[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9311-9318]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 GLOBAL WARMING AND THE KYOTO PROTOCOL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I thank the Speaker for this 
opportunity to address the House and join my colleagues to talk about 
global warming, to talk specifically about the Kyoto Protocol and the 
language that is currently in the bill of the Committee on 
International Relations, the authorizing bill for the State Department 
to implement the Kyoto Protocol.
  I am disappointed that there was not an amendment on the floor to 
take that particular amendment out of this legislation, because I think 
the consequences of implementing the Kyoto Protocol are so dramatic 
that it deserves a discussion before this House. That is why we have 
joined in this special hour to talk about the consequences if America 
was to implement the Kyoto Protocol. It is a bad deal for America, and 
the conferees should examine the implementation language in this bill.
  Let me just say that, under this protocol, by 2008 to 2012, the U.S. 
would be required to slash emissions of greenhouse gases to 7 percent 
below the 1990 level. That level was last achieved in 1979. Based on 
projections of the future growth in U.S. energy use, this would require 
a real cut in emissions of over 30 percent. In the meantime, major 
greenhouse gas emitters, such as China, India, Mexico, Brazil, would be 
able to continue business as usual.
  Let me just review the numbers of the total income in this country. 
The GDP in 1979, it was four trillion eight hundred sixty-nine. Today 
the GDP, or the total income, the total production of this country is 
nine trillion one hundred ninety-three.
  So based on that kind of efficiency that we had back in 1979, we 
would have to cut the gross domestic product, the output of this 
country in half. Of course we have increased our energy efficiency a 
little bit so, not totally half. But a dramatic change.
  So what we are going to be discussing tonight is how scientific is 
the evidence of global warming, how good is the scientific evidence of 
how much man contributes to that global warming.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), one 
of the experts in this area who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Energy and Air Quality to start off our discussion tonight.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I sincerely appreciate the 
gentleman from Michigan having this Special Order at the request of the

[[Page 9312]]

leadership. I think it is important to air the issue, so to speak, as 
we get into this debate.
  I am an official observer to the Council of Parties operating under 
the auspices of the United Nations. I was in Kyoto. I was in Buenos 
Aires. I was in Hague. I am planning at the moment to be in Bonn, 
Germany in July.
  I think there are some things that we need to make sure that the 
American people know about this. First of all, the economy that will be 
most affected in the entire world community, if we would implement 
this, is the United States economy.
  As the gentleman from Michigan pointed out, China, whose VOC 
emissions will exceed the United States within the next 10 years, would 
have to make no reductions. Mexico, which is a growing economy and our 
partner in NAFTA, would not have to make any reductions because they 
are considered to be a developing nation. India, the second most 
populous nation in the world, again with growing VOC emissions, would 
have to make no reductions because they are considered again to be a 
developing nation.
  So when we get right down to it, the Western European community, 
because the collapse of communism occurred after the base year that 
they are using to calculate the reductions, would make few, if any, 
because they have shut down the old coal plants in the Soviet Union and 
in behind the Iron Curtain. In Western Europe, they have gone more and 
more to nuclear power. So they have to make no reductions in their 
economy. It would be the good old U.S. of A. that would have to make 
these reductions.
  Under the protocol, a steel plant operating in Pennsylvania or in 
Illinois or in Indiana that would have to be shut down under the 
protocol, one could take it bolt by bolt, piece by piece, dismantle it, 
ship it to China or ship it to Mexico, put it back together, that same 
plant with the same emissions, and would be perfectly legal under the 
Kyoto Protocol.
  For that reason, it is not just Republicans like the gentleman from 
Michigan and I that oppose this. Good solid labor union Democrats like 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) strongly oppose this. In 
fact, when they did the Byrd-Hagel amendment in the United States 
Senate, it passed 98 to 2 that we cannot implement Kyoto unless certain 
changes are made so that it does not negatively affect the United 
States economy.
  Second thing that the citizens of the United States need to 
understand about Kyoto is that the science is not settled. In fact, 2 
years ago, 15,000 of the most eminent environmental scientists in the 
United States signed their names to a letter that I believe was sent to 
the President. It may have been sent to the Members of Congress. 
Fifteen thousand scientists said do not implement Kyoto because the 
science is not settled.
  Just within the last 6 months, research based on actual data in the 
Atlantic Ocean has come out that says the whole concept of global 
warming may be exactly wrong, could be totally 180 degrees wrong.

