SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE CHANGE

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2000

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION,

Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m. in room SR253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. John McCain, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN MCCAIN,

U.S. SENATOR FROM ARIZONA

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. Earlier this year we examined the science of global warming as a means of defining the issue of climate change. We followed that hearing with a discussion of the impact of climate change on the United States, specifically the national assessment report. Today we hope to examine a few of the many solutions or approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the suspected cause of global temperature increases.

I hope to have an honest and open discussion of these solutions so that the members of the Committee can be better informed on our policy options as we look to the future and address this very important issue. Today's discussion does not represent, nor should it be implied, the totality of solutions available. Today's discussion represents only a sampling of these solutions.

I am pleased to hear that several companies are taking voluntary actions to reduce emissions and become more efficient in their operations. I know that these efficiencies often lead to cost savings, which further motivates their actions. Nevertheless, reduced emissions are helping the environment.

These actions are leading some critics to claim that industry is doing more on a voluntary basis than Congress. If this is true, then it is time that Congress steps up to the plate. The Federal Government will continue to support scientific research concerning climate change. However, we must depend on the industrial base of this country to implement these scientific findings. I would hope that they would apply their ingenuity by using technologies to bring about a cleaner environment.

I am pleased that our witnesses today represent those on the front line of industries who are implementing programs to reduce greenhouse gas emission. I am also interested in hearing about what else the government can do to improve the current situation or, again, if anything at all should be done.

During the past two hearings, we have heard about the complexity of climate change and the difficulty of understanding the

interaction between the atmosphere, oceans, and land. I believe there are many questions yet to be answered. Many of these are further complicated by the mixing of politics and science. I hope to add some clarity to this situation by proposing an international commission of scientists to study climate change and to provide unbiased, sound scientific analysis to anyone in search of the facts on global warming.

We plan to introduce legislation in the near future to this effect. I hope others will rally and support it to help bring international understanding to this contentious issue.

I welcome all the witnesses today. Finally, there are probably only 2 or 3 weeks left in this session of Congress, so we may not have other hearings this year. I intend to work with Senator Kerry and others to take up this issue again early next year, since I have become convinced that there are changes taking place that we need to better understand, and at some point we need to develop some kind of plan of action.

[The prepared statement of Senator McCain follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN MCCAIN,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ARIZONA

Earlier this year we examined the science behind global warming as a means of defining the issue of climate change. We followed that hearing with a discussion of the Climate Change Impact On the United States, the National Assessment Report. Today, we hope to examine a few of the many solutions or approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the suspected cause of global temperature increases.

I hope to have an open and honest discussion of these solutions so that the members of this Committee can be better informed on our policy options as we look to the future and address this very important issue. Today's discussion does not represent, nor should it be implied, the totality of solutions available. Today's discussion represents only a sampling of these solutions.

I am pleased to hear that several companies are taking voluntary actions to reduce emissions and become more efficient in their operations. I know that these efficiencies often lead to cost savings which further motivates their actions. Nevertheless, the reduced emissions are helping the environment.

These actions are leading some critics to claim that industry is doing more on a voluntary basis than Congress. If this is true than it's time that Congress steps up to the plate.

The Federal Government will continue to support scientific research concerning climate change. However, we must depend on the industrial base of this country to implement these scientific findings. I would hope that they would apply their ingenuity by using technologies to bring about a cleaner environment. I am pleased that our witnesses today represent those on the front line of industry implementing programs to reduce greenhouse gas emission.

I am also interested in hearing about what else the government can do to improve the current situation or again, if anything at all actually should be done. Over the past two hearings, we have heard about the complexity of climate change and the difficulty of understanding the interaction between the atmosphere, oceans, and the land.

I believe there are many questions yet to be answered. Many of these are further complicated by the mixing of politics and science. I hope to add some clarity to this situation by proposing an international commission of scientists to study climate change and to provide unbiased, sound scientific analysis to anyone in search of the facts on global warming. I plan to introduce legislation in the near future to this effect and hope that others will rally and support it to help bring mutual international understanding about this contentious issue.

I welcome all of our witnesses here today.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Kerry.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN KERRY,

U.S. SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS

Senator KERRY. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having these series of hearings. I really want to congratulate you on doing that. I think you are the only chairman in the Senate providing at this point any ongoing dialog on this subject, and so I personally want to thank you because I think what it needs more than anything else, frankly, is leadership.

As you know, Mr. Chairman-and I'm sort of tired of repeating it a little bit, but I say it as a preface to where I am coming from on it. I have been following this for a long time now through the work on this Committee, beginning when the Vice President served here on the Committee and we became interested in this as members of the Subcommittee. Obviously, his views on the issue are now a matter of record internationally.

One thing we do not want to do is insert politics into it and I do not want to do that. I have now followed the emerging science since the 1980s and I have participated in the negotiations for the United Nations Framework Convention. I have been to Rio, been to Buenos Aires, been to Kyoto, watched this emerge, and Í have talked and met with people I have enormous respect for: John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister in England, others who are leading on this issue, and many people on the European continent, who just have built a consensus.

An enormous scientific consensus exists internationally on this subject. And while you cannot prove precisely that global warming has caused this particular event or that particular event, the following are all consistent with models of projected climate change: No. 1, the 1990s were the hottest decade on record.

No. 2, the hottest 11 years on record have all occurred in the past 13 years.

Ranges of infectious diseases are spreading. Cases of infection are increasing around the world.

