[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20252-20253]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     PARIS CLIMATE CHANGE AGREEMENT

  Mr. CORNYN. Now, Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes talking 
about some of the things on which I don't think we are going to be able 
to find political consensus. That has to do with the President's moving 
up his list of priorities. Among all the other things that are going on 
in the world, he seems to be saying that climate change is the most 
urgent challenge facing the United States and the world. I worry a 
little bit any time I hear a politician--or anybody, for that matter--
making sort of messianic claims. The President characterized the 
agreement in Paris--and I will talk more about the nature of that 
agreement--``a turning point for the world.'' It strikes me that it 
takes quite a bit of hubris and really arrogance to be claiming that 
yes, this is going to be a turning point for the world. As a matter of 
fact, the Wall Street Journal said that it pays to be skeptical of a 
politician who claims to be saving the planet.
  I don't share the President's priorities when it comes to climate 
change because I think there are actually more urgent priorities, such 
as fighting terrorism both abroad and here at home. That would be a 
more urgent priority. Some of the other more prosaic work we do here is 
pretty important to the quality of lives of the American people and to 
the economy, our ability to create an environment where they can find 
work and provide for their families. I think those needs are more 
urgent.
  Nevertheless, the President seems to be once again exaggerating what 
his authority is under our Constitution. Of course, the President has 
no legal authority to bind his successor. What he seems to be saying is 
``This is an agreement between me and the 140-some-odd nations,'' and 
it won't last beyond his Presidency. Last time I checked, the President 
will be leaving the White House sometime in January 2017. What he has 
purported to do is enter into an agreement that would somehow bind his 
successor and would somehow bind the Congress and the American people. 
But under our Constitution, this President--no President has any 
authority to do anything like that.
  So it is clear that this agreement has been crafted in a way that 
gives some of the countries that are parties to the agreement more 
leeway than others. Some major economies don't have to play by the same 
rules that the United States would.
  This agreement represents the President once again trying to claim 
authority he simply does not have. We don't have a king. In America, we 
made that decision a long time ago. I think it was 1787 when we decided 
we would not have a king, but the President seems to act like a monarch 
and claim authorities from some source other than the Constitution. It 
seems unbelievable that after the Obama administration has failed to 
find support for so many of the President's overreaching regulations 
here at home--not in the Congress, not in the State houses, not in the 
courts--his response was to sign on to an agreement with the United 
Nations that seeks to tax our use of energy. It is another attempt to 
do an end run around the Constitution and around the American people.
  What really frustrates me is the President's willingness to sacrifice 
our economy--job creation and the ability of people to find work and to 
provide for their family--to promote a cause that offers no guarantee 
of a more resilient climate or a clean environment.
  The President and some of his supporters frequently like to say: 
Well, people who don't regard climate change as a priority are anti-
science. I actually think people who think agreements such as this are 
going to provide the answer are anti-science.
  First, if you start looking at some of the models that are used to 
predict temperatures decades and perhaps centuries out, this is not 
what you would call science, this is more like an economic projection 
or model, and we know how reliable they have been in the past.
  I couldn't help but think about growing up and a book that I remember 
reading called ``The Population Bomb,'' which was written by a Stanford 
professor named Paul R. Ehrlich. The thesis of ``The Population Bomb'' 
was that unless we did something to control population, millions of 
people were going to starve to death because we were going to outstrip 
our food supply.
  Well, obviously that didn't happen. One of the reasons it didn't 
happen is because of a man by the name of Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Prize 
winner, and now considered the father of the Green Revolution. By the 
way, he did spend a little bit of time at Texas A&M in Bryan College 
Station. But he was a very heroic figure who used science to help 
figure out how to increase production of the food supply in a way that 
made Paul Ehrlich's prediction a pipe dream. It just didn't happen.
  I think that by predicting all these dire consequences, it is the 
predictors--it is the people who are embracing this sort of climate 
change theology--who don't have any confidence in our ability to 
innovate our way out of these problems.
  I will use one more anecdote to try to make the point. At the start 
of the 20th century, horses in New York City were producing about 5 
million pounds of manure a day. Can you imagine what an environmental 
hazard this would be with manure piled on vacant lots with rats? I will 
not go into all the details; it is pretty repulsive to think about. But 
there is a book called ``SuperFreakanomics,'' which uses this great 
example. They said: Well, what happened to that? Instead of some 
grandiose government policy or instead of some new tax or regulation 
that government issued, what happened to that and the environmental 
hazard that presented was the internal combustion engine. So not 
overnight, but apparently in short order, that manure was disposed of. 
Horses were replaced by cars.
  Again, it is just another example of how American innovation, 
creativity, and entrepreneurialism can take care of many of these 
problems that some of our friends worry so much about and think should 
be such an important priority for us. America's entrepreneurs have 
shown time and again that they are simply more adaptive and genius than 
government regulators and bureaucrats.

[[Page 20253]]

  By bypassing the American people and signing our country up for a bad 
international agreement that doesn't put our country first, we should 
instead focus on finding innovative solutions that fit the diverse 
needs of consumers, businesses, and a growing economy alike.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.

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