                              {time}  2145

  So there are all kinds of reasons for us to take a go-slow approach 
on this. And I think that President Bush, when he said the Kyoto 
agreement would not be ratified, did exactly the right thing. I think 
the President and Secretary of State are going to work with 
Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to develop 
a new mechanism for environmental negotiations, not based on Kyoto, but 
based on sound science and based on economic interests of the United 
States vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
  I would think within the next year or so we will come up with a 
different mechanism that actually will enhance the environment and will 
enhance the world community. But the Kyoto agreement, as it is 
currently structured, is totally flawed. It would be very 
disadvantageous to the United States. And unless we want to go back to 
the economy like it was in the 1970s, as the gentleman pointed out, 
this is exactly the wrong agreement and should not be implemented in 
this country.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. I joined the gentleman from Texas at the 
Hague, and what the Kyoto Protocol did is it left a lot of the details 
of implementation to further negotiations. One of the questions at the 
Hague was the so-called ``sinks,'' the sequestration of the 
CO2, and this chart, I think, demonstrates why the United 
States was trying to insist that sinks be a consideration in emissions. 
As we see by this chart, this is North America, and the red indicates 
the amount of CO2 emissions. The blue at the bottom displays 
the sequestration, or the sinks, how much of the CO2 we 
capture by our corn and our sorghum and our field crops and our 
woodlands. And when we compare that with Europe and the whole Eurasian 
and North African area, we can see that the amount of emissions of 
CO2 greatly exceeds the amount they sequester.
  It seems to me this was one of the reasons that Europe said, well, 
no, we cannot allow you any credit for sequestering those.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. If the gentleman will continue to yield, this 
whole concept of sinks was something that back in the mid 1990s, when 
we began to negotiate Kyoto, was not even a variable. People had not 
even thought of this. And then, when it became apparent that our 
forestlands and our grasslands actually consumed CO2 and 
that we could be a country that on a net basis emitted no 
CO2 because we had large pinewood forests in the south and 
hardwood forests in the north and the grasslands and the cornfields in 
the Midwest, this caused consternation in the international 
environmental community, because under the very mechanism that they had 
negotiated, the United States, in their mind, walked away free.
  So as the gentleman pointed out, at the Hague this was the subject of 
intense negotiations to minimize the impact of sinks. But again, the 
sink is an issue that, using their terminology and their models and 
their variables, the United States should get tremendous amounts of 
credit, which is, again, one of the reasons this is a flawed process, 
because they have not really thought the science through.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. It seems to me that rather than negotiating in 
good faith, a lot of the countries of the world, but maybe particularly 
in Europe, seemed to be more willing to use the treaty as a way to 
reduce our competitive position. Do you think there is merit there to 
that?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. There is a train of thought that this would be a 
surrogate system to put the United States at a competitive disadvantage 
vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
  Now, do not hold me specifically to these numbers, because I do not 
have some of my briefing books before me as we engage in this special 
order, but my recollection is that of all the nations in the world that 
are involved in the Kyoto agreement, and it is around 160 to 170, there 
would be only 13 that would have to make any significant reductions in 
their emissions, and of that, the United States would be a huge 
majority.
  So nations like Iceland would have to make some reduction, Japan, 
Great Britain, Australia, the United States, there were a total of 13 
out of 162, but over half the reduction would come from the United 
States economy.
  I have to exit, but I want to tell the gentleman I appreciate his 
taking this special order, and I think it is very timely and very 
important that the American people understand some of the facts and 
figures the gentleman is going to present.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Let me add my birthday wishes to your 
daughter, where I understand you are going.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Kristen Barton is 19 today. Her birthday party 
is going on as I speak. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. The gentleman from Texas mentioned that a lot 
of individuals, Republicans and Democrats, questioned moving ahead with 
the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, in July of 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol 
was agreed to, the U.S. Senate passed what they called the Byrd-Hagel 
resolution, which says that the U.S. should

[[Page 9313]]

