[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15225-15227]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   GREEN THE ECONOMY: SAVE THE WORLD

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. When it comes to climate change, we are 
facing a stark choice in America. We can do nothing and see if it 
happens or we can do something, protect our children, and actually grow 
jobs and our economy.
  If you believe climate change is not happening, if you are a denier 
of climate change, you do not need to listen any further.
  But I do have a wall that I would like to put your name on. I call it 
the Wall of Climate Denial. Heck, let's put this wall on the National 
Mall. And I would like to invite all my colleagues across the aisle to 
put their names on it. And that way our children and grandchildren can 
visit this wall decades from now and see for themselves who acted on 
climate change and who stood in the way.
  If we act, we can start to change course, and that wall would only be 
a monument to a way of thinking that was on the wrong side of science.
  If we do not act, it will be a monument to those responsible for the 
massive loss of human life and economic productivity. It will also be, 
if we do not act, likely, a wall that is underwater.
  Global climate change is one of the greatest challenges that we face. 
And I agree with the previous speaker: there is no question one of the 
most immediate threats that we face in our country right now is 
defeating and wiping from this Earth ISIL.
  But one of the longest-term threats to our own energy security and 
our existence is global climate change.
  Last September, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
released a report which states with a 95 percent certainty that human 
activities are responsible for climate change.
  This report was based on a rigorous review of thousands of scientific 
papers published by over 800 of the world's leading scientists making 
it clear that if we do not act on climate change, if we don't take the 
necessary steps to halt this change, the repercussions for humans 
across this globe and the environment will be catastrophic.
  We need to move forward now at this moment to take the necessary 
steps to combat the warming of our planet before these impacts become 
inevitable.
  I represent the East Bay in California, where people understand the 
effects of climate change and are willing to do whatever is necessary 
to take the big steps, do the big things, take some risk to address 
this and grow our economy.
  We are facing big energy challenges in this country and around the 
world. But we know that our old, dirty methods are not sustainable.
  We know that the dynamics of the energy marketplace are shifting. Far 
from being stagnant and hopeless, we are now seeing an unprecedented 
amount and an unprecedented pace of change that was unpredictable even 
a few years ago.
  For instance, renewables are penetrating at a remarkable rate, with 
growth in wind alone outpacing natural gas in 2012.
  Our responsibility is to make sure that our country is prepared for 
whatever changes the markets may experience.
  Overreliance on a limited range of technologies and finite resources 
is unreasonable. We know that the United States consumes 25 percent of 
the world's oil. But, at best, we only have 3 percent of the U.S. oil 
reserves. This is not a problem that we can drill our way out of. That 
is only a short-term bridge.
  Our strength will lay in our ability to transition to new, cleaner, 
more sustainable resource energy future.
  We must be competitive and not let ourselves get behind. As 
Washington bickers, our competitors are pulling out every imaginable 
stop to capitalize on the booming clean-energy economy.
  It is time for us to get serious about creating green energy policy 
to enable us to compete more globally.
  A recent article in The New York Times over the weekend pointed out 
how far ahead our European friends are. Germany will soon be getting 30 
percent, 30 percent of their power, from renewable sources. By 
contrast, in 2013, renewable sources of energy accounted for only about 
10 percent of the United States' energy consumption and 13 percent of 
electricity generation.
  Are we any less capable than Germany of harnessing the energy from 
the wind and the sun?
  I believe, Madam Speaker, we are not. We are not less capable. But 
right now, we might be less willing.
  Step one in addressing climate change is admitting that it is a 
problem. Too often in Washington we see this false choice, this debate 
that if we accept climate change as a problem, then it is going to kill 
jobs, and we should do, therefore, nothing about it.
  But if we don't accept climate change as a problem, we will never be 
singing off the same sheet of music. Once we sing off the same sheet of 
music, we can start to take the steps necessary to address that climate 
change is indeed a problem.
  There is overwhelming consensus among scientists across our globe 
that it is a problem.
  Here is what we know: the current warming trend is a particular 
concern because it is very likely that it is based on human-induced 
activities.
  The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was 
demonstrated in the mid-19th century. Ice cores drawn from Greenland, 
Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth's 
climate responds to changes in solar output, and the Earth's orbit, and 
in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large 
changes in climate happened very

