[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 11 (Wednesday, January 25, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H174-H177]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
A FUTURE WHERE WE ARE IN CONTROL OF OUR OWN ENERGY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for
30 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege and the
honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United
States House of Representatives and to follow the gentleman from
Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) here in the well.
I want to first say that he makes clear sense with the argument he
makes. We don't hear these arguments enough. Too often, this Congress
is dealing with superfluous issues, political issues, rather than
practical solutions.
It brings to mind for me the President's speech last night from in
front of where you are right now, Mr. Speaker. Very early in his
speech, the President said he wants to see a future where we are in
control of our own energy. Part of that solution is encompassed by the
delivery of John Shimkus here a little bit ago with what to do with
nuclear waste. I would say also there are other things we can do from a
technical perspective to utilize that, recycle that.
Some of the nuclear waste is tied up because of an Executive order
that was signed by President Jimmy Carter more than 30 years ago. We
haven't cracked the code on how to resolve that even though the science
has caught up.
We have a long ways to go, and we need to have an administration that
actually means this: A future where we are in control of our own
energy. The instant that I heard that statement last night, it occurred
to me that the President is in control of our energy, but the American
people are not in control of our own energy.
I would point out the Keystone XL pipeline as an example. I heard an
instantaneous rumbling here on the floor of the House of
Representatives when the statement was made that we were going to be in
control of our own energy.
The President also said he wants to see an all-of-the-above energy
policy. The all-of-the-above policy includes responsible utilization of
all of the nuclear fuel that we have and then responsible positioning
of it when we can no longer utilize the energy within it.
But it also includes drilling offshore, and it includes drilling the
nonnational parks public lands in the United States, and it includes
bringing in energy from other places on the North American continent
from our friends, our number one trading partner, Canada, our good
friends to the north.
They are in energy-export despair right now because they have
listened to what the President had to say. For 3 years, the study has
gone on about the Keystone XL pipeline, 1,666 miles of pipeline that
runs from Canada down to the gulf coast. It allows for a spur to go off
of that to a future refinery that I hope is built in southeastern South
Dakota and which would be able to transfer refined oil that would come
from the oil sands in northern Alberta and be able to distribute that
across the country, primarily to points from there south and east.
Mr. Speaker, the President has blocked the Keystone XL pipeline. He
announced last night that he is opening up 75 percent of the--I have
forgotten the exact word he used--75 percent of the Federal lands that
are eligible, I think would be a fair way to characterize his
statement, to drilling for oil. That is news to all of us. It is news
to the oil industry, I believe. In the previous State of the Union
address that he gave, if I recall correctly, he mentioned that he has
opened up drilling in the gulf coast again. In at least one of these
addresses that he made, that's what he has said.
But when you look at the permits, it is a different story. They say
they are opening up permits again after the BP spill; but we have lost
a lot of deepwater rigs to other parts of the oil-developing world,
including outside the Western Hemisphere. The industry tells me that
once you lose a big rig from a location, it takes about 4\1/2\ years to
transition it back into the gulf coast again. That has happened to rig
after rig down off of the gulf coast.
The announcement that this is the most oil that we have produced or
most petroleum that we have produced domestically in 8 years may be
true. I don't know anyone else that knew those numbers in this Chamber
either. And I am wondering how they defined it, how they quantified it.
In any case, we have a lot of oil that is being produced up in the
Bakken region of North Dakota. The reason for that is because they
found the oil up there. It is on private land. The Federal Government
has not as many tools to obstruct the development of oil production in
the Bakken region of North Dakota as they might have in 75 percent of
the Federal property that the President addressed last night.
I don't know that any of us believe that he is serious about wanting
to develop American energy, especially American petroleum energy. If he
were serious about it, why would he not direct the Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton--whom he spoke kindly of last night--why would he not
direct her to sign the agreement with Canada so that we could go ahead
and build the Keystone XL pipeline? The only Federal procedural
obstruction left in the way is the permit that is the agreement between
Canada and the United States. All that is required to do is to drop
that last section of pipe in place right there at the 49th parallel, at
the border of the United States and Canada. The rest of that is all
green light.