not be signing any treaty that, one, would mandate reductions in 
greenhouse gas emissions for developed countries but not developing 
countries; and, two, would result in a serious economic harm to the 
Nation. And of course the Kyoto Protocol moves in both of these 
directions. It does not include countries for any reduction, such as 
China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and many other developing countries. It 
seems to me this common sense resolution, which was approved by a 
Senate vote of 95 to 0, set the minimal parameters for Senate 
ratification of any treaty.
  And with no realistic idea that a treaty was going to be signed and 
eventually ratified by the Senate, which it has to be ratified for it 
to work, the Bush administration said let us move ahead and make sure 
we reduce our CO2 emissions, reduce our greenhouse gases, 
but let us be very careful about signing on to a treaty that is 
demanding almost the impossible. And although many European governments 
have expressed bitter disappointment about the U.S. decision, it should 
be pointed out that Romania is the only developed country in the whole 
world that so far has ratified the treaty.
  At this time, Madam Speaker, I am going to yield to another leader in 
this area, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), who was a 
leader in trying to introduce an amendment to take this language out of 
this particular authorizing legislation for the State Department.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Michigan and 
am delighted to join him here this evening. This has been an 
interesting issue, because during the last administration, and my 
friend from Michigan will agree with this, each and every department of 
government almost had a budget to promote global warming in the Kyoto 
Treaty. It was very cleverly done. Billions of dollars were spent 
selling the concept of global warming; that it was a fact, when, in 
reality, it has been based on computer models. It has not been sound 
science.
  But just to back up for a few years, in 1977, when we were at the 
height of some cold weather, there is an article here in Newsweek, 
about seven or eight pages long, called ``The Deep Freeze.'' They talk 
in here about the beginning of the Ice Age. Because we had a couple of 
real cold winters in a row, they were talking and they were predicting 
here that by the year 2000 how the colder climate was going to be 
moving further south and limiting agricultural ability in this country. 
The same people are now the ones that are screaming global warming and 
the oceans will rise as the ice melts and all will be catastrophe.
  It is interesting in the last couple of years, and we know most 
Americans get their news from television, but according to a recent 
media study, the major networks are biased in their coverage on this 
subject. And if we think about it, they really are. The study of Media 
Research Center's Free Market Project states for the three big 
networks' nightly newscasts, not a single comment from a global warming 
skeptic for 3 months. That is beyond bias, because this issue has been 
getting a lot of ink. The numbers clearly show that, with the exception 
of Fox News Channel, the nightly newscasts have become advocates for 
the environmental extremist cause. Our findings come as scientists with 
impeccable credentials, and no particular political axe to grind, such 
as Dr. Sally Baliunas of Harvard, Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 
or Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, concur that the science of global 
warming is very much unsettled, flawed, and, in many cases, 
exaggerated.
  During this same time, I am pleased that two people from my district 
have written me in the month of May. A gentleman here who says, ``I am 
not sure whether or not you have taken a position on this matter, but 
my letter is to ask you to give support to the administration's 
decision to withdraw U.S. support from the Kyoto Protocol to help 
protect the country's citizens, including those who are retired and on 
fixed incomes. We already have an energy mess that is crippling the 
economy in California. Enacting the Kyoto Protocol would have put the 
whole country in danger of a California-style crisis.''
  He goes on and discusses that there is not agreement in this country. 
And that is true.
  Another gentleman I know quite well, Mr. Sam Smith, the Whip of the 
House in Pennsylvania government, wrote me another letter: ``The Kyoto 
Treaty would devastate mining communities unnecessarily because it 
really attacks the use of coal.''
  I am here to say that if we are going to deal with the energy crisis 
in this country, and we own 40 percent of the world's coal and 2 
percent of the world's oil, clean coal technology needs to be a very 
strong part of our future energy policy.
  It says here, ``Mr. Bush got a lot of flack recently for opting to 
pull out of the Kyoto Treaty, but it was the correct decision and he 
did it for some very good reasons. Tens of thousands of those good 
reasons work in American coal fields and in our factories every day. 
The harsh realities of the treaty drawn up by international bureaucrats 
in Japan in 1987 would have its most devastating impact on small towns 
in States like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.''
  And it goes on here to talk about many of the things that have 
already been spoken about, that countries like China and our 
competitors, who have already stolen a lot of our light manufacturing, 
would force us to give them our heavy manufacturing, because that would 
be the only place in the world you could do it.
  Let me come back to another issue that has been talked about a lot, 
the scare tactics of the ice melting and the oceans rising. Here is 
what it says. ``As many know, the United Nation's Panel on Climate 
Change publishes a report on global climate change every 5 years. 
Chapter 11 of the most recent report addresses sea level rise, a 
favorite scare scenario of the media and radical climate warmers. 
Professor Morner is president of the International Commission 
representing the scientific community of sea level researchers. These 
are the best scientists in the world on this subject. This is what he 
had to say about Chapter 11 and the dire predictions made about 
catastrophic sea level rise:
  ``The IPCC Chapter 11 is a very inferior product, written by 33 
persons in no way being specialists on the task. The real sea level 
specialists would never give these statements, figures, and 
interpretations.'' He says, ``I have finished a seven-page review 
report. It is most shocking reading. Lots of modeler wishes but very 
little hard facts based on real observational data by true sea level 
specialists. I allow myself a few quotations from the report. It seems 
that the authors involved in this chapter were chosen not because of 
their knowledge on this subject, but rather because they would say the 
climate model that had been predicted.
  This chapter has a low and unacceptable standard. It should be 
completely rewritten by a totally new group of authors chosen among the 
group of true sea level specialists. My concluding position is to 
dismiss the entire group of persons responsible for this chapter, form 
a new group based on real sea level specialists, let this group work 
independently of a climate modeler.''
  So much of this global warming concept has been computer models, and 
we know what they can do with computer models.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. If the gentleman from Pennsylvania would 
yield, there is no question, and I totally agree the treaty lacks a 
firm scientific basis. And while there is no disagreement that carbon 
dioxide and other greenhouse gases are in our atmosphere, before the 
industrial revolution they were there, they are there now, but 
scientists disagree about the extent of man-made gases and how much 
they contribute to global warming.

