Alternative Energy
Floor Speech
Alternative Energy -- (House of Representatives - March 17, 2009)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, I enjoyed listening to my colleague from Illinois. In fact, this is the second time today I have heard him speak on the floor and I have seen him point to the picture of the coal miners and talk about the problems of the Clean Air Act. And I hope every American was listening to that because that is exactly what we are talking about today.
We had, for decades, people burning dirty coal, turning rivers and lakes in other parts of the country, acid rain, destroying forests, posing problems to people's health. And what this Congress did, in a bipartisan effort, was create a mechanism to make it so that it was no longer free to pollute the air with dirty coal that created acid rain and destroyed lakes and forests.
My friend didn't want to talk about the problems to health, didn't want to talk about the issues that relate to the damage to the environment, or the fact that we were able to create the most effective market system in history that was able to solve a real problem to the environment, to health. Life went on. Yes, there were some changes in terms of the economy. There were some people who didn't--when it became too expensive for them to foul the air, spoil our lakes, and destroy our forests, then they shifted. Well, I would suggest, Madam Speaker, that any independent observer would suggest that that was a solid program and a good tradeoff.
I don't hear my friend from Illinois coming to the floor and saying, repeal the Clean Air Act so we can have a few more miners at work creating dirty coal that is going to ruin our environment and destroy health. That issue is over.
We are facing a very real challenge today about what we are going to do to protect the future of the planet. I will get into, in a moment, talking about some of the discussion that we have heard from our friends on the other side of the aisle, but one of the things that is very, very important to note is that they have no answer in terms of what we do to the slow cooking of the planet. They ignore the costs that are being incurred right this minute. Temperatures in Alaska have already gone up several degrees, permafrost is no longer permanent, roads are buckling, coastal villages washed away. These are costs and consequences that we are already seeing as the ocean levels slowly, imperceptibly to most of us, but very clear to scientists when they see the fabled Inland Passage in the Arctic Ocean free of ice, when we watch the habitat shrink for arctic animals, when we watch diseases shifting from vector control--West Nile disease, for instance, popping up in places where it shouldn't be, where invasive species are infesting our forests. These are costs and consequences that we are seeing now that my friends on the other side of the aisle refuse to come to grips with.
But we are not going to be able to have the same head-in-the-sand attitude that we saw from the Bush administration alone--of all the major governments in the world, alone--denying the imperative of global warming, withdrawing from opportunities to be collaborative on a national scale.
What we had to have in the last 8 years, where the other side of the aisle simply accepted that sort of behavior from their administration and, in fact, aided and abetted and supported it, we had over 900 cities across the country come forward and say wait a minute, we're not going to wait for the Bush administration and the Federal Government. We are going to take it upon ourselves to deal with climate change and global warming and move to change our local economy, to prepare it for the future, and to help slow this damage to the environment by carbon pollution.
I come from a community in Portland, Oregon, where we have actually reduced greenhouse gas emissions for 4 years in a row. We're very close to being Kyoto compliant. It gave us an opportunity, frankly, to create new green jobs. We were competing with Houston and Denver for being the wind energy capital of the United States because we've been serious about energy conservation, transportation choices, land use, all of the things that are going to be part of a comprehensive solution to the threat of these changes to the climate and the carbon pollution. We've actually been able to make some progress and be positioned to deal with a carbon-constrained economy.
We need, Madam Speaker, for people to reflect on what is happening now. Just like my friend from Illinois didn't talk about the cost of acid rain. It didn't matter to him. He was concerned about a few miners in his district and didn't care about the damage to forests and human health and lakes and fishing. But we are already seeing the damage that is occurring as a result of climate change.
Speaking of acid rain, one of the things we are seeing is that the ocean is slowly becoming more and more acidic. This increased acidic content of the ocean is having a consequence in terms of damaging coral reefs. I mean these are the rain forests of the ocean. This is where billions and billions of different animals and plants reside up the food chain throughout the ecological system of the ocean that makes a difference in terms of how people on this planet are going to be fed. We are watching what has happened. There may be consequences in terms of the Earth's climate because of the change in the ocean's current and acidic level.
We are seeing across the country increases in extreme weather events, exactly what the scientists told us would happen. Yes, the world's atmosphere is increasing in temperature. Yes, we're seeing an increase in the sea level that could be 2 to 6 feet by the end of the next century. But we are already seeing vast stretches of this country in the flame zone being subjected to increased forest fires, to drought. In your areas in the Southeast, you have seen drought where it has not been a problem for years. In the Southwest, Lake Mead that supplies the city of Las Vegas is going down, causing massive disruption. We are watching changes that are taking place in terms of snowpack. My good friend and colleague from the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Inslee, and I depend on snowpack for water supply and energy production. This makes a great deal of difference.
Madam Speaker, one of the concerns I have as I am listening to our friends on the other side of the aisle make things up about what is going to happen with a proposal to reduce carbon pollution and put a price on it, they assume somehow that this is going to result in money disappearing, that somehow this is just a tax that goes into the great government maw and there is nothing that comes out the other end. Well, as a practical matter, and I'm confident that in the course of this hour as I work with my friend Mr. Inslee, who I see poised here in the front of the Chamber and I am hoping that he's willing to enter into this conversation with me because he knows a great deal about it, we hope that we will be able to encourage, if not our Republican friends, at least the American people to look at the President's budget. Look at what he has proposed to begin a comprehensive approach to transform our energy supply and slow global warming.
