The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“EARTH WEEK” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2134-H2139 on April 19, 2005.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
EARTH WEEK
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to address the Chamber today on Earth Week. This is the 35th anniversary of Earth Day, something that is quite a significant event and something that has been very successful in American history.
I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes. I think it is appropriate once in a while to reflect on success in our Nation.
I live in the Seattle area and on an August day in Seattle, you look south where on a clear day you see Mount Rainier. It is quite a beautiful 14,600-foot peak. In August, it was invisible. You could not see it through the yellowish haze, except maybe the top 1,000 feet or so. As a result of some bipartisan efforts to reduce particulate matter and others in our air, we have been successful and I report you can see Mount Rainier very clearly as long as it is not raining, which once in a while it does in Seattle, of course.
We have had successes all over the country in improving our air quality as a result.
Just another little story: When I look out at Puget Sound just in front of my house, 35 years ago you may not have seen any bald eagles. They were an endangered species and had considerable problems because of some pesticides in our food chain. Now, just yesterday before I flew out here, I saw a great bald eagle soaring. It is a real joy to watch him fishing, they are joined by the ospreys frequently, and we have had success with the bald eagle and now people are enjoying and our grandkids and great grandkids are going to enjoy. We have had success.
The third success: I want to point to some of our policies that this Congress has adopted have been successful in bringing more efficiencies so we do not waste as much oil and have the pollution associated with oil.
In fact, if you will look at the graph here, this is a graph of the auto efficiency that we have had over the last several decades, and the top line here is for cars. The bottom line is for trucks, and the middle line is the average of both. You see back in 1975 our trucks were getting about an average of 12.5, 13 miles a gallon. Our cars, on average, were getting about 14.5 miles per gallon.
Back in the mid-1970s, we adopted some fairly ambitious goals to improve efficiency of our cars. What did we get? We got a tremendous boost in efficiency. If you look at these rising lines both for trucks and cars, very, very steep curves going up, so that in about 1984-1985 we got our cars up to an average of 24 miles a gallon, our trucks up to about 17 or 18 miles a gallon.
We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country.
In sort of one of those ironies of life during Earth Week, we are going to have the energy bill up here before the House, which has major, major environmental impacts as well as security impacts and job and economic impacts.
I wanted to address tonight the impacts on our jobs, on our security and on our environment of the energy bill that the House will consider this week. I would like to start with some of the difficulties of that bill and some of its failures, and then I would like to move to the good news about the vision that we have to create a new energy future, a visionary energy future for this country. In fact, what we call it is the new Apollo Energy Project, and many of us believe we need an entirely new visionary, over-the-horizon plan for energy efficiency in this country that will do three things: first, break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil.
The security needs of this Nation to do that are obvious. The need to help spread democracy and the ability to do that will be much greater if we break this addiction to oil, which gives the oil princes and sultans the power in the Mideast. The security need for this is obvious. This is the first goal of the new Apollo Energy Project.
The second goal is to stop global warming. We have real problems with that. I will address that later. We need to have an energy policy that will stop this freight train right now that is building to significantly change our climate.
The third goal of the new Apollo Project is to grow jobs right here in the United States rather than allowing job loss to go overseas. Many of us feel that we should be building fuel-efficient vehicles here and not just in Japan. Those jobs, building fuel-efficient cars, should be here in America and not overseas by necessity. We think the solar cell technology, which was originally developed here, those jobs building those solar cells ought to be here, not Germany.
We feel that the people who are building the wind turbines, those jobs ought to be here, in Washington State and other manufacturing centers around the country, rather than in Denmark, that is now leading the world in that technology.
So we think we can bring those high-tech, visionary jobs home, and that is the very package of the new Apollo Energy Project.
I want to contrast that just for a moment with what the bill that will be voted on the floor consists of. Basically, the best way I can describe the bill that the majority party is bringing to the floor is pretty much a large transfer of taxpayer money to the oil and gas industry, and it is nothing more and really nothing less.
It is about $7.5 billion out of the $8 million that will go in direct subsidies in one form or another, sometimes through the Tax Code, some through direct subsidization to the oil and gas industry. That is over 85 percent of the entire amount to be invested in this that will go from taxpayers to the oil and gas companies.
