[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 11 (Thursday, January 22, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S370-S372]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, yesterday we had an interesting debate on 
climate change in the Senate, and there were three separate votes. The 
first one I and virtually all the Republicans supported, the Whitehouse 
amendment No. 29, said climate change is real and not a hoax.
  This is true. Climate has always changed, and I think there is an 
effort by those on the other side who are trying to promote the big 
Obama program that would cost $479 billion and not accomplish anything 
in terms of setting up a new bureaucracy of trying to say we are 
denying that climate changes.
  As I said on the floor yesterday, climate has always changed. If we 
go back and read history, look at archeological findings, and read the 
Scriptures, it has changed since the very beginning of time. We know it 
is real.
  The hoax is that somehow there are people so arrogant who are going 
to go along with the President's program to say: Yes, if we spend 
enough money we, the human beings, can stop the climate from changing. 
I think people do understand that is not going to happen. So I am very 
happy we were able to get it out so it cannot be used in a way that 
would be deceptive to the public--because the climate has been changing 
since the beginning of time.
  The hoax I have referred to since 2002 is that man is going to be in 
the position to change climate. That is not going to happen.
  What is interesting is these votes could have taken place any time 
over the last year. I hope I am not divulging something someone else is 
going to use, but we are on pace now to have more amendments and votes 
on this one bill--a popular bill--than we had on amendments in the 
entire year last year.
  We were very critical of the majority and the fact that we were not 
doing anything here. I would go home this last year and people would 
say: What did you accomplish?
  Nothing. We didn't have any votes. We didn't do anything.
  We had 15 votes on amendments in the entire year last year. By the 
end of today we will have that many votes on amendments just in 1 week. 
So it is very significant that we are actually getting things done.
  Why did the Democrats not have a vote on the Keystone Pipeline or on 
climate? Because voters don't care or because people have lost interest 
in that. They have caught on. They know that, despite the money that 
has been put in this thing by Tom Steyer--we have already talked about 
that on this floor--that went into midterm elections, the proglobal 
warming votes would be seen negatively by voters.
  This wasn't true back in the 1990s. At that time they had everyone 
scared that global warming was coming and the world was going to come 
to an end. There was polling by the Gallup polls, and that was the No. 
1 and No. 2 concern in America. Environmental concerns are now No. 14 
out of 15 in America.
  So that is where it is. That is why Tom Steyer has spent, by his own 
admission, some $70 million on the elections. He stated he was going to 
get involved in eight senatorial elections--and I say to the Presiding 
Officer, he knows which ones they would be--and they lost them all. But 
Tom Steyer is not out of money, and they are going to do what they can 
to try to resurrect this global warming as an issue.
  So the Gallup polls--and not just the polls. The Pew Research Center 
said 53 percent of Americans either don't believe global warming exists 
or believe it is caused by natural variation. I don't have it here, but 
I do know there was a university that put together a poll of all of the 
television weather people and it came out to the same thing: It was 63 
percent said either it doesn't exist or, if it does exist, it exists 
because of natural causes.
  What do the American people care about? They are concerned about the 
deficit and they are concerned about jobs.
  Yesterday on the floor we talked about the deficit. Under this 
President--not a believable figure but an accurate figure--he has 
increased the debt in America more than all Presidents in the history 
of America, from George Washington to George Bush.
  So that is what people care about.
  As chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, one of my 
top priorities in this Congress is to conduct vigorous oversight of EPA 
regulations and getting into President Obama's excessive regulation 
regime through numerous hearings. We are going to have hearings on 
these regulations. We actually have dates set already to have hearings 
so people will understand what the cost is of these regulations.
  The Presiding Officer is from a rural State, as I am. I am from 
Oklahoma. When I talk to farmers--in fact, Tom Buchanan, president of 
the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, said I can use his quote: Our farmers in 
Oklahoma--and I suggest all throughout America--are more concerned 
about the EPA regulations than they are all the other problems that are 
out there or anything that you will see in the farm bill.
  He talks about the endangered species, that they can't plow their 
fields anymore in certain places because there might be some kind of a 
bug down there. He talks about containment of fuel on their farms. He 
talks about the water of the United States. That bill is probably the 
No. 1 concern of farmers.

