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Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,

I am sorry that Chairman Sensenbrenner could not stay with us. I wanted to make three comments about his opening remarks.

First is that the letter I received from Mr. Sensenbrenner has many, many questions, not just the request for information access. We did want to give thoughtful answers to those questions, and we have done so in my response to the Chairman recently.

The Chairman's letter also noted that IPCC information is increasingly-on my letter-noted that the IPCC information is increasingly on the web. The U.S. Global Change Research Program Office has put IPCC information on its website. Increasingly, we want to use electronic means of communication, as you are doing in your deliberations.

And, finally, with regard to Dr. Hanson's comments, I can quote from Dr. Hanson. He says-and I do quote, "There are large uncertainties about future climate change, especially because of the uncertainties about how the climate forcings will continue to change. But as long as we let greenhouse gases continue to increase rapidly, we almost surely are headed to a much warmer planet."-end of quote.

Mr. Chairman, my remarks this morning will focus on the Climate Change Technology Initiative and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

I know the members of this Committee share my strong belief that America's world-leading science and technology enterprise must be sustained and nurtured, and today I come before you to suggest that we can bring that same common appreciation of science to the issue of climate change.

Mr. Chairman, the Climate Change Technology Initiative is the Administration's response to a call from the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, PCAST. And what they have asked for is a greater investment in a broad, balanced energy R&D portfolio that can help us simultaneously meet our Nation's multiple energy challenges and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A little over a year ago, PCAST issued a report that concluded that the federal energy R&D programs were not commensurate in scope and in scale with the energy challenges and opportunities the 21st century will present. PCAST warned that the continuing shortfall of investment in clean energy technologies would likely translate into higher oil import dependence, higher energy costs to industrial and residential consumers, smaller U.S. energy technology exports, and worse air quality than would otherwise be the case, as well as the diminished capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions cost effectively.

The Climate Change Technology Initiative was developed to address those issues, as well as help achieve short-term greenhouse gas emission reductions. These investments in efficiency, renewables, and other clean energy technologies will help provide America with a diverse, strong, and affordable energy future.

Now, Mr. Chairman, let me briefly discuss our proposals in the climate research area.

U.S. climate change science is largely supported through the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The Administration is committed to continued strong support for the scientific research need

ed to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of the Earth's climate system, the likely future course of climate change, and the potential impacts of such change on the environment and human society.

The Fiscal Year 2000 Global Change Research budget of $1.8 billion supports a wide array of scientific investigations. I would like to note two areas of special importance for Fiscal Year 2000.

First of all, a new Carbon Cycle Science Initiative will provide critical scientific information on the fate of carbon in the environment, on the sources and sinks of carbon on continental and regional scales, and on how they might change naturally over time and the potential to enhance sinks through agriculture and forestry practices.

Second, the U.S. climate modeling effort will be a beneficiary of the Administration's separate initiative on information technology for the 21st century. A new generation of U.S. supercomputers and software funded by the IT initiative will help U.S. climate modelers hone their ability to simulate environmental prophecies to examine a range of longer-term scenarios for the future and predict nearterm climate events like El Niño.

The Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to carry on the longstanding bipartisan tradition of support for climate research and energy technology R&D.

Mr. Chairman, I believe as do most scientists who have carefully studied this problem-that we need to confront the challenge now. The evidence is compelling that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are amplifying the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and warming the planet's surface. Computer models suggest that such warming is likely to lead to further climate disruptions and ecological impacts as the sea levels rise, patterns of precipitation change, and atmospheric and ocean currents shift.

So, the question facing us is, what specific constructive steps do we take? First, it requires a sustained and enhanced commitment to energy research, development, and deployment. The earlier we act to develop, adopt, and adopt clean and efficient energy technologies, the greater the future benefits we will reap. Second, it requires continued research into the science of climate change to help guide our understanding of impacts and mitigation and adaption options.

Mr. Chairman, doing nothing is a high-risk option. What is at stake is the health and the well-being of our children and future generations, as well as our environmental quality and global stability. The same scientific and technical capabilities that have helped identify this problem can help us overcome it. The Administration's climate change science and energy technology proposals are important initial steps in this regard.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Committee, for your attention today, and I look forward to your questions. [The statement and biography of Dr. Lane follow:]

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Thank you for this opportunity to discuss with you the Administration's science and technology
programs that are relevant to the understanding and mitigation of climate change. I have enjoyed
the opportunity to testify before the Committee on Science and several of its Subcommittees on
several occasions, first as Director of the National Science Foundation and, more recently, as the
Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. I know the Members of this
Committee share my strong belief that America's world-leading science and technology
enterprise must be sustained and nurtured. While we sometimes differ on precisely how and
where to invest our taxpayers' funds, we share a bipartisan understanding that the future
prosperity of this country depends on strong federal support for all areas of scientific inquiry.

Today I come before you to suggest that we can bring that same common appreciation for science to an area of considerable policy disagreement the issue of climate change. Whatever your

policy views may be on the wisdom of the Kyoto Protocol, I respectfully suggest that the
President's budget proposal for climate change science and the climate change technology
initiative makes good, sound economic and scientific sense for this nation.