[[Page 15226]]

quickly, geologically speaking--in tens of years, not millions or 
thousands.
  How about sea-level rise? Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters, 
that is just under 7 inches, in the last century.
  As far as global temperature rise, all three major levels of global 
surface temperatures showed that the Earth has warmed since 1880. Most 
of this warming occurred since 1970, with 20 of the warmest years 
having occurred since 1981, and with 10 of the warmest years occurring 
in the past 12.
  The oceans are also rising and warming. The oceans have absorbed much 
of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters of ocean showing a 
warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.
  Extreme events, the number of record high temperature events in the 
United States, have been increasing, while the number of record low 
temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also 
witnessed increasing numbers of intense windfall events.
  So once we can address and accept that climate change is occurring, 
we can end this false debate of, do we do anything or do we do 
something?
  And I submit to America that if we do something, not only can we 
address climate change, save the world, protect our children, we can 
actually create jobs.
  My district is home to several businesses and initiatives that are 
fighting to green our economy and combat global warming but that are 
also economically successful.
  In my district, we have a program called i-GATE, or the Innovation 
for Green Advanced Transportation Excellence. I-GATE is a regional 
incubator in the Tri-Valley specializing in growing green technology 
startups. With a network that includes two national laboratories, 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National 
Laboratories, with over 7,000 scientists, investors, and advisers, and 
leading universities and corporate partners, i-GATE has created a 
unique ecosystem for growing the startups that are working to address 
our biggest energy challenges.
  The startups that i-GATE incubates are working to create better 
lithium ion batteries, provide region- and crop-specific information to 
farmers on how climate change could change and affect their crop 
revenue, and create low-cost diagnostics to screen for life-threatening 
diseases.
  We also have an interesting company that I had the opportunity to 
visit at their ribbon-cutting called Siluria Technologies. It is in 
Hayward, California. And they are pioneering the commercial production 
of fuels and chemicals made from clean, abundant natural gas and 
renewable methane.
  Since its opening in 2013, Siluria has already demonstrated how their 
technology can be employed to produce gasoline, an achievement that 
paves the way for the first such commercial facilities producing liquid 
fuels in 2017.
  This year, Siluria unveiled a first-of-its-kind development for 
producing cleaner fuels from natural gas and renewable methane.
  This accomplishment is an important milestone in moving forward. It 
represents the last scale upstep prior to full commercialization of 
Siluria platform technology.
  Then there is UltraCell. James Kaschmitter, a former employee of 
Lawrence Livermore National Lab, founded the company UltraCell in 
Livermore, California. They are designated as a veteran-owned small 
business, making compact high power, long endurance, off-grid portable 
power.
  I also want to tell you the story of a small business in Dublin, 
California. I visited this small business when they put solar panels on 
their rooftop just a few weeks ago.
  Now, their business owner is admittedly a pretty conservative guy. 
And so I asked him, I said: ``You're putting solar on your rooftop. You 
know, solar is often affiliated with addressing climate change and 
investing in renewables, and sometimes conservatives don't always agree 
with that.''
  Well, the business owner told me: ``Eric, this is going to reduce my 
energy bill, which is about the equivalent cost of a supermarket, by 
hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.''

