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“GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H9713-H9720 on Nov. 16, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I come to address the House this evening on an issue that has some similarities to the issue my colleagues, my Democratic colleagues, just addressed on the Federal deficit. The Federal deficit is this long-term, rather insidious challenge to our Nation that sort of is something that can sneak up on us and over the long term can cause us great grief. And the issue that I am compelled to address the House on tonight is a similar issue with even larger global concerns that has the capability of causing major changes to the way we live and our kids live and our grandchildren live, and that is the issue of global climate change, which is being precipitated by our enormous contributions of carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere.
And as I come here tonight, this is the first night we have been in session since the election, and a couple things have changed relatively dramatically actually since the election. And one of the things that has changed when it comes to the atmosphere we are going to leave to our kids and our grandkids is that there was a major scientific announcement made last week that basically should send off red lights, alarm bells, and whistles in the United States Congress which indicated that the problem of global warming is much more acute and is happening much more quickly than many of us anticipated. So tonight I would like to address the science that has now become available to this body in the House of Representatives, which I hope that we would act on fairly shortly.
Unfortunately, the U.S. House has been somnambulant when it comes to global warming to date. This Chamber, for all its virtues, basically has not acted at all in the face of what has been very rapidly accumulating scientific evidence about this problem. But after the report came out last week, which I am going to address, there really is no longer any excuse for inaction by the House; and that is why this evening I would like to address the scientific report that became available to us.
Last week, eight nations that have been working for 4 years now to try to get a handle on the scientific information that is now available to us issued a report called the ``Impacts of a Warming Arctic,'' and this was a report issued by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. This is a group that has been working of the best scientists in the United States, nonpartisan, no ax to grind. These people, a diverse group from the National Oceanographic Administration, from the University of Fairbanks have been working in conjunction with seven other nations on this report. Those other countries are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Canada, and six indigenous groups in Canada.
And this group basically for the last several years has been taking a very acute and sensitive look as to what is going on in the Arctic to determine whether or not there is evidence that can guide us policymakers and whether we should or should not treat global warming as a serious issue. And I have to say that when I read this report, I was blown away. And I was blown away because it is the most concrete, cemented, and alarming report that I have read about an environmental issue in the last 10 years. And this report, which is about 120 pages, one can get online. If I can get the site here, they can read it on line at acia.uaf.edu. That is acia.uaf.edu. They can also get it through the Cambridge University Press at cambridge.org.
Basically what this report concluded is that global warming is, number one, a fact; number two, likely caused by significant human activity; and, third, that the rate of global warming in the Arctic regions surpasses anything that we really would have assessed or predicted even 2 years ago and that that rate has the capacity to cause significant changes not only in the Arctic but where we live in our homes and towns where we expect our grandchildren to have a life like we do.
And what I would like to do is go through this report. And basically this report synthesized scores of scientific assessments that have been done on the Arctic. For reasons that are quite complex, what we have found is that the changes that are happening in global warming are even faster in the Arctic than other places. So I would like to go through some of the findings of this scientific report.
First, the report found that Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger changes are projected. The annual average Arctic temperatures have increased at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world and over the past few decades with some variation. And additional evidence comes from widespread melting of glaciers and sea ice and a shortening of the snow season. We are seeing actual changes in our climactic systems now due to global warming.
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This is not a hypothetical. This is not a ``Chicken Little.'' This is not a bunch of theoreticians. What the science has shown is that we are seeing significant changes already. The Arctic is where science looked. There are other changes as well, but they are occurring.
The numbers that this report came up with are really quite startling. They are not talking about one-tenth of a degree or half a degree in changes, changes that we may not notice in our daily lives. What this report concluded was that because of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, Arctic warming is expected to be 4 to 7 degrees centigrade over the next 100 years. That is at least 8 or 9 to 14 or 15 degrees Fahrenheit during our grandchildren's lifetime.
Think about the significant changes in a region of the world where you have 8, 9, 10 to 15 to 17 degree temperature increases. You are talking about major changes in the planet that God created. And whatever our political stripe in this Chamber, I dare say that none of us would believe that there is a moral value to change 8 to 9 to 14 to 15 degree changes in the climatic system designed by the Creator.
That is a moral value that is violated. We now have evidence that is occurring, and we need to act on it, and we need to act on it now. This is the most alarming evidence that we have in humans that I am aware of to date of about how significant this problem is.
So we know we have seen changes in the Arctic, and we now have compelling scientific evidence. And I want to make sure people understand this is not evidence from some pointy-headed group that just has an ax to grind. This is the best scientists in our Federal Government on a nonpartisan basis in alliance with scientists from around the world who are associated with the Arctic.
Now, what this is also showing in the Arctic is that we have had shorter and warmer winters, which perhaps is not rocket science but is true, with substantial decreases in snow and ice cover, and these are expected to continue. We can look forward to unexpected and even larger shifts and fluctuations in climate. The reason for that is we do not fully understand all of the climatic systems to date.
