[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13365-13370]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2215
               PRESERVING AND PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, it is interesting to review the ebb 
and flow of the political tides, as we have had here this evening, 
where we here on Capitol Hill deal with the ebb and flow of various 
political crises, whether it is the struggle against global terrorism, 
whether it is the battle of the economy, budgets and tax cuts, where 
the economy is hopefully a short-term problem, where the perversion of 
tax and budget priorities hopefully is temporary in nature, and it is, 
after all, within our power to change priorities to adjust tax rates 
and make infrastructure investments.
  There is, Madam Speaker, however, a greater battle, and one over 
which, if we are not careful, we may not be able to exercise such 
control. I am speaking, of course, of the struggle to preserve and 
protect our environment, because we are watching the slow, relentless 
poisoning of air and water, the destruction of habitat, which puts 
millions of people at risk on a daily basis and inflicts permanent 
damage.
  The World Health Organization, for example, suggests that water-borne 
diseases kill at least 3.5 million people every year. That is more than 
three times as many people who were lost in the World Trade Center, who 
die every day, 365 days a year. It is within our power, our capacity, 
to do something about it.
  It was my privilege to be in South Africa last fall as the world came 
together, the largest United Nations conference in history, making 
commitments to what we were going to do to try and make changes like 
that to protect the environment. I watched as the United States joined 
with over 104 other heads of state, 194 countries in all, to make 
commitments, for instance, that over 1 million people who do not have 
access to clean drinking water, we would cut that amount in half in the 
next 15 years.
  I think a number of people felt uncomfortable with that, thinking 
about how many people would be sentenced to unnecessary death and 
disease, but it was an important goal. But that goal suggests that we 
are going to provide, even that modest goal, 211,000 people per day, 
clean drinking water who do not have it, in order to reach that 15-year 
goal of just cutting it in half. It is an example of these threats that 
we face to the environment.
  I would like to reflect for a few moments this evening about what we 
are doing dealing with these two great global threats.
  We have focused our attention on the greater environment in terms of 
the atmosphere and our oceans. Fifty years ago space was our proxy in a 
struggle against communism. Ten years later, we had the Stratton 
Commission, ushering in a new era for the space under our oceans' 
surfaces. We have spent billions of dollars trying to penetrate deep 
space, a somewhat lesser amount dealing with our oceans, while we as a 
planet continue to affect weather patterns, affect global climate 
change, global warming and disease.
  Madam Speaker, I think it is important for us to be able to focus on 
what we can do to make a difference in those areas.
  I have often on this floor dealt with issues dealing with global 
warming. The scientific consensus is agreed to, although it is slow in 
dawning on Members of Congress, and our policies do not yet reflect it. 
But when you deal with objective members of science, 15 years ago what 
was a debatable proposition that we were affecting the Earth's climate 
in cataclysmic ways, now the vast scientific consensus, including the 
commission that wrote the report from the National Academy of Sciences 
2 years ago requested by President Bush, confirms that we now know that 
global warming and this climate change is a reality; that it is, in all 
likelihood, a world where our children will inherit a Glacier National 
Park with no glaciers, indeed, no glaciers at all in the continental 
United States.
  The sudden occurrence of open water at the North Pole for the first 
time in recorded history is now being followed by evidence of rapid 
melting of the polar areas, and we face consequences like the 
extinction of polar bears within our children's lifetime.
  But the problems are not just with trophy species and signature 
landmarks like mountain glaciers. We are changing the envelope, as 
Professor Holden, Director of the Program on Science and Technology and 
Public Policy at Harvard University, expresses it, the envelope in 
which all other environmental conditions and processes operate.
  It will be impacting the productivity of our farms, our forests and 
fisheries, the livability of our cities in summer, and damages from 
storms, floods and wildfires. People in States like yours, Madam 
Speaker, are going to be experiencing dramatic changes as sea levels 
increase, as issues that relate to the Everglades, something we have 
all come together to try and do something about, become more acute, 
because of what we are doing to the global climate, the issue of sudden 
weather events.
  Those who follow the news are intrigued, I think, that on a regular 
basis