And so if it weren't for the fear that the billions that would be
invested for a real return--not to mention the 100,000 jobs that would
be created, if you look at the iterations that come forth from not just
the construction of the pipeline but the operation of and the economic
development that flows from it, 100,000 jobs. But his speech last night
was about jobs, and we can't have the 20,000 jobs instantaneously lit
up by the Keystone XL pipeline or the additional 80,000 jobs that flow
from the economic development from the Keystone XL pipeline. Why? Not
because there is a legitimate environmental concern. There is not one
left. Not because, as the President said, he needs more time to study
it. There has been 3 years to study it.
Think about how this works if you're the President of the United
States. You're constantly barraged with decisions that must be made,
and you have set up a network, a pyramid of advisors that filter that.
You're only dealing with the most difficult problems that there are.
Your subordinates take care of all the other decisions. No one--no
matter how smart, no matter how quick--really has the mental space to
deal with all of the things that go on here in the United States of
America. It is humanly impossible. The President has a series of
advisers. They advise him.
The President has said, I haven't had time to study the Keystone XL
pipeline. The President of the United States is never going to have
time to study all of the nuances that have to do with all of the
components of the
[[Page H175]]
Keystone XL pipeline. Hardly any Member of Congress could dedicate a
career to know all the things there are to know about the Keystone XL
pipeline. It isn't how we make decisions in the real world. It isn't
how the President makes decisions in the real world.
What if the Iranians launched a nuke and it was in the air? Would the
President say, ``I don't have time to make a decision''? I would like
to think not.
{time} 1150
I'd like to believe, Mr. Speaker, that the President would make that
decision in a split-second heartbeat. In fact, I'd like to believe he
had that delegated so there could be instantaneous action and a
response, and we could shoot that missile down before it could get over
the continental United States and be within the cone of its target. I'd
like to think that would happen.
I'd like to think the President had fail-safe systems in place to
protect us for national defense. And I'd like to think that he has a
system in place where he can trust his advisers to look at something
that is conceptually like the Keystone XL pipeline and be able to say,
Mr. President, we've studied this for 3 years--if I'm listening to that
briefing, it's already cleared a lot for me at that point, and ``what
have you found out?'' would be my question if I had to ask it. And the
answer would be, there's no environmental risk. Zero.
We have tens of thousands of miles of pipeline that pump a lot of
things more toxic than crude oil through it underneath the ground of
the United States of America, and the average number of problems we
have that I hear about is zero. And so if we had had spills from an oil
pipeline, I guarantee you the environmental extremists would have let
us know, and they would have embellished it to the point where
everybody in America would know about how horrible it might be if one
of those pipelines got a crack in it and some oil seeped out.
But instead, environmental extremists come with this argument. My
gosh, it goes over the Ogallala Aquifer. It's an important aquifer, a
wonderful, freshwater aquifer. They pump water out of it to irrigate
and water cattle and people. That's all true.
But also, it's true that there are hundreds of miles of pipeline that
run over the top of the Ogallala Aquifer now, and some of them have
things in it that are less digestible than the petroleum that's coming
out of the oil sands in Northern Alberta. So I don't have heartburn
over that because we have already established we can build pipelines
effectively and we can build them safely, with a very, very, very
minimal risk of any spills. Statistically it's almost zero.
And by the way, Mr. Speaker, I'm not just speaking as someone who has
an opinion, having read a briefing document put together by someone
else. I'm actually a guy who's gone out and worked on a pipeline, built
pipelines. I've been down in the ditch, I've been up on the bank. I've
been a swamper on a bending crew. I've been a welding helper. I've
built pipelines in Kansas, I've built them in Iowa, and I understand
the mechanics of it, and I understand the system. I understand the
labor structure, the business component of it.