So what we have is finding number one, which is that the Arctic is changing rapidly, and that it is likely over our grandchildren's lifetimes to have increases in the 8 to 16 to 17 degree Fahrenheit realm, huge changes in the biosphere in the Arctic, and we are already seeing changes.
The second finding that this group has found relates perhaps to our lives as we live them here. I live just north of Seattle, and I kind of like it. A lot of people do not like some of the rain in Seattle, but I think it is a great place to live. I have become accustomed to having a spring, when we get it, and having the glaciers and having snow to ski on and having salmon in the rivers.
All of those things are now put into question because of the existence of global warming. That has been suggested by finding number two of this group, that basically found in their conclusion, and I will read from it, ``Arctic warming and its consequences have worldwide implications. Melting of highly reflective Arctic snow and ice reveals darker land and ocean surfaces. It increases the absorption of the sun's heat, further warming the planet.''
Now, maybe this is intuitive, but it bears thinking about it.
One of the things scientists are concerned about is that we are dramatically increasing the percentage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. As you may know, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation. The way this works is just like a greenhouse. Light can come through the atmosphere, because when light comes from the sun it comes through an ultraviolet wavelength. But when it bounces back, it bounces back at a different wavelength, at infrared spectrum in the wavelengths.
Carbon dioxide, methane, a few other gasses, are impermeable to infrared radiation. So it traps that radiation in the Earth. That is a really, really good thing. If we did not have some carbon dioxide, we would be a frozen ball in space. It is important to have that as a blanket to a certain degree to keep us warm.
But, unfortunately, those rates of carbon dioxide are up 20 to 30 percent in the industrial period of time and are expected to double, double, the highest carbon dioxide rate in our atmosphere in several millions years in the planet Earth's history, if we do not act.
So the science is compelling that this material traps heat in the Earth.
But the thing that is disturbing to a lot of scientists is that there are also what are called feedback effects. Feedback effects means that when you change the atmosphere you warm the planet due to this trapping mechanism like greenhouse panes in a greenhouse, but you also set up a phenomena called feedback effects.
One of those is, if you melt more ice, you effectively warm the planet through a doubling effect or an increased effect, because ice is more reflective. It reflects back more energy than dark ground or the oceans. So you have this kind of reflective barrier up there in the north and in the Antarctic and the Greenland ice cap, and if you lose that reflective barrier, you absorb more heat and increase the rate of increase in temperature.
That is what we are seeing right now. This report concluded that is likely to happen, and it will have implications not only in the Arctic but where we live down in the 50 States.
It also says that increases in glacial melt and river runoff add more fresh water to the ocean, which will raise the global sea level, possibly slowing the ocean's circulation that brings heat from the tropics to the poles, affecting global and regional climate.
If you go on-line and look at this map, you will see there are significant areas in the United States which could be affected during our grandchildren's lifetime of raising sea levels due to global warming.
I am familiar with a lot of beaches. We like the breaches. Frankly, I do not like them being underwater. But that is the circumstance our kids have to look forward to if we do not act.
It works in two ways: One, warming sea water expands simply because it is a warmer temperature. But we also have additional volume from additional melt. So we have that phenomena.
But the report also had this disturbing line, and you can read about this in detail, which says that this could possibly slow the ocean's circulation that brings heat from the tropics to the poles. This is something when I went on a tour of some of the regions that could be affected by global warming, some of the countries in Northern Europe are very concerned that because we have more fresh water melt off of the Greenland cap and Arctic, we can reduce the salinity of the North Atlantic, reducing the action of the current which drives the Gulf Stream which really warms Northern Europe. This has the capacity of altering or shutting down that Gulf Stream, because, paradoxically, you could end up with a little ice age in northern Europe due to global warming. It is an interesting phenomena you would not think of intuitively. But this report indicated that is something we need to be concerned about.
The third conclusion, Arctic vegetation zones are very likely to shift, causing wide-ranging impact. What they are finding is that the tree line is moving northward into higher elevations, with the forest replacing an existing fraction of tundra and tundra vegetation moving into polar deserts.
Now, this may sound a little esoteric, but it has meaning to us in the 50 States as we start to see northern movement of these biospheres, if you will, as well. You can basically, this is a little simplistic, but look to the south of you and assume that is what is going to happen. Frankly, that may look okay to me and from Northern California, moving north, but to folks in the south, having a Mexican climate moving north into California and Oregon may not be a prospect folks really look forward to.
The fourth conclusion, animal species diversity and ranges and distribution will change. This is one that those who are fond of polar bears and seals, and I think a lot of folks are, they are threatened. They are threatened because reductions in sea ice will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals and some sea birds, pushing some species towards extinction.
Whatever you think, I believe that we have an obligation to our grandkids not to leave a planet barren of some of the animals and critters we grew up with. I do not think that is too outrageous a statement.
There was an instruction by the Creator to Noah to bring two of every animal and to keep them alive, and ``to keep them alive'' was the operative word. If that was the instruction to Noah, perhaps we ought to have an instruction to the U.S. Congress to pull our heads out of the sand and do something that does not result in huge extinctions on this planet, which unfortunately is the scientific fact that is now occurring.