[[Page 13366]]

now there are recordings not just of hurricanes and tornadoes, storm 
surges and floods, but the descriptions of these items: in Australia 
this last year, the worst drought; flooding in Morocco, the worst in a 
third of a century; the severe storms that we have had across the 
United States, in the Carolinas and the Northeast this last year; 6 
inches of rain that fell on Central Park last December, more than 
double the amount of rain recorded through all the prior winter.
  Time and time again we are watching these occurrences that are of 
catastrophic proportions. And what we are finding from our friends in 
the scientific community is that this is a small taste of one of the 
most serious consequences of global warming: that these sudden, 
unpredictable, disruptive and terrifying events are going to be 
predictable in terms of their occurrence, and nobody is going to be 
safe; the disruption of the food supply chain, habitats that are going 
to be migrating north, shifting patterns of wealth, sustainability, all 
subjected to more uncertainty.
  We are going to have people living in harm's way in flood plains, 
whether it is in Florida, in Manhattan, in Bangladesh, that is going to 
test and best the ability of people to adapt. And tragically, it is 
going to be those people in the poorest areas of the world that are 
going to pay the highest price, have the greatest difficulty in 
adapting.
  There are things within our power to start making some modest 
adjustments. I will be working in this next month, hopefully, we will 
be able to have brought to the floor of this Chamber some modification 
of flood insurance, something that the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. 
Bereuter) and I have been working on for years, where we have an un-
actuarially sound program that subsidizes people to live in areas where 
God repeatedly shows they are not wanted, putting them in harm's way, 
concentrating almost 40 percent of our payments to 2 percent of 
repetitive flood losses.
  A simple adjustment is something that will send the right signals to 
people to modify their behavior, to move out of harm's way, to save 
money, to save lives, and to start making adjustments before global 
warming makes that problem even worse.
  There are special responsibilities for the United States as both the 
wealthiest Nation and the largest polluter in terms of greenhouse 
gasses to step forward and do something about it.
  Well, we have been less than totally successful, one must admit. We 
have walked away from not only the Kyoto Treaty, but any opportunity 
for the United States to assume leadership by offering an alternative, 
to step forward if we do not like the treaty, to be able to indicate 
what we can do to enter into partnership with countries like China and 
India.
  It is not acceptable to just simply say, Well, these people are going 
to have to step forward and change their lifestyles before we as the 
richest, most powerful Nation and the biggest polluter, is willing to 
do anything. Because they are, although massive in population, they are 
in fact dealing with significant greenhouse gas emissions now. They are 
on a trajectory, Madam Speaker; if we do not, as a world, work together 
to be able to reduce them, if they follow the pattern of development of 
the United States, China and India have the potential in a short 
period, a few short years, of having a devastating impact on the 
world's climate. The world cannot sustain the United States, China and 
India all following this very destructive pattern.
  But it is in the area of protection of our oceans that I find some 
interesting optimism in the midst of some depressing news. We have all 
witnessed in recent days studies, for example, the Canadian Study in 
Nature, that talks about what has happened with our fisheries around 
the world, where we have destroyed 90 percent of the trophy fish since 
the 1950s, only 10 percent of the populations of tuna, swordfish, 
marlin and other prize species remain in the ocean; that we have 
created a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River now, every 
year, that has grown. When I first came to Congress, it was only the 
size of Rhode Island. Now, in less than a decade, it is larger than the 
State of Massachusetts, with devastating impact for the fisheries in 
the Gulf area.
  Time and time again we look at these dangerous signals that are an 
important wake-up call to those of us who care about the world's 
environment.
  It has been my privilege since I have been in Congress to understand 
the scope, direction and nature of these threats to our oceans. I have 
been privileged to work with my colleague, the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Farr), who was the driving force behind the first 
Oceans Conference, a gentleman who has been active in creating marine 
sanctuaries, who has been focusing on the fact that we spend eight 
times more studying space, which is interesting and has positive 
aspects, but only one-eighth of that expenditure is spent on our 
oceans, upon which our climate and our very existence depends; and as 
the gentleman is fond of pointing out, that a lot of this research that 
is attributed to NOAA and oceans is actually atmospheric study of the 
weather.
  I am privileged to note that the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) 
is with us here this evening for a discussion of how we can focus on 
opportunities dealing with our oceans.