                              {time}  2030

  He used a small company in my district called Cool Earth Solar which 
also came out of our national laboratories; so they used federally-
funded research dollars that were put into our national laboratories, 
and then they transferred that out to the private market and created 
this technology that a small conservative business owner is using in my 
district to save money so he can create more jobs. We can green the 
economy, save the world, and protect our planet for our children.
  Cool Earth Solar joined with the Livermore Valley Open Campus and 
Sandia National Laboratories in a public-private partnership to make 
solar energy more affordable and accessible. Sandia National 
Laboratories researchers, with the laboratory's solar energy program, 
are testing and helping bring to market their innovative technology 
which uses cheaper and fewer materials to capture solar energy so that 
it is more affordable for small business owners, like the one in Dublin 
at All American Label, so that they can save money and create more 
jobs.
  Then there are the two national laboratories. Sandia National 
Laboratories is home to the Combustion Research Facility. The 
Combustion Research Facility is a public-private partnership, and I 
stress these public-private partnerships because the Federal Government 
cannot do this alone.
  We could spend the money on the basic research to get this to the 
marketplace, but we need faithful, committed actors in the private 
sector to make this successful. It is a public-private collaboration 
with industry, including General Motors, Cummins, ExxonMobil, and 
Caterpillar.
  The facility focuses on the advanced combustion strategies required 
by industry to develop a new generation of high-efficiency clean 
engines.
  Then there is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which is 
also in my district, and it is home to the National Ignition Facility, 
also known as NIF. NIF is the largest and most energetic inertial 
confinement fusion device built to date, and it is the largest laser in 
the world. Fusion holds the promise of providing a practically 
limitless supply of clean energy to the world.
  Across the country, there are other national laboratories, including 
Argonne National Laboratory, which is the home to the Joint Center for 
Energy Storage Research.
  This world class research is working towards developing new 
technologies that move beyond lithium ion batteries and store at least 
five times more energy than today's battery, at one-fifth the cost. 
Then there is the Idaho National Laboratory, managing the Feedstock 
Process Demonstration Unit.
  Look at this: across America, different laboratories are harnessing 
their local resources. The PDU provides an industrial-scale research 
system for testing feedstock formulation processes, collecting process 
data, and producing larger quantities of formulated feedstocks for 
conversion testing, a key step to getting a new biofuel to the market.
  There are also very interesting ventures across America taking place 
in a bipartisan way to address climate change. Launched in October 
2013, the Risky Business project focuses on quantifying and publicizing 
the economic risks from the impacts of a changing climate.
  Risky Business was cochaired by a bipartisan group of leaders, Hank 
Paulson, Michael Bloomberg, and Tom Steyer. The Risky Business project 
has found that our economy is vulnerable to an overwhelming number of 
risks from climate change and that the current path will only make 
these risks worse.
  Climate change is our planet's way of charging compound interest. 
They find that the longer we wait to pay down our climate debt, the 
more it will cost the American economy, and the harder it gets to 
adapt. There is no such thing, they find, as ``business as usual'' and 
that the only path forward for businesses and individuals is to act now 
to reduce these risks.
  Their assessment found that, if we act immediately, we can still 
avoid

[[Page 15227]]

