[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 168 (Monday, September 27, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H5180-H5181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   CLIMATE IS MORE LIVABLE THAN EVER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, while climate catastrophists claim that 
our climate is less livable than ever because of fossil fuels, it is 
actually more livable than ever, thanks to our fossil fuel powered 
climate protection systems.
  When you hear the scary claims about a climate crisis, keep in mind 
that climate catastrophists, or alarmists as they are now known, have 
been claiming climate crisis for about 40 years.
  If America tries to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use through a Green 
New Deal or Biden climate plan, we will not prevent a crisis. We will 
cause a crisis by making energy completely unreliable and unaffordable 
for American industry and American consumers, especially the middle-
income and lower income folks.
  Now, what isn't pointed out very often in all this talk about carbon 
dioxide being a pollutant is that carbon dioxide is 0.04 percent of our 
atmosphere. Most people think it is some big number like 20, 30, 40, 50 
percent of our atmosphere. Nitrogen, number one, is 78 percent; oxygen, 
number two, 21 percent. CO2 is not even in third place. 
Argon is, 0.93 of 1 percent.
  Some of these pie charts you would look at on the internet would have 
carbon dioxide mixed in with other trace gases--other, okay?
  So, we are at 0.04 percent. It is an extremely small amount of our 
atmosphere. Now, you would think, again, with the alarmism going on, 
that it is a high percentage that is poisoning all of us. Carbon is a 
building block of most of what we have on this planet, carbon life 
forms, right?
  We are chasing down this path, I think, because of an agenda that is 
a lot different than the climate itself, especially when you see the 
folks that are pushing it the hardest still flying to all their Paris 
rallies and this and that in private jets, not living their lives any 
different, other than what normal people do.
  Coming back to the fossil fuel portion of it, it would be worth it, 
so the alarmists say, to lower CO2 levels and avoid a 
crisis. But the U.S. causes less than one-sixth of all global 
emissions, and that number is even going lower.
  President Trump pulled us out of the Paris accord, yet the United 
States is still leading the way on lowering its CO2 
production anyway. It has a lower net number than before, without an 
accord. The other countries in the developing world, in the Third 
World, in the Eastern Bloc, whatever, are still increasing their 
numbers, building new coal-powered plants in China--one a week, some 
crazy number like that.

  We are supposed to adhere to that in this country and curb our 
production and curb our economy, even though we are leading the way in 
cleaner technology, cleaner-burning automobiles and trucks, cleaner-
burning power plants.
  It is so crazy that in my home State of California, for example, when 
we look at the type of electricity production that comes from green 
power sources, the environmentalists are trying to get rid of them. We 
had two nuclear-powered plants in California. They already closed one, 
San Onofre, down by San Diego, and then one in San Luis Obispo. Those 
two themselves are responsible, at their peak production, for somewhere 
around 16, 18, even 20 percent of the whole grid of California. Imagine 
knocking out 20 percent of the grid in that short amount of time and 
trying to replace it with more politically correct green power.
  It is hard to get the permits to do the politically correct green 
power, such as making tens of thousands of acres covered with solar 
cells or windmills, but nonetheless, we are hellbent on that direction.
  At the same time, they want to get rid of the use of natural gas and 
propane to power people's stoves, power people's water heaters, things 
like that, and have them go electric. They are hellbent on changing 
cars into being electric powered by 2035, no more combustion engine 
cars, all because of this 0.04 percent.
  What are we doing here? It is a political agenda.
  Indeed, every committee in this new Congress has to spend a good 
portion of their time not talking about whether it is childcare, 
agriculture, or finance. They have to run it all through a climate 
change filter before we can move on to the work that needs to be done.
  Coming back to California, we sometimes have public safety power 
shutoffs, they call it, because we have an issue of trees that might 
fall onto power lines or branches that the wind might catch and blow 
into power lines. Right here is an example of three fires that have 
happened in northern California in the last couple of years.

                              {time}  1215

  This one here is the current Dixie fire. I am using an older poster, 
because I am cheap, but this is now, instead of 100,000 acres, a 
million acres. It would come all the way up here past Mount Lassen.
  What is the CO2 equation here of unmanaged forests? We 
need to manage

[[Page H5181]]

forests, so we don't make all the CO2 and have all the fire 
and soot and ash that blows all the way back to the East Coast. This 
CO2 this is deceptive, and we need to think differently.

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