This report is just one more factor that ought to lead us to conclude that we need to act to avoid significant extinction so that we cannot say that we are the generation that took away polar bears, seals, Orcas, you name it, from our grandkids, to enjoy in their lifetime. According to this report, that is a risk we should be concerned about.
The fifth conclusion, many coastal communities and facilities face increasing exposure to storms. We are already seeing some of our communities in northern Alaska are having to actually move their villages that have been there for centuries away from the encroaching wave action that is occurring. It is predicted that will occur in part because thawing permafrost weakens coastal lands, adding to the vulnerability.
This is a real kind of interesting thing that is going on. If you look at this report, you will see the pictures of the buildings that are collapsing in the Arctic because the permafrost is melting. The permafrost, as the name would suggest, is permanently frozen ground, and people build their buildings on it, they build their roads on it. But that is melting now because of the increasing temperatures. You will see pictures of these cracks running through buildings, cracked roads.
It is interesting, because you know folks who want to drill in the Arctic, in the Wildlife Refuge, something I vigorously oppose, ought to take into consideration that, because of global warming, it is going to be more difficult if that were to happen. Because the days in which you can drive over frozen tundra and not sink up to your hubcaps are being reduced by about 10 days to 2 weeks in the last several decades, and that has created havoc up there in the oil drilling fields, even in Prudo Bay. So we have melting permafrost, something that has been there for eons, now occurring.
In fact, it is interesting, up in the villages up in the northern Alaska area, you have birds that are appearing that the folks up there do not even have words for. They do not have language for them, because they have never seen these birds before, as they are moving north because of this melting that is occurring.
Sixth, reducing the ice is very likely to increase marine transport and access to resources. This is an interesting phenomena. If you want to look at this on the plus side you can say, well, we will be able to have shipping through the Arctic during the summer.
There are some changes that might be useful to our economy, but I question whether we want to radically change the climatic system which we have grown accustomed to during the entire period of human evolution in the hopes that we might have a couple of upsides in that regard. I would suggest that we not.
I have been joined by a great visionary on this issue and others, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind). I yield to him.
Mr. KIND. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Washington State, for yielding me a little bit of time for this very important discussion.
First of all, I commend him for it, his leadership throughout Congress and the Nation, in trying to draw attention to and highlight an incredibly important issue not only for the current generation but future generations. That is, how are we going to, as the world's most powerful Nation, economically, militarily, culturally, our influence throughout the world is going to address one of the seminal issues of our generation, and that is global climate change and warming, what we can do policy-wise to try to effectuate the needed changes in order to stem the terrible results that might occur if we do not start acting today on it.
The science is in. My colleague from Washington has cited the scientific studies. In fact, even the current administration now is releasing recent reports indicating that climate change is real, that global warming is occurring, that it is heavily influenced by man-made objects and that it is something we cannot ignore any longer.
The problem we have, however, with the administration is lack of leadership and a lack of ideas and a solution on how to address it. They have the science before them. The President during an initial report that said, hey, this stuff is real, it is happening, we have got to take corrective action, excused the record as the work of bureaucrats within the EPA and various agencies that was putting the science together. But a more recent study that just came out in August highlighted the very real effects and the tracking data of climate change and the fact that it is heavily influenced by man's action on this globe.
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The question is now what are we going to do with the science. It was interesting to note and see that Russia has been the latest signatory to the Kyoto treaty which now puts the treaties into effect because they had to have a certain number of nations that produced a certain amount of these greenhouse gasses to first sign the treaty before it would be implemented. Russia now puts them over the top. Granted there are some problems with Kyoto, issues that need to be addressed and cleaned up and further corrected; and that is why there was an overwhelming vote against the Kyoto ratification in the Senate about a year ago. But what has been lacking in this debate on a global basis is U.S. leadership and what are we going to do about it.
I know the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) has been one of the champions of a new Apollo energy program, one that makes sense for us not only addressing the global climate changes that is occurring now but makes sense for us economically in regards to our long term energy needs as a Nation. If we do not get our energy policy right, we will not be very successful in growing the economy and creating jobs.
We have seen what the dependence and addiction to foreign oil has done to us economically. We have been looking at $2 a gallon for gas prices for too long. It is a hidden tax on working families that are paying more out of their pocket at the pump in order to pay for these increased energy costs. Gas prices this winter will be 30 to sometimes 40 percent more in the upper Midwest and in the northern regions that will be relying on heating bills to get through the winter season. And we see the implications foreign policy-wise of our addiction to oil in the Middle East and why we are so heavily involved there right now. There is something we can do about it.
I guess what is so frustrating, serving on the Committee on Resources, as my friend from Washington and I do, is there are certain steps that we can be taking in order to wean ourselves off from this dependence on foreign oil in order to move to a new energy policy that emphasizes alternative and renewable energy sources: the wind, the solar, the geothermal, the biofuels, the ethanol. And also a major investment in the energy source of the future, fuel cell development, so we become a hydrogen-based energy society as opposed to a carbon fossil fuel base that we are currently dependent upon and that is creating these greenhouse gases.