                              {time}  2230

  I am particularly honored that he would join with me in the 
discussion this evening, because, as he is well aware, in fact his 
predecessor is Chair of a commission, the Pew Oceans Commission, that 
is the first comprehensive study of oceans policy of the United States 
and its global implications in over one-third of a century.
  I am honored that the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) is here. I 
am privileged to work with the gentleman. I deeply appreciate the 
gentleman's leadership and insight here in Congress, perhaps one of the 
strongest, if not the strongest, at least in the House, as it deals 
with oceans policy and its consequences for our future.
  I welcome the opportunity to yield to the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Farr) for his thoughts and observations.
  Mr. FARR. I thank the gentleman for his kind words and for yielding 
to me. I am delighted to be here.
  I think in light of tonight's discussions, which really have 
wonderful populist appeal about issues of drug sales in America and 
about the practices of licensing telecommunications in this country, it 
is also appropriate that we focus a little bit on the politics, the big 
politics of the oceans, that is, that the meeting of land and water, of 
the two massive forces on Earth, takes place in coastal zones. Coastal 
zones are also where most of the people live, that is, where most of 
the voters are, most of the taxes are raised. That is where we find the 
most U.S. population, on the coast, which comprises about 17 percent of 
our entire land mass.
  We also find that people are moving to coastal areas faster than any 
other place. There is an increase of about 3,600 people a day that move 
to the coastlines.
  I think coastlines are also important from an economic standpoint if 
we think about that is where fishermen make their living, that is where 
tourism attracts people to swim in the oceans. The largest recreational 
areas in the United States are the publicly owned beaches of this 
country.
  It is clear that the public takes special interest in our oceans; and 
as we have learned from our colleagues, even the inland colleagues in 
inland States, people in their districts think of oceans because they 
think of them as they consume seafood, and as places they would like to 
visit on their vacations, to go to the beach.
  What do we do in Congress, because we understand that there are real 
problems with the oceans, not just ours alone but internationally, as 
well? In a recent report in the journal Nature, it stated that 90 
percent of the large predatory fish are gone from the oceans totally, 
globally, all over the world. Overfishing has led to fishery closures 
for rockfish on the west coast and groundfish on the east coast.
  We find that because we have not really effectively monitored or 
stopped

[[Page 13367]]