And by the way, I'd say this to the Keystone XL pipeline people.
Let's do this. Let's take the risk. There's a lot of money invested now
anyway. This country needs to move forward. This pipeline will be
built. It'll either be built with the approval of this President, or
it'll be built after the disapproval of the American people elects us a
new President.
So why wouldn't we just take this risk and move this ball down the
field a little ways, start that investment and build this pipeline in
the United States, build all of it that's appropriate. The only thing
that can't be done is you can't cross the 49th parallel. You can come
down from Canada right up to that line. We don't know how wide our
border is. You know, it's infinitely narrow, at least in theory. But
let's say a 20-foot section of pipe--that's what I'd leave out.
Build it down from Canada, stop 10 feet from the 49th parallel, take
the GPS locator out there, drive a stake in the middle at the border.
Step over to the other side. Oh, wait a minute. Bring your passport,
then step over to the other side, and start 10 feet south of the 49th
parallel and build that pipeline all the way down to the Gulf Coast.
Now we have it all built, except for 20 feet, and we've done it all
within the law, all within the regulations. Everything else is all
cleared and wide open. That 20-foot section of pipe can sit there then
on the spoil pile, can just sit there, and we can look at that for a
while. Let's set up a Web cam and a Web site, and then all the American
people and everybody around the world, including the oil sheikhs and
the oil cartels and those tyrants that are rich with oil money that are
getting more and more belligerent in proportion to the oil price, they
can watch too on the Web cam, on the Web site, as that piece of pipe 20
feet long sits there waiting for the President to let Hillary Clinton
sign the agreement with Canada so that 20-foot section of pipe could be
set in place and welded, and then we could open up the valve and send
that oil down to the refineries. And oh, what a breath of economic
fresh air that would be.
Mr. Speaker, that's what should be done, and with the Web site and
the Web camera watching this still piece of pipe sitting there on the
spoil pile right at the 49th parallel, what we need to have also is a
little counter on there; that is, how many days they've stalled, how
long does he have to think about it now, and how much money is being
lost and how many jobs are being lost, three little counters there on
that Web site, along with the Web cam shot of the still photo of--well,
we can make it a video, can't we--of the section of pipe 20 feet long
that's sitting there, 10 feet of it to go in Canada, 10 in the United
States.
By the way, somebody's going to sign that permit some day, sooner
rather than later, whether it is the new Secretary of State that will
be appointed by the successor to Barack Obama, or whether it's Hillary
Clinton that might sign that agreement.
I'm standing here, Mr. Speaker, saying this will happen. The Keystone
XL pipeline will be built. The American people support it. They know
it's environmentally safe and sound. The labor unions want it. There is
a tugging of war going on within the political support base for the
President, and he found himself in a situation where he had to decide
between environmental extremists, a very strong base for him, or the
labor unions, another strong base for him. He essentially said to
America, I'm making a political decision here, and I'm going to go with
my environmental extremist friends, and the labor unions are going to
have to just swallow this one for a while. That's the answer.
He told us he didn't have time to study, and Congress said you shall
come back with an answer within 60 days of whether this is an economic
security risk for the United States, this pipeline, whether it needs to
be built for economic security reasons or not, national security
reasons or not.
Twenty-eight days into the 60 days that he had to study--now,
remember, he had all of those 3 years to study like everybody else did,
and all of those advisers to synthesize this for him, boil it down and
give him one or two or three points, all he really needed to know. But
instead, he opted to jump the gun, go only 28 days into the 60-day
period of time he had and then say, I didn't have time. How would that
be?
What if he had to go out and run a race that was 30 or say 60 laps
long, and you run that race for 28 of the 60 laps, and then you go,
well, I didn't have time to finish the race so I'm quitting now. Cut
this thing off, shut it down.
We know the difference. The American people, Mr. Speaker, know the
difference between reasons and excuses. The President has given the
lamest of excuses. No thinking person in the country believes that it
was a reason that he didn't have time to study the Keystone XL
pipeline.