So the question now becomes what are we going to do about the science that is staring us in the face. Are we going to continue to ignore it, claim we cannot do both, grow the economy and address global climate change at the same time? I believe we can. And I believe there is job creation involved if we do start bringing these new technologies online, creating new businesses and new industries to deal with the new Apollo energy program for this country.
We should see the leadership from the White House setting dates certain for certain goals of achieving greater alliance on alternative and renewable energy sources, but we are not. In fact, the energy bill that is currently pending before Congress is better suited for the 1950s as opposed to the 21st century. There is a lot of new technology that can be developed that will spur economic growth and jobs if we have the political will to do it. And I believe at the end of the day this can be a win-win scenario, not only for job creation in this country but in addressing the root causes of global climate change, something that the rest of the world is waking up and realizing and starting to take action on their own.
But if the world's largest economy and the world's greatest consumer of fossil fuels remains on the sidelines, as this administration has decided to do, we will not see tremendous progress being made on this front regardless of what other countries throughout the globe are trying to do right now. That is why I commend my good friend from Washington State for getting up here on a late evening here, Tuesday night, to continue talking about this very important issue. And it is an issue that the younger generation gets. I do not know if it is intuitive or if they have just gotten enough information themselves, but they know the problems we are facing ecologically and environmentally.
They also believe in this whole global warming science that is out there right now. I believe they also believe that it is their generation that will pay the highest price if action is not taken today with the policymakers we have right now. I believe it was one of the more important issues in the last Presidential campaign that did not receive the attention that it deserved. I pledge tonight to continue working with my friend from Washington State to continue to draw attention on this important issue, to see what we can do working in a bipartisan fashion, because this is going to be an issue that we will have to lock arms together and jump into the icy waters on if we will have significant progress on it.
And there can be a lot of different areas of the sensible center that we can pursue in this Congress in the upcoming session, and hopefully being able to work with the administration even though they are doing new personnel changes right now, to address one of the more pressing and important issues changes of our day, that is, global warming. And what this generation is going to leave as a legacy for the next generation to inherit.
Unfortunately, there has been too much dithering. There has been study after study and scientific report after scientific report, all pointing in the same direction; but it is falling on deaf ears right now. And we do not have the luxury of time on our side. The longer we delay in taking affirmative action on this, the harder it will be to address this at the end of the day. So the clock is ticking.
We will continue speaking out on this. We will continue working amongst ourselves trying to form these bipartisan coalitions, trying to develop a greater consensus in our country to address this. I think the American people are there as well. I think given the option, they want to see us moving to a more sustainable energy policy that is more ecologically and environmentally friendly for their children and grandchildren as well. Lord knows the rest of the world is waking up to the possibilities that exist out there. And there is so much potential with the creativity and the innovation that this country has, that the American workers and with the science that we are developing in this country.
What is lacking and what the missing ingredient I believe is is the political leadership and the will to get it done. That is really what is at stake. And I thank my colleague for having this Special Order this evening talking about this issue and for his leadership on it as well.
Mr. INSLEE. I really appreciate two messages the gentleman had. One was why this needs to be a bipartisan effort. This should be a totally bipartisan effort. Now we have a start on that. Senator McCain, if I am allowed to use that name, and another, Senator Lieberman, in the Senate have a bill that will help us put a modest cap on the amount of CO2 we put in the atmosphere. We have a similar bill with some of our Republican colleagues that we have co-sponsored here in the House.
When our grandchildren look back at us when polar bears are extinct and there is no summer ice cap, and Western Nile Virus and malaria have moved south up into the Midwest, and we have lost some of the birds we are used to having around our houses, and your air conditioning billing goes through the roof in Seattle, Washington, and Wisconsin in March or April, they will not look back and say oh those pesky Republicans or pesky Democrats. They will curse us all for being so shortsighted.
So we need to be bipartisan on this.
Second message that I appreciate is one of optimism that we can deal with this problem. That is a fundamental thing that we need to have confidence in ourselves to do that. I think you have to ask yourself, why when the science is so overwhelming, why when the science is just absolutely certain that carbon dioxide has increased by 30 percent in the atmosphere, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever of that and there is no doubt that it acts as a greenhouse gas, and why when you see the summer ice in the Arctic already being decreased by 15 percent by area and almost 40 percent, almost half as thick, we have almost lost half the thickness already in the polar ice cap, when you already see the changes in animal life? We had these squid off the coast of Washington. We have never seen these squid off the coast of Washington. For a hundred years nobody had ever caught a squid. Now they are up there because we have warmer water temperatures.
So after all of these efforts, why do some people sort of want to blind themselves to do this? I think the answer is human nature. If you do not think you can deal with it, you just do not think about it. If you put it in that little box of things, maybe like our own mortality that we cannot do anything about it, you just do not think about it. We need to spread the gospel that we can handle this problem and the reason we can handle this problem is we are the most creative people on Earth. We went to the Moon in 10 years when John F. Kennedy challenged us to do it. We can do the same thing now with the Apollo energy project that we are working on here in the House which will unleash the technological can-do spirit of Americans.
