Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Marvin, and thanks to all of the witnesses.

We have a large number of Committee members here, and the Chair will announce that we will be operating under the 5-minute rule, including on the Chair, I might add, and the Chair intends to recognize members alternatively on each side of the aisle in the order in which you appeared on your side of the aisle. So those who came here first get to ask their questions first and then can excuse themselves and go on and do whatever else you have to do.

DEVELOPING COUNTRY PARTICIPATION

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. So let me begin. Ms. McGinty, we are aware that the Senate unanimously passed the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which stated that the Administration should not sign any treaty that imposed binding commitments on the United States unless there were also binding commiments placed on the Third World. We know that that did not come out of Kyoto.

If the Buenos Aires Conference does not provide some type of a mechanism for developing national adherence to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, is the Administration prepared to announce that this process is fatally-flawed and walk away from it?

Ms. MCGINTY. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, first, that the resolution in the Senate is one we supported. It was helpful to us in these negotiations. The President has said clearly and consistently that this is a global challenge and we need global participation to get the job done.

We are working very hard right now to further that objective, whether it's in continued multilateral for the preparations for Buenos Aires, and, frankly, beyond Buenos Aires, or on bilaterial discussions with various countries to get those developing countries to step up to the plate become part of this process.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Now if that fails, are you going to walk away from it? That's what my question is.

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, the President has said very clearly that the United States won't assume binding obligations until we have effectively secured that meaningful participation by developing countries.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. I guess my question is, how long is this process going to play out without any results in getting developing nations to have meaningful participation before the Administration pulls the pin and says, you know, we've tried and tried and tried, and we have not gotten any of the developing nations to sign up, so we, as Americans, are going to walk away from this process and perhaps do something else?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, let me reiterate two things that are very important in terms of what we have accomplished already in that regard.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Please answer my question. You're not answering the question. The question is, if we don't get meaningful participation in developing countries, when is the Administration prepared to walk away? I don't believe that going about this bilaterally or multilaterally is going to work. If China, for example, says, no, we're not going to participate in this-no way, no howthey've already bought electric plants and steel mills that we closed

!

down because they pollute too much and reopened them over there, and I don't think that there's anything that's really in evidence that indicates that anything's going to be different.

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, I think that in some respects our job is more difficult going forward from Kyoto and securing that developing country participation, but in some respects it's less difficult. One of the most interesting dynamics that I'm sure you observed also when you were there is that the G-77 is not a monolith. When the G-77 is concentrated in one room, there are voices that are louder than others, and China's was a very loud voice. But there are also the Mexicos of the world, the Koreas of the world, countries that are much more interested in working positively and progressively on this front. And, in fact

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Now, Ms. McGinty, you and I were both there

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER [continuing]. And we know that the job of the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole, a gentleman named Raul Estrada, is the Argentine Ambassador to China. Now Mr. Estrada is the person who makes the determination on whether there is consensus of the participants in the Conference or whether there isn't. Now his main job isn't dealing with global climate change; it's representing his country's position with the Chinese government. If the Chinese get up and say, "No, we object; we don't consent to this," do you think Mr. Estrada is going to ignore them and say consensus has been reached, like he did against us and some other people in Kyoto?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, it is, in part, why we will not have as our strategy simply to talk to countries in multilateral fora. We will work with them on a bilateral basis, and I think it's very important to note and underscore that the Clean Development Mechanism, while the original idea of the United States, was put into the treaty by Brazil. Second, that the mechanism that will allow developing countries to opt into this treaty was put into the treaty by Mexico. These are countries who have a different view than China, who is very loud, and

CLEAN DEVELOPMENT MECHANISM

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. But who controls the distribution of the funds through the clean development mechanism? I'm sure that very few American consumers would like to see the money that they spent to help their electric utilites buy credits end up in Iraq or Iran. Are we going to be able to prevent that?

Ms. MCGINTY. There will not be a single U.S. Treasury dollar that goes into those mechanisms. Those are private sector

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Ma'am, that's not my question, with all due respect. We all know that because the Administration has correctly rejected a carbon tax or a Btu tax, the way the market is going to work is that the price of particularly dirty energy will increase through the purchase of credits by those who sell this socalled dirty energy, through the Clean Development Mechanism or otherwise. This is not U.S. Treasury dollars; these are consumers' dollars. What's going to protect the consumers from having their

money end up in Iraq helping Iraq build weapons of mass destruction?

Ms. MCGINTY. The Clean Development Mechanism, as the emissions trading mechanism and the other flexibility tools that are in the Kyoto agreement are tools there at the disposal of U.S. businesses, businesses around the world, in their sound business judgment to either use or not use. The decision will be made on their basis, their estimations and calculations, as to whether or not it is a cost-effective, wise investment strategy for them to take advantage of

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Okay, my time is up. I'm going to announce that we're going to have a second round of questions, so that I get another chance at you.

Ms. MCGINTY. Fair enough.

[Laughter.]

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman from California, Mr. Brown.

Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, you might announce that some of us would like to submit written questions also.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Written questions will be allowed, and I would like to ask all of the witnesses to whom written questions are directed to respond within about 21 days' time, so that we can close the hearing record and get it published. The gentleman from Čalifornia.

CHINESE PARTICIPATION

Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Chairman, obviously, it's of key importance to understand how we could get the significant involvement of the less-developed nations who will be major polluters, and I frankly confess I don't understand that.

I am aware that some of these nations are deeply interested in cutting their emissions. China is, for example, and is engaged in a number of programs to do that. They have reduced energy subsidies, and they have major reforestation programs, and so on.