the toxic pollutants that come in from just runoff, where it rains on 
the land and that rain runs through agricultural land, it runs through 
parking lots, it runs through streets; and whatever is on those 
streets, what they call trace metals and pesticides, ends up going into 
the rivers and then down into the oceans, therefore affecting marine 
systems.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. If the gentleman would let me add for one moment on 
that precise point, the recent study from the National Academy of 
Sciences estimates that that runoff the gentleman talks about from our 
driveways, our parking lots and our roads, these oils, solvents that 
wash into our rivers, estuaries, and oceans are the equivalent of one 
Exxon Valdez every 8 months, almost 11 million gallons of oil and 
gasoline in the course of a year, an Exxon Valdez and a half every 
year.
  Mr. FARR. It is more difficult to trace than the Exxon Valdez, which 
was essentially one spot, a big contamination. These are subtle 
contaminations. But these contaminations are not just chemicals.
  We have a way of transporting nature. Certainly we have learned about 
that recently with the way to transport virus, with SARS originating in 
China ending up affecting us in Toronto and other cities around the 
world.
  The San Francisco Bay now has 175 nonnative marine species living in 
San Francisco Bay brought in by the ships that travel the oceans far 
and wide. Despite all these indicators that show that the marine 
ecosystems are unhealthy today, the question is, well, can we save 
them? Has it gone beyond repair?
  The gentleman and I know that we have certainly laws that govern our 
coastlines and oceans; but those laws, as the gentleman said, are 
outdated. It is time to focus anew.
  Fortunately, Congress has taken action to do that by creating a 
commission. With a bill that I authored with Senator Hollings in the 
Senate that President Clinton signed, and it went into effect when 
President Bush took office, President Bush appointed the commissioners. 
They are about to finish their work and give us a report sometime this 
fall.
  As the gentleman mentioned, there is a separate commission appointed 
by the Pew Charitable Trust, which my friend and predecessor here in 
Congress, Leon Panetta, has been chairing when Christy Todd Whitman, 
the former Chair, went to work for the Bush administration as head of 
EPA. So we have both of these commissions coming to Congress with 
really strong recommendations on how we need to update our Nation's 
marine policies.
  So the body of science, the body of politics, by the fact that the 
commissioners are from all walks of life that relate to the oceans, 
from the oil interests to the fishing interests to the museum and 
science interests, they have all been represented; and they all bring a 
constituency to the plate that is going to deliver these reports.
  June 4, on Wednesday, the privately funded Pew Commission will make 
its report available to the public. Then sometime later in the year the 
Commission on Ocean Policy will produce its report.
  I anticipate that both commissions will have recommendations that we 
as Members of Congress, recommendations that, as lawmakers, we can 
incorporate into legislation and change our ocean policy so that indeed 
we can have a sustainable ocean policy. I think the gentleman more than 
most Members, and probably more than anyone, really understands the 
proportionality of sustainability.
  I think that word is used so often as to sort of guarantee success, 
but it is really one of compromise. Essentially, we do not cut out the 
economic interests in fishing. We more balance them so they can be 
sustained over time. It is not just, take it all right now and leave 
nothing for our children or generations ahead.
  The whole idea of how we develop these balancing systems is very 
controversial, because we do have to regulate people that have never 
been regulated before, or we have to tell people they cannot fish in 
certain areas that they have been able to fish in without restrictions.
  So this is more what they call an ecosystem-based management. We 
understand a little bit about ecosystems on land. We do not call them 
that; we call them zoning. We call them master planning for our 
communities; essentially, where do we want people to live in houses, 
where do we want the industrial area to be, where do we want to keep it 
an open space, where we should not go building because of hazardous 
conditions such as floodplain zones or earthquake zones and so on.
  I think we are getting to a point, and I would love to hear the 
gentleman's reflection on it, that we really need to master-plan our 
oceans around these ecosystems and around avoiding conflicts of the 
sea.
  We have seen in California, and Maine as well, where we had, before 
regulation, people who would make their living setting out crab pots or 
lobster pots at the same place people were dragging for seismic 
information for oil companies. They would catch the lines of the 
lobster pots or crab pots and pull them up, and so destroy the income 
of one fisherperson for the advantage of someone else who was also 
interested in a resource from the ocean. That is what I call the 
conflicts of sea. We just need to make sure we understand what people 
want to do and how they want to use the ocean, and make the regulations 
so they can use it wisely.
  I would really respect the gentleman's thoughts on those issues, 
because I think the gentleman has been very involved with the city of 
Portland. As I remember as a young adult studying in Oregon in 
undergraduate studies and visiting Portland, it was then, to use a 
phrase we used at home, a city known by its smell. We used to say that 
about Monterey because of all the canneries. In Portland, you had all 
of the wood pulp industries and the Willamette River.
  We go to Portland today and it is certainly one of the most beautiful 
cities in America, and one of the best-managed from a transportation 
standpoint, from a livability standpoint. As far as aesthetics and 
trees, it is really an example of what we can do with leadership in 
providing a turnaround in an area. If we can do that for cities in 
America, we certainly can do it for oceans and nearby communities, 
near-shore communities under the sea.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I think the gentleman is absolutely correct, Madam 
Speaker, in dealing with the analogy to some of our successes on the 
land and some of our failures.
  Sadly, the Stratton Commission in the late 1960s offered up a vision 
of how we manage the sea that was more of one of exploitation: how did 
we extract the bounty of the ocean and not deal with the fragility of 
resources, the finite nature, the impact of technology and 
mechanization and of many countries industrializing this extraction, 
instead of it being a small family enterprise, like happened in the 
beautiful coastal area that the gentleman represents in California, the 
fisheries that we have seen in the Southwest, in the Northeast as well; 
the impact of industrialized fishing, for instance.
  We need to look at some of our successes, and understanding that we 
have to balance interests, that we have to look at competing pressures, 
that we can work together in a cooperative and thoughtful fashion to be 
able to make sure that everybody is actually better off.
  There are certain areas of our land area, one could think that the 
way that some people howl about wilderness, we would think that most of 
the United States is off limits; but as the gentleman and I know, it is 
only about 5 percent, but it is a critical 5 percent.
  Mr. FARR. Even then it is not off limits to people who want to access 
it on foot rather than by motor vehicle.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Absolutely. But what the gentleman has done in his 
own career in terms of dealing with issues of marine sanctuaries and 
marine reserves, we need to be able to make sure that there are some 
areas where the sea can rest, the fisheries can be restored, much like 
we do with farmland, where, in some of the areas

