[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7483-7484]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



             ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMISM THREATENS U.S. ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Morella). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Madam Speaker, yesterday, I read one news item and heard 
another, both of which caused me great concern. One was the headline in 
the Knoxville News-Sentinel which said, ``Tennessee Economic Outlook 
Grim.''
  Now, Tennessee has become one of the most popular places to move to 
in the whole country. Also, our economy is very diversified and not 
overly dependent on two or three big-ticket items and, thus, not as 
subject to the boom-and-bust cycle seen in some other places. So if 
Tennessee's economic outlook is grim, it causes me great concern about 
the economy in the Nation as a whole.
  The second item was a report on a national news cast that said Dell 
Computer and some other leading companies were withdrawing job offers 
previously made to people about to graduate from college. The report 
said that Dell was announcing additional layoffs which will soon total 
about 6,000, or 10 percent of their workforce, in addition to the 
withdrawn job offers.
  Over the years, I have had many parents and grandparents bring their 
children or grandchildren who have graduated from college to me for 
help in getting jobs. For the most part, they are good-looking young 
people and have made very good grades, but who are unable to find jobs. 
Many young people are going to graduate schools today because they 
cannot find good jobs with just a bachelor's degree, as in the past. 
Also, many young people are majoring in subjects in which there are 
almost no jobs. Colleges and universities cannot discourage people from 
majoring in some subject where the job prospects are poor because they 
would make the professors of those subjects very angry. But it is 
really sad when someone spends years in college and cannot find a job.
  Also, some universities are encouraging students to incur huge 
student loans which they cannot then repay. I remember last year 
reading in the Washington Times about the glut of Ph.D.s. The story 
told of one man who had gotten a doctorate in English and had sent out 
almost 400 resumes and got only one job offer for a job he really did 
not want.
  There are far too many lawyers. We always read about what the top 
graduates from the top schools are getting. The reality is that many 
law school graduates cannot find jobs or end up making less than they 
would if they managed a McDonald's or drove a truck.
  I was visited recently by members of the Tennessee Hospital 
Association. Their main problem is a severe shortage of nurses. Nursing 
is a great profession to go into at this time. But I strongly encourage 
all young people to check out the job prospects before they spend a 
small fortune and years of their lives getting a degree or even degrees 
that are almost meaningless.
  The main thing, though, that is going to cause our economy real 
trouble if we do not wake up is the energy crisis. We have wealthy 
environmental extremists all over this country that protest anytime 
anyone wants to drill for any oil, dig for any coal, produce any 
natural gas or cut any trees. Bill Bryson, in his book ``A Walk in the 
Woods'' about hiking the Appalachian Trail, mentions that New England 
was once only 40 percent in forest land, while today it is almost 70 
percent covered by forests. My own State of Tennessee is half in 
forests now, 50 percent, compared to only 36 percent in 1950.
  The amount of forest land has gone way up in the last 50 years; yet 
the children in our schools have been so brainwashed in recent years by 
extreme left-wing environmentalists. I am sure almost none of them 
would answer correctly if asked if the forest land had gone up over the 
last half century. The Sierra Club and some other environmental groups 
have gone so far to the left in recent years they are making socialists 
look conservative.
  Some wonder why gas is going toward $3 a gallon, as many are 
predicting, and why utility bills are going way up. Well, it is 
primarily because rich, yuppie environmentalists are slowly but surely 
shutting this country down economically. They may not be hurt when gas 
and utility bills go way up, but millions of lower-income and middle-
income people are. Jobs are destroyed and prices go up when we stop or 
delay for years the production of any energy or even many other forms 
of production in this country.
  We have closed half of our oil refineries since 1980. We now have to 
import most of our oil. We are now cutting only one-seventh of the new 
growth in our national forests each year. Environmentalists pushed for 
it and won and passed a law in the mid-1980s saying we would only cut 
80 percent of the new growth. But they always demand more, and they 
continually have to exaggerate the problems or their contributions will 
dry up.
  East Tennessee had 157 small coal companies in the late 1970s. Now 
there are none due to environmental extremism. Former President Clinton 
locked up 213 trillion cubic feet of natural gas just before he left 
office. Now the mayor of the small town of Englewood, Tennessee, tells 
me he has senior citizens in his town who are having to choose between 
eating or paying their utility bills. One Illinois water district said 
its water bills would have to go up $72 a month to achieve the 
unrealistic Clinton standards on arsenic levels; yet even at the 
present safe levels, people would have to drink water full-time for 
their entire lives to run even a minute, minuscule risk of cancer from 
the 50-parts-per-billion standard now in effect. All of the coal, oil, 
lumber, and natural gas companies we have shut

[[Page 7484]]

down or greatly restricted used to hire many college graduates and 
other workers.
  When we drive up energy costs, we harm almost all companies and 
individuals. College graduates cannot find jobs at the very time prices 
for everything are going way up.
  Madam Speaker, if we do not soon stop this extremism and bring some 
balance and moderation back into our environmental policies, many more 
college graduates will be unable to find jobs and millions of lower- 
and middle-income people will suffer greatly.

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