It is interesting; I read a quote today by a gentleman who may surprise you, who said this, commenting on the relative wisdom, or lack thereof, of transferring $7.5 billion from taxpayers, who just got done filling out their tax reports, to one of the most profitable industries in America. In fact, last week I just read that one of those companies, I will not name their name, they are a fine company, good people work for them, but they had $8 billion in profits the third quarter last year, the largest quarterly profit of a corporation in American history. Yet, the bill the majority party is bringing to this Chamber will take $7.5 billion, roughly, of taxpayer money and give it to the oil and gas companies.
It was a very interesting quote I saw in this morning's newspaper. I thought I might share that. I thought it was a very sage comment on whether that made sense. This gentleman said, I will tell you, with $55 oil, a barrel, we do not need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent.
That quote was by a fellow who knows the oil and gas industry quite well. That was a quote from President George Bush, who I think very pointedly asked, What are we doing giving the oil and gas industry $7.5 billion of taxpayer money when they have got $55, $56, $57, maybe $58 a barrel of oil now? If that is not an incentive, what else would be needed?
As President Bush pointed out, what we really need is some more technological solutions to deal with a way to break our addiction to oil of any nature, foreign or domestic, so that we can move forward and no longer be a slave to big oil. I thought that was an interesting comment, one that I hope some of my colleagues can ask when we debate this issue.
I was talking to one of my constituents the other day, and I told him this; and he just looked at me and said with incredulity, he said, That cannot be true, Congress could never do such a bizarre thing as to hand over taxpayer money like that to an old technology. A mature industry does not need that sort of pampering to get out of the crib of technology and get on its feet to become market-based. It has been around since the late 1800s. What are we doing with a $7.5 billion subsidy to an old industry?
Good question. I do not have an answer for it, but we will have a debate on this floor in this regard.
So the bill that is now before us is sadly lacking. It is a perfect energy policy for the early 1900s. In the early 1900s it might have made sense to help subsidize an industry just developing new technology, beginning to grow, a huge burst in the industrialization of America; but not now, not here. And we think we need a significantly different approach.
So we believe that we need an approach that will really use America's creative genius to develop the technologies to break our addiction to oil. And by the way, let me make sure people understand. As long as we are dependent on oil, we will be subservient to the international oil marketeers even if we increase our domestic production, and the reason is geology.
We consume about 25 percent of the world's oil every year, but we only have reserves, including that which has not been pumped, of about 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world. The simple fact is we cannot plant dead dinosaurs underneath our continental United States to create oil. It is simply not there. We are dependent on foreign oil, and even if we increase our domestic production to some degree, if we doubled it, if we doubled our domestic production, we would be at capacity. We would be having 6 percent of the world's oil, but still be consuming 25 percent of the world's oil.
The fact is that we cannot drill our way to independence. We cannot drill our way to freedom, and we cannot drill our way to create jobs in this country.
We need to largely invent our way out of this pickle. We need to use American ingenuity, the kind of ingenuity that created the software system, the Internet, the aerospace industry, biotechnology, putting the man on the moon. That is the kind of technology we need. In fact, that is why we named this project the new Apollo Energy Project, because President Kennedy stood right there actually May 9, 1961, and he spoke to America and he said America needs to put a man on the moon and bring him back safely within the decade.
That was a dramatic thing to say at the time. I mean, we could hardly launch a softball into space; we had not even invented Tang yet. It was a dramatically bold, audacious challenge. He made it because he understood how good we are at invention in the United States of America, and we need that same kind of spirit now, a new Apollo Project that will call on the innovative spirit of Americans to solve these technological challenges.
This is not going to probably happen this Wednesday when we debate this matter, but I can say optimistically that the planets are aligning to really come up with a new energy policy in this country. Let me suggest some of the reasons here.
One is that the people are starting to understand that we can be very successful. This is a note of optimism. We are optimistic, and the reason we are optimistic is because we have already understood how we can achieve success. And if we will go back to this graph for a moment, we will take a look at this graph that showed what we did in the late 1970s, early 1980s, when we set ourselves on a course to improve the efficiency of our cars, we almost doubled the efficiency of our cars and some of our trucks by using new technology that we developed here domestically in America. With a bipartisan effort in Congress, we called for a higher fuel efficiency and we got it.