There is no reason the Danish have to be ahead of us. We went together to Denmark and saw the wind turbines. Denmark will have 50 percent of their energy produced by wind turbines in the next 10 years. There is no reason we cannot do that. There is no reason we cannot be competing with the Germans on solar technology, which has now come down in price 20 percent, every time you increase it by a factor of ten.
We need to make a buck off of global warming and this is one of the great economic opportunities for America because we are the smartest, greatest tinkerers the world has ever seen if we have that challenge.
Mr. KIND. Madam Speaker, I think the gentleman is right. I think this really comes down to two different visions, two different camps of what we can and cannot do. The optimist versus the pessimist. The optimist which we are members of happily really do believe we have the innovation, the creativity, technological know-how to lead the rest of the world in developing the changes that have to be made in regards to energy use and new energy technologies coming on line.
Conservation could be a big part of what we are talking about as well. It is something that unfortunately the Vice President poo-poos every time someone tries to bring it up, is the things we could be doing to develop more energy-efficient machines that we rely on for our quality of life.
It was interesting that when California just a couple of years ago was going through their energy crisis, energy consumption dropped 11 percent within the first month through increased energy conservation practices. So conservation can also be a part of this. What does this mean for the average person back home in western Wisconsin, the district that I represent?
We have a very good manufacturing company called the Trane Company. It is one of the largest employers in western Wisconsin, over 2,000 workers. They manufacture high-efficiency commercial heating and cooling units to be sold. They are so efficient and so good at what they do that those machines are already in full compliance of what the Kyoto treaty calls for. If we unleash this potential, that means creating more jobs in districts like the third congressional in western Wisconsin, with new companies being able to expand by developing a market share with these new machines, these new technologies that are crying out to be developed.
But again it is a question of political leadership and whether or not we have enough visionary people to see where we can take it and what steps we have to do and what each of our roles is going to be as consumers, as manufacturers, as producers, as policymakers because there is going to be a role for all of us to play, but it will require a buy-in.
The gentleman mentioned the Apollo program of the 1960s. When President Kennedy first announced the goal to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, most of the scientific experts did not think it was possible. We were experimenting with Saturn and Jupiter II missiles that if they were not exploding on the launch pad at the time, quickly exploded after launch or dovetailed into the oceans off the launch pad. And for the President at the time to conceive of putting a live human being on top of these flying bombs that were blowing up typically on the launch pad, and safely launching them out into outerspace and then landing them softly on the Moon, and then relaunching them from the Moon and landing them softly on the Earth's surface so that we do not lose anyone, was a vision that very few people in the scientific community in the early 1960s thought could be achieved by the end of the decade.
But it was that political leadership and vision and marshaling the resources and the best and the brightest that our Nation had to offer that enabled us to achieve that dynamic mission by 1969.
It was an incredible technological achievement, and it was spurred by a vision that President Kennedy had for our Nation at the time.
Mr. INSLEE. Many of us think that is simply what we need again is that same type of vision.
We can only do so much with even our existing technology. A report by the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that we could basically reduce our fossil fuel use and have the same economic productivity by 20 percent with existing technology if we just made the right policy decisions. But there is so much excitement for job creation out in the State of Washington right now about the prospects of creating jobs.
Let me give you an example. We just built the largest wind turbine farm in the southeastern corner of the State of Washington; 10,000 homes essentially get their energy from wind turbines. These are jobs, and for rural America I might add. It is not bad getting a lease payment just sitting there putting your feet up on the couch and getting a lease payment from the power company to lease a couple of acres of your farm. That works pretty well.
In southwestern Washington we have one of the largest manufacturers of solar cell panels for North America. It had been previously owned by a German company. We are employing American workers to make solar panels, and those numbers are going up significantly. The reason is that there is a tremendous trend, we can report to Americans, when it comes to new energy sources, and that is they get cheaper every year. And the reason they get cheaper every year is when we make more of them there is a scale of production.
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On solar, every time we make 10 times the solar panels that we made before, the price comes down 20 percent. It is a curve. I actually have a graph somewhere that has been a straight line curve for the last 20 years. They used to have the potential to be market-based in a very, very short period of time.
Mr. KIND. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, we are seeing a very exciting development. In Wisconsin, people think the Dairy State, a lot of farms. There are still a lot of family farms in that. The operations are getting better. The livestock herds are getting larger.
One of the grant programs that I and others were able to include in the last farm bill was a methane digester grant program going to these family farmers to start developing methane digesters. That is using the waste that these livestock herds are producing and converting it into energy.
Again, it is another small piece of the energy puzzle that we need to be looking at in further developing as this Nation, because there is not going to be a silver bullet that is going to provide the cure-all for all of this, but it is finding out where the pieces need to fit in, whether it is solar, whether it is the wind turbine farms, whether it is methane digesters, whether it is the further development of hydrogen fuels in this society.