It will be built. We need to build it all within the United States
and within Canada, leave out that 20-foot section. For the people that
might want to set it as a 50-foot section or a 10-foot section, I'm
good with all that. I'm not going to quibble.
I'll just tell you here's what I'll do personally, if you'll let me.
I'll go up there and swing that section of pipe into place myself, and
I'll go down there and grab the welder, and I'll weld it in place
myself. I'll weld my initials
[[Page H176]]
on that pipe, too, while I'm there and the date, and that date and the
time will coincide with the last date and time that will be on the Web
site that will be ticker tape rolling through, telling us how much
money it's costing not to complete that Keystone XL pipeline, how many
days it's been, how many jobs it's cost, and this economic development
piece.
So a President that comes to the floor and says last night, I'm for
all-of-the-above energy policy, well, let's see. Except for the
Keystone XL pipeline, except for drilling offshore, if that means
actually issuing permits, except for this mystery that how much public
lands he's going to hold off of the production. I think we ought to
drill all the nonnational park public lands where there's oil. We don't
know how much oil there is in the United States. We haven't been able
to examine it. We have not committed the resources to do the inventory.
We used to have an inventory that there were 406 trillion cubic feet of
natural gas available in the United States. We know that number's a lot
higher than that now. We've learned how to develop it.
When we look at the fracking technology, that's another thing that
the President didn't speak to last night. But if he's for all of the
above, the EPA should not be turning over every stone, looking at every
geological nook and cranny trying to come up with a way to block
fracking, the fracking technology that's opened up so much energy to
this country, developed by Americans. We have about 1.2 million
utilizations of fracking, and now the EPA has found some elements that
could have been potentially used in fracking in a shallow water
location someplace in Wyoming that they say could have actually come
from a fracking utilization in a well somewhere. They've not tied it
together; they just run that red herring up the flagpole, and now the
environmentalists can hyperventilate and they can try to find another
way to shut down energy production in America.
{time} 1200
Why? Mr. Speaker, what's going through the fixed goals of these
people. And to the American people, why do they have patience with that
kind of thinking, the effort that goes after the economic development
efforts in the United States? What's going on?
And here's what's behind it. The President alluded to that last
night, too, come to think of it. He said he doesn't think the votes are
in this Congress to pass cap-and-tax. Oh, wait a minute. I might have
amended the President's quote a little bit, Mr. Speaker. So I'd back up
just a little and say he didn't think the votes were here to pass his
proposal or his version in his speech last night of cap-and-trade.
No, they aren't. They aren't because the American people have wised
up and so have a lot of Members of Congress. And we have 89 new
freshman Republicans in this place, many of them the result of what
happens when you try to advance bad policies through this Congress.
So the votes aren't there for cap-and-tax, that's true. The EPA is
looking to implement it by order of the President, and his public
statement that they could implement and promulgate rules and end up
with the same thing as cap-and-tax. So underneath that is the almost
religious belief by environmental extremists that if you burn petroleum
products and these hydrocarbons release into the atmosphere
CO2--and it does, by the way. I can concede that point, the
CO2 in the atmosphere--they believe that is the cause of
global warming.
Now, first you have to come to a conclusion that global warming is
taking place, and then you have to come to the conclusion that it's an
unnatural global warming taking place caused by activity of man. Then
you have to conclude the activity of man that causes it is the release
and suspension of CO2 into the atmosphere.
So I listened to all of that, and I say there's a tough equation to
make. And it was really hard for the people in the University of East
Anglia and Penn State, Michael Mann and some of those other people to
make that case. They had to fabricate, remember? Mr. Speaker, they had
to fabricate the case for the actual data that would support even that
the Earth was getting warmer, let alone the calculations that it's
being caused by CO2 suspended in the atmosphere, let alone
that that CO2 is sourced from industry, let alone that that
industry is primarily U.S. industry.
So I just ask a few--you might call them dumb--questions, Mr.