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And we got all the way up to about 1985, when you see something happened. We had this just absolute cessation of any progress in efficiency in our cars. You see, we had this very rapid buildup for car efficiency that literally stopped and became a plateau from 1985 to 2005. On trucks, we saw it stop in 1985 and plateau and absolutely go down a little bit. So today the average fuel efficiency of our fleet is actually less today than it was in 1985.
So you have to ask yourself, what happened in 1985? Did we just get dumb? I do not think so. Since 1985, we invented the Internet, we mapped the human genome, and we have built several new generations of jets at Boeing, in my neck of the woods in Washington State. We have had all these tremendous technological advancements, but in the efficiency of our cars we have actually gone down.
Why is that? We just forgot how successful we could be, because Congress and the White House, for reasons I never agreed with at the time, stopped calling for more fuel efficiency in what are called our corporate average fuel economy standards, and so they stopped progress. So we are now still dependent on foreign oil, have a problem with global warming, and are losing jobs rapidly to the Japanese in fuel-
efficient vehicles as a result of that very shortsighted progress.
Now, that is bad news; but it is also good news because it shows what we are capable of if America sets its mind to it to use its creative genius to move forward, and that is what we need to do today. And one of the things the new Apollo Energy Project will do is to call for new improvements in the efficiency standards of our fleets. But the project also recognizes that we need to help our manufacturers achieve that. So we dedicate a significant sum, several billion dollars, to our domestic manufacturers, people who manufacture cars within the United States, of whatever manufacturing company it is, to assist them in retooling their factories to build these new fuel-efficient vehicles.
And that is an important part of our package, because it recognizes that we need to help our domestic industry find a way to finance the changes to continue improvements like that which we know we can obtain. We think that there is going to be enormous money made and jobs created in fuel efficient vehicles. Today, I must say, a car that gets 42 to 44 miles a gallon, one of these hybrid cars, in Seattle, Washington, now you can sell it for more than you bought it for because of the attractiveness of this fuel-efficiency standard. Safe, comfortable car. We can do this in this country. We need to set our minds to it, and that is one of the things we have suggested to do in the new Apollo Energy Project.
Coming back to this idea about an alignment of the planets, about why we can achieve this, I think what we are seeing in this country is a rather unprecedented combination of people who normally might have some different viewpoints on various policy matters who are coming together to understand why we need a visionary high-tech future for our energy world. I want to read some comments by these folks who sort of suggest we need to go in that direction.
Dealing with global warming, for instance, I think you might be surprised at some of the statements that have been made. The CEO of British Petroleum, Sir John Browne, who has provided remarkable leadership on some new high-tech solutions to global warming said:
``There is a discernible human influence on the climate and a link between the concentration of carbon dioxide and the increase in temperature.'' That is the CEO of British Petroleum.
He is not alone. The CEO of Shell, Sir Philip Watts, on March 12, 2003 said: ``We cannot wait to answer all questions on global warming beyond a reasonable doubt. There is compelling evidence that climate change is a threat.''
You then have James Baker, former Secretary of State for the first President Bush, who said: ``When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen. I think we need to go forward with some sort of gradual resourceful search for alternative sources.'' This is a gentleman who was intimately involved with the first Bush administration, who recognizes that many people in corporate America are seeing a need for a real visionary change.
You see folks in the faith community who are now addressing the view that we have obligations to the Earth that are spiritual as much as aesthetic. Reverend Rich, and I am sorry if I mispronounce his name, Cizik, who is Vice President of National Affairs For the National Association of Evangelicals, said just this last month: ``There is a feeling that global warming, or climate change, is real and the result of human impacts that impact other humans.'' The association itself issued a statement that said: ``We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the Earth, and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are part. We are not the owners of creation, but its stewards, summoned by God to `watch over and care for it,' '' citing Genesis.
You are starting to see a parallel thinking of folks from the fossil fuel industry, from former members of the Bush administration, from James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, from a group of the neoconservatives, many of whom supported the war in Iraq, from members of the faith community that we have a constellation of challenges that we need to have a new approach to; that demands us to use the asset above our shoulders, namely our brains, rather than just the assets below our feet, namely our fossil fuels. This is a gift from the creator, and we need to use it.
If I can turn for a moment about why we need to use this in regard to global warming, I would like to refer to a graph that is pretty unquestioned evidence of why we need to have a new energy on policy that will address global warming. You heard the comments from the Shell and British Petroleum CEOs, and they are doing some hard-headed thinking because we are facing some hard-headed facts.
