[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 11989]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  INTRODUCTION OF THE SAFE CLIMATE ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 20, 2006

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to join 12 of my 
colleagues in introducing the Safe Climate Act. Global warming is the 
greatest environmental challenge of our time, and we have a short 
window in which to act to prevent profound changes to the climate 
system. Unless we seize the opportunity to act now, our legacy to our 
children and grandchildren will be an unstable and dangerous planet.
  There are different approaches that can be taken to climate 
legislation. Some bills seek a symbolic recognition of the problem. 
Others are premised on what may be politically achievable in the near 
terms.
  The Safe Climate Act is drafted on a different premise: It reflects 
what the science tells us we need to do to protect our children and 
future generations from irreversible and catastrophic global warming. 
The bill has aggressive requirements to reduce emissions of greenhouse 
gases. But the reality is, these are the reductions that scientists say 
we need to achieve to preserve a safe climate for future generations.
  The science clearly tells us what we need to do--we must reduce 
emissions of greenhouse gases, starting now and continuing over the 
next few decades. To achieve this, we have to grow our economy into a 
new and cleaner future. It's simply too late for legislative baby 
steps.
  I have been working to address the threat of global warming for many 
years. At first, the scientists' warnings about global warming came 
like a few early drops of rain. We knew that our activities were 
emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases. And we knew that 
greenhouse gases trap the sun's heat and warm the planet. When 
scientists found steadily rising quantities of greenhouse gases in the 
atmosphere, they hypothesized that our activities could warm the 
planet, with unknown but potentially troubling consequences.
  Over the years, these scattered warnings grew to a stream, then to a 
rushing river of danger signals. Over 10 years ago, the science and the 
threat of global warming were clear. That's why I introduced the Global 
Climate Protection Act of 1992, which would have frozen U.S. emissions 
of carbon dioxide at 1990 levels. But Congress failed to act.
  Now the river of warnings has become a flooding torrent. We can no 
longer ignore the evidence of global warming. We're now just starting 
to experience some results of climate change. And they are not good.
  Eight of the ten warmest years on record have occurred in the last 
decade. As the earth warms, its ice is melting. From the glaciers in 
Glacier National Park, to the snows of Kilimanjaro and the Larson B 
ice-shelf in Antarctica, ice that has been here since the last ice age 
is disappearing or already gone. The permafrost supporting towns and 
roads in Alaska is melting rapidly, and the summer sea ice in the 
Arctic Ocean is diminishing each year. These are changes we can see 
with our own eyes.
  The seasons are changing--maple sugar producers in Vermont are 
tapping trees earlier, plants are flowering earlier, and birds are 
migrating earlier. These changes are happening across the globe. And 
with warmer weather come bugs that are no longer being killed by the 
winter cold, such as the beetles that are destroying forests across the 
Southwest and Alaska.
  The scientists have long predicted that as the oceans warm, rainfall 
episodes, storms, and hurricanes will become more intense. Last year 
broke hurricane records, and America experienced the devastating 
results of just a few such storms with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The 
scientists have been proven right about global warming, over and over 
again, across the planet. We should start listening to them.
  Now they are telling us that we have about 10 years to act to avoid 
being locked into irreversible global warming on a scale that will 
transform the planet. The scientists have identified a global 
temperature rise of just 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit as enough to produce 
undeniably dangerous consequences, such as 20 feet or more of sea level 
rise, which would flood large parts of Florida and New York City, as 
well as huge population centers in other countries. And scientists have 
calculated the quantity of atmospheric greenhouse gases that would very 
likely cause such a temperature rise. The nations of the world must 
keep greenhouse gases below that level to avoid irreversible dangerous 
global warming.
  The United States emits more greenhouse gases than any other country 
in the world--about 20 percent of the total worldwide. We simply cannot 
avoid catastrophic global warming without substantial cuts in U.S. 
emissions. Of course, every nation will have to do its part. According 
to the best science, under any plausible scenario of future 
international actions to stabilize the climate, the United States will 
eventually need to reduce its emissions by about 80 percent.
  Fortunately, we have some time to get there, as long as we start 
reducing our total emissions now. And that's what the Safe Climate Act 
does. It caps U.S. emissions in 2010, and then gradually reduces them 
by just 2 percent per year until 2020. This gives us 15 years to deploy 
the cleaner technologies that we already have but aren't using much, 
such as hybrid vehicles and wind power. After 2020, emissions must fall 
under the legislation by roughly 5 percent per year, as more advanced 
technologies, such as biofuels from waste materials and capturing 
carbon dioxide from power plants, become widely available.
  The Safe Climate Act reduces emissions through a flexible, market-
based emissions trading program, as well as complementary requirements 
for cleaner cars and more electricity from renewable energy and 
efficiency. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of 
Energy would oversee these programs nationally, while states would 
retain their authority to act on the State level. In effect, the Safe 
Climate Act sets the targets and then unleashes market forces and 
American ingenuity to solve the problem.
  This sounds ambitious, and it is. But it is also completely doable, 
once we decide to act. Look at what we've already achieved. In just 
over 30 years, from the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 to 2002, 
we reduced air pollution from automobiles by over 60 percent. We 
achieved these reductions even as the total number of vehicle miles 
traveled increased by 160 percent and GDP grew by 166 percent.
  From 1990 to 1996, in just 6 years, we ended production of key 
chemicals destroying the earth's protective tropospheric ozone layer 
and shifted to substitutes. Those chemicals had been widely used 
throughout the economy in applications from air conditioning and 
refrigeration to solvents and fire suppression.
  In each case, entrenched industries told Congress that changes of 
these magnitudes would be impossible to achieve without massive 
economic dislocation. And in each case, they were wrong.
  We've ignored the threat of global warming for almost too long, but 
we still have an opportunity if we act now. I urge my colleagues to 
join me in cosponsoring this critically important bill, and I urge the 
committee of jurisdiction to consider it without further delay. We must 
face and overcome the challenge of global warming, and the Safe Climate 
Act is the way to do it.

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