Speaker. I might call them simple questions, the basic questions that I
sometimes find out nobody asks. Everybody is a specialist nowadays, and
they only deal with a component of the overall picture. They don't look
at the big picture, be it generalist, they say wait a minute, arrange
this all for me so a logical rational deductive mind can come to a
conclusion, do that first and then we'll get to the details.
And so the physicists deal with the formulae that are handed to them
by the meteorologists; and the data, it comes from other places. They
accept what comes to them, and they work within their zone. And then
who picks up the whole picture? I don't know.
So I just ask this question: tell me if CO2 is suspended
into the atmosphere by U.S. industry, is the cause of the theory that
global warming exists, then would you tell me how much CO2
is in the atmosphere from the U.S. industry? Because they propose they
are going to cut it by one-seventeenth each year until the year 2050.
So if they know the formula that's going to turn down the Earth's
thermostat--and, by the way, I spent a lot of my life cold, so I'm not
sure that that's a good idea--but I do know that on their comparison
chart they have a whole list of bads on one side of the ledger and no
list of goods, good things that might happen from a warmer Earth.
So I look at this and I say, all right, so show me, I want to know
how much atmosphere has the gravity of the Earth attracted throughout
all this time of it orbiting around the Sun and floating through the
galaxy. So we get this answer back: it's not a disputed number. The
gravity is pulling it so many metric tons. I don't have the number
committed to memory, Mr. Speaker, but that is okay. So, fine.
Now we know how much atmosphere there is. Now I'd like to know how
much of that atmosphere is CO2 suspended in it as a result
of the cumulative effect of U.S. industry since the beginning of the
dawn of the industrial revolution. So that calculated out to be, when
we did this, 205 years of industrial revolution.
So we add this all up. I said, now, take all of this atmosphere of
the Earth, draw it in a circle for me, two sheets of drywall, so to
speak, an 8-foot diameter circle, a little bit higher in my hand all
the way around. That's the size of the Earth's atmosphere in your pie
chart.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I'd ask, think about it. How big a circle would you
draw in the middle of that 8-foot diameter circle in order to
demonstrate the total volume of the CO2 that's suspended in
the Earth's atmosphere, a cumulative effect for 205 years of the
industrial revolution, this thing that we're going to reduce by one-
seventeenth of its emissions each year? By the way, that's one-
seventeenth of one-two hundred and fifth the first year. We're going to
adjust that, and we're going to use that to turn the Earth's thermostat
down.
How big is that circle of CO2 suspended in the atmosphere,
8-foot circle is all the atmosphere? Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to put
you on the spot, but I'll just say, here's the answer. One might
imagine that it's a 4-foot circle of CO2 suspended or
something that could really impact the Earth's temperature.
Well, it's not. It is .56, Mr. Speaker, just a little over a half an
inch in diameter. That's the size of the CO2 that's
suspended in the Earth's atmosphere, the cumulative effect for 205
years of U.S. industry, some of those times that we were belching a lot
of the smoke out into the atmosphere from burning raw coal in ways that
aren't nearly as clean as they are now.
So I looked at that and I thought, are you kidding me. An 8-foot
circle is the Earth's atmosphere, and we're going to take this .56
circle of all the CO2 that's in there from the U.S., and
we're going to reduce that by one-seventeenth, which is actually one-
seventeenth of the 205 years that it has accumulated, remember, and
we're going to do that for the next 50 years and dial the Earth's
temperature down?
[[Page H177]]
What utter arrogance to think that we could do that. Haven't the
physicists looked at this, also? I don't think they have.
Then I go back and--see, I'm a generalist, so go across some other
studies, Mr. Speaker. I found a book called ``Human Universals,'' and
it's written by a Professor Brown from the University of California at
Berkeley. I don't usually go there to find my enlightened authors, but
he's the only one I could find that actually has written a book on
human universals.
What are the common denominators of humanity? What do you see in
human beings that has been true since the beginning of time, the first
civilization? What did Adam and Eve do, and what did every generation
of humanity do that was common to them then that's common to us now and
common to every generation across all cultures, civilizations,
continents and tribes?
