[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8511-8514]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            PARIS AGREEMENT

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion in the 
media over the last couple of weeks about what President Trump is going 
to do and should do with the Paris climate agreement. We know all about 
this agreement. It was entered into by President Obama in December of 
2015 at the U.N. annual party that they hold, the 21st annual 
Conference of Parties meeting.
  Let me explain what this is. It was 21 years ago they decided--the 
United Nations had always been quite offended every time something 
happened that they were doing in the United Nations that was not in the 
best interest of the United States. Several of us would call and 
threaten to withhold some of our funds supporting the United Nations. 
Of course, the United Nations has always wanted to be independent. They 
wanted to not be accountable to anyone so consequently they put 
together these parties. The best way for them to do that is if they 
could somehow be funded independently and not be accountable to the 
various countries--not just the United States but any of the rest of 
them.
  So they hold this meeting in December of every year, and they hold it 
in very exotic places. Everybody gets really excited. They have 192 
countries come in. What they are trying to do is get them all to limit 
their CO2 emissions. Of course, they all come in because 99 
percent of the 192 countries are ones who want to get money out of this 
deal. I ran into a friend of mine from Benin, West Africa. This was 
several years ago. I said: Why are you here? You are not really going 
to agree with this stuff. He said: No, this is where the money is. This 
is the biggest party of the year.
  One of the worst things that ever happened at their big party was--
they headed to South America someplace, I don't remember where--when 
they ran out of caviar. They have these big meetings every year.
  Well, the last one I went to was December 2009. It was in Copenhagen. 
You might remember that was just after President Obama was elected. He 
and his administration were pledging to the 192 countries that we were 
going to pass a form of cap and trade. Well, they all went to 
Copenhagen--Nancy Pelosi, Hillary, John Kerry, Barack Obama--they all 
went there and told them we were going to pass cap and trade here in 
the United States so they all needed to follow form. This is 
interesting because of the 192 countries he was talking to, most of 
them didn't even know our form of government. They didn't know that we 
had a Senate that had to confirm these things or that we even had a 
legislature. They assumed that was going to happen.
  I remember, right after they left, I went to Copenhagen. I had to go 
in the

[[Page 8512]]

