has been able to question the religious commitment to the global warming theory and expect to get any government grants, and I think it is outrageous. But with that, I am willing to discuss this issue now, and I am happy to have this panel in front of me. UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES Mr. ROHRABACHER. You know, there are people who accomplish things that they do not want to accomplish when they go out to accomplish something good if they do not think about the consequences. I have an office in California where because of the energy conservation measures taken by Mr. Carter back during the 1970's, we cannot open our windows, and I do not know if anybody else has allergies from air conditioning or anyone else is susceptible to germs floating in the air or smoke floating through the air, but the unintended consequence of that energy conservation has been that I have a lot of trouble breathing in my office back in California, and I understand this is not uncommon. That was an unintended consequence. ENERGY TAXES Mr. ROHRABACHER. Today, I am afraid that the unintended consequences of us rushing into a global warming treaty will be a dramatic decrease in the standard of living of the people of the United States, especially the poorest. Now, Joe, I would like to ask you, even if you accept the global warming theory, why are we focusing on solutions like a tax that would increase, that would bear most heavily on the lowest income of our people? Mr. ROMM. Well, the Administration is not proposing a tax, and at no point in any of the work that I have done have we ever analyzed or considered a tax. The goal, as always, is to figure out market-based mechanisms that promote efficiency. I am sorry for your office building back in California. It is not Jimmy Carter's fault that BUILDING DESIGN Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is it your fault, Joe? Mr. ROMM. No. I think I was a toddler back then when that building code was designed. You know, look, people thought incorrectly that conservation meant that the way that you design a building to save energy was to make it ridiculously tight. I think it has been demonstrated time and time again, particularly in the last few years, as we move away from conservation and focus on technologies that save energy, that you would design a building, and many buildings around this country have been designed, that, in fact, save energy and increase the productivity and reduce the absenteeism of the workers in that building. And as you may know, I actually published a book on that subject. We have had 20 years of superior learning on design practices and technologies. You do not need to seal up a building to make it energy-efficient. You can actually— UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF BLACK MARKET CFCS Mr. ROHRABACHER. But that was an unintended consequence, and let me put this to Professor DeCanio. Wouldn't an unintended consequence of this treaty, for example, where we are leaving out certain countries from these controls, haven't we already had an experience and seen an unintended consequence with this freon? The fact is, freon here, we have committed ourselves to not producing freon in the United States, but all of a sudden we have got a black market in freon, coming across our southern borders, which could negate the very controls, costly controls that we put into place? Mr. DECANIO. Well, the black market is a very tiny fraction of what the production and consumption of CFCs and freon had been before the Montreal Protocol. And even though it is a problem, it is an order-of-magnitude smaller problem than the ozone depletion that is being prevented by the Montreal Protocol. There are unintended consequences of policies, especially if the policies are not well thought out in advance; but there are also unintended consequences of doing nothing. If an unintended consequence of business as usual is that the subsequent generations have to deal with planet-wide climate crises, what is their judgment of us going to be? I do not think it will be favorable, and I think that we can take steps now that are very prudent, moderate, cost-effective, rates of return on the order of 40 percent for some of the technologies that have been examined. LACK OF SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, Doctor, your point was, of course, predicated on if we face this global, catastrophic change in our weather, and, again, I am sure, as our other members of this Committee have suggested before I got here, that has been far from proven. And I know in the hearings that I had on it 2 years ago, that I felt that those people who were making the case for ozone had perhaps made their case, but global warming, I was in no way convinced; and the testimony we heard here just a few days ago again has convinced us that in the scientific community there is no consensus on this, much less a consensus wide enough to be able to make these incredible commitments that will change our way of life in the United States. PATENT PROTECTION Mr. ROHRABACHER. One last point, Mr. Chairman, if you will indulge me, and that is, in order to get the change that Joe is talking about here, we rely a lot on technological innovation. I mean, everyone is saying the way we can really do this with the least amount of harm is to have new technology that will be cleaner technology, yet this Administration has supported measures that gut patent protection of our people that will, indeed, encouragethat has done more to encourage that patent protection in the past technological development. And let me point out that in this global-warming treaty there is a provision that further guts the patent protection of the people of the United States of America; and if you are serious about this, I would like to make sure this Administration understands that this provision has not gone unnoticed by this Congressman. There is a provision that further supports the reduction of patent protection of the people of the United States, which will have exactly the op posite impact, maybe perhaps as an unintended consequence, to what you are trying to get. And with that, unless someone wants to comment on that. Okay. I yield back the balance of my time. Chairman CALVERT. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. I appreciate your comments, always to the point, as usual; and I appreciate this panel. It has been a very interesting morning. I appreciate the travel and distance that many of you have taken to come up here. This subject obviously is not going to go away. We are going to hear a lot more about it, and this debate will go on. So we, again, appreciate your attendance, and this Subcommittee is adjourned. Whereupon, at 11:10 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.] COUNTDOWN TO KYOTO, PART III: THE ADMINISTRATION'S GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE PROPOSAL THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1997 U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT, Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ken Calvert, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. Chairman CALVERT. This hearing of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee will come to order. This is the third in a series of hearings that we're calling, "Countdown to Kyoto." Today we'll look at the Clinton Administration's position, which was announced on October 22, on negotiating a global warming treaty at the international conference to be held in Kyoto, Japan, in December. Despite all of the rosy rhetoric and fancy footwork by the best of the Administration's spin doctors, this proposal has done nothing to allay the fears of many Members of Congress, including this Chairman, that the proposed treaty may be a convenient way to carry out an agenda that has consistently been rejected by the American people. At this hearing we'll try to find out if an Administration which attempted to impose an energy tax on the American people less than 4 weeks after taking office, only to be rejected by their own Congress, is now trying to accomplish the same thing through a United Nations treaty. We'll try to find if an Administration which dares not propose directly transferring America's wealth to other countries might be taking a back-door approach by signing a treaty that leaves out over 130 countries and creates emission-reduction investment incentives that may well result in sending jobs abroad. What we do know so far about these issues is disturbing. We know from testimony presented to this Subcommittee on October 7th that the science is uncertain at best. We know that the Department of Energy's five-lab report presented to this Subcommittee on October 9th was clear. The only way the United States could conceivably reach the 1990 greenhouse gas emission levels by 2010 is through an energy tax. We also know from the just-completed treaty negotiations in Bonn that any proposal to include countries like China and India in the proposed treaty will get slapped down. We've heard a lot of rhetoric in recent weeks about America's re(241) |