power. They needed to have some sort of addressing of those 
situations.
  What we were able to do is retrofit those dairy farms and allow for 
them to reduce their energy costs, which allows for them to feed this 
Nation in a more effective way.
  So, also, as we create these opportunities through investment and 
research and development, we are growing significant jobs, tremendous 
jobs that will call upon the engineer out there, the inventor, the 
innovator, and we know that there's a great career ladder we can build 
there.
  We are investing in the trades because the trading out and the 
retrofit of these systems, they will maintain, operate, and repair 
these situations so that, again, job creation galore here that can 
really allow us to breathe freer in terms of creating the energy that 
we need and how we use that energy.
  What I also would make mention of is that R&D, research and 
development, should be seen as economic development. I believe that by 
investing in that sort of future, by creating the funds that will allow 
for a blueprint for our energy future, that allows us to take that 
intellectual capacity as a Nation, to take our brain power as 
Americans, and put it to work so that we can deploy these success 
stories into the commercial sector, where we can do cutting edge, where 
we already have ready opportunities, they need to be inserted into the 
outcomes here in the States, and we also can move forward with many, 
many new opportunities in this energy-driven, innovative economy that 
is so boldly expressed by this President and certainly by Speaker 
Pelosi and the leadership of this House.
  So I see a great opportunity here for this Nation to respond 
favorably to the energy needs of this country, to do it much more 
independent of reliance on some of the most troubled spots in the 
world, and doing it in a way that creates significant career ladders 
for people across the strata of job opportunities, from trades on up to 
those who hold bachelor's and master's and doctorate degrees that can 
assist this Nation.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. We deeply appreciate your adding a voice of 
experience as somebody who dealt not just with the policy but the 
practice to demonstrate how this money somehow doesn't disappear, but 
is reinvested, creates wealth, creates economic opportunities for a 
wide variety of people.
  Mr. TONKO. Certainly. As we struggle through these very difficult 
economic times, job creation, job retention is at the forefront of the 
work we do. We all talk about it every day. This is a good way that not 
only grows jobs but grows that energy independence and strengthens the 
energy outcome, and it does it in an environmentally friendly way.
  So it's a powerful statement that we can make here as legislators.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate that very much.
  Mr. Inslee.
  Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. I want to continue this discussion of job 
creation. I want to address--some of our colleagues may be watching 
tonight, possibly--a couple of industries that are concerned about 
this. One is the coal industry and one is the auto industry, two great 
industries doing hard work for a long time. And I want to address how 
our proposals tonight I believe long term will help those people 
working in those industries. Not hurt them, but help them, which we 
want to do. These are great, hardworking people.
  I want to address the auto industry first. We know the difficulty we 
have

[[Page H3501]]

right now with many thousands of Americans who are in difficult straits 
in the auto industry right now. I believe that what we are proposing 
here can be a great tool for the rebirth of the American auto industry. 
Here's the reason I believe this.
  Right now, we are in a race to build the next generation of the new 
car of the next couple of decades. We know it's going to be different 
than the car of the last several decades. We know it has to be. It has 
to not use as much Saudi Arabian oil so we would be addicted to Saudi 
Arabian oil as much.
  We know it has to be advanced on materials. We are in a race to 
preserve the jobs of the American auto industry against folks in China 
who want to take these jobs and against folks in Korea who want to take 
these jobs. We are in a race right now with them to get these jobs in 
this country.
  Well, to get these jobs in this country, we know we have to have the 
technology here to build these next generation of cars. We know to do 
that, we are going to need an investment to help the research and to 
help the retooling of these domestic auto industries to retool to start 
to build electric plug-in cars and the aerodynamic cars and the cars 
that can move to these new technologies with the new biofuel cars.
  We have to win this race with China and Korea. To do that, we need an 
investment pool to help the auto industry to do that. Where are we 
going to get this pool? We are not suggesting we get it from some tax 
of lower- and middle-income Americans. We are suggesting we get it from 
an auction of the right to put pollution into the atmosphere and then 
use those funds to help auto workers build the cars of tomorrow and, 
for those who can't, to be retrained to help in some other industries, 
which is an important part of this.
  Let me tell you why retraining is important. There's a company in 
Washington State called Infinia. Infinia makes a Stirling engine, a 
concentrating solar power system that basically it's a big parabola and 
concentrates the sun's energy and uses thermal energy from the sun to 
create electricity.
  Guess who's the perfect workers to build those? It's auto workers. 
Because this technology is essentially right out of Detroit. Whatever 
you use to build a car, you use to build this Stirling engine, which 
could be one piece of the puzzle. They are now selling tons of these 
Stirling engines to Spain, and they are worried about having to build--
not this company, but others in Spain--because Spain has policies like 
we are now advocating to try to move Spain forward. We need this right 
in this country.
  Move to coal. People are concerned about coal. A company called 
Ramgen, which is a company that has figured out a way to compress 
carbon dioxide so you can stick it under the ground to continue to burn 
coal. We know we need to have those technologies if it's going to be a 
meaningful player in the future.
  Thanks.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Super. As we move into our last 10 minutes, I would 
like to turn again to my colleague from Boulder to share some of your 
further thoughts in terms of where you think we are now and how we move 
this forward.
  Mr. POLIS. I'd like to build on some of my colleague from 
Washington's arguments about the opportunity for growth in the green 
economy.
  My district and, in particular, Boulder, Colorado, has been a center 
of growth in the green jobs industry. In fact, when President Obama 
signed the Recovery Act a few weeks ago, he did so in Denver, and 
invited a company from my district, Namaste Solar, a company that had 
three people 3 years ago, now is up to 45 people, install solar home 
panels.