[[Page S371]]

  The western part of my State is arid. I was out in Boise City, in the 
panhandle, and it is one of the most arid parts of the United States. 
It could actually be declared a wetland if we were to pass this and 
allow the Federal Government to replace the States and come in and 
regulate water on the land.
  These are the things they are concerned about.
  We should look closely at this, and this is quite a breakthrough. Our 
friends in Australia already tried regulating their emissions. I think 
we all know the IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 
and that bureaucracy is supposedly the scientific community. Yet we 
find out now--and I talked about this yesterday. All the scientists 
were not believers in this, but a lot did believe and Australia did 
believe. So they joined in a Kyoto-type treaty and started stopping 
their emissions. They imposed a carbon tax on the economy a few years 
ago, and it caused horrendous damage--$9 billion in lost economic 
activity per year, and destroyed tens of thousands of jobs. It was so 
bad that their government recently voted to repeal the carbon tax they 
imposed just a couple years ago, and their economy is now better for 
it. In fact, it was announced just following the repeal that Australia 
experienced record job growth of 120,000 jobs--far more than the 10,000 
to 15,000 jobs economists had expected.
  We also looked closely at this because scientists are having a 
difficult time explaining the 15-year hiatus we have seen in 
temperature increases. This isn't me. The IPCC agrees with this, Nature 
magazine agrees with this, the Economist magazine agrees. They are 
reputable publications.
  Reviewing the science is one thing they have to do in the EPW 
Committee, the committee I chair, because it is on this disputed 
science the EPA is building its significant greenhouse gas regulation 
package scheduled for this summer, which all together would be the 
costliest regulation in history. The component regulating 
CO2 emissions from existing sources is the cause of a great 
concern in particular.
  We heard in the President's message on Tuesday night that as proposed 
right now, the EPA's regulation will raise energy prices, destroy jobs, 
and impose billions of dollars in costs on the U.S. economy without 
achieving any kind of an effect.
  It is interesting, and I have quoted her many times. The first EPA 
Administrator appointed by Barack Obama was Lisa Jackson. Lisa Jackson 
came before our committee many times. I always appreciated her because 
she would not get a message from the White House and come and repeat it 
in our committee.
  I asked her a question: If we were to pass any of these regulations 
or the legislation to have cap and trade in America--which is what the 
President proposed on Tuesday night--would this have the effect of 
reducing CO2 emissions worldwide.
  Her answer, live on TV, in our meeting was, no, it wouldn't because 
this isn't where the problem is. The problem is in China, the problem 
is in India, the problem is in Mexico.
  So what we do in the United States isn't going to affect what they 
do. In fact, the opposite is true. Because if we control emissions to 
the point where our manufacturing base runs out of energy in America, 
where do they go? They go to places such as China. China is sitting 
back hoping we pass something so they can benefit from our lost jobs in 
America.
  The Wall Street Journal on June 3 called the proposal that the 
President suggested on Tuesday ``a huge indirect tax and wealth 
redistribution scheme that the EPA is imposing by fiat [that] will 
profoundly touch every American.''
  Further quoting the Wall Street Journal: ``It is impossible to raise 
the price of carbon energy without also raising costs across the 
economy.''
  This is clearly worthy of intense congressional oversight, and that 
is what we intend to do. EPA has gone beyond the plain reading of the 
Clean Air Act in an attempt to grossly expand its authority. It is 
forcing States to achieve dubious emission reduction targets from a 
limited menu of economically damaging and legally questionable options.
  One of the foremost authorities in America is Richard Lindzen of MIT. 
Richard Lindzen some time ago made the statement, ``Controlling carbon 
is a bureaucrat's dream.''
  That is what they want to do, try to control carbon emissions.

       Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control 
     carbon, you control life.

  The scientific community has been divided on this. We are in a 
position to try to make sure this doesn't happen to America, and so we 
are going to be very busy on that.
  I wish to also mention we have seen Europe go down the road of 
imposing these mandates--the cap and trade and regimes they are 
proposing for America and in the green energy subsidies--and we have 
seen where that has gotten them. Electricity prices are up to 2\1/2\ 
times higher than those in the United States. In Germany, in 2012, 
CO2 emissions actually rose by 1.3 percent over the 2011 
levels, while the U.S. emissions fell by 3.9 percent--and they were 
imposing these new restrictions, we were not.
  As a matter of fact, things got so bad in Germany that they backed 
off of their disastrous renewable fuels program and now plan to build 
10 new coal-fired powerplants in Germany.
  Make sure we heard that, 10 new coal-fired powerplants. This is what 
they are trying to do away with altogether in America--as if we could 
run the ``machine'' called America without fossil fuels and without 
nuclear. We can't do it.
  A look closer to home: California has adopted similar carbon 
reduction policies, and its cap-and-trade scheme alone will increase 
electricity rates by 8 percent, according to the California Public 
Utilities Commission.
  That is in California today. If we pass this, I don't have a figure 
as to how much that is going to increase out in California. Do we want 
our entire economy following the path of the State of California? It 
has one of the country's highest electricity rates. The rates in 
California are 65 percent higher than our rates in the State of 
Oklahoma, and it has one of the worst unemployment rates, one of the 
worst insolvent fiscal positions of any State, not to mention some of 
the worst air quality in the country.
  Predictions of this rule's devastating impacts are prevalent. In 
Oklahoma, residential rates are projected to increase by 15 to 19 
percent and industrial rates by 24 percent; that is, in the event they 
are successful in this program.
  I notice the other side has not arrived. I ask unanimous consent to 
go an additional 7 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. INHOFE. The Kansas Corporation Commission calculates that 
compliance with the rule as proposed would cost the State $5 to $15 
billion, the equivalent of a 10- to 30-percent increase in electric 
rates. The loss of cheaper and more reliable coal units will increase 
the power prices by as much as 25 percent on grids that serve about a 
third of the Nation's population, according to the Brattle Group in 
Massachusetts.
  Now, I have gone on and talked about how much more this would cost 
State by State. There isn't time to go over all of it now. But let's 
stop and realize the cost of this. NERA's analysis of the increased 
cost if we were to adopt these programs projects that the cost to 
comply with the EPA's plan could be a total of $479 billion or more, 
with 43 States having double-digit electricity increases and 14 States 
potentially facing peak-year electricity price increases exceeding 20 
percent.
  I say this because--who is having to pay this? Everybody pays it, and 
they have to pay it equally. It has to be the most regressive type of 
increase in taxation that we could have. If you have a pilot program, 
with a family that is in poverty they have to spend the same amount of 
money for their electricity. That is a must, not a luxury. It is 
something they have to have. So they could easily spend half of their 
expendable income on electricity price increases, while wealthy people 
might only face a 1-percent increase of their income. That is why it is 
important and why we need to pay attention to it--to make sure we know 
the public is aware of this.