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote a really interesting article just a couple of months ago in regards to the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he said that that is not our only intelligence failure in Iraq, not being able to find these weapons of mass destruction. If we do not learn from this, that our dependence on their oil in that region is a large cause of what is happening over there right now, and that, too, will be another intelligence failure on our part if we do not derive the lessons of our dependence on the oil in the Middle East and start converting to a new energy policy for a new century and wean ourselves off from that dependence, which would then start forcing those regimes in the Middle East instead of basing their whole economic model on the natural resources that are being extracted from their soil and instead forcing them to diversify their economic base, and have them start drilling their human capital more than their natural resources, that is going to lead to the type of transformations and reforms that we desperately need throughout the Muslim and the Arab world right now.
But so long as we, the largest consumer of these fossil fuels, remain the supply line for those regimes and their economic base, as long as we remain addicted to what they have got, we are not going to see the type of economic and political and the cultural reforms that that region of the world desperately needs right now.
That, too, is something that we have got to wake up and realize, in light of what is happening in the Middle East today, that a lot of this stems from our dependence on their energy that they are producing and our inability to start pivoting now and seeing the long-term ramifications that this has and the national security implications that I believe it holds for our Nation in future years.
Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, the gentleman's pointed out something that is very important.
When you go to the horse races, you want to hit the trifecta. You want to win all three races. It is a big thing, and this certainly is a trifecta of an energy policy because it solves three problems we have. Number 1, it helps us reduce our addiction to Middle Eastern oil; number 2, it helps us reduce global warming; and number 3, it grows jobs in this country. It does not get much better than that, you can solve three problems with one program, which we intend to introduce during the next Congress, early in January or February, we hope on a bipartisan basis.
So we intend to have real concrete legislation. We have the cap on carbon dioxide which is now pending in the Senate. There was a hearing today in the Senate on that. We have a similar bill in the house, and we have a comprehensive energy bill, or the new Apollo energy bill, which will encourage the adoption of these new technologies.
Both of these are important. One, we have to stop treating the atmosphere just like a global junkyard where we can just dump our junk into it willy-nilly. We have got to stop that. We just cannot do that anymore when we have got the arctic ice cap disappearing on us.
Two, we need to inspire these new technological systems that we intend to do, and unfortunately, we are going to give a report card here in a few minutes for Congress. It is kind of an F minus, because at the moment that the arctic ice is melting, at the moment that salinity is changing at the oceans, the moment you have these huge global changes going on, this chamber incredibly has not passed a single energy bill in the last 2 years, and here we are coming down to the last 72 hours of this Congress, with an abject failure to pass an energy bill.
Now, that is something I do not think any of us should be proud of in light particularly of this new scientific report that came out that ought to ring alarm bells. There ought to be like fire bells going off in this building about what is going out there in the globe, and there are a lot of environmental challenges we have.
Mercury in the air. Of course, the administration wanted to allow more mercury in the air or water. We thought that was a bad idea. Soot in the air. The administration wanted to allow more soot in the air. We thought that was a bad idea. Issues about cutting down and clear cutting our national forests, we thought that was a bad idea and the roadless area policy.
There are a lot of things that are contentious about the environment, but this issue I think Americans of all political stripe ought to understand, when you fool with the whole basic climactic system of the globe, which is the only one we have got right now, you are messing around with something, number one, we do not fully understand, and two, we have got nowhere else to go. If the climate system goes south, we just cannot hop off earth to another lifeboat, and that is indeed what is happening right now before our eyes if we will open our eyes and look at this and look at this report. I encourage people to look at this report. It is about 120 pages long but it is pretty interesting.
Mr. KIND. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, it is one of the fascinating conversations I like to have with our astronauts. We are very proud of Mark Lee who is an astronaut who grew up in Viroqua, Wisconsin, Western Wisconsin. Of course, Deke Slayton was from the Sparta area in Western Wisconsin. I had a meeting with one of the Shuttle astronauts down at Cape Canaveral about a year-and-a-half ago, and I asked them all, what is the one thing that really leaves an impression upon you when you are out in space and looking back. They all say it is the greater respect for our environment and our ecosystem on this planet because, from their perspective, out in space looking back, I think they see intuitively how fragile our environment really is and the atmosphere and this planet that we all share together, and I think they all understand that much more work needs to be done on this front.
The fact that we have had an energy bill now pending for the last couple of years I think speaks more to the dysfunctional nature of this Congress recently that has become so polarizing, so partisan, and there is not enough outreach, not enough effort to find that sensible center on policy, to try to come together and work in crafting truly bipartisan bills where we understand it is going to be a process of give and take and that compromise should not be a four letter word in trying to make our democracy function.
But unfortunately, there is this 218 strategy where the leadership on the other side just wants the minimum number of votes, and more Republicans, the better, in order to get anything passed around here that it makes great achievements virtually impossible today.
On issues like the environment and energy policy, it is something that is going to require the Nation coming together if we are going to be make significant strides.
It is going to be interesting that later this week we are going to be dealing with another vastly important issue, and it is not one that is really short term, but it has long-term implications, raising the national debt ceiling limit. This is not something that we are going to see tangible results tomorrow if we start addressing it, but it does have future long-term implications about economic growth, and it is the same thing in regards to global warming. It is something people are hearing about now, and they are starting to see the science come in, but it is not something that is going to a direct and immediate impact on their lives tomorrow.