morning and get back in time for votes all in 1 day. I did that. At 
that time, they termed me as the ``one-man truth squad.'' I told them 
under no circumstances--this is 2009--were we going to pass any kind of 
cap and trade in this country. I was right. They were shocked over 
there because they assumed if the President said we are going to do it, 
that we are going to do it. The legislation was estimated at that time 
to cost between $300 and $400 billion--that is per year--to implement. 
It never came to a vote because the Democrats knew they had at that 
time--keep in mind this is 2009--they had control of the White House, 
they had control of the House and Senate, and they had, at that time, 
60 votes in the Senate, but they couldn't get the votes because it was 
too expensive.
  So many people thought it was the first time we would consider cap 
and trade, but it wasn't. We had been working on that for years. They 
first tried it in 2003. In 2003, we had a bill for the U.S. Senate. I 
remember being down here--because at that time I was chairman of the 
Subcommittee on the Environment and Public Works. They had that 
jurisdiction. So I was down here to try to make sure that thing wasn't 
going to pass. Sure enough, it didn't. We defeated it, 43 to 55. Then 
the same group tried it again in 2005. At that time, they only got 38 
votes, and that failed. Then, in 2008, Senators John Kerry and Joe 
Lieberman tried it again. Of course, at that time, it failed again. 
Now, that is a far cry from the 60 votes necessary in order to get 
something like that to pass. We have been looking at that with various 
forms of legislation for quite a number of years.
  After suffering those embarrassing defeats in the Senate, President 
Obama sought to do by regulation what he couldn't do through 
legislation. That is how we got the Clean Power Plan. I think it is 
important to think back where we got to this point. There has also been 
an implementation cost, by their own admission, some $300 billion a 
year, and it made it impossible at that time for us in the United 
States to build a new coal-fired powerplant.
  It is interesting. Some people say: Why do you go back so often to 
Oklahoma? I said: Well, I like to talk to real people. I can remember 
being at Shattuck, OK. I bet the Chair doesn't know where Shattuck is. 
It is in Western Oklahoma.
  A guy said: Now, explain this to me.
  This was actually during the Obama administration.
  He said: If we in the United States are dependent upon fossil fuels--
that is, coal, oil and gas, and nuclear--to produce 89 percent of the 
power it takes to run this machine called America, and if President 
Obama is successful in doing away with coal, oil and gas, and nuclear, 
then how do we run this machine called America?
  For that reason, the President decided he was going to do this with 
regulations.
  I ask unanimous consent that this list of all of the regulations--47 
of them--we have been able to do away with in the first 100 days be 
printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  A few weeks ago, he signed an Executive order instructing the EPA to 
unwind the United States from this regulation. That is exactly what my 
friend, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, is working to accomplish right 
now.
  While the President has disavowed the Paris Agreement, he has not 
pulled out as of this time. He has been kind of busy doing other 
things.
  I understand there are a lot of competing voices on this front. Many 
people don't believe the Paris Agreement is binding. While that is 
true, to a certain degree, it is kind of shortsighted.
  I am speaking today because I believe the President should make a 
clean exit from the Paris Agreement and avoid a lot of confusion. There 
are two key reasons I want to do that.
  The first one, reason No. 1, is that if we remain in the agreement, 
we are putting ourselves at significant litigation risk.
  The Paris Agreement commits the United States to lowering its 
greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025. This is 
interesting because in the Paris Agreement that took place, the 
President at that time, President Obama, was getting just a little bit 
panicky. He had already gone to seven of these and had been unable to 
pass any kind of an agreement that would accomplish his goal of putting 
coal, oil, and gas out of existence. So this agreement that he made, he 
made unilaterally, saying: I agree on behalf of the United States of 
America that we will reduce our emissions of CO2 by between 
26 and 28 percent by 2025.
  Well, we all know that the environmental community wants to do 
whatever it possibly can to regulate carbon. There is a reason for 
this. You might wonder why this is. There is a professor named Richard 
Lindzen. Richard Lindzen is a professor at MIT and is one of the top 
professors in this discipline. He said: If you control carbon, you 
control life.
  It makes it a bureaucrat's dream. So yes, in fact, that is what he 
was trying to do. That is all they want. So if we stay in the Paris 
Agreement, environmentalist groups--radical groups--would be able to 
sue the EPA to force it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under 
section 115 of the Clean Air Act. Section 115 of the Clean Air Act is 
entitled ``International Air Pollution.'' This section is triggered 
when a country asserts that our pollution is harming them, establishing 
an endangerment finding, and when there is a reciprocal agreement 
between our countries and those countries that have such a regulation.
  It is not difficult to imagine that if we remain in the Paris 
Agreement, the environmentalists, NGOs, led by the Natural Resources 
Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, and 
others, will file lawsuits against the EPA as it takes legal steps to 
deregulate the Clean Power Plan.
  While there has not been an internal endangerment finding, the 
environmentalists would be working to force the issue. Further, they 
would make the case that the reciprocal requirements of section 115 of 
the Clean Air Act are met by the Paris climate agreement. Even though 
it is not binding at the international level, the environmentalists 
could, with a sympathetic judge, make a case that the administration 
has made the reciprocal agreement by staying in Paris. It would sound 
good. It is not too hard to find a sympathetic judge nowadays. This is 
something they have been planning to do all along. They built this back 
door into the agreement as the Obama administration was actually 
writing it.
  You ask, why would certain lawsuits be filed? A former general 
counsel at the Sierra Club, David Bookbinder, said that section 115 of 
the Clean Air Act is--these are his words--``the silver bullet de jour 
of the enviros, and they are dead serious about this,'' meaning that 
they believe the Paris Agreement clearly states that it meets the 
reciprocity test established by section 115 of the Clean Air Act.
  If you have noticed, the environmental groups have been very silent 
about whether the administration should stay in the agreement. We all 
know they want us to stay in the agreement, but why be so quiet at this 
time? Because we have not heard from them. Well, the reason is, I think 
the environmental groups who are trying to accomplish this see that 
there is real progress being made to convince the President to stay in 
the Paris Agreement, which means they could have their wish of 
greenhouse gas regulations. If we stay in the agreement, they could sue 
the EPA and force regulations under section 115. So they have been very 
quiet. They don't want President Trump to know they will also benefit 
if we stay in the agreement. Because of this, they are allowing people 
to believe that nothing will happen by staying in the agreement. I have 
heard this from Republicans and Democrats.
  It really does not make too much difference, because for 
ratification, the votes are not there, and everybody knows it. In the 
meantime, you are subject to the lawsuits. So they just don't want us 
to know it as well. Could it be that a Republican President would give 
them the tools they need to force greenhouse gas regulations even 
without meaning to? It is a possibility.