                              {time}  2200

  The amount of warming or if the planet is warming at all, and like 
the gentleman from Pennsylvania suggests, some scientists have even 
come to the conclusion that maybe we are in a cooling-off period.
  I think nowhere is this more evident than in the divergence between 
atmospheric conditions, the data collected

[[Page 9314]]

from satellites and weather balloons, and surface temperature data 
collected from ships which tell a different story. Highly accurate 
satellite measurements do not note any warming over the past 2 decades.
  What we have in the red, for those individuals that can make out the 
small details, the red is the surface temperature. The blue is the 
satellite-measured temperatures, and lower are the balloon-measured 
temperatures. If you take the satellite along with the weather balloon 
temperatures, they are almost on an even keel, and they show no global 
warming. The only global warming that is portrayed is the surface 
temperatures, and they could be caused by a lot of changes, such as 
expanded populations in some of the areas.
  In terms of the potential contributions of ocean, you see a big peak 
over here in 1998. That was actually credited to the impact of El Nino. 
I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania is totally correct. These and 
other shortcomings make climate models unreliable tools for predicting 
future climate change and for making energy policy.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is 
absolutely right. In debates I have had with people who believe 
opposite of I, I say give me data. Give me facts and true measurements, 
and they cannot. They keep using these models. We have cycles of 
weather, but if my memory was correct, there was not much talking about 
global warming when we had the coldest temperature months in a hundred 
years this past winter. Temperature hours, we had a cold year overall. 
But you do not hear people talking about that.
  A year or so ago when we had unusually warm summers brought on by El 
Nino and other air currents, everything was global warming.
  I think it is very important that we also mention about the sinks 
that were earlier discussed. A lot of our scientists are amazed when 
our air currents hit the ocean after crossing the eastern part of the 
country because from Michigan to Pennsylvania we have tremendous 
forests that are great sinks that suck up the carbon dioxide, and when 
the air currents reach the ocean, they have a lot less carbon dioxide 
than when they left because of the combination of farm country and our 
forests. This country may not be a contributor because of our sinks, as 
indicated on the charts that here.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Let me put that chart back up. Just to review, 
Europe and the North Africa area, the red indicates the amount of 
CO2 that they are putting into the air. The blue at the 
bottom indicates how much they sequester or capture of CO2. 
And of course all living organisms live on CO2. Our plants 
collect that as part of their growing.
  Because our agriculture is so intense and expansive in the United 
States and our forest lands are so abundant, we capture about the same 
amount of CO2 as we emit. Unlike the European countries, as 
you see on the right, the tropics and the southern hemisphere capture 
more because of the forests and the growth of biological products in 
that area. We see a great sequestering.
  But the point needs to be made strongly that that has to be part of 
the consideration. And it has to be part of our research in the future. 
How do we increase our ability with technology to capture some of that 
CO2 just in case it might be causing a greenhouse gas out 
there.
  I am chairman of the Subcommittee on Research in the Committee on 
Science, and all of the scientists in the field on this issue agree 
that we need more research on global warming because there is so much 
that we do not know. We are basing so many conclusions on incomplete 
research. There is a lot of shooting from the hip. If we are going to 
make this dramatic change such as what is described in the Kyoto 
treaty, I think it behooves us to move ahead more aggressively with the 
same kind of scientific research and that is what we are going to do in 
the Committee on Science and that is what this administration has 
suggested.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. The Kyoto treaty, that chart says it 
all about this country. If the Kyoto protocol was implemented, would it 
reduce global warming if it were a proven fact? The answer is ``no'' 
because it would only restrict emissions in our country. It has minimal 
impact in Europe and all of the developing countries that are stealing 
our manufacturing, like Mexico and China, who would not be living up to 
any agreement. They would be doing nothing.
  So we would be pushing manufacturing out of a country that has the 
best pollution control equipment in the world, taking that 
manufacturing to parts of the world that have little or no control over 
emissions, and would actually be adding to air pollution in the world.
  The Kyoto treaty was not written by a friend of the United States. It 
is probably one of the worst documents signed and brought back to this 
country because it would destroy our economic base. If global warming 
was a fact of life, it would do little or nothing.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I think it is fair to at least 
mention the tremendous political influence that some of the 
environmental community has. We all want a cleaner environment. We are 
all going to move ahead to develop renewable-type resources that can 
minimize the CO2 emissions, but a tremendous political 
influence that I think has caused maybe some in the previous 
administration to agree to these kinds of protocols because it was so 
strongly supported by a strong political group.
  I think the bottom line is that if we are going to make reasonable 
policy decisions, we are going to have to get emotion away from that 
policy table and scientific evidence on the table to make the kind of 
decisions that are going to have a tremendous impact on the economy of 
this and other countries.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. One of the things that I have found 
distressing, the scientists that have had the courage to speak out on 
this issue have often been called to task by the college presidents by 
saying we want you to tone down your discussion of this issue. We are 
going to lose research dollars.
  Mr. Speaker, that is not what science is about. Science should be 
seeking the truth and the facts. When you have a university president 
telling real scientists that they should not be talking about their 
findings in a real scientific way, you are cooking the books. In my 
view, a lot of that happened in the last few years. There was a huge 
influence from the White House and the Vice President's office, and 
there was intimidation at the university level that if you wanted 
grants and further studies, you better give them the message that they 
want.
  When you buy scientific information and you tell them what you want 
to be in the answer, you are not getting anything for your money 
because all you are getting is somebody to state what you want stated.
  Mr. Speaker, real science is about searching for the scientific 
facts. I think a lot of that was veered from in the last recent years.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. There is no question that making sense of 
climate variability is a hugely complex challenge, but one that we can 
make progress on, at least before we commit to onerous regulations.
  In a 1999 study, the National Research Council made recommendations 
for a research strategy focusing on unanswered scientific questions. 
The NRC identified over 200 questions that need answers if we are to 
understand and predict climate change. That is exactly what the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania is suggesting; we need real science and 
real answers to some of these questions.
  But in the meantime, there are things that we can do to reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions. We can improve energy efficiency, and we are 
doing that. We are developing new energy sources, sources that do not 
emit CO2; and certainly the research to expand the 
sequestration of CO2 must be encouraged.