  This has been--and, like many districts in the country, of course my 
district has been hit by this recession. We have seen unemployment 
rise. One of the biggest sectors we have seen job growth in is these 
green economy jobs--solar energy, the research and development.
  It's not only areas that have strong solar and wind geophysical 
characteristics. We are also talking about energy conservation. There 
are several model homes in my district that are net energy positive. 
Put energy back on the grid. They get there, yes, with solar panels, 
but also by reducing their energy consumption, looking at insulation, a 
smart grid, and Boulder is the pilot for allowing energy consumption 
when there is more power on the grid and turning many homes into net 
energy producers during part of the day, as well, and having an 
intelligence aspect to appliances so they can draw from the grid when 
we have extra capacity.
  Researching, developing and, yes, manufacturing these products are 
going to be a major sector for economic growth across our country in 
the future. When we talk about where America can still be competitive 
and will be competitive in manufacturing, it's in these high-tech 
items.
  We do have a hard time, and we have been losing jobs to other 
countries in some of the manufacturing jobs that gave our middle class 
strength in the 20th century. But I am optimistic that we can grow in 
some of these short order, smart appliances, which traditionally have 
been and will continue to be developed and brought to market right here 
in this country, and be a critical part of this new economy.
  I have had the chance to visit with a number of companies in our 
district. Our district is really a hot bed of entrepreneurial activity. 
And there are others in other parts of the country.
  The more that public policy can embrace this, the more that we can 
serve the dual goal of fostering economic development as well as 
preserving our natural heritage, reducing our carbon emissions and 
reliance on foreign oil, and all the issues which a number of my 
colleagues have so ably discussed that are critical reasons to invest 
in the green economy boom.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate you zeroing in, both of you, talking 
about the value that is added. A wind turbine, for instance, has more 
than 8,000 parts. There's cement, steel, ball bearings, copper, wiring. 
It goes up and down the production line. As soon as that order is 
placed, it moves out throughout the economy.
  Congressman Tonko.
  Mr. TONKO. Right, Congressman Blumenauer. I'm enthralled by the 
comment made by Congressman Inslee about the auto industry and the work 
that we can be doing on investing in new ideas and new concepts. Just 
in our recovery package that we did a few weeks ago was a major 
investment in advanced battery technology. That advanced battery 
technology can speak to not only transportation sectors in our economy, 
but to energy generation. And it may hold the secret to an awful lot of 
progress that we can make.
  If we continue to invest in that R&D, I'm convinced we will have the 
automobile of the future. Also, when we look at some of these 
investments in R&D, they will incorporate other sectors of the economy 
like the ag economy, where you can diversify that ag economy to grow 
the produce that would be required to go forward with some of the fuels 
that we can create simply by using cellulosic formulas that include 
perhaps switch grass or soy products or whatever and go forward in a 
smart way that will look at the best outcomes that we can encourage by 
the government, based on energy required to create new energy, impacts 
on the ag, impact on environment, do those quantifiable studies and 
then determine what path to follow.

                              {time}  2000

  But we can do this with a great degree of skill and analysis that 
will move us into a new generation of thinking. But it takes the 
boldness, It takes that major step forward.
  To your point about some of the opportunities with renewables, we are 
bringing in all aspects of opportunity from R&D from the highest 
technical sense on to the trades that will install these facilities and 
allow us to move forward with a smart grid to connect all of this, the 
smart metering concepts that we need to invest in so that we are using 
the power at the right time and making those consumer judgments that 
are in our best interests individually or household-wise and also 
collectively in a way that has the smartest energy consumers possible 
with the choices being placed before us and the job creation that is 
embraced by this sort of an agenda.
  So I am really encouraged by the work that is being done in this 
House.