[[Page S372]]

  NERA also estimates that atmospheric CO2 concentrations 
would be reduced by less than one-half of 1 percent--that is if they 
are successful in doing this--equating to reductions in global average 
temperatures of less than two one-hundredths of a degree. So all these 
things they say they might be able to accomplish, they have studied it 
and say it is just not true.
  I have already talked about the fact that within the President's own 
administration, Lisa Jackson, the former head of the EPA, said even if 
they are successful, even if they are right about this, it is not going 
to reduce CO2 emissions because this isn't where the problem 
is.
  So this is going on right now. We have a committee that is clearly 
going to be working on this so the American people will be aware of 
what is happening. The Energy Information Administration determined 
that the China agreement would result in a 34-percent increase in 
electricity prices.
  I bring this up because we heard in the President's speech on Tuesday 
that they were negotiating with China and some very successful 
negotiations took place. The Presiding Officer remembers that this was 
back when our Secretary of State went over and met with President Xi of 
China and came back and said it was a successful meeting. What came out 
of that negotiation? China said: Well, we will keep increasing our 
emissions until 2020, and then we will look at it and decide whether we 
want to lower it. That is not much of a negotiation, and it was not 
very comforting to us.
  A comprehensive survey conducted by a Harvard political scientist 
shows that people who are worried about climate change are only willing 
to pay energy bills up to 5 percent higher. Whether it is global 
warming or climate change, the American people understand this proposal 
is in no way about protecting the environment or improving public 
health. This rule is an executive and bureaucratic power grab unlike 
anything this country has ever seen, and it is merely the tip of the 
spear in a radical war against affordable energy and fossil fuels.
  At a time when domestic oil and gas prices through hydraulic 
fracturing continue to be one of the only bright spots in our economy, 
a lot of people are trying to stop this from taking place. I kind of 
wind up with this because I think it is important. I come from an oil 
State, so I have to buy it. I understand that. The process of hydraulic 
fracturing started in my State of Oklahoma--in Duncan, OK--in 1948. Did 
you know that by their own admission the EPA said there has never been 
a documented case of groundwater contamination since they started using 
hydraulic fracturing?
  When the President made the statement in the State of the Union 
Message that the United States has dramatically increased in the last 5 
years our production of oil and gas, that is correct, but that is in 
spite of the President. We have enjoyed a 61-percent increase in the 
production of oil and gas in America in the last 5 years--61 percent. 
However, all of that is either on State or private land. On Federal 
land we have had a reduction of 6 percent. So I look at that, and I 
believe it when people say that if we had been able to increase 
production on Federal land such as we have done in the last 5 years on 
private land and State land, we could be totally--100 percent--
independent from any other country in developing our resources.
  So I am committed to using our committee, the Environment and Public 
Works Committee, not only to conduct a rigorous oversight of the Obama 
EPA policies which are running roughshod over our economy, operating 
outside the scope of the law, and directly ignoring the intent of 
Congress but also to rein in this out-of-control agency through any and 
all means at our disposal.
  This has been a problem. People used to say that it was just big 
business that wanted to reduce these regulations. That isn't true. As I 
mentioned before, the farmers of America--just in my State of 
Oklahoma--say the overregulation of EPA is the most difficult issue 
they have to deal with.
  With that, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rubio). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.

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