There are some uncertainties about global warming: the extent to which it will occur, how it will affect the specific climates of regional areas. There is much uncertainty. But there is also much absolute clear facts, and I want to go over a couple of those. As folks may know, global warming is caused by carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide works like a pane of glass: it traps heat, just like a greenhouse. Hence the term ``greenhouse gases.''
Now, I actually had a scientist explain this to me a while ago. The way it works is that glass, like carbon dioxide, will allow ultraviolet radiation to come through it. When radiation comes from the sun, it is largely in ultraviolet ranges. And as you recall the spectrum of frequencies, this energy comes in at the ultraviolet frequencies. That can pass through glass. When it bounces back, when that energy is reflected back, it comes back at a different frequency. It comes back in infrared ranges. A different frequency. That cannot pass through glass, and it does not pass through a layer of carbon dioxide as much as it would in the absence of the carbon dioxide. So you have ultraviolet rays coming in, they bounce back as infrared rays, and they are trapped.
And that is a good thing, because if we did not have a CO2 layer, we would be on a barren planet. You could not exist here no matter how thick your down coat was. So we need that layer to some degree of heating gases. The problem is if you have that CO2 layer increase in density.
So has it? Well, the facts are very, very clear. This is a chart that shows a red line that goes back to the year 1000. It comes up in 100-
year increments, coming up to zero, which is today, showing our concentrations. On the left of the chart are the concentrations in parts per million that are measured. And these are absolutely unquestioned measurements. Scientists do an assessment of the parts per million of the molecules in the air, and it is a direct measurement. Nothing speculative about it. No hypothesis. Every scientist in the world will agree to this.
And we know what the records are because we have air bubbles trapped in glaciers and ice cores that we have taken out thousands of feet down in the Antarctic, in Greenland, and other places. So we know what the CO2 layer was back in the year 1000, which is pretty amazing, with just as much as we know it today, because we had the air trapped a thousand years ago in these air bubbles. We knew it was 278, maybe 280 parts per million, and it was very stable for just under a thousand years. Then you start seeing it going up just over 100 years ago, which of course coincides with the Industrial Revolution and burning coal and oil and gas. And then it starts to come up at a fairly rapid rate over the last 100 years. And during the last 50 years, it has gone up approaching a vertical level of increase.
So we are now up to, and I should have the number specifically, but in the 370 parts per million range. There is no doubt about this. We can see that we have gone up a factor of at least a third over preindustrial times, and the scary thing about this chart is you will notice the rate of incline. It is almost vertical. So at the end of the century we will be at twice the levels of carbon dioxide as we were in preindustrial times. That is disturbing when you know carbon dioxide traps heat.
We know it has a close relationship to Earth temperatures, as these blue lines mark Earth temperatures. And of course for about the last 200 years, they are observed temperatures, and you can see they are going up with some deviation up and down during the last 150 years. Now, before that, they are not observed temperatures. They are worked out through a formulation of using a variety of mechanisms. If you go back for geological times, the temperature is gradient. It matches fairly closely this CO2 curve.
So we know without a doubt that we are causing a spectacular increase in the CO2 levels of the planet. The planet has never seen this before, ever, as far as we can ascertain through looking at these old air bubbles. We are doing something to the planet that has never happened before, and we are the ones responsible for it. The question is what is this Congress going to do about it.
Unfortunately, this Congress has done absolutely zero about this problem. It has wallowed in the fog of indifference and ambiguity and has refused to show any leadership whatsoever. And it is disturbing to me because, as you know, the consequences of this carbon dioxide is trapping energy in this Earth, and we are experiencing global warming already, and the vast majority, and I reiterate, the vast majority of the Earth's meteorologists and geophysicists believe that this is now causing and will continue to cause an increase in the general temperatures of the Earth.
Now, there is some variety as to how much that is predicted to be; but all of them, even the lower estimates of 2 to 3 degrees can cause very significant climactic effects. The differences between us and the last ice age were just under 10 degrees, even just Fahrenheit. So we have some very significant issues to deal with with global warming.
