Fiscal Year 2000 Climate Change Budget Authorization Request

oratory, Arthur Ď. Little, Inc., April 1999 .... Our Changing Planet: The U.Ś. Global Change Research Program-FY 2000 Implementation Plan and Budget_Overview, Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Committee on Environment and Natural Re

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FISCAL YEAR 2000 CLIMATE CHANGE BUDGET

AUTHORIZATION REQUEST

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1999

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT,

Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:20 a.m., in room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ken Calvert (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.

Chairman CALVERT (presiding). The hearing will come to order.

Before we have our regular order of business and my opening statement and the gentleman from Illinois' opening statement, I would like to recognize the Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Sensenbrenner, for some remarks.

Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Let me say that I think the Administration's elaborately tuned lobbying for their Global Warming Treaty that will end up selling out American consumers and American jobs is beginning to unravel. We've heard time and time again of all of the prophets of doom and gloom, that the planet is about ready to be fried. And yet, in October 1998, Dr. James Hanson, who is the same NASA scientist who brought forth claims that global warming would bring catastrophic temperature increases declared in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences that predicting global temperature with climate models is all but impossible with today's science. Specifically, he said that, "The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy significant to define future climate change.”

Now here is NASA's chief scientist who has gone back on previous statements relative to the effects of global climate change that the Kyoto Protocol is supposed to do away with, with a magic wand.

Finally, I want to briefly address one other issue relative to today's hearing that I find troubling and that is the lack of timely access to the information and schedules from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which is also used extensively by supporters of the Kyoto Protocol.

I raised the IPCĆ issue with Dr. Lane, whom I am glad to see . here today, in early January. And last week, he responded that he had forwarded this concern to the Chairman of the IPCC and urged him to take better advantage of the Internet to make IPCC documents and information more easily accessible and available. It took

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almost 3 months to get that response, which really is nothing but an urging. I would simply note that it has been 3 months since I raised the issue, and the Chairman of the IPCC has taken no action. I don't know why they want to play "I've got a secret," but this is unacceptable and raises a number of questions about the objectivity of the entire IPCC process, a process that I expect the Subcommittee will examine in detail at a future hearing.

And I thank the gentleman from California for giving me this time to make these few constructive words to start this hearing out.

Chairman CALVERT. I thank the Chairman.

Today, the Subcommittee will consider the President's Fiscal Year 2000 budget request for climate change. The Administration is asking for more than $4.14 billion for a variety of spending as well as tax incentive and grant programs across several federal departments and agencies. This includes: $200 million for the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Partnership Fund; nearly $1.4 billion for Climate Change Technology Initiative spending programs, mostly funded by the Department of Energy and EPA; almost $400 million for CCTI tax incentives; $400 million in other DOE-funded climate-related programs, including coal and natural gas R&D and weatherization and state energy grants; and, lastly, $1.8 billion for the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Last year, the Administration signed the Kyoto Protocol, but has yet to submit it to the United States Senate for ratification. In the meantime, the Congress has forbidden the use of any funds that implement the protocol. Today, I want to examine whether or not any of these funds are intended to pursue activities, either explicitly or implicitly, prohibited by the United States Congress.

Gentlemen, as much as I enjoy your company, I am sad to say that I cannot find anything in this budget proposal that is much different from the request that Congress, in large part, rejected last year—with the exception being the U.S. Global Change Research Program. However, the size and scope of this request still concerns me as do the statements presented by DOE and EPA, which were not only late in being submitted, but also devote nearly as much space to attacking the Energy Information Administration as they do in justifying their own budgets.

Since the Administration is barred from implementing or preparing for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol before it is ratified, how can these funds be spent without violating the will of Congress? What goals are to be achieved? And is this proposal anything but a backdoor attempt to implement Kyoto?

I also think it is important to consider what other countries are spending on climate change. Last Friday, Vice President Gore announced that the Administration was giving $100 million to the People's Republic of China to allow them to buy U.S.-made environmental technologies. How much of this $100 million is going to be funded by the Administration's climate change budget proposal? And how much is the Chinese government willing to spend on their own? Perhaps China could redirect some of its own funds currently used for spying in the United States to reducing its own carbon emissions.

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