What we are talking about is what this means for the next generation and the generation after that and why it is incumbent upon us to start worrying about this today rather than punting it for future generations. I am concerned that the same attitude is being taken with the huge accumulation of debt in this country today, that all we have to do this week is jam another $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling in a bill that has to pass in order to keep the government functioning, and there is very little thought about the long-term implications of what these decisions mean in the future.
Again, this is a classic issue, and I have enjoyed working with my colleague from Washington State and look forward to working with him on this in the future because it is an issue that obviously is not going to go away anytime soon, and it is going to require a lot of hard work.
Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, the good news is that our kids' generation gets this. I have got three boys, 27 through 18, and they get this. I think they understand a little bit of the science, but they also see the world changing right in front of them.
This is again not an esoteric issue. The glaciers in Glacier National Park are disappearing. In 75 to 100 years there will not be any glaciers in Glacier National Park. The Committee on Resources will have to change the name to the park formerly known as Glacier because there will not be any glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now, it is just something we kind of grew up with, and we will not all die because the glaciers disappear, but it will be something that is different than what we grew up with. When you take your kids to Glacier National Park, they will have a little sign there, and it will say this used to be called Glacier National Park and it used to have glaciers on it until the Congress in 2004 stuck their heads in the sand and their tail feathers in the air and refused to do anything about global warming. That is what the sign is going to say. Maybe we should put our names on it just so we will be sort of appropriately chastised about doing nothing on this.
But you look at the other things that are going on, these are not just a ascetic issues. There are things important to life.
One of the conclusions of this report is that climate warming would increase forest fires and insect-caused tree death, further reducing this valuable habitat which is already declining due to other human activities. Well, we have seen some of the worst fire years in the last several years due in part to the horrendous drought we have had in the Western United States, changes that are consistent with global warming. We have had this huge outbreak of insect devastation in our forests in the West and in Alaska, systems that are consistent with trees that are stressed due to change in climate. Now, you cannot pinpoint any single one fire or any single one's day's precipitation pattern to global warming, but these changes are consistent, the scientists are telling us, with what global warming would occur.
You know what, people die fighting forest fires, and I know a family who lost a young man fighting a fire up in north Washington. Those are not esoteric changes to me when I fly over the Cascade Mountains and the Rockies and see these burn patches and insect devastation. Fortunately, it is not that terrible at the moment on the route I fly, but I know how bad it is up in Alaska.
These are real changes that are happening in our lifetime, and I just question whether we are acting as good a stewards from the creators of the earth as we should be given the mind that we are given. Maybe the highest creation in the universe is the human mind. So maybe we ought to use it.
We are suggesting that the U.S. Congress needs to open its eyes and read the science a little bit because right now we are sort of just got the hands over our eyes and we refuse to recognize this report. Now let me give you some other bad news here.
November 24, these eight Nations will meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the reason for this meeting is to conclude the formal national report for this arctic assessment. This was done under the auspices of eight national governments that wring the arctic, and the scientists want to include a report that says something that is not rocket science.
They want to put a conclusion on the report that we need to do something about global warming; that we need to reduce or at least put some limit on the carbon dioxide and the gases that are causing the arctic ice to disappear; causing polar bears to possibly go extinct; causing the lack of habitat for a bunch of critters that we like; causing potentially shutting down the gulf stream that warms northern Europe and a little bit New York city I suppose; causing the Greenland ice sheet to be melting now 15 percent. There has been a huge increase in the melt, 15 percent, in the last several years of the Greenland ice cap.
The science says all of those things are happening so they want to take the radical step of putting in this report, we need to cap or limit the amount of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere.
So what did this administration do, the President of the United States, in the face of this overwhelming science that is absolutely consensus? There was not a single scientist in this group, anybody from any country, including the United States of America who contested these conclusions. So what does the President of the United States want to do and what has he instructed his negotiators to do I am told? He has instructed them to not allow this report to suggest that we put some limit on carbon dioxide.
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Now, if you consider the President of the United States the world's potentially most effective steward of God's creation, does it make sense for him, in the face of science that says God's creation is at risk, to shut his eyes and do absolutely nothing about this problem? I believe that is not consistent with the moral values that this country of any faith shares, and this President has dropped the ball when it comes to this major effort. He has dropped the ball considering one of the greatest risks really that we have had in global environmental history.
He has told, I am told this, and if anyone can show I am wrong I would be happy to be disabused of this notion, but we read that he has told his negotiators not to allow anything in this report that say that humans need to act as good stewards to reduce CO2 and limit CO2. Now, I think that is very, very disturbing, particularly given the fact we have the technology to deal with this issue today, and that we can make a buck on. It is very, very shortsighted, and I hope my colleagues, anyone who might be listening tonight, will chime in with this administration and urge them to take a more responsible pattern.
Now, maybe the President could get away with this 10 years ago, 6 years ago, 3 years ago, or 2 years ago, when science was not so sure; but the verdict is in. The guilt is there. The glove fits. The DNA evidence is there. There is no doubt about this. And once the verdict is in, we need to act.