[[Page 8513]]

This is why the President needs to make a clean exit from the 
agreement.
  If the President stays in the Paris agreement, he will be putting at 
risk our ability to accomplish his campaign goals; namely, ending the 
war on fossil fuels and rescinding the Clean Power Plan. He has already 
taken the Executive steps he needs on this front. The EPA is currently 
on solid legal footing. But we must not limit the effectiveness of 
these key steps by remaining in the Paris Agreement.
  So that is reason No. 1. Reason No. 1 is that if we remain in the 
agreement, we are subjecting ourselves to all of the lawsuits that will 
be out there.
  The other reason, the second reason I will mention, is that even if 
we pull out of the agreement, we will still have a seat at the table.
  I have heard the statement quite often, in fact, by some people in 
the Trump administration--they say: We don't want to pull out of it 
because we want to maintain a seat at the table. As they have these 
meetings every December, we want to be there so we can express what 
America really is planning to do and is not planning to do.
  But let's keep in mind that the seat at the table was established way 
back in 1992. That was when they had the United Nations Framework 
Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC. This is the 1992 treaty that 
supports all the big parties that meet every December that are held in 
the exotic locations I mentioned. That group was the foundation of the 
Paris Agreement and the foundation of the Copenhagen discussion in 
2009.
  Now, 2009 is when they had the event in Copenhagen. That is the one 
where all the people went and told them that we were going to pass cap 
and trade, which we were not going to pass cap and trade, and we 
didn't. Further, it was the foundation of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, 
which was the first agreement that sought to set binding international 
greenhouse regulations.
  The Senate demonstrated its intent to defeat that with the Byrd-Hagel 
resolution. Let's remember what that was. The Berg-Hagel resolution--by 
Senators Byrd and Hagel--was right here in this Chamber. They said they 
were going to oppose the ratification of any treaty that does one of 
two things--either it is harmful economically to the United States of 
America, or that countries that are developing countries, such as 
China, are not a part of it.
  Well, that was the case. So the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 was a natural 
follow-on from that decision that was made. So even if President Trump 
removes the United States as a signatory to the Paris Agreement, we 
will continue to have a seat at the table and the President will have 
the ability to negotiate further deals. That is already done. That was 
the done, and it is inescapable. It was done back in 1992. We have been 
a party to that protocol. We have been ever since then and we will 
continue to be regardless of whether the President pulls out of the 
Paris Agreement.
  In the event the President does decide to stay in the Paris 
Agreement, he will need the Senate for ratification because the Paris 
Agreement meets seven out of eight criteria established by the State 
Department to determine what constitutes a treaty. An agreement need 
meet only one of these, and this meets seven. So it would have to come 
in for ratification. If the President does not exit, the Paris 
Agreement will be considered as a treaty.
  It is in the best interests of the Nation and the President's agenda 
to make a clean exit from this agreement. That is why we sent a letter, 
which was sent out this morning by about 25 Members of the Senate, 
encouraging the President to pull out of the agreement. It is the best 
way to get everything he wants: a complete end to the war on fossil 
fuels--which has been ongoing since the day Barrack Obama went into 
power--without the risk of any further future litigation mandating that 
the EPA establish new greenhouse gas regulations, and a decent seat at 
the table for the United States, which we all agree that we want. If 
for some reason he decides not to withdraw, he will have to submit it 
to the Senate as a treaty, and it would be defeated.
  Let me mention two other things which I think are important and which 
I want to include in the Record at this time.
  You know, we have been talking about the Paris Agreement. The far 
left has been trying to get a forum of cap and trade ever since Kyoto 
in 1997. They have tried to do it through legislation, tried over and 
over again, as I mentioned. They could not do it, so they tried to do 
it through regulation.
  You might wonder, what was it way back in the beginning--what were 
the motives for this in the very first place? I carry this. I think it 
is very important to realize what people were saying about it.
  The former Minister of the European Union--her name was Margot 
Wallstrom. She said: ``Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the 
playing field for big business worldwide.''
  Then along came Jacques Chirac. He said during a speech at the Hague 
in November of 2000 that Kyoto represents ``the first component of an 
authentic global governance.''
  Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper once dismissed UN's Kyoto 
Protocol as a ``socialist scheme.''
  Then Christiana Figueres, who was actually at Paris at the time this 
thing was put together, said that ``the real goal is to change the 
economic development model for redistribution of wealth among 
nations.''
  Those are some of the original comments people have forgotten about.
  The last thing I will mention, because I think it is significant, is 
that I remember going to Copenhagen. At that time, the person who was 
the head of the EPA--an appointment by the President at that time--was 
Lisa Jackson. Lisa Jackson--actually, we became pretty good friends at 
that time. She had one problem: She had a hard time saying things that 
were not true. I asked her a question right before we left. I said: I 
have a feeling that once I leave town, once I go to Copenhagen, you are 
going to come up with an endangerment finding.
  This was live on the record, by the way, in the committee I was 
chairing. She kind of smiled, so I knew it was true.
  I said: Now, if you come up with an endangerment finding, it has to 
be based on science. What science would you rely on?
  She said: Well, on the IPCC.
  That is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  Now, I wouldn't say as luck would have it, but it is kind of 
coincidental that right after she made that statement was when the big 
scandal that was referred to as ``Climategate'' came along. They 
discovered that the scientists who were with IPCC were not getting the 
results they wanted. So they rigged the science, and they were caught 
doing it with emails. So there wasn't any question as to what they were 
trying to do. So that totally diffused the effectiveness and the 
legitimacy of the IPCC.
  In fact, Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph said: ``This is the 
worst scientific scandal of our generation.''
  So when people keep saying that science is settled, that is where it 
all came from--the IPCC.
  Clive Crook of the Financial Times said:

       The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, 
     their willingness to go to any length to defend a 
     preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of 
     intellectual corruption is overpowering.

  Well, I assumed at the time that that would end their providing the 
science and justification for passing what would have been the largest 
tax increase in the history of this country.
  So, anyway, back to the issue here, several of us feel that to avoid 
all of this from happening, the best way to do it is to have this 
President, when he gets back from his trip, do what he campaigned on 
and pull out of the Paris Agreement, and I anticipate that he will do 
that.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


              CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW ACT RESOLUTIONS PASSED

       SEC Rule requiring oil and gas companies to disclose their 
     ``playbooks'' on how to win

[[Page 8514]]

     deals. Inhofe-CRA--first signed since 2001; Stream Buffer 
     Zone rule that blocks coal mining; Education rule mandating 
     federal standards for evaluating teacher performance; 
     Education rule establishing national school board; Interior 
     rule that blocked Alaska-control of hunting & fishing; Social 
     Security rule that put seniors with ``representative payees'' 
     on gun-ban list; OSHA rule that changed paperwork violation 
     statute of limitations from 6-months to 5-years.
       Defense rule that blocked contractors from getting deals if 
     suspected (not convicted) of employment-law violations; Labor 
     rule blocking drug-testing of unemployment beneficiaries; BLM 
     rule blocking oil and gas development on federal lands. 
     Federal Communications Commission rule that would have 
     established 2nd regime of privacy rules in addition to 
     Federal Trade Commission; HHS rule that would make it easier 
     for states to fund Planned Parenthood; Department of Labor 
     (DOL) rule forcing private sector employees onto goverment 
     run retirement plans; DOL rule allowing states to bypass 
     protections on retirement plans.


                        TRUMP EXECUTIVE ACTIONS

       Regulatory reform: requires 2 regulations be repealed for 
     each new regulation; WOTUS: directs EPA to rescind Waters of 
     the United States Act; Energy: repeals clean power plan, 
     other harmful regulations . . . ending War on Fossil Fuels; 
     Mexico City: reinstates ban of fed funds going to NGOs that 
     do abortions; Hiring Freeze: freezes federal hiring (exempted 
     military); Military: rebuilds military; Approves Keystone XL 
     pipeline; Approves Dakota Access pipeline.
       Permit Streamlining: expedites infrastructure and 
     manufacturing project permits; Immigration: 90 day suspension 
     on visas for visitors from Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, 
     Sudan, Yemen. 20 day suspension of U.S. Refugee Admission 
     Program; Sanctuary Cities: blocks federal Department of 
     Justice grants to sanctuary cities; Dodd-Frank: demands 
     review of Dodd-Frank banking regulations and demanding roll-
     back; Shrink government: directs federal agencies to 
     reorganize to reduce waste and duplication; Trade: evaluates 
     policies to reduce trade deficit; Opioids: fed task force to 
     address opioid drug crisis; Fiduciary rule: delays 
     implementation of bad DOJ rule; Religious Liberty: Eases 
     enforcement of Johnson Amendment and grants other protections 
     for religious freedom; Offshore drilling: revises Obama-era 
     offshore drilling restrictions and orders a review of limits 
     on drilling locations; National Monuments: Directs a review 
     of national monument designations.
       Improves accountability and whistleblower protections for 
     VA employees; Affirms local control of school policies and 
     examines Department of Ed regulations; Reviews agricultural 
     regulations; Reviews use of H-1B visas; Top-to-bottom audit 
     of Executive Branch; Moves Historically Black Colleges and 
     Universities offices from Department of Ed to White House; 
     Obamacare: directs federal agencies to ease burdens of ACA; 
     Establishes American Technology Council; Establishes office 
     of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; Identifies and reduces tax 
     regulatory burdens; ``Hire America, Buy America''; 
     Establishes a collection and enforcement of antidumping and 
     countervailing duties and violations of Trade and Customs 
     laws; Creates an order of succession within DOJ; Revokes 
     federal contracting executive orders.
  Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.

                          ____________________