Yes, he recommends putting a price on carbon pollution, but he also recommends that this money would be generated by having the carbon polluters pay for the privilege, just like we did with acid rain so successfully that my friend from Illinois now is against. There are opportunities to be able to put this back into place because the program, and I'm just quoting from the President's budget, would be implemented through a cap and trade, like we did with acid rain, that will ensure that the biggest polluters don't enjoy a windfall. The program will fund vital investments in a clean energy future, which I think my friend Mr. Inslee may have some thoughts about, $150 billion over the course of the next 10 years. The balance of the auction revenues are to be returned to the people, especially vulnerable families, communities, and business, to help the transition to the clean energy economy.
You know, there's a great NRDC blog that talks about Newt Gingrich's assertion that climate change will result in a $1,300 tax per household. And they point out it's simply voodoo economics.
First of all, he ignores the value of the carbon market. It just disappears.
He assumes that the money doesn't get returned to the taxpayers. Well, based on what New Gingrich and the Republicans did with their bridges to nowhere, with their profligate spending in Iraq, with their driving up the budget deficits and giving benefits to a few taxpayers at the expense of the many, I can understand the skepticism. He assumes that it won't be invested in energy conservation, saving us money. He assumes that communities aren't being helped. He assumes that it's not going to address regional differences in the cost of cutting global warming. He just assumes that somehow it's locked up someplace in a vault. Well, that's wrong. The President has outlined an approach that captures the value and makes America stronger, more energy reliant, and allows families the tools to reduce their escalating energy costs.
And I will conclude on this point and then yield to my colleague from Washington State if he's interested in joining in. But I want to say that we are facing now the consequences of an energy policy that was designed looking in a rear-view mirror for failed fossil fuels, lack of energy conservation, and not dealing with the technologies of the future. And as a result, energy bills are going up. As a result, we saw $4.11 a gallon gasoline last summer. We saw $700 billion leave this country to petroleum potentates when there's a different vision of the President and of those of us who want to do something not just about global warming but to retool and revitalize our green economy.
And with that I would like to yield to my colleague Mr. Inslee, who's an author in this arena, a noted spokesperson who has been working for years in Congress before, as they say, it was fashionable, to talk about how our economy and our environment could look different.
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. I very much appreciate the perspective you bring to this discussion, and I very much appreciate you referencing the Stern report. This is an opportunity, we both serve on the Speaker's Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, having a chance to deal with the British Parliament hearing and Sir Nicholas Stern lay out the result of his research.
And by a 5-1 margin, the cost, the risks, the costs that we are looking at were far greater than any cost of implementation, and as you have outlined in great detail, there are many opportunities, if we do this right, to revitalize our economy, to reduce costs right now to American families.
Just four categories of climate damage alone, hurricanes, higher energy bills, property lost to rising sea level and water-supply impacts are predicted to cost the average family $2,000 a year by 2025; by 2050, that increases another 50 percent to $3,000 a year; and by the end of the next century, $11,000 per family, just for those elements.
Now, those estimates ignore, because they are a little hard to quantify, but as you pointed out, they are real. The added cost of drought, flood, wildfires, the mud slides that follow, agricultural damage and the value of lost life. We saw thousands of people lose their lives a few years ago in Europe, in France. We saw hundreds of people die in the Midwest.
These are real problems that our friends on the other side have no answers for. They are, instead, paying--I am stunned that they would come to the floor and argue against.
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Well, I appreciate your clarification and amplification. It is stunning to hear my friend on the other side of the aisle think that the Clean Air Act failed, and because a few people admittedly lost their jobs mining dirty coal, that somehow it wasn't worth stopping the damage to lakes and forests and human health. We put a price on a pollutant, as you pointed out, sulfur dioxide.
People paid and pretty soon we had reversed the damage and we were cleaning it up. There are costs now that the American public is paying. There are greater, future costs that we can avoid, an opportunity to strengthen America and strengthen our economy.
I see we have been joined by our colleague from Colorado, Congressman Polis, if you would wish to enter into this dialogue, I know you have been an avid supporter of a strong environment. You come from a community that cares deeply about this, and we would welcome your thoughts and observations if you would care to join us.
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate you zeroing in, both of you, talking about the value that is added. A wind turbine, for instance, has more than 8,000 parts. There's cement, steel, ball bearings, copper, wiring. It goes up and down the production line. As soon as that order is placed, it moves out throughout the economy.
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Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate that. And as I turn to my friend from Washington to conclude this session for us this evening, I do hope that our friends who are watching this program on TV, on C-SPAN, go to the President's budget. I hope they look on page 21. It is available at www.budget.gov. There are copies available in libraries. Look on page 21 where the President outlines his goal. He is talking about putting a price on carbon pollution, yes, returning the benefit to the American consumer, the American economy to be able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to reduce costs for paying for utilities, to be able to spark that green economy.
You know, I am struck by people who are making things up about what is in the President's plan and outlandish numbers that are associated with it, and I think we have gone a long way tonight towards debunking that and talking about the real cost that the American consumer and the environment is paying right now. But I am hopeful that people will embrace this, like we embraced the Clean Air Act where, on a bipartisan basis, people decided that it wasn't fair to pollute the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide; that we were going to have acid rain, that we are going to poison lakes in your area and kill forests. We put a price on it, and we were able to make remarkable progress with a very light touch as far as the government is concerned. We have this opportunity with carbon pollution to do exactly the same thing. The stakes, if anything, are higher.
I hope that our friends on the other side of the aisle stop this line of argument that somehow the Clean Air Act was a mistake, that a few polluting jobs were worth the damage that it inflicted on the environment, and ignore the lessons that we have learned.
Congressman Inslee, I would appreciate it if you would kind of take us home.
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