OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Senator VOINOVICH [assuming the chair.] Thank you very much. I appreciate the fact that you began the hearings this morning. Today's hearing is on the science of global climate change and the options and obstacles related to reducing net greenhouse gas emissions. It was suggested by Senator Lieberman earlier this year-and I thought it was a good idea to bring the best and brightest people here before this committee to discuss this issue. I would like to thank our chairman for allowing me to chair this important full committee hearing. It has been almost 4 years since this committee had a hearing on climate change science. Since then not only has the issue evolved, but the membership of this committee has changed. There are eight new members of this committee, including myself. Therefore, I thought it would be important to hold this hearing, so that all of the members of this committee would have an update on this very, very important issue. The state of the science has evolved, and I think it is important for us to hear from the leading scientists as to what we currently understand and what we don't understand regarding climate change. Most of the information the public hears is media summaries, taken from political summaries which summarize the UN's IPCC reports. That's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I would like to make it clear that is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That is out of the United Nations. They try to summarize these studies. With all of these summaries, no wonder it is difficult for everyone to understand what is going on. Today we will see if we shed a little light on the state of the science. We will also take a look at some of the options and obstacles related to reducing net greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the topics I hope we cover include carbon sequestration and energy efficiency. In dealing with reduction issues it is important to understand what can reasonably be accomplished and at what cost. If actions are warranted, we need to make sure we understand the effects of those actions, or perhaps inactions. First and foremost, we need to understand the science and what it means, where the questions are, and what further research needs to be completed. I am sure most of us remember back in the seventies when the media reported on the coming Ice Age and how the planet would be covered in a sheet of ice, which dramatically changed to predictions of global warming in the late eighties and nineties. We need to make sure we do not get our understanding of the science from Time magazine or summaries by politicians, but instead turn to the scientists conducting the actual research. There is an article in Science News, November 1969. "Earth's Cooling Climate." "How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilization," says Dr. Mitchell of the Environmental Science Services Administration." Here's an article in the Science Digest. This is February 1973. "Brace Yourself for an Ice Age." "The idea of another Ice Age is not a new one but recently scientists have been confronted with the possibility that it may be much sooner than anyone thought." Time magazine, "Another Ice Age?" This is back in June 1974. It warned of expanding arctic saying, "ice and snow covering in the northern hemisphere had suddenly increased by 12 percent in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since.” Of course, last but not least is the Environmental Magazine, February 1996, and the front cover is "Global Warming." On Kyoto, I would like to say a few words about the treaty. I know the international press, some countries, and even some here in the United States have criticized President Bush for killing the Kyoto Treaty. The Kyoto Treaty was dead long before President Bush was sworn into office. The treaty was dead when Bill Clinton signed it December 11, 1998. In fact, the treaty was probably dead before the negotiations at Kyoto even began. The treaty that came out of the Kyoto negotiations could not have survived the ByrdHagel test as found in the Byrd-Hagel resolution passed in the 105th Congress on July 25, 1997. It passed in the Senate 95-0. Although I was not a member of the Senate at the time, it is interesting to note that many members of this committee voted for it, including Senators Smith, Warner, Inhofe, Bond, Specter, Campbell, Baucus, Graham, Lieberman, Boxer, and Wyden. I believe Senator Reid is the only member of the committee at that time who didn't cast a vote on that resolution. Now one could argue that there was never a meeting of the minds between the U.S. negotiators and their European counterparts at Kyoto. When the U.S. negotiators returned from Kyoto in 1997, they announced that the U.S. would get meaningful credits for international trading and carbon sinks. However, last fall at the Hague negotiations broke down when the EU rejected the U.S. trading program and the carbon sink proposal, despite significant concessions by the United States. Apparently, the two sides did not understand each other's position back in 1997. Cynics would say that many of the countries that are publicly berating the United States are privately relieved that the treaty has been pronounced dead since compliance would have been difficult, if not impossible, for many of them. As the Economist magazine pointed out last month, the only European countries that are likely to meet the Kyoto targets are Britain and Germany. Japan and the rest of Europe are no further along in this issue than the United States of America. At this point I think it is important not to play partisan games with this issue. We all want to make sure that we do the right thing that protects our environment without causing unnecessary harm to the economy. I would like to have the following questions answered today: What is the current state of the science? Where do we need more scientific research? If we do, what areas of technology do we need to do more research. I would like to know, what is the appropriate role of the Federal Government? I am sure these questions are just the tip of the iceberg, and I don't expect we will be able to answer all of them today, but we should start to get answers. We have tried to put together today a balanced hearing, representing all sides of this issue, and I think we have succeeded. Our first panel will discuss the state of the science. Both witnesses have been involved in the research at IPCC. Our second panel will include a mix of technology, science, and business experts. I look forward to their testimony. I notice that the ranking member of this committee, Senator Reid, is here. Under protocol, Senator, we'll call on you for the next statement. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HARRY REID, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEVADA Senator REID. Thank you very much. I appreciate very much your concern about this issue, and I am very happy that we are conducting this hearing. For every year that goes by without Congress or the President making a serious effort to reduce greenhouse gases, the odds increase that my grandchildren are going to inherit a warmer, more chaotic world. We hear a lot of talk about Senator Byrd's amendment on the Senate floor, but we can only hear from Senator Byrd himself, who just within the past week has stated in a meeting similar to the one in which we are now gathered that he had no intention of his amendment being grounds for wiping out the Kyoto Treaty. He thought his amendment would lead to some discussions, discussions that Third World countries should have more involvement. We could hear more from Senator Byrd, but I only want to say that his amendment and those who voted for it, it was certainly not an effort to—or at least the vast majority of those who voted for it-to somehow "deep six" that treaty. A recent study by scientists at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calculates there is a one-in-four chance that the world will warm between 5 and 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the next hundred years. I have this chart up just to take a brief look at it. Mr. Chairman, I am from a State that gambles; I don't gamble myself [Laughter.] Senator REID. [continuing] but I think this chart gives pretty good odds that we have a problem here in the world. I would hope that we are going to spend more time on this complicated subject than the committee has to date. This is the Environment Committee, and we have spent far too little time on this very important issue. I applaud the chairman for allowing this hearing to go forward. I appreciate very much, Senator Voinovich, your taking the time to chair this committee. We need to do more. This committee hasn't looked at this matter directly for more than 2 years. Can you imagine that? The Environment Committee of the Senate on an issue of this importance, we simply have ignored it for 2 years, and that is not good. Our committee has the responsibility and the jurisdiction to develop legislation that reduces manmade emissions that cause, or have the potential to cause, harm to the environment and public health. It is far past time for this committee to do its duty and produce some proposals, helping them work together to develop bipartisan legislation to reduce emission of greenhouse gases. Mr. Chairman, we are on the Senate floor now, and in the next couple of weeks we are going to talk about education, and we should; it's a very important issue. But I would hope that we can spend some time this year debating this issue and coming up with some concrete proposals. We may not be able to do everything that needs to be done, but, hopefully, we can do something. I understand some of my colleagues have been put in the difficult position by the President's decision to reverse his campaign promise on reductions of carbon dioxide from power plants. We don't need to beat a dead horse, but even his EPA Director gives a speech talking about the United States leading the charge in reducing carbon dioxide. Four days later her legs are literally cut out from under her, the President saying, no, we are not going to reduce carbon dioxide the way that she had talked about. It is time for leadership and progress. I would say President Bush is a good person. I know he means to do the right thing. I just think he is getting bad advice. I would like to see this committee help to be part of the advice that he gets. I would like this committee to be a laboratory of new bipartisan issues for cutting greenhouse gases. I have no doubt that the Administration is equally interested in such progress. There has been a lot of talk about voluntary versus mandatory requirements to reduce these gases. My colleagues know that the nation has a Senate-ratified commitment to reduce emissions to 1990 levels. That was to have been accomplished through voluntary measures. Unfortunately, we failed miserably using voluntary means. We are now about 13 percent above our target. So what we need is a comprehensive approach-excuse me, I have allergies. I hope it is not caused by the global warming, but it is bad. [Laughter.] So what we need is a comprehensive approach that achieves real net reductions by a time certain. I don't know any other way to get the ball rolling. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions must come down. The Senate has already made that policy decision. Scientists at the IPCC and elsewhere can help us help to determine which policy options are most useful and when they should be implemented. But it is time for opponents of that decision to work with us on real world reduction strategies. It is now our job to figure out how to accomplish that goal in the most effective and expeditious way. I am glad that we have some witnesses here on the second panel to tell us about policies we might adopt to move in the right direction. I would hope also that the Administration's energy policy plan, even though it doesn't sound as though it moves in the right direction for climate purposes or for protecting the environment, really will do that. We need a plan that reduces harmful emissions, not increases them. Press accounts describing the Administration's plan say it would simply result in burning more fossil fuels. That is really shortsighted and irresponsible and has little or no chance of getting wide bipartisan support. Emphasizing increased and efficient fossil fuel use when we know that carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are higher than they have been for some say 400,000 years is a little bit like handing Nero a fiddle to play while Rome burns. I believe, Mr. Chairman, a strong and supportable energy plan would first emphasize renewable energy, energy efficiency, and conservation. Then, once all the economically viable energy is wrung out of these resources, we can turn to cleaner and safer uses of coal and other traditional fuels. Mr. Chairman, we had a hearing 1 day this week in another committee, one of the Appropriations subcommittees, and there it was determined that the States of South Dakota-I'm sorry it leaves me temporarily what the other state would be-could produce enough electricity by windmills to produce all the necessary energy that the whole United States would use. It was also determined there that the State of Nevada in a 100-square-mile plot where the Nevada Test Site now stands could produce enough electricity by solar to power all the United States. Now we know that is not going to happen tomorrow, but I think we need to get on with having proper incentives to get that started. No one can disagree, I don't think, that we should continue burning fossil fuels the way we have. Geothermal, wind, and solar, we need to share these abundances that we have in States with lots of wind and lots of sun with the rest of the country. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to try to be constructive. I want results, but I am not interested in amending the Clean Air Act or any other environmental statutes as part of an energy plan that doesn't make tangible cuts in greenhouse gases. I would like unanimous consent to include in the hearing record a summary of a recent study showing that reducing carbon emissions can be done cost-effectively. Thank you for your patience. Senator VOINOVICH. Without objection, that will be part of the record. We are going to follow the "early bird" rule, and the next Senator I am going to call upon for a statement is Senator Wyden. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RON WYDEN, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OREGON Senator WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I commend you for holding a very important hearing, and I also want to associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished Democratic Leader. Mr. Chairman and colleagues, very briefly, I want it understood that I believe there is no plausible scientific deniability about the human contribution to climate change. There has been one objective scientific report after another that has documented the fact. There is no plausible scientific deniability about the human contribution to climate changes. The challenge now, as our colleagues have talked about, is to work in a bipartisan way to deal with the problem. I think Chairman Voinovich put it pretty well; we should not spend our time in partisan bickering. |