We have seen it already affecting our lives. Glacier National Park is predicted not to have glaciers in the next 50 to 70 years. When you want to take your grandkids there, you will say, This is where the glaciers used to be, Johnny. We are seeing melting tundra in Alaska. My son only had 3 days' work as a ski patrolman this year because there is no snow in the Cascade Mountains, a condition which is predicted to be much more frequent when this spike goes up higher. We need to deal with this problem.
So we have suggested, and I will introduce shortly and have introduced an amendment this evening to the energy bill to adopt the substance of this new Apollo Energy Project. Because we believe we have to reduce our contributions of carbon dioxide to the Earth's atmosphere. And we can do that. The clearest most short-term things we need to do are to improve the efficiency of our cars, and we need to have a limitation on the carbon dioxide that we put into the atmosphere.
Senators McCain and Lieberman have introduced a bill in the Senate, I and some of my Republican colleagues have introduced a bill here in the House which will set a cap on carbon dioxide emissions from the United States.
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It is a cap that we know we can meet. In fact, it was absolutely amazing to me, the Department of Energy last week issued a report that concluded that the cap that we set could be met by the United States without any significant economic harm. This is issued by a gentleman who is actually appointed by George Bush.
The Department of Energy has concluded that we are fully capable, using existing technology, of dealing with this issue by adopting a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere, which will help spur some of these innovations.
What will we do to achieve it? Our energy and power bill takes a broad-based approach. There is not one panacea to these challenges we have, but it does take the approach that we should be optimistic about it and we should recognize that we can have the same success in the new industries that will spring forth to deal with global warming to grow new jobs, as has happened in the software, biotech, and aeronautical industries.
For example, number one, the United States needs to embark on a research and development project akin to the original project that got a man to the moon, the original Apollo Project, because we found when the Federal Government invests in basic research and development, amazing things can happen. We would invest significant sums in these emergent technologies, technologies that sometimes seem obscure but have tremendous capacity.
There is a company in my district called Neah Power that is developing a fuel cell battery, which runs on ethanol or methanol. It will be four or five times as long-lived as a lithium battery with no emissions, completely safe, and will help to spur the development of fuel cells that we hope to become a significant part to the solution to this puzzle. They are small now, but tend to grow over time. A small company, but here is a place we can help, and we hope that this company is going to help the American military pack less wieldy, safer, and more effective batteries to fuel our communication systems.
But the point is, we need to continue the research and development of the nature and scope that got us to the moon. Not every invention is going to work out and not every idea is going to come home, just like in the space program, but it is a worthwhile investment.
Second, the Federal Government needs to use its procurement power to inspire these new industries. We need to have Uncle Sam order some of these new products to inspire these new products.
Third, we need to use the power of the government to recognize success. I want to talk about some success and what the Federal Government ought to be doing. For instance, solar power.
If I can share a success story in Virginia, this is a picture of a home just a few miles from here in Hillsboro, Virginia, built by Alden and Carol Hathaway. They built this home for $365,000, which is not that much more expensive for a home in this neck of the woods, and it is a ``net zero'' home, ``net zero'' meaning it does not use any energy from the electrical grid. But it is comfortable, it is nice looking, it is warm, and it is nonpolluting. They did this by using existing technologies.
They used an integrated solar cell built right into the roof of their home, which creates electrical current. They used an in-ground heat pump which is tremendously efficient. They used very high insulation values in the walls and windows, and some passive solar in how they aligned their home; and their home has a net energy consumption of zero.
That does not mean it is never using juice off the grid. At times there is electricity coming into their home, but other times they are generating more from the sun and they are feeding it back into the grid so the net is zero. They did this on a fairly economical basis.
I point this out for the reason I want to show success today. This is not just tomorrow's sort of futuristic world from the Jetsons, if anybody is as old as I am and remembers George Jetson. This is today's technology.
An amendment that I believe will be in the bill tomorrow or Wednesday does allow and call for the Federal Government to start a program to equip Federal buildings with solar cell technology. The reason that this makes sense, solar cell technology is much more economical. The more you buy, the price of solar cells comes down dramatically. Every time we increase the number of solar cells we buy by a factor of 10, the prices come down 20 percent. It is still more expensive than buying electricity from a gas turbine, but it has its place.
We believe if we increase dramatically the number of units, we will continue to see a decline of that cost curve so we will be able to enjoy what the Hathaways are enjoying tonight in Virginia.