some of the worst impacts and significantly reduce the odds of costly, 
catastrophic climate outcomes, but only if we start changing our 
business and public policy decisions today.
  They are calling on American business leaders and investors to get 
into the game, to get into the game of climate investment. America's 
businesses are fully capable of rising to this challenge of climate 
change, and we must do more now, just as we are seeing done in Germany.
  This is not a problem for another day. The investments that we are 
making today, this week, this month, this year will determine our 
economic future.
  They point to short-term problems and long-term problems. In the 
short term, we are going to see the cost of coastal property and 
infrastructure. Within the next 15 years, higher sea levels combined 
with a storm surge will likely increase the average annual cost of 
coastal storms along the Eastern coast and the Gulf of Mexico by $2 
billion to $3.5 billion. Adding in potential changes in hurricane 
activity, the likely increase in annual losses grows to about $7.3 
billion.
  How about agriculture? California is the largest agriculture State in 
the country. A defining characteristic of agriculture in the United 
States is its ability to adapt, but the adaptation challenge going 
forward for certain farmers in specific counties in the Midwest and in 
the South will be significant.
  Without adaptation, some midwestern and southern counties could still 
see a decline in yields of more than 10 percent over the next 5 to 25 
years should they continue to sow corn, wheat, soy, and cotton, with a 
1 in 20 chance of yield losses of these crops of more than 20 percent.
  Most importantly, energy. Greenhouse-driven changes in temperature 
will likely necessitate the construction of up to 95 gigawatts of new 
power generation capacity over the next 5 to 25 years, the equivalent 
of roughly 200 average coal or natural gas-fired power plants, costing 
residential and commercial ratepayers up to $12 billion a year.
  Then there are the large-scale losses to coastal property and 
infrastructure. If we continue on this current path, by 2050, between 
$66 billion and $106 billion worth of existing coastal property will 
likely be below sea level nationwide, with $238 billion to $507 billion 
worth of property below sea level by 2100.
  Who is standing in the way of climate change action? We know who they 
are. We know this family. Koch Industries spent over $25 million in 
campaign contributions by the end of 2013.
  They have spent over $84 million in lobbying as of the end of 2013. 
Americans for Prosperity does not have to fully disclose spending 
since, technically, it is a not-for-profit entity; so the numbers are 
actually truly unknown.
  The Koch brothers have funneled $67 million to groups who deny 
climate change and actively try to delay policies and regulations aimed 
at stopping global warming.
  The Koch brothers run oil refineries and control thousands of miles 
of pipeline, giving them a massive personal financial stake in the 
fossil fuel industry.
  Koch-owned Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary, owns refineries in 
Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas that process more than 800,000 barrels of 
crude oil daily. The company owns a 3 percent stake in the Trans-Alaska 
Pipeline System, 4,000 miles of oil and products pipelines in the 
United States, and an 80,000 barrels per day refinery in Rotterdam.
  In addition, Koch Industries has held multiple leases on the 
polluting tar sands of Alberta, Canada, since the 1990s, and the Koch 
Pipeline Company operates the pipelines that carry the tar sands from 
Canada into Minnesota and Wisconsin, where Koch's Flint Hills Resources 
owns oil refineries.
  It is time that we have real campaign finance reform in this country. 
It is time that we pass a constitutional amendment that reverses the 
decision in Citizens United. It is time that we take the influence that 
Koch Industries has on policymakers to standing up for climate change.
  It is also time that we end this false debate. Let's accept that 
climate change is truly happening. Let's believe in the science, the 
overwhelming majority of scientists who accept that it is happening. 
Let's move past that debate.
  Once we move past that debate, let's have the real debate: What do we 
do next? How do we address climate change without killing jobs in 
America? How do we invest in our own energy resources?
  It is often said that, ``Well, if the sun doesn't shine and the wind 
doesn't blow, there is not much you can do with renewables.'' Well, 
there is great research taking place in our national laboratories and 
in the private sector to better store renewables, to use fuel storage 
methods for our renewables. Let's look at better investments and fuel 
storage renewables.
  We have a unique opportunity in this country to do something. The 
cost of doing nothing is too great. The cost of doing nothing means 
leaving our children a future that is more insecure. The cost of doing 
nothing means spending more money in defense because we don't have our 
own energy resources that we can draw from, making us more vulnerable 
to people across oceans who aren't necessarily our allies to receive 
our energy resources.
  The cost of doing nothing means our entire planet could one day be 
under water. We have an opportunity to do something. We can green our 
economy. We can create jobs.
  My district is not unique. There are great minds across our country 
who can answer this call for action. There are great minds who can 
create jobs in every district in this country through wind, solar, fuel 
storage, and other alternatives to dirty fossil fuels. I believe in an 
all-of-the-above energy approach.
  We should not just pull the plug immediately on fossil fuels; but, if 
we don't look forward, as our ally Germany is doing--30 percent 
renewable consumption by the end of 2014, 30 percent. If we don't look 
forward in that way, we will pay a steep, steep price.
  Let's build that climate wall--I hope there aren't many names on it. 
Let's build that wall of climate denial. If you truly believe we should 
do nothing, if you believe the answer is to just cover our eyes, put 
our fingers in our ears, bury our heads in the sand, and just reject 
all of the science, that wall will likely be under water.
  But America is too great. America has always responded to changing 
science and has always harnessed our own resources. I believe we can 
seize on this opportunity. We can green our economy, save the world, 
and leave a better planet for our children.
  With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________