Mr. KIND. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for one final point, this has been a consistent pattern with this administration. Even with their own agencies producing reports on global warming, the President on down has kind of pooh-poohed the findings. And in fact at one time the President commented on one of the global warming studies that came out of the EPA that it was just the work of a bunch of career bureaucrats, as if to discount the findings of that report. But the most recent one, just released in August, was signed off on by the agency heads of those departments, so it is a little more difficult then for the President, with these political appointees, to claim they are just a bunch of bureaucrats doing what bureaucrats supposedly do, in his eyes, and that is producing a bunch of invalid, nonscientific-
based reports, when in fact the information out there is just to the contrary.
This administration has tended to base policy more on faith-based initiatives rather than science-based findings and studies, and that is very disturbing. Because if your instinct is wrong on something as important as this, it could lead this Nation down a disastrous course that could take decades to try to reverse and change, if it is not too late already.
That is why during the course of the election there were so many scientists around the Nation writing letters and indicating their concerns and displeasure in regards to the administration's practice of discounting scientific research and findings on the important topics of the day, and that pattern has been consistent from day one.
Now we have a second term that is about to begin. We have new political appointees that will be made. Many of the Secretaries have submitted their resignations, so there will be a turnover in leadership, and what will be very interesting and I think very important in the days and weeks to come is who the President is deciding to head up these very agencies that will have so much influence and so much say in the future course of the policy that this Nation will follow which will have implications not only for us here at home but on a global basis. So these appointments are going to be very important in the days to come.
When my colleague and I were in Norway, studying their alternatives and renewable energy plan, we received a briefing on the global circulatory system and how that could be impacted from global warming. I do not know if too many people watching tonight realize our oceans have this circulatory pattern to it with the water flow.
The gentleman from Washington mentioned the gulf stream a little earlier that warms in the southern climates and goes up north and keeps the Northern Hemisphere warm and the shoreline free of ice accumulation. The fear with global warming is that as the water goes to the north, it will not cool. And if it does not cool, it will not drop. And if it does not drop, it will not continue the circulatory pattern in the other oceans throughout the world and so the whole system could shut down. Like the blood that rushes through our body, if it stops pumping and stops circulating through our body, you can imagine the disastrous consequences.
The Earth's environment and ecosystem is based on that ocean circulatory system that would be adversely affected if global warming continues at the pace that it currently is. It could potentially shut down, creating an environmental havoc that perhaps is only realized in the imagination of Hollywood producers right now in the movies they are starting to produce but which may not be that far off from reality. This too I think is a huge implication that we have to start studying more and taking seriously in the policy decisions that we face in the upcoming session of Congress.
Again, Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his leadership on the issue and for garnering some time this evening.
Mr. INSLEE. Well, Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for joining me this evening, and I want to make some concluding remarks basically to summarize what the science shows. And I will not be judgmental; I will just conclude with what the science is tonight as we stand here in 2004, in the concluding days of this Congress.
In those concluding days we now know, according to the best science the country has to offer, that temperatures have increased 3 to 4 degrees Centigrade, which is 6 to 7\1/2\ or 8 degrees already. In the Arctic, they will probably increase in the next century another 8 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Very dramatic global warming.
The glaciers are melting at an increasing rate, contributing fresh water to the North Atlantic. That has the capacity to perhaps shut down the currents that our current climactic situation depends on. There is diminishing lake and river ice. There is retreating and disappearing summer ice, with a 15 to 20 percent decline over the last 30 years. And the actual elimination of the summer ice cap that we have had since humans crawled out of their caves will disappear in this century.
There are rising sea levels that could raise half a meter in this century. There are ocean salinity changes which have already occurred, and those ocean salinity changes have the capacity of shutting down the halcine cycle, which drives the currents we all depend on.
There has been increasing ultraviolet ray exposure to our children, particularly in the Arctic, for at least several decades as a result of this. Exposing them to this ultraviolet radiation can cause an increase in cancer by as much as 30 percent as a result of this phenomena. There is old-growth forest loss, and there are long-term carbon cycle changes which are too esoteric to get into.
But the bottom line is this: the Arctic climactic assessment that our government represents is the best scientific information we can possibly get has given us a wake-up call. It comes late in this congressional session, but it is a wake-up call and should be to the administration and to this Congress, to act, and to act in a way that America historically has acted when we are challenged.
In World War II, when we were challenged, we responded with the greatest burst of technological achievement perhaps in human history in the armament sector. When we were challenged in the space race, President Kennedy challenged us to go to the Moon in 10 years and bring a man home safely, and we did it. That was the second great technological innovation burst. And now we are poised for a third revolutionary burst of new technologies that can lead us out of this potentially very, very, if disastrous is too strong a word, it may be one that our grandchildren will use when they have to deal with a climactic system that is changing before their eyes, the beginning of which we are going to see now.
We are optimistic in the belief we can deal with this problem if people here in Washington, D.C. will accept the science, read it, and act. That is the American way.
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