[[Page 13368]]

where I think people are justly proud, we have been conserving some of 
our farmland. We are being able to zone and protect it. We are looking 
at ways to revitalize it, working with scientists and with farmers, 
with citizens. This is part of what needs to happen.
  The gentleman went through some of the list of problems that we are 
facing, like nonpoint pollution. We have problems with point source 
pollution, like the massive hog farms that we see in some of our 
coastal States and along some of our major river systems that dump 
effluent into our waterways.
  He has referenced the issue of invasive species. There are problems 
of aquaculture. If we are not careful, aquaculture will end up, or if 
it is not done appropriately, it can produce a great deal of not just 
pollution, but the potential, for example, where we have had areas 
where there have been tens of thousands of farm-bred salmon escaping 
into the ocean.
  We have had situations where coastal development, where it is not 
done in a thoughtful and careful way, severely damages fragile bays and 
estuaries and river habitat, which are important nesting and breeding 
grounds. It is where fishing stock is restored. It purifies water. We 
alter that habitat.
  Mr. FARR. We have also shown, though, that where we have degraded 
that habitat to such a point where all known life forms have failed in 
those systems, they have gotten so polluted, some of those streams, but 
with good management techniques we have brought those streams back and 
made them clean; and they now have vibrant fish life.
  The point is, we can turn this around. But when we are dealing with 
the entire ocean, we just cannot turn that around over time. If we have 
indeed taken all the large species, commercial species on the planet, 
it is going to take a long time of not fishing some of those species to 
allow them, the babies, to grow up to be big adults. Some of these fish 
live for over 100 years, so it is going to be, some places where we set 
up these marine reserves, we are going to have to put them off limits 
for fishing for a long time.
  On the other hand, when we do clean up areas and set these reserves, 
they allow this sort of abundance to return; fish do not know where 
those boundary lines are. They hang out outside the boundary lines. 
Then that becomes an opportunity for the commercial activity to be 
done.
  We have in our area a national marine estuary, the largest in 
California, known as the Elkhorn Slough. Right next to the Elkhorn 
Slough is one of the largest power plants in California, a Duke Energy 
gas-fired natural gas plant which used to burn oil and now burns 
natural gas.
  That big industrial complex has worked out a management system with 
this fragile ecosystem so they can be co-partners in the sustainability 
of the ecosystem, not one preventing the other from happening.