[[Page 9315]]

  I have one chart that I think is dramatic. This is a model by the UC 
National Center for Atmospheric Research. What this diagram shows, the 
red line is what is going to happen to global warming without the Kyoto 
treaty. The orange line that we see coming up slightly underneath it in 
the years 2040 to 2050, represents the possible reduction in 
temperature. And even if all of the Kyoto treaty was implemented, the 
reduction in climate is 0.07 degrees centigrade, almost unmeasurable in 
its extent. We still have scientists that came before me in my pursuit 
of what is the right answer suggesting that a little global warming 
might be good for agricultural expansion in this country. So with that 
small a degree in warming, I think it is very important that the 
Members of this Chamber, Madam Speaker, understand that we could go 
into grave consequences by the implementation of this. That is why I 
certainly want to encourage the negotiators on the conference committee 
that are taking up this State Department authorization bill to review 
this.
  I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Another factor, around 1440, there was 
7 degrees of warming temperature. The negative impact was the 
agricultural belt in this country expanded immensely. They were growing 
grapes further north than ever grown before. The food basket grew. 
There was no measured real evil force from the temperature rising 7 
degrees, which has not happened in recent centuries.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, the historical consequences of 
such a modest warming, I mentioned have shown to be beneficial. An 
example I was looking at was during the Medieval climate optimum. 
During that optimum period of slightly warming temperatures from 800 to 
1200 A.D., improved agricultural production linked to warmer weather 
led to economic expansion throughout Europe.
  There are many things that we need to give priority to to get answers 
to the 200 questions that the scientific community have suggested that 
we need answers to before we proceed in this type of venture.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I welcome scientific 
facts, not computer models, but the real facts. That is what we need to 
deal with. I think it is very important that we do get this language 
taken out. We have had enough promotion and sales pitch on global 
warming and the Kyoto protocol in the last 8 years. It is time to get 
back to sound science.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I put the last chart up to show 
some of the accomplishments that we have achieved in the last 35-40 
years especially in terms of increased energy efficiency.
  The top black line represents the energy use at constant 1972 GDP. 
How much GDP does one unit of energy achieve.
  What has happened is our actual energy use to achieve this greater 
GDP, which has almost doubled since 1979, is way down below what we 
have expected. That shows this country has been very aggressive in 
trying to achieve the greater economy. It takes 30 percent less energy 
to produce a dollar of GDP than it did in 1970. So we are moving ahead.
  That greater efficiency means less emissions. That greater efficiency 
means less energy use that is also compounding our problem right now.
  It is an appropriate time to discuss this issue of the Kyoto protocol 
when we are looking at high energy prices because if we were to follow 
that protocol and reduce our energy use back to the 1979 levels, we 
would have to ration the amount of home heating fuel and gasoline and 
coal; and the way to ration it would be dramatically increasing price 
or some kind of law that says you can use only so much.