But let me ask this question: In an ideal world, not one in which we were just looking for some immeasurable, significant change, what would we expect of the Chinese? And I ask this in part because we have a Chinese delegation visiting with us this week, a distinguished group of senior officials from their Science Academy and other places, and I might want to pose a question to them. What would we expect? Would we expect, for example, that they would accept Dr. Hake's prediction of what their energy consumption would be in 2010 and agree to cut it 31 percent or something like that? Is there a metric that we can apply that we would find agreeable to measure this with?

Ms. MCGINTY. Thank you, Mr. Brown. I think there are a number of different approaches that have been suggested. In the President's own dialog, both with the Chinese, with the Mexicans, with the Koreans, the first and most important principle we have tried to make clear is that there is nothing in our agenda in wanting them to be part of this treaty which is about reducing their economic growth. In fact, to the contrary, when Mexico is shutting down its factories because people are choking to death on pollution, and the pictures we all remember in Southeast Asia this summer

of the very same phenomenon, industries shutting down, tremendous tragedies because of pollution hurting the economy, the first and most important point we've said to them is we're not interested in slowing their economic growth in any way, shape, or form.

In Kyoto, some of the various approaches that were talked about would offer ideas such as sign up to a target, but it can be a growth target, the idea being, no, we don't expect Bangladesh to do the same amount of work that the United States will do here, but can we at least get some deflection from where those emissions would otherwise be growing toward? Those are ideas that seem to offer some room for discussions.

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AND EMISSIONS CREDITS

Mr. BROWN of California. All right, but if we want the underdeveloped nations to sell credits, it must be credits earned by cutting emissions below some target, and you're saying you don't want them to curtail their rate of economic rate, but they can have economic rate with less energy use if they adopt certain new technologies. Do we have standards for what we would expect them to do in order to generate credits, basically?

Ms. MCGINTY. Yes. Yes, we do, because for the last 4 years we have invested in a pilot project on this idea of joint implementation to prove to the rest of the world it's a good idea. The essential thrust of that is that if a country faces a choice of putting in place a polluting and inefficient power plant, for example, or with some additional upfront investment, could put in a place a similar power plant to provide an exactly equal amount of energy, but with significantly reduced pollution, then that action would be one which would earn them credits, the credits representing the difference between the pollution there would have been and the lesser pollution that results because of the investment in the cleaner technology.

Mr. BROWN of California. So we could make the argument to Mexico or China or these underdeveloped nations that, if you set up a metric which we can use to quantify your reductions, we might be able to pay you enough for credits to invest in and improve technology that would improve your efficiency?

Ms. MCGINTY. Well, and on a business-to-business basis that could happen, as a business partnership, yes.

Mr. BROWN of California. Well, thank you. That helps clarify it for me.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.

I have what is probably an impediment; that is, I'm a scientist. My master's and my doctorate thesis was on CO2, so I begin the discussion here at a big disadvantage.

[Laughter.]

GLOBAL WARMING AND CARBON DIOXIDE

Mr. BARTLETT. I would like to note that the global temperature increase, as I understand it, has been order of magnitude of something less than a degree centigrade. That's roughly a 1 degree Fahrenheit. Most of that occurred before the ramp-up in CO2 pro

duction. So I think it's very difficult to credit greenhouse gas production with the very modest increase in global temperatures.

If we look back through the history of our world, we note that we have been through several ice ages; we also note that at one time the earth was very much warmer, because we are still finding mammoths in the tundra that still have subtropical vegetation in their stomachs; it was such an abrupt climatic change; that with subtropical vegetation like northern Florida that was growing in the tundra, the climate changed very abruptly, and the mammoths are still frozen there as evidence that we one time had a very much warmer world.

Pollution does two things. I remember that Carl Sagan was cautioning us that, if we had a nuclear war, we would have what he called a nuclear winter, because any time you have pollution, you cannot produce CO2 without producing other pollutants. Pollutants can either block the long wave lengths that come back-they let the short wave lengths in-or they can block the sun from coming in, and make us cooler. So pollution can both warm us and cool us, and I submit that, on balance, we don't have the foggiest idea as to whether pollutants will, in fact, cause global warming or global cooling.

Although we are in a very short cycle of global warming now, that could very well be simply a small upswing in what is otherwise a gradual downturn in temperatures. We could just as certainly be moving to another ice age as we are to global warming. I would note that we still enjoy very pretty sunsets and sunrises, primarily thanks to Rackatowa, but through millions, billions of tons up into the atmosphere, we're still seeing those effects years after the volcano. So what nature does kind of dwarfs what we are able to do in affecting the climate.

I'm not sure what present CO2 levels are. When I was doing my research, they were .04 percent. That is barely enough for plants to make it. Any serious rose fancier who's growing roses in a greenhouse will release additional CO2 into the greenhouse because his roses will grow faster if he does that. If, in fact, we're having CO2 increases, there will be losers and winners. All plants will be winners because plants grow faster with increased CO2.

No one has mentioned the ocean has a sink for CO2. A CO2 is very soluble in water. The oceans cover three-fourths of the Earth's surface. They have a very large fauna and flora, and all of the flora in the ocean, just like our plants on land, use CO2 and produce carbon dioxide.

Some of you mentioned the renewables. I want you to know I'm a very strong supporter of renewables, not so much because I think they're important to prevent global climate change, but because they will limit the use of fossil fuels, which are not infinite in their supply, and we will one day run out of them.

If there is, in fact, global warming-and I'm not at all convinced we're on a global warming swing-but if there is global warming, then you have to convince me that that, in fact, is bad. There will be winners and losers. I doubt that Russia and Canada would be very much disadvantaged by a bit of global warming. So I'm not sure on a grand scale whether a little bit of global warming will produce more winners or losers on the Earth.