                              {time}  2245

  It is a partnership that has been worked out and is constantly being 
updated as a sound management practice. Those are the kinds of examples 
I would like to set because I think so often people hear that if there 
is a problem, we are just going to shut down somebody or people are 
going to lose their jobs if we go about this. And I think what the 
reports are going to say is that this does not have to be a lose-lose 
or win-lose; it can be a win-win.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, I think the gentleman's point is 
compelling. He has seen examples of cooperative action with fisheries' 
interests in the State of California. We have seen in the Pacific 
Northwest, particularly in Alaska, there are some pretty good examples 
of where these independent fisher-people have been able to work 
together in a cooperative fashion with the scientists, with government, 
to be able to make a difference.
  The ocean can heal. Fishing stocks can be replenished. We saw what 
happened to the North Atlantic fishing stocks during World War II. 
Sadly, it was a war that disrupted the fishing, but the fish 
nonetheless came back under a combination of thoughtful policies, 
reducing the catch, managing the resource, having areas that are 
protected; and the United States controls more surface area of oceans 
in terms of our zone of influence than any other country in the world. 
It is a half again larger than the entire surface area of the United 
States.
  It is a tremendous opportunity to strategically allow these species 
to recover.
  Mr. FARR. Let me elaborate a little bit on that. By treaty, we have 
created the special economic zones, and these economic zones on the 
oceans go out from the shoreline 200 miles; and why the United States, 
more than any other country in the world, has larger EEZ is because we 
have in our territory, in our trust islands in the Pacific, we are all 
very much aware of Guam and the Hawaiian Islands, but we go through the 
Marshall Islands and American Samoa, and each one of those islands 
having a 200-mile radius makes the United States interests in the ocean 
even greater than any other country in the world.
  This is where I think we have to provide leadership in being able to 
provide these ecosystem-based management plans, and in order to do 
that, it is going to take an act of Congress. It is going to take new 
laws in this country.
  As we stand here tonight, we are probably at one of the best moments 
in recent history to be able to have all this scientific knowledge 
flowing to us. With the release of the Pew report and the commission's 
report later on this year, Congress will be better informed on what it 
should do, what it needs to do more than ever before in history.
  My hope is that we, in a bipartisan way, because certainly I do not 
think we need to have partisan fights about it. We had a lot of 
discussion here sort of on the takings issue on land ownership and 
whose responsibility it is, whether the government has a right to go 
onto someone's land to understand what kind of species or wildlife are 
living on their land. That does not happen in the oceans. The oceans 
are not owned privately. There are certainly not real estate 
developments in the ocean, other than oil leases, and those are leases 
from the Federal Government. So we are the manager.
  It seems to me that we, in a collective way, can really provide not 
only a future for this planet, which breathes from the ocean, and where 
weather is all initiated in the ocean, but also provide a healthy 
management system so that our children and grandchildren can enjoy not 
only the oceans and the bounty of the seas, but also have health and 
safety, a life of being able to go to beaches that are safe and so on.
  This is our responsibility. We are the trustees elected to develop 
the Federal law, given that trust by our voters and, I think, by the 
world, by the fact that we have so much of the ocean at stake, to 
really do sound management; and hopefully, we will take the 
recommendations of the Pew Foundation and the government commission and 
put them into law this year. Hopefully, the administration will 
enthusiastically support those recommendations and help us lobby them 
through Congress.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate the gentleman's observation, and I think 
he is correct. We can sit here and talk in ominous tones about some of 
the very negative things that have occurred, and it truly is 
disturbing, but there is better information, greater awareness.
  We have the United States population concentrated in the coastal 
areas in a way that we have not seen since the founding of the 
republic.
  The gentleman mentioned some of the work of the Pew Oceans 
Commission. It is not just the report that is coming forth in the next 
36 hours, but there are some fantastic science reports that the 
commission has contracted with a distinguished group of scientists and 
expects to write reports outlining some of the major threats to coastal 
and ocean resources, offering recommendations for addressing the 
threats from the perspective of science, the professionals, to assist 
their own commissioners in forming this report to help the Bush 
administration and Congress meet its responsibilities.

[[Page 13369]]