                              {time}  2215

  Either way, there is a dramatic implication on the economy of this 
country, and that means on the standard of living of this country, 
because what other companies are going to do if energy prices were to 
go up in the United States, they are going to look at these countries 
like China and Mexico and the other ones that were impacted by this 
protocol and look at the energy price there that is going to be much 
lower, and they will say, hey, we are going to move our business and 
our factories and our production to those other countries. Of course, 
when that happens and those other countries start developing, it is 
very unlikely that they are going to sign a similar protocol some time 
in the future to impede their economy. So I think it behooves us all to 
make sure that we think very carefully before we emotionally move ahead 
on something that might cause more damage than it does good.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think it is pretty 
outstanding when we have been increasing the efficiency of 
manufacturing and processing by more than a percent a year. The 
gentleman talked about 30 percent. I was reading something today that 
was 40 percent, I do not know what the time span was, but we have made 
tremendous progress in the efficient use of energy.
  Now, it is my belief that the reason we are in an energy crunch today 
is number one, we did not have an energy policy and we had very cheap 
oil and very cheap gas for an extended period of time that kind of 
shifted us in the wrong direction. But, there was a real move in this 
country away from coal, away from nuclear, and the Kyoto protocol 
concept had us trying to phase out fossil fuels with a false 
assumption.
  Now, we are all for renewables, but when we look at the charts, and I 
have read all the charts recently of energy usage in this country and 
growth, and when they are projecting into 2010 and 2020, renewables are 
still a very narrow line. I mean, there is not a lot of growth there 
whether it is solar or whether it is wind, and, of course, hydro has 
been stuck at the same amount. The chart showed, hydro, questionable in 
the ability to relicense; nuclear, questionable in the ability to 
relicense.
  Those are discussions we are going to have to have. Because the 
phaseout of the use of fossil fuels, the phaseout of coal, except for 
power generation, has put a heavy load on other energies and has us in 
a position where we are very dependent on oil from foreign countries 
that are not our friends. I have a personal fear at the moment, and I 
heard on this floor just a couple of nights ago why we were even 
thinking of building coal power plants when we can build these clean 
natural gas ones. I believe personally we have overloaded natural gas.
  I do not think we can drill wells fast enough, because what we are 
going to do is we are going to endanger home heating costs. We are 
going to have people who now mostly depend on gas for their home 
heating; most of our factories, our schools, our hospitals use gas. We 
are going to have a huge shortfall of gas in this country.
  Gas prices doubled last winter. I am afraid they could double again 
this winter. If that is the case, we are going to have people unable to 
pay their energy bills, seniors unable to stay warm. When we talk about 
a ripple effect in our economy, natural gas will make one far worse 
than gasoline, because when we drive, we can drive the vehicle that 
gets the best mileage, we can drive a little less, give up the pleasure 
trips. But when it comes to heating a home and running a business, 
there are not too many options.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman opened the 
door to a short discussion as we conclude on energy. Let me briefly go 
through a couple of the charts that I think describe the predicament 
that we are facing in energy.
  This chart simply shows the top red line is energy consumption, and 
the bottom green line is energy production at the 1990-2000 growth 
rates, and so the middle is the projected shortfall. That means we are 
becoming more and more dependent, like the gentleman said, on other 
countries, especially OPEC countries.
  In 1970, I was asked to go on the Presidential Oil Policy Commission, 
and so we went over to the White House with Bill Simon every morning at 
6:30 to

[[Page 9316]]

