[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19749-19750]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PARIS CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I just found out that supposedly the big 
party that is taking place in Paris--it is interesting. For those 
people who are not familiar with this issue, the United Nations puts on 
a big party every year. This is the 21st year that they have done this. 
It goes back to the Kyoto treaty and to the fact that through the 
United Nations they have been trying to develop some type of a thing 
where global warming is coming and it is going to be the end of the 
world.
  I remember way back when I was chairing a subcommittee that had 
jurisdiction over this type of an area, back when this first started. 
We might remember when Al Gore came back, and they had developed this 
thing called the Kyoto treaty. They signed it on behalf of the United 
States, but they never submitted it to be confirmed by the Senate. 
Obviously, that is something that has to happen. They now are going to 
go in there to do a climate agreement. It was a real shocker on 
November 11 when the Secretary of State John Kerry made a public 
statement that the United States would not be a part of anything that 
is binding on the United States. The President of France didn't know 
that. He went into shock. He said that the Secretary must have been 
confused. They had to reconcile themselves at that time. That was 2 
weeks before people arrived for the big party in Paris. They decided 
that we will put together something where we can have an understanding 
of what we want to do in the future--nothing binding.
  The reason I am mentioning this now is that this afternoon there is 
supposed to be a plan that is going to be unveiled that is going to 
reflect what they want everybody to do with this. I want to keep one 
thing in mind. The last event I went to was in Copenhagen. They are 
designed to try to get 192 countries to agree that the world is coming 
to an end and that we are going to have to do something about cap and 
trade to stop the global warming. This has been going on for a long 
time. There are significant problems that remain. The negotiators can't 
agree on whether it is binding or what part of the agreement might be 
binding and still comply with our laws and constitutional restrictions. 
They can't agree on financing.
  This morning, in order to entice the developing countries, Secretary 
Kerry, on behalf of the President, announced that the United States 
would contribute another $800 million a year to help developing 
countries adapt to the effects of climate change. Let's keep in mind 
that this is in addition to the $3 billion that the President expects 
Congress to appropriate to this cause.
  Yesterday, in Paris, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy again 
misrepresented to the international community the EPA's authority and 
confidence in the U.S. commitments. The highlight of her remarks was 
her claim that ``the Clean Power Plan will stick and is here to stay.'' 
When attending international delegates asked questions about their 
legal vulnerability and the possibility of the future administration 
changing anything that is adopted by this administration, she 
reportedly walked around the question and many in the audience were 
upset that she wouldn't answer the question. The reason she wouldn't is 
because there is no answer to it.
  I chair the committee called the Environment and Public Works 
Committee. We have the jurisdiction over these things. When the 
President came out with the Clean Power Plan, we said: All right, you 
are saying that you are committing the United States to a 28-percent 
reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025. How are you going to get 
there?
  They wouldn't say. No one to this day has talked about how they are 
going to do it. He said: Let's have a hearing.
  We are the committee of jurisdiction. I don't recall any time when a 
bureaucracy that is in a committee's jurisdiction refused to testify, 
but they did refuse to testify. I think we all know why. We know there 
is no way of coming up with that type of a commitment. If you have all 
these costs and what it is going to cost us, does it address climate 
change? The Clean Power Plan will have no impact on the environment. It 
would reduce CO2 emissions by less than 0.2 percent. It 
would reduce the rise of global temperature by less than one one-
hundredth of a degree Fahrenheit, and it would reduce the sea level 
rise by the thickness of two sheets of paper. In fact, the EPA has 
testified before the environment committee that the Clean Power Plan is 
more about sending a signal that we are serious about addressing 
climate change than it is about clearing up pollution. The Justice 
Department requested that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals not rule on 
the Clean Power Plan, the principal domestic policy which supports our 
commitments to the climate conference, until after the conference 
concludes.
  What they did was they went to the courts, knowing that the courts 
were going to be acting on this power plan and probably acting against 
it, and they didn't want that to happen before the party in France. I 
think it is the biggest signal to the international community that the 
administration lacks the confidence in their own rules.
  Administrator McCarthy also claimed that the next administration 
cannot simply undo the Clean Power Plan because of the extensive 
comment period supporting the rule. The international community is not 
fooled by this either. Congress disagrees. Not only can Congress 
withhold funding from any element of an agreement that the 
administration refuses to send to Congress for approval, but the 
Congress

[[Page 19750]]

has explicitly rejected the Clean Power Plan in the bipartisan 
Congressional Review Act, saying that we do not agree with this and we 
want to do away with this Clean Power Plan before it is finalized.
  That should be the signal to the people who are at the party in 
Paris. I think that a lot of them do understand that. Even President 
Obama is now conceding that specific targets each country is setting to 
reduce greenhouse gas emissions may not have the force of treaties. He 
is hoping that 5 years or some type of periodic reviews of those 
countries would be in the form of a binding commitment. But even if 
that is the case, that would merely be a review. Although the European 
Union and 107 developing countries are hoping for a legally binding 
long-term deal with review mechanisms and billions of dollars, any 
truly binding agreement must be sent to the Senate for approval.
  Back when they first went down on the Kyoto treaty, we had the Byrd-
Hagel rule. The Byrd-Hagel rule says that we are not going to ratify 
any treaty if it either is bad on our economy or it doesn't apply to 
countries such as China. So they have to do the same thing that we are 
doing. That passed 95 to 0. That was way back at the turn of the 
century.
  Everyone knows that he can't unilaterally do these things, even 
though he tries. In 1992, when the Senate approved President H.W. 
Bush's agreement to have the United States participate in the 
conference of parties--that is the one that is going on right now, the 
21st one--the process, any emissions, targets or requirements were 
going to have to be approved by the Senate. This is the President who 
was in charge at that time, George H.W. Bush. That was the agreement in 
1992, and that agreement hasn't changed. Legally binding agreements 
must go before the Senate for consideration, and there is no way around 
it.
  This is the message I conveyed when I attended the COP convention in 
2009 in Copenhagen, and nothing has changed since that time. Nothing is 
happening over there now. They are having a good time. I am sure there 
are lots to drink and lots to eat, but that party will be over.
  Let me share one experience I had. I have been very active in Africa 
for a number of years. There is an officeholder in the tiny country in 
West Africa of Benin. I saw him at the convention that was in 
Copenhagen.
  I said: What are you doing here? You don't believe all this stuff.
  He said: No, but they are passing out hundreds of billions of 
dollars, and we want to get some of ours. Besides that, this is the 
biggest party of the year.
  Enjoy your party over there. Nothing is going to happen. Nothing 
binding is going to take place on this issue.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

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