Mr. Chairman, my remarks this morning will focus on the Climate Change Technology Initiative (CCTI) and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP).

PCAST Report

A little more than a year ago, the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology
(PCAST) concluded in its study, "Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges
of the Twenty-First Century," that the current energy R&D programs of the Federal government
“are not commensurate in scope and in scale with the energy challenges and opportunities the
twenty-first century will present." PCAST found that, while many high-tech industries
consistently invest 5 to 15 percent of revenues in research and development, the sum of private
and public investments in energy R&D in the United States amounts to less than one percent of
the nation's expenditure on energy. As a fraction of GDP, the Federal government's investments
in energy R&D in the late 1990s are less than half what they were thirty years ago.

As the PCAST panel emphasized, innovation in clean energy technologies would bring many other benefits besides the possibility of cost-effective greenhouse-gas reductions. It would also: reduce consumer costs for energy supplies and services; increase the productivity of U.S. manufacturing; improve U.S. competitiveness in the world market for energy technologies; reduce costly and dangerous over-dependence on imported oil; improve air and water quality; improve the safety and proliferation-resistance of nuclear-energy operations around the world; and enhance the prospects for environmentally sustainable and politically stabilizing economic development in many of the world's potential trouble spots.

PCAST recommended that Federal funding for applied energy technology R&D in the areas of fossil fuels, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, renewable energy sources, and energy end-use efficiency, be increased from a total of about $1.3 billion per year in FY 1998 to $1.8 billion in FY 1999 and $2.4 billion by FY 2003. (In constant-dollar terms, the figure in 2003 would be about the same as annual spending for these purposes at the beginning of the 1990s, during the Bush Administration.) The largest shares of the proposed increases would go to R&D in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies, but nuclear fusion and fission would also receive increases. The composition of R&D on advanced fossil-fuel technologies would change in favor of longer-term opportunities, including fuel cells and carbon-sequestration technologies, but the overall spending in the fossil-fuel area would remain approximately constant in real terms.

The twenty-one members of the PCAST panel came from the private sector, academia, and public-interest organizations and included members with expertise in the full range of energy options—coal, oil, gas, nuclear, renewables, end-use efficiency. There were also members of wide and senior experience in non-energy fields, who did not start out with any presumption that more Federal energy R&D would be desirable. Notwithstanding this diversity within the panel (including a range of views on the pace and seriousness of climate disruption by greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel combustion), all of the panel's recommendations were unanimous.

We agree with PCAST that our energy challenges and opportunities are significant. We have made little progress in reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the 25 years since the first OPEC oil embargo. Record-low oil prices are shutting down our small independent wells and increasing our dependence on foreign sources. The United States currently imports roughly half of its oil, about 45% from OPEC countries including the Persian Gulf.

Improving energy efficiency not only reduces our dependence on oil, but saves us real money. Since that first oil shock, energy R&D and deployment of advanced energy efficiency and supply technologies, along with other structural changes in our economy, have reduced the energy intensity of U.S. economic activity by nearly one-third, saving U.S. consumers some $150-$200 billion per year. But low oil prices have slowed or stopped further reductions in our national energy intensity.

The Climate Change Technology Initiative

The President's FY 2000 Climate Change Technology Initiative budget is a direct response to the recommendations of the PCAST report. The President's FY2000 budget proposes $1.4 billion for the R&D and deployment of clean and efficient energy supply and end use technologies. This is a $347 million increase over FY1999 investments.

The CCTI programs build on PCAST's recommendations for increased investment in a broad, balanced energy R&D portfolio that can serve the long-term goal of diversifying our energy base, moving us away from our dependence on fossil fuels, and finding more environmentally benign ways to use our fossil fuel resources. At the same time, these programs will improve the production and delivery of reliable, cost-effective supplies of energy and help meet the energy needs identified by PCAST. While CCTI will help stimulate the development and deployment of energy technologies which can help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the short-term, that has never been CCTI's primary goal, and it would be inappropriate to judge it solely on that basis. These investments will help provide America with a diverse, strong, and affordable energy future.

The Need to Act

The science of climate change is extremely complex and continuing to evolve. It is fair to say, however, that the last several decades have seen a remarkable increase in our understanding of how the Earth's climate system functions, how the climate has changed in the past, and how it is likely to change in the future. Most importantly, we have identified a number of independent lines of evidence that human activities are affecting the climate system and that a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions is likely to result in more climate change during the next century than we have observed during the last century. The Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the most comprehensive and rigorous overall assessment of climate change science and impacts, puts it this way: "The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate."

Significant uncertainties remain in the science of climate change, particularly with regard to the precise regional distribution of changes in precipitation and temperature and the simultaneous effects of multiple impacts on ecosystems. Yet we know enough about climate change and its causes and consequences to take reasonable actions to mitigate and adapt to change, and thus minimize its effects on the environments and human health and well being.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program

Our current understanding of climate change is the result of the significant progress that has occurred over the last several decades in climate change science. U.S. climate change research is largely supported through the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The Administration is committed to continued strong support for the scientific research needed to

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