find out where the available supplies were and how we could distribute 
them. At that time we were very nervous because we were in a Cold War 
situation, so we gave agriculture a top priority for fuel.
  So two decisions were made. Number one, put a price ceiling on the 
price that could be charged for gas and petroleum products. Number two, 
give agriculture a top priority. I was assigned the task of sort of 
substituting for the market economy in trying to find out what farmers 
were low on fuel.
  So we set up a computer in every county of the United States, every 
agricultural county of the United States, and they would call in if 
they were out of fuel and we would go down to the chart and say, look, 
under law, you are required to deliver to this area so this farmer can 
have fuel. We learned then that price controls, from the long gas lines 
to the fact that we were doing a very poor job in allocating this 
scarce resource; computers were not good enough then, they are not good 
enough now, so rationing is a predicament, but this chart shows the 
increased dependency, and most of this is on the OPEC countries, as the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania suggested, that we need to not only expand, 
reduce our dependency totally, but certainly we need to look at some of 
those other countries, the Caspian area countries and others that might 
have a better attitude towards the United States.
  This chart shows an average of what goes into a gallon of gasoline. 
So the crude oil price, which is what has usually been the basis, 58 
cents of the price of $1.81 which was May 1, I think; 18 cents Federal 
tax, State tax is 27 cents, refining costs, 58 cents; distributing and 
marketing costs, 20 cents. Gasoline has gone up.
  Mr. Speaker, I introduced a bill to suggest that the Department of 
Energy review all the regulations, especially the boutique fuel 
regulations. This chart shows the 15 different boutique fuel 
regulations in different parts of the United States, and if we multiply 
that by 3 for the regular, the midgrade and the premium, one can 
understand, with all of those different fuels, the tremendous 
inefficiency that is required by complying with those kinds of 
regulations. So we have to have separate holding tanks, separate 
pipelines, or we have to clean out our pipelines before we ship another 
variety through, so we need to review those. This is old data. We need 
to make sure that we can protect the environment, but review these 
kinds of regulations to see what the new technology can contribute.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think we will find where 
we see those bright colors where the prices have been in the last year 
or two where we had spikes in the central part of the country; the year 
before in California; two years ago was up the East Coast where truck 
fuel prices were exorbitantly high. But where these special fuels are, 
our national system of pipelines does not work, because we have a 
different type of fuel than most of the country is using, and if one of 
our refineries goes down, then there is just not enough to go around, 
and so the price is going to go up for that marketplace. So this has 
really complicated the gasoline and truck fuel delivery system.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, this chart shows, I think, 
something that we can be very proud of. The increase in gross domestic 
product in this country has been plus 147 percent, where U.S. coal 
consumption has increased 100 percent, but U.S. energy consumption in 
total has only gone up 42 percent, and the key air emissions have 
actually gone down 31 percent.
  Mr. Speaker, the United States is leading the world in terms of 
pushing the kind of research that is going to reduce CO2 
emissions, but whether it is CO2 or whether it is vapor 
emissions going into those greenhouse gases, or whether it is the kind 
of new technology where we can develop new energy sources, the United 
States is moving ahead probably more aggressively than any other 
country, and we need to do that, but we do not need to sign and agree 
to the Kyoto protocol, which is not based on complete science and which 
would be a punishment to the United States.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will 
yield, I think the head of our energy policy, as Mr. Bush and Mr. 
Cheney have shared with us, is we have to conserve, we have to use 
energy efficiently and be more cautious that we are not wasting energy. 
I think we still have lots of progress we can make there. And we must 
continue to do that. But that is down to every American citizen who can 
contribute there. It does not need to be some new law, it does not need 
to be some strict regulation, but I think leadership from the White 
House is going to help Americans be much more conscious.
  Of course, prices makes us much more conscious. As prices go up, we 
are going to turn lights out when we are not using them. We are not 
going to turn our thermostats to be quite as high. We will not drive 
quite as fast and waste fuel. We might take a little shorter trip. We 
may look at the next car we buy to be more fuel efficient. Those are 
all things we can do individually, but they should be personal choices. 
They should be incentives, not strict government rules and not a heavy 
hand from government. The American people all need to realize that we 
are all in this together.
  However, on top of that, we cannot conserve our way out of this 
crisis. We have been phasing out production, and $10 oil certainly 
killed production in this country and $1 gas stopped all drilling. 
There are a lot of people thinking there are just thousands of wells 
out there capped, ready to let gas out. That is not true today. The 
pipeline system is inadequate to get the gas from one part of the 
country to the other. The grid that moves electricity is inadequate to 
get where there is excess electricity to parts of the country where 
there is a shortage. We need an investment in our total system. But 
when we have all energies in a greater amount available in inventory, 
that is what stabilizes prices.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. And the market system works. I think we have a 
responsibility at the Federal level to make sure as best we can that 
there is competition, and there is not the kind of gouging. But if last 
year, the crude oil prices got for a little while over $30 a barrel, I 
think now they are around $26, but still if we were to say, you cannot 
sell crude oil for over the $8 a barrel that was a low point several 
years ago, I mean there would not be exploration. They would not be 
coming into Pennsylvania and Michigan doing some wildcatting. They 
would not be acidizing some of the old wells to drain them dry of oil, 
and there would not be the kind of research that can make sure that we 
can be environmentally friendly in the smaller drilling in the fact 
that we can now sit on one site and go for 4 miles in all directions to 
capture some of the oil down below, rather than having the congestion 
that we saw back in the 1940s and 1950s maybe in Oklahoma and Texas. So 
technology is a huge change.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, we helped fund research 
that they felt very close to working using ultrasound, one type of 
ultrasound to clean out the old well bore, the other kind to go out and 
loosen the oil from the rock crevices and let it flow into the well. 
They have successfully increased production with ultrasound. Now it is 
a matter of the next study is going to put it out into the field in a 
number of wells, and if that works, we will be able to get more oil. 
But those are the sorts of things we need to do.
  I was at Penn State recently. They have a project there that has been 
completed in the laboratory, and now it is moving into the refinery 
where they are going to take western Pennsylvania coal and make jet 
fuel and have a carbon product that will be used by Pennsylvania's 
famous carbon industry. So they will take coal and turn it into two 
carbon items. One is jet fuel and the other one a carbon product that 
will be used in manufacturing, and they also have a fluidized bed 
boiler that can be implemented and could be used by hospitals, could be 
used by schools, could be used by factories, that can burn any fuel. 
Because the

[[Page 9317]]

fluidized bed process is what we are using in this country to burn our 
high sulfur waste coal, in Pennsylvania we are using it, because they 
use a crushed limestone slurry that takes the sulfur and unites with it 
instead of sending it up to stack into the air and helps it burn it 
cleanly, and they are claiming that if it can burn coal and wood waste, 
it could burn coal and animal waste, it could burn coal and animal fat, 
it could burn natural gas, it could burn number 10 oil or fuel oil.