This shift in temperature that is accompanying that, some parts of the world have warmed by 5 degrees Fahrenheit or more in the last 100 years, the average temperature of the entire planet having risen 1 degree.

Again, all of these are consistent. In 1995, after a period of unusual warming, 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, a 48 by 22 mile chunk of the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapsed, and in subsequent years we have seen remarkable sizes of ice falling off.

This summer a section of the North Pole was water for the first time in recorded history. I think it was about a mile wide area of water. And for the first time in recorded history, a trip was taken retracing a trip of yore which took 2 years, and this trip took only about a month to do because there was no ice in the Northwest Passage.

The reason I say all of this, Mr. Chairman, is that the "solution" to climate change and we are going to hear from Senator Feinstein, we are going to hear from other members today-has proven to be elusive. I just want to say to you there are two reasons for this, and I will be very quick. The first reason is, obviously, selfinterest. Whether it is a country, a company, or citizens in a State, we all benefit from the status quo and everybody is resistant to

change. At the international level, we, the United States, are increasingly the butt of cynicism and doubts about our seriousness because other nations, developing nations, remain very critical of the developed nations for the past emissions and for their desire to hold onto the status quo, while we remain very suspicious of developing nations that think they can not be part of the consensus and do not have to buy into Kyoto. So we are locked into this unfortunate gridlock now where things get worse and nobody is doing anything.

Within the United States, we have different industrial sectors defending their position, each of them arguing that the pollution cut should come from somewhere else. Energy points to the transportation sector, transportation points to manufacturing, and so you go back and forth.

The second reason is the difficulty of the underlying problem. I know that some of the work of Dr. Romm and his colleagues, such as Amory Lovins, points to how existing technology has the potential to reduce emissions. I buy into that, I accept that.

But the challenge is using that technology domestically and internationally, and there you run into this huge political resistance because corporations and governments have invested billions of dollars in the current energy, current transportation, current manufacturing, and current building infrastructures, and those investments are intended to last 30 years or longer. So you have this enormous economic resistance to a reality that is growing around

us.

So the question for us, Mr. Chairman-and that is why I applaud your having these hearings and focusing on this-is how we take this consensus that has been built internationally about a certain set of scientific facts and translate that into political action here in the United States. It is going to take a massive educational effort. It is going to take wise and forceful political leadership, and we need the corporate sector to be part of the solution. We cannot make this a war between politicians and the economy. We have to harness the best creativity of our economy, the best entrepreneurial spirit of our corporations, to implement the solutions.

I believe we can do that and I hope we will do it, Mr. Chairman. The framework is there, but we are going to have to exert enormous political leadership consistent with good common sense in order to make it happen.

So again I thank you for your leadership on this and I look forward to these hearings.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank you, Senator Kerry. Your involvement predates mine by a number of years and that is why it is important for us to work together with other members such as Senator Brownback, who has shown a great interest in the issue as well.

Before we turn to Senator Feinstein, Senator Brownback.

STATEMENT OF HON. SAM BROWNBACK,
U.S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS

Senator BROWNBACK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, John, for your leadership that you have provided on this.

I would like to put my entire opening statement in the record. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection.

Senator BROWNBACK. I just would point out a couple of quick things. No. 1 is Senator Kerry has really encapsulated the issue quite nicely. I would hope that we would focus, not on where we disagree, but where we can move forward and progress. There is a lot of dispute about Kyoto. There is a lot of dispute about how we got to the place we are today. But there is not so much dispute about what we can do of common sense steps today to solve some of these problems and start down the right path.

That is what I see in the panel you have got here, is people talking about some rational steps we can start now moving forward. I have put in two bills, one to deal with carbon sequestration, one on an international basis, one on a domestic basis. The international one would provide tax credits to companies that work to keep land from being developed, particularly rain forest areas that are big carbon sinks.

I am going to be going to Brazil to see one of these projects later this year, and I am hopeful that some other members can go as well. This is where private companies, along with NGO's, the Nature Conservancy, have set aside a very large tract of land. It is good for biodiversity and a number of other purposes, but it is also very good carbon sequestration, a carbon sink.

The second one is in U.S. agriculture, what all we can do in different farming practices to incentivize carbon sequestration and pulling carbon out and not releasing it back up. The science is developing well. You have got one presenter here today that is going to be commenting about that. At Kansas State University they are doing a great deal of research on how we can farm to fix carbon or carbon farming, as it is being referred to.

I put in a bill to incentivize that in the U.S., because I think we have got great promise here as well on pulling carbon out of the air, fixing it into the soil, that it is good for farming and it is good for getting some of the CO2 out of the air.

To me, these are rational, common sense approaches that we can look at and say, well, I do not know about Kyoto Treaty, I do not know about how we got here, but I do know we have got some solutions that we could pretty much all agree on, and that is the track that I would hope we can move down.

I applaud your holding these hearings.

[The prepared statement of Senator Brownback follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. SAM BROWNBACK, U.S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS Mr. Chairman,

I'd like to first thank you for holding this hearing and for your continued persistence on this important topic.

With respect to the issue of Global Climate Change, we must be persistent. That this will be a debate that might affect global weather patterns, we must be persistent. That this will be a debate that will almost certainly affect the future of our national economy, we must be persistent. It is my opinion, that whether our persistence is for the better or worse, will be determined by the extent to which our persistence is tempered by wisdom.

In my faith we are each called on to be both gentle and wise. This advise also strikes me as good counsel for how we are to proceed as we pursue the debate on how this nation will address global climate change.

We must be gentle.