  I had a chance to review, as I know the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Farr) has, the materials, Managing Marine Fisheries in the United 
States; Ecological Effects of Fishing in Marine Ecosystems; Marine 
Reserves, a powerful tool for ecosystem management and conservation 
from a professor at Stanford University. They have dealt with, in a 
realistic way, the best report I have seen, on marine pollution, both 
accomplishments and future challenges, an area that the gentleman and I 
have been working on in our own respective spheres of influence now for 
over 20 years, dealing with coastal sprawl, the impact that urban 
design has on aquatic ecosystems in our country.
  The gentleman has been a champion, I know, in terms of the California 
Coastal Conservation Commission, the work that he has done as a local 
county commissioner, as a legislator and here in Congress; and then 
there is great research on invasive species and the impact of marine 
aquaculture, looking at the environmental impacts and policy options.
  Having these reports available to us to go along with the two 
commissions, the work here in Congress and, most important, to be able 
to raise the awareness of the public, he is 200 percent correct. The 
ocean belongs to us all. No single person owns those rights. It is 
truly an international problem, but the United States has the greatest 
leverage. Not only are we the richest Nation, but we have more control 
over oceans than any other country. It cries out for that sort of 
cooperative solution.
  Mr. FARR. That interesting, cooperative solution is done by, in 
congratulations to the gentleman as a representative from Oregon, that 
the Oregon State University, along with the University of California in 
Santa Cruz, that is in my District; the Long Marine Lab, that is in my 
District; the Hopkins Marine Lab which is my district; and the 
University of California at Santa Barbara; and Stanford University are 
all participating in this consortium known as the Partnership for 
Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, and in fact, they call 
themselves PISCO, and I understand they have a Web site. It is a pretty 
easy one. It is just www.piscoweb.org, and those publications are put 
up on that Web site as they come out.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Truly phenomenal resources for individual citizens or 
policy-makers that want to be able to understand what these challenges 
are.
  The gentleman referenced the outstanding program at Oregon State 
University. Dr. Jane Lubchenco is one of the members of the Pew 
Commission who will be with us here in Washington, D.C., this week, not 
only with the announcement of the Pew Report and with our friend Leon 
Panetta, the Chair, but will be meeting with men and women here on 
Capitol Hill.
  The approach is simple: Deal with the information that is available 
to us; change the philosophy from one of exploitation which, sadly, we 
have not been able for a variety of forces to do something on public 
lands in this country. Sadly, the Mining Act of 1872 exists virtually 
identically to the bill that was signed into law by President Ulysses 
S. Grant 131 years ago. This is an opportunity for us to move past 
that, changing the philosophy from one of exploitation to one of 
conservation and protection.
  To be able to reduce the pressures on fisheries and environment, 
these are things that are within our power. We do not have to wait. 
What just happened in Canada where the cod fisheries collapsed and they 
had to stop all fishing because it got to the point where they had 
verged on destroying the species. It does not have to get to that 
point.
  Being able to focus on protection of coastal areas, and in many cases 
what we need to do to protect those estuaries, those rivers, those 
beach fronts are exactly the same thing that our communities are crying 
out for to protect against sprawl, congestion, bad air and loss of open 
space. So we will be able to satisfy the needs of the ocean by 
listening to our constituents right now.
  Being able to make the marine sanctuaries, which really are not 
sanctuaries, transform them into real reserves and connect them in a 
system so that the fish can migrate from one to another, and as the 
gentleman mentioned a moment ago, very important, the fish do not 
recognize the boundaries. So, in effect, we will be reseeding the 
oceans.
  Finally, a commitment of the United States to international 
leadership. Maybe we can start by ratifying the convention of the 
oceans.
  Mr. FARR. Treaty of the seas, law of the seas, something our Navy is 
very interested in having ratified. The Senate failed to do that many 
years ago. I have suggested that the Senate ought to revisit that, 
particularly with the Navy's interest in it, and hopefully we can get 
it ratified so that we can be a partner with all the other coastal 
nations around the world.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Could the gentleman comment on the significance of 
our failure to have ratified this 210 years ago?
  Mr. FARR. I think what happens now, according to a spokesperson for 
the Navy that I talked to several years ago, was that we have dozens of 
Navy research vessels which are owned and operated by the Navy, but the 
operators are mostly contract marine scientists, marine biologists who 
go out and do the deep ocean exploration and near shore exploration. 
When we go into these economic zones of other countries we have to go 
there with their permission. These are military vessels, and without 
signing a law of the sea, we have no protocols for, if a country 
decides, well, we think you are spying on us or we think we do not like 
the work you are doing or you are not sharing it with us enough.
  There are always efforts to do that, but nonetheless, if there is a 
problem, we have no way of getting out of the problem because we are 
not a signatory to the treaty which lays out a protocol for what we can 
and cannot do with these research vessels, and that, if indeed there is 
a question, how we can resolve those disputes.
  So we could conceivably get into a military situation because of a 
seizing of one of our research vessels which has nothing but scientists 
aboard, and that should be avoided. We need to sign the law treaty as 
soon as possible.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate that explanation and the gentleman's 
continued leadership. As one of the cochairs of the coastal caucus.
  Mr. FARR. The Oceans Caucus.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. The Oceans Caucus.
  Mr. FARR. Quite all right. Coastal caucus is just as well.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. It was some of my colleagues, particularly providing 
coastal leadership, I get confused, I apologize, but bringing this to 
the forefront. I appreciate the gentleman's career-long commitment to 
being able to protect these treasures.
  Mr. FARR. Let me say something. I think that before our lifetimes are 
over we are going to see the ability to rent a vehicle where a person 
can drive under the sea. They can drive in the sea.

