accomplish. I hope that we can examine how we can make this initiative most effective, how we can measure its success and how we can make mid-course corrections in the future if it begins to falter.

In particular, I believe we all need to learn from the past failures and past successes for similar programs. Clearly the "no regrets" policy of five years ago was ultimately not sufficient to address the magnitude of the emissions problem as we now perceive it. Unfortunately, the Federal Government does need a more proactive role to make this work. In addition, despite the welcome call from both sides of the aisle today for a strong energy research program, we need to recall how our energy development programs have fared in Congress over the past five years.

Caught up in the intense ideological debates over what is and what is not corporate welfare, we have seen the budget requests for energy efficiency, solar and renewables, fusion, and nuclear research slashed dramatically every year by Congress. Spending today is 30% below the 1995 spending level in real terms. By the same token, the Administration has sought reductions in fossil fuels research every year since 1995 which, fortunately, Congress has rejected.

Clearly, there has not been a consensus on what an appropriate Federal role is in energy research. Faced with the stark reality that Kyoto has provided, I hope we can move beyond the past ideological policy debate and set a clearer goal for what we need to accomplish over the next decade.

Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the testimony today.

Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing on the implications of the Kyoto agreement.

I am pleased that President Clinton's budget request has allocated significant monies of the $6.3 billion dollars to the Climate Change Technology Initiative and the Global Change Research Program. Both of these initiatives address the global climate problem and offer expedient solutions to the problem.

I agree with the use of these funds to be targeted towards Research and Development practices. Research and development is a necessity for the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The monies spent to develop more fuel-efficient automobiles and trucks, energy saving technologies for commercial building and homes, energy efficient industrial processes and renewable energy sources will prove to benefit the environment in many great ways.

Research and development should be a top priority and federal agencies need financial support to continue their research agendas. Although DOE and NSF show moderate

Program, NASA's portion is proposed to decline by several percent. I have been reassured by the

Administration that NASA has identified efficiencies and cost cutting measures that allow this decline without loss of scientific content.

The U.S. is taking actions at the federal and private levels to insure that we are addressing the global climate problem. However, I am concerned with the research and development activities of developing countries.

The global climate problem cannot be solved with only a few participants addressing this problem. I would like to urge other countries to allocate substantial funds for research and development activities as related to the deployment of energy efficiency.

Thank you.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. And the Chair will notice at our next Full Committee meeting the approval of the changes in Ranking Members. Without objection, all members' opening statements will be placed in the record at this time. Without objection, the Committee or the Chair-is authorized to declare recesses of the Committee during roll call. And the Committee stands recessed for 10 minutes for this roll call, and asks the members to be back promptly.

[Brief recess.]

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Committee will be in order.

The Chair will swear in the witnesses. Will each of you please rise. Raise your right hand please.

Do you, and each of you, solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give before this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth so help you God.

Dr. GIBBONS. I do.

Dr. MONIZ. I do.

Mr. GARDINER. I do.

Mr. BACHULA. I do.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The reporter will note that all four witnesses answered in the affirmative.

Today's witnesses will be the Honorable John H. Gibbons, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; the Honorable Ernest J. Moniz, Under Secretary of Energy; the Honorable David M. Gardiner, Assistant Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Evaluation of the EPA; and Gary Bachula, Acting Under Secretary for Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Without objection, all of your written statements will be inserted in the record in your testimony. The Chair would request that each of you summarize your statements in about 5 minutes or so, so that we will have plenty of time for Committee members to answer and ask questions.

The first witness will be The Honorable John Gibbons. Jack, you may proceed as you would like.

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN H. GIBBONS, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, AND DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. GIBBONS. Thank you, and good morning, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and the Committee for inviting us to testify. I will focus on the U.S. Global Change Research Program, its current program and the project, and its relationship to the Kyoto Protocol. As you know the USGCRP began under President Bush in 1989, and it is designed to provide us with the scientific information that we need to make better decisions about climate change to understand it and, therefore, have a firmer basis, a more thoughtful basis, for making policy decisions. So, I'd like to describe briefly what we're doing, and some things that we have learned. And I would address these issues, of course, in much more detail in my written testimony which I have provided for the record.

I also have included in that provision for the record our 1999

in this program and a copy of a publication from my office entitled, "Climate Change: the State of Knowledge."

Finally, Mr. Chairman, although I don't have it with me today, we will be delivering to the Committee within about 2 weeks our 1997 annual report on USGCRP called "Our Changing Planet."

I do want to stress the fact that the climate change research program is distributed across 11 agencies of government. It totals about $1.86 billion a year and it is integrated at both the program and budget level. It's a good example of where we are able to get the best of the resources of the relevant agencies and pool it together into a single integrated program.

Now, I also want to emphasize that the USGCRP planning for this year was not directly related or driven by the Kyoto negotiations. This program is shaped by the developing scientific questions and the longer-term consideration by the scientific community of the scientific information that is seen as most relevant to understanding climate change and, therefore, most relevant to the needs of U.S. policymakers.

I feel climate change is the preeminent environmental challenge that faces us as we move into the next century. This research program and its companion programs in other nations are providing us with a wealth of compelling scientific evidence of past history of climate change and also of human-induced climate change that has been occurring in recent decades. I'm not alone in the opinion that there is strong scientific evidence of human-induced climate change. The vast majority of the world's scientists who study this issue do agree. There's no question, for example, that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen dramatically-by about 30 percent over the last century-as a direct result of human activities. The concentration is now about 365 parts per million CO2, and this is higher than any level seen in the measured records from ice cores that date back 160,000 years. This is clearly shown. on figure 2 of my detailed written testimony for you.

Now, I know there are a lot of arguments about this business, but as Senator Moynihan once said, "We can each have our own opinions, but we cannot each have our own facts." And I'm speaking about facts in this case, about this fundamental rise of concentration of carbon dioxide.

Now, if we continue business as usual, and I sure hope we don't, we will pass through a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 in the next half century, and by 2100, we would reach over 700 parts per million of carbon dioxide-well on the way toward treiling, or beyond, in terms of that concentration. At that kind of concentration, the atmospheric concentration would be higher than anything the earth has experienced in 50 million years. The associated rate of temperature change would exceed anything seen since the dawn of civilization 10,000 years ago.

Over this intervening 10,000 years, human settlements and ecological systems have optimized themselves in a period of remarkably constant climate, and they've optimized themselves to that particular climate. That worries me; that we may be departing radically from something that both humans and plant and animal systems have been optimizing to for 10 millennia.