                              {time}  2230

  This kind of burner would then give a manufacturing plant or a 
university the ability to buy the cheapest energy that year.
  When we get that kind of competition going out there we will not be 
stuck, because this winter we are going to have businesses and people 
owning homes stuck on high-priced natural gas because this country 
moved strictly to making all the new power plants gas without adequate 
inventory to back it up, in my view.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. I think it is worth mentioning that over the 
last 8 years, we have been so conscientious or the administration was 
so conscientious on the environment that we ended up closing down about 
one-third of our refineries in this country with regulations and 
increased costs. We ended up stopping a lot of the clean coal mining in 
this country.
  Right now I think the estimate is something around 250 to 300 years' 
worth of energy from coal, if we move ahead on that kind of technology. 
Or if we use some of technology that we have now, the administration 
and President Bush is suggesting another $2 billion over the next 10 
years to do research on clean coal technology to even do a much better 
job of the nitrates and sulfur dioxide emission, besides the particle 
pollution that is happening.
  We are able to do a lot of that now. With a little more effort, we 
can make this kind of a fuel a very efficient contribution to a 
continuing strong economy in this country.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I asked the question 
recently on why the question mark on relicensing hydro. Someone said, 
remember, these hydro plants, where water runs through a pipe coming 
out of a dam and turns a turbine, there is no environmental downside, 
these dams were built without adequate environmental impact statements, 
and we might want to have to tear them down.
  That is where we are coming from on this whole issue. That is at a 
time when we are looking at shortages.
  There are some very new interesting pebble bed nuclear plants that 
are built in small units that can be built right alongside of existing 
plants that have very little fuel waste and solve a lot of problems. 
They are being built all over the world.
  Our whole energy issue, if we want to become more self-sufficient and 
not dependent, the thing we must not forget, the Far East countries 
that are providing so much of our oil today, and that is just one of 
our energy sources, they could double the prices again tomorrow by just 
restricting how much they will give us. They set the price. They have 
the ability, because of the amount we are buying from them, they can 
set the price.
  If we can lower that, that is why some of us are even supporting ANWR 
drilling, because we need to do anything we can do to take away that 
control that these countries that are unfriendly to us have over us, 
because they could cause us to have $40 oil in the next month.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman talks about the 
national security of this country, of our country. Certainly there is 
power that a few countries in the world now have over our ability to 
produce.
  And look, we have changed. We are a new world. We are not where we 
were back in the thirties. We now have high-rise office buildings where 
we need the elevator to get up to that 15th or 20th floor; where the 
windows do not open, so we need the air conditioning in hot weather and 
we need some warming up in cold weather. We are a new society.
  We have got so many older individuals that are on the kind of life 
support system where it is actually a matter of life and death. We 
cannot be a government that accepts brownouts, certainly not blackouts, 
as a regular order of business.
  That means moving ahead aggressively with conservation, but 
conservation cannot do it all. It means expanding, and I am biased as 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Research, but it means dramatically 
expanding our research efforts.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I just talked to my local school 
district, who paid $2.80 for gas last year. They have now purchased 
this winter's gas for $5.40. Last year they paid as high as $12 one 
month because they had not purchased ahead.
  When people this winter start paying $10 per thousand for gas, they 
may think, is it smart to lock up the whole West Coast for gas 
drilling? Is it smart to lock up the whole East Coast for gas drilling? 
Is it smart to lock up all of our shoreline except Texas and Louisiana? 
Those are the only two places I believe they are allowing drilling to 
happen. Is the environment compromised there? I do not think so.
  We have the technology to get gas out of the ground today in a very 
environmental-friendly way. In a country like Norway, they drill all 
the way around themselves. They do not have their coastlines ruined. 
They have not ruined their environment. But natural gas is what they 
use, and I am told they have the model system of drilling offshore.
  We are going to have to look at all of those things. Prices will 
force people to take a broader look at this issue, because $10 gas will 
be painful when we are heating our homes.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. As we conclude this special order session, 
certainly I would like to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) 
and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson).
  If the gentleman from Pennsylvania would like to give a wrap-up 
conclusion.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I just say to the American public, to 
Members, and to those listening, I just believe that we need to support 
the President's comprehensive energy plan. There is no quick fix to our 
energy needs.
  As we talked, I think a lot of it has been brought up by the hysteria 
of the Kyoto Protocol and the concept that the Kyoto was something 
special that we had to do. If global warming was a fact of life, the 
Kyoto Protocol was not something that made it better. It was a bad deal 
for this country, and would not have changed what the situation was in 
the world, because it would have allowed all the countries to steal our 
employment, steal our factories, where they do not have strict 
pollution laws.
  In this country, where we have the strictest and the best technology, 
we would have lost the business, so it would not have improved the 
world's atmosphere, it would have destroyed the economic base. The poor 
people in America would have lost their jobs.
  That, and the energy issue as a whole is one that the American people 
had better be very wise about. I think the Bush-Cheney administration 
on the Kyoto Protocol made the right decision, and having a broad-based 
energy where we improve our ability to have the energy we need for this 
country, and allow the marketplace then to work from supply, not from 
shortages, is what is needed.
  I thank the gentleman tonight for allowing me to join in on his 
special hour.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. In 
the authorizing bill for the State Department that went through the 
Committee on International Relations, there was an amendment in there, 
and that is what we have been talking about tonight, to go ahead with 
implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.
  It is interesting, that vote was very close. I think it was 20 to 22 
that the amendment succeeded in going on that bill with something like 
14 members absent, so it is a real question that needs debate.
  I would certainly encourage the conferees from the House and Senate,

[[Page 9318]]

when they meet to reconcile the differences between the House and 
Senate, that they seriously look at the consequences of that language 
and consider removing it from the final bill.

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