                              {time}  2300

  And that will really open up this massive amount of territory on this 
planet to people who have never been able to see it before.
  The technology of getting people down in the water is merging at a 
very fast rate. Remember, it is much more difficult to go deep than it 
is to go high. When you go into outerspace, you are just going from 
zero atmospheric pressure, from 14 pounds atmospheric pressure to zero. 
When you are going down, it gets harder and harder. And as you have 
seen, when these researchers have put a little Styrofoam coffee cup 
with your name on it and put it out in those research vessels, it comes 
back literally the size of a thimble. That is what the pressure is. So 
it is much more difficult to get down into the ocean. But they are 
developing technology where you can go down to 4,000 feet in civilian 
clothes without a lot of training to essentially allow people who are 
not scientists to be able to get access to the oceans.

[[Page 13370]]

  We need underwater artists, we need poets, we need music writers, we 
need the rest of society to be able to explore the oceans, as well as 
our marine scientists; and so I thank the gentleman for his leadership 
in scheduling this Special Order tonight and for inviting me to speak.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, I was going to give the gentleman one 
last word, if I might, because the gentleman wears another hat here in 
Congress. Well, actually he wears a number of them, but one I know he 
has spent a lot of time on is the Travel and Tourism Caucus. The 
gentleman cochairs this with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley), 
and the two of you have a commitment, in part I think because your two 
States have economies that are dramatically impacted by tourism, and I 
wondered if the gentleman wanted to just make one brief comment about 
the connection. I know it sounds a little crass, but we are suffering 
some difficult economic times now.
  Mr. FARR. What is interesting about tourism is, why do people go into 
the outdoors? It is really to experience the outdoors. And how is that? 
It is not just the beautiful shapes of mountains and trees and natural 
forms; it is also the wildlife.
  We were able to successfully recover a sea otter herd. The sea otter 
was thought to be extinct. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a marine 
scientist discovered them off Big Sur, kept them a secret, because 
there were no laws in place to protect them; but now that they have 
been protected by Federal law, the sea otter population has come back. 
It has, unfortunately, had some setbacks this year with disease, and 
perhaps with too many boats in the habitat; but that sea otter 
population on the California coastline is now a multimillion dollar 
industry, watching sea otters. And who makes money off of that? 
Certainly they do not. But people who make T-shirts, who make mugs, who 
make jewelry, who take photographs, who provide boat trips, who do 
interpretive studies.
  The point is that the wildlife can be one of our most viable economic 
industries if we manage it well. And that is what this is all about; it 
is trying to have a planet. Here we are discussing so much of how do 
the people on this globe get along, but the people cannot survive on 
this globe without nature getting along and at least us understanding 
how not to just take from nature but also to give back and to manage 
appropriately so that we can have sustainable oceans, sustainable 
lands, and hopefully sustainable populations of people that will get 
along living in peace and being able to enjoy this planet. I think that 
is what this is all about.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's 
eloquence. I think that says it all.
  Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to spend a few minutes 
focusing on what is going to be a big week here on Capitol Hill, 
focusing on this unique opportunity to deal with the attention that it 
deserves to protect our oceans, to be able to bring people together 
across the country, different philosophies, different geographies, 
different political parties to understand the opportunities to protect 
our quality of life. By doing the things we need to do on the land and 
in terms of our habits under the sea, we can restore the vibrance of 
our fisheries, and we can protect the quality of the tourist 
experience. We can have the regenerative power of these waterways, and 
we can make sure that we flex some of our problem-solving muscles that 
can help us in the international arena and here at home on larger 
issues of war and peace and climate change.
  So I appreciate the opportunity to share this information this 
evening.

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