There are a list of about 123 things in his book, and he explains
almost all of them. But one of them, Mr. Speaker, this human universal
is every generation of man has tried to not just worship the weather,
or was affected by the weather. Every generation of man has tried to
change the weather, to change the weather. You know, they sacrificed
virgins down in Central America and sometimes ripped their heart out
and threw them down in the pit, and that was going to change the
weather and get it to rain or not rain, as the situation called for.
I just wonder, Mr. Speaker, if this cap-and-tax is not the modern
version of the rain dance. And the weather is probably not going to
change because we argue in here--and it's probably not going to change
because we change the emissions. I think we should, though, put our
factories together and control our emissions and have the cleanest
atmosphere we can have because it's good for the air we breathe.
But I think it's utter arrogance to believe we're going to adjust the
Earth's thermostat with the methodology that we have here. We do know
the methodology of cap-and-tax that was advocated by the President last
night is a methodology that will transfer our wealth in our industry to
countries that care a lot less about the atmosphere, which is my point,
Mr. Speaker.
I didn't really intend to go down that path, but I thought it was
important to bring it up, and I make another point that came to my
attention last night, and it was in the very early part of the
President's speech. He spoke of this being the first time in two
decades that Osama bin Laden doesn't threaten the American people, a
very good thing. I give the President maximum kudos for that and the
SEALs, of course. It was the right decision, it was the right order,
and it was the right result, a very good thing.
But he went on to say--and, by the way, he delivered that in a subtle
fashion that was becoming of the President of the United States in a
speech he gave last night--but he went on to say the Taliban's momentum
has been broken. I disagree, to this extent: the Taliban's momentum has
shifted from military tactical to political.
They have a lot of political momentum. It's not been broken. Their
political momentum has been accelerated, Mr. Speaker. I would make this
point that if we look at the country of Afghanistan and look back
through its history, starting at the end of the seventies and beginning
of the eighties--well, when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the
Northern Alliance, the mujahedin, many of them at the time, took on the
Russians and fought them through that decade with the help of Charlie
Wilson and at least one Member in this Congress seated today, the help
from U.S. missiles that took out Russian helicopters.
But the tenacity of the Northern Alliance today, the tribes from the
northern part of Afghanistan that took on, that took on the Russians
and drove the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance
leaders today, the men who mounted horseback and then themselves led
the cavalry charge on horseback and attacked Russian tanks with AK-47s
in their hands, these courageous men are the men that drove the
Russians out of Afghanistan and, at that point, there was a power
vacuum.
{time} 1210
The Taliban filled up Afghanistan, and we remember what they did.
They blew up the Buddhist temples, and they drove the life expectancy
of a woman down. The only country in the world to have a lower life
expectancy for women than men was Afghanistan. They treated them
horribly. Afghanistan was digressing back to the Stone Age. It was a
fertile area for al Qaeda training camps. We got hit on September 11.
The United States went in to help them with Special Forces. The
Northern Alliance rose up again and, with our help, drove the Taliban
out of Afghanistan. Then they handed over their heavy weapons and
embraced the constitution that was proposed by the United States State
Department, accepting that we would look out for their political
interests.
And what do they have?
These warriors, who defeated the Russians and the Taliban, who lost
their political influence because they trusted the constitution to
represent them and who gave up their heavy weapons, are now watching
the White House and President Karzai negotiate with the Taliban.
The Taliban's momentum has not been broken. It has been transitioned
into political power, and they are looking today to hand political
power over to the Taliban in Afghanistan so that the Afghanistan
Government will reflect the wishes of the Taliban and less reflect the
wishes of the Northern Alliance.
Mr. Speaker, I would inquire as to how much time I might have
remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. KING of Iowa. So I will take 10 seconds to thank you for your
attention and for the opportunity to address you. I appreciate that
privilege.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________