Now, we have to do some things to get that done.
I am a supporter of a bill called the Net Metering bill, which will require utilities to buy back your power from you so your meter runs backwards when you feed electricity back into the grid. Unfortunately, that will not be in the bill Wednesday. It is one of those long-term things that we have to do.
Third, we have to give incentives to Americans to help them make these choices. For some of these technologies that are still just a little bit above market base, we need to increase the amount of a tax break we give to Americans who drive fuel-efficient cars. We need to do the same thing for the manufacturers of fuel-efficient vehicles. For the retooling investments, we need to give an assist to our domestic auto industry when they do the retooling that they need to do for fuel-
efficient cars.
We need to have better tax breaks when you buy an energy-efficient home, and a way to get a better mortgage lending rate for energy-
efficient homes. We need to use all of these multiple tax levers to help Americans when they take that step up to better fuel- and energy-
efficient appliances. Unfortunately, that is not in the bill that we will have Wednesday.
Instead of helping Americans move forward to these new technologies, technologies that we have today, fuel-efficient cars we have today, the energy bill we will consider Wednesday will go backwards to give the subsidies to these old industries that started to reach fruition in the late 1800s. That is most unfortunate.
Fourth, we need to do some things on the regulatory side, one of which is the CO2 cap that I talked about. Another is the CAFE standard to improve the auto efficiency of our vehicles. Those are all measures that, together, could have a significant impact. We have already seen some successes, such as what we have seen in the Hathaways' home.
So let me talk, if I can, about the job creation aspect of this. We have a real problem with manufacturing industry job loss in this country. Since 2001, we have lost 2.8 million family-wage manufacturing jobs. We have had a significant number of losses in a host of industries, but now we have an opportunity. This might be one of the greatest job creation opportunities that the country has right now.
We know, as the Creator makes little green apples, jobs are going to be created by the millions in the new industries that, by necessity, are going to be built to deal with the shortage of oil, to deal with global warming. And the shortage of oil, folks ought to read this book about the peak of oil production that is now on the market. It will make you very concerned about your future oil prices because it suggests that our oil production globally has plateaued and will go down in a decade or so, together with China having a demand that is astronomical. China will be equivalent to America's demand for autos in the next decade and a half. We have to find some alternative mechanisms of energy, both in efficiency and new systems.
Somebody is going to get jobs doing this, and we think it ought to be Americans. We do not think we should give these jobs away to our friends in Japan, or give the wind turbine jobs to Denmark. We think those jobs ought to be here.
And a very conservative estimate of our new Apollo Project, done by an economist in Waco, Texas, concluded that our program would create 3.3 million good-paying American jobs in the next 5 years. That is a significant step in the short term to help rebuild our manufacturing base. It would increase $1.4 trillion in new gross domestic product, add $953 billion in personal income. This is an assessment done by a reputable economist from Texas.
By the way, Texas has done some good things in wind energy. Wind energy is having some spectacular success, growing at 30 percent a year. In southeastern Washington, in my district, we have the largest wind plant farm in the United States. And we have five new wind farms under construction in the State of Washington.
The other interesting thing about energy efficiency is, it creates more jobs than the fossil fuel-based industries. It creates 21.5 jobs per $1 million invested compared to 11.5 for natural gas generation.
This is a job-creating technological solution to an old, dinosaur-
based fossil fuel-based economy. This is our destiny as Americans to fulfill it. We are the inveterate tinkerers. We are the best people at inventing solutions technologically to problems of any people in human history. This is now our moment when the U.S. Congress ought to be seizing this opportunity, just like Kennedy suggested we do in 1961, and bring those jobs and that bright light of creativity to our country.
The environment demands it. The glaciers and national parks demand it. Our children, who should not be living under slavery to Middle Eastern oil, demand it. We should not have to worry about Middle Eastern politics again when we break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil. We should not be wrapped around the axle of the Saudi Arabian royal house and whatever difficulties they have. We are slaves to whatever is going on in Saudi Arabia, and it is not a place that we deserve to be.
Lastly, we ought to use our technological prowess to make sure we are the number one job creator in the world for these emerging industries. That is our destiny and that is why I will be joining some of my colleagues in introducing the new Apollo Energy Project in the next week or so. We know at some time it is going to get done, maybe not this week, but the stars are aligning and those who share my view, I welcome you to share you views with your Member of the U.S. Congress.
Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to add my voice to those who would commemorate Earth Day 2005 by pledging our efforts to ensure that our childrens children may enjoy the same Earth we celebrate today.
And it is those children who will pay the price if we do not.
Children are usually at greatest risk of suffering environment-
related health problems, with race and poverty playing a disproportionate role, especially minority children from families living below the poverty line, according to EPA reports.
Concern that minority populations and low-income populations bear a disproportionate amount of those adverse health and environmental effects led President Clinton to issue Executive Order 12898 in 1994, in order to focus Federal agency attention on these issues, leading to the establishment of the office of Environmental Justice Strategy at the EPA.
The EPA defines Environmental Justice as the ``fair treatment for people of all races, cultures, and incomes, regarding the development of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.''
This has long been a concern of the environmental community, especially among minority and low-income communities who have come together to organize and fight for equal protection under the law.
The environmental justice movement really got its start in Warren County, North Carolina where a PCB landfill ignited protests and resulted in more than 500 arrests. These protests prompted a U.S. General Accounting Office study, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, which found that three out of four of the off-site, commercial hazardous waste landfills in Region 4 (comprising eight States in the South) happened to be located in predominantly African-
American communities, although African-Americans made up only 20 percent of the region's population. More important, the protesters put
``environmental racism'' on the map.
Since that time, attention to the impact of environmental pollution on particular segments of our society has been steadily growing in the form of the Environmental Justice Movement. This movement contends that poor and minority populations are burdened with more than their share of toxic waste, pesticide runoff and other hazardous byproducts of our modern economic life.
The EPA's Office of Environmental Justice Strategy was created to address these issues, but thus far has done little to improve the situation for minority and low-income communities.
In fact, an EPA Evaluation Report released last year found that 10 years after its issuance, the EPA ``has not fully implemented Executive Order 12898 nor consistently integrated environmental justice into its day-to-day operations. EPA has not identified minority and low-income, nor identified populations addressed in the Executive Order, and has neither defined nor developed criteria for determining disproportionately impacted.'' It goes on to say that when the Agency restated its commitment to environmental justice in 2001, they did not emphasize minority and low-income populations, which was the intent of the Executive Order.
The report found that even after 10 years after its implementation, the EPA had not developed ``a clear vision or a comprehensive strategic plan, and has not established values, goals, expectations, and performance measurements.''
We must continue to bring attention to the documented environmental health disparities suffered by low-income and minority communities throughout the country, raising awareness so that together we might seek solutions. I call upon the Office of Environmental Justice Strategy to make this issue a priority as it was designed to do more than 10 years ago.
This is a very real threat for my constituents. The EPA has announced that the entire State of New Jersey is officially designated as out of compliance with the agency's health-based standard for ozone. The entire State is out of attainment for smog, and all counties that are monitored for soot levels are also out of attainment.
Studies have shown that New Jersey's air pollution levels cause 2,000 premature deaths every year. At this rate, pollution ranks as the 3rd most serious public health threat in my State. Only smoking and obesity kill more New Jerseyans each year.
In addition, child asthma rates are on the rise--especially in our cities--and the threat of mercury pollution puts all of us at risk, but most especially infants, children, and pregnant women.
The Bush Administration's efforts to weaken protections established under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts have compromised the long fought-for protections we have won since the Inaugural Earth Day back in 1970. We must stand firm in our objections to environmental policy that favors industry at the expense of nature and public health, and we must oppose irresponsible legislation, such as Clear Skies, that claim to protect the environment even while it is attempting to degrade it.
As we celebrate Earth Day, I hope that all of us can pledge to do more than just talk about these issues and to commit to act in support of those things which we speak about so passionately today. We must dedicate ourselves to full enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We must rid our lakes, rivers, and streams of dangerous mercury pollution to ensure the safety of all Americans. We must oppose any more delays and restore full funding to the clean-up of toxic waste sites that threaten the health and safety of our Nations children. We must take seriously the threat of pollution to public health and act to alleviate the suffering of the urban minority and low-income populations, as well as the 5 million American children who now suffer from asthma.
These are big goals, but the stakes could not be higher. We must protect our precious natural resources and the health and safety of all Americans, especially urban, minority, and low-income populations who bear the brunt of our failure to do so.
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