[[Page H3502]]

I know that in a caucus that we have created that deals with 
sustainable energy and environment outcomes, that is a powerful place 
to share these ideas and grow the synergy that will produce the 
policies that take us forward.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate that. And as I turn to my friend from 
Washington to conclude this session for us this evening, I do hope that 
our friends who are watching this program on TV, on C-SPAN, go to the 
President's budget. I hope they look on page 21. It is available at 
www.budget.gov. There are copies available in libraries. Look on page 
21 where the President outlines his goal. He is talking about putting a 
price on carbon pollution, yes, returning the benefit to the American 
consumer, the American economy to be able to reduce our dependence on 
foreign oil, to reduce costs for paying for utilities, to be able to 
spark that green economy.
  You know, I am struck by people who are making things up about what 
is in the President's plan and outlandish numbers that are associated 
with it, and I think we have gone a long way tonight towards debunking 
that and talking about the real cost that the American consumer and the 
environment is paying right now. But I am hopeful that people will 
embrace this, like we embraced the Clean Air Act where, on a bipartisan 
basis, people decided that it wasn't fair to pollute the atmosphere 
with sulfur dioxide; that we were going to have acid rain, that we are 
going to poison lakes in your area and kill forests. We put a price on 
it, and we were able to make remarkable progress with a very light 
touch as far as the government is concerned. We have this opportunity 
with carbon pollution to do exactly the same thing. The stakes, if 
anything, are higher.
  I hope that our friends on the other side of the aisle stop this line 
of argument that somehow the Clean Air Act was a mistake, that a few 
polluting jobs were worth the damage that it inflicted on the 
environment, and ignore the lessons that we have learned.
  Congressman Inslee, I would appreciate it if you would kind of take 
us home.
  Mr. INSLEE. Well, I would take it home to say this is an American 
approach to a problem. It really is. We basically are following in the 
footsteps of what Americans have always done when they are presented 
with a problem.
  Number one, when Americans are presented with a challenge, we act. We 
don't just sit around on our hands. Some people are saying we should do 
nothing about this. We believe we need a new energy transformation of 
our economy to deal with this. So that is number one, we act. We are 
not a passive people.
  Number two, we act with confidence in our ability to innovate and 
find solutions to these problems based on technological solutions. 
Other people think we are just too dull to figure out how not to just 
burn fossil fuels. We think we are smart enough that the people who 
went to the moon and invented the cup holder ought to be able to invent 
ways to solve this problem. So we act with confidence.
  Third, we would like to act in a bipartisan way. You know, you would 
think that growing green collar jobs and saving the planet from global 
warming would be a bipartisan thing; but, unfortunately, so far in this 
debate we have advocated an action plan, and there is a thousand ways 
to skin this cat, there is various ways to deal with regional cost 
disparities, there is various ways to distribute the pool of revenue 
between research and helping low income people. There is all kinds of 
permutations that we are going to find a consensus on eventually. But, 
unfortunately, our friends across the aisle have just adopted a 
favorite movie of Ian Fleming, ``Dr. No.'' They have just said no. And 
I hope that over time some of our friends across the aisle will join us 
in finding a consensus on how to move forward. If we do that, we are 
going to continue to enjoy successes in building jobs for Americans 
like we have in the wind energy industry.
  I will just close with this one comment. People 4 or 5 years ago said 
that wind turbines were kind of child's play; they were a fancy toy of 
a bunch of fruitcakes out on the West Coast who were dreaming in their 
teepees of how to solve this problem. Today, America is the leading 
producer of wind power in the world, and more people work today in the 
wind power industry than in the coal mining industry and it is the 
fastest growing of energy in the United States.
  This is the kind of future that we believe we can move forward in. It 
doesn't mean that we are going to replace coal necessarily. We are 
going to use this money that we are going to generate from this plan to 
try to find a way to burn coal cleanly, because we think we ought to 
look at all possible approaches to this problem. So we are going to 
act, we are going to be confident, we are going to believe in 
bipartisanship, and we are going to believe in innovation. That is the 
American response to this problem, and I look forward to when we get 
this done. Thank you, Mr. Blumenauer.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Well said.
  Mr. Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time.

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