We would love to see it, but not at a meeting on the environment and global policy.

Mr. Roth.

Mr. ROTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have to agree with our colleague from Illinois. People are concerned about taxes, and rightly so. We spent most of our time here talking about domestic issues when your expertise is also in international issues. You were in South America when I was there and concerned about the rain forests.

What are we doing diplomatically to resolve that issue? In my opinion, what is happening in the rain forests, that is a real disaster.

Mr. WIRTH. When I was there leading a delegation with the late Senator Heinz and Senator Gore, we sat down with President Sarney of Brazil, the two-times-ago President of Brazil. I brought up the subject of the rain forest and the first thing that President Sarney said was "Why are you here talking to us about the rain forest when you in the United States"-his words-"are wantonly tearing down the last great rain forest in North America," referring to the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska.

There is validity to that, that we have to be sure that we lead not only by rhetoric, but also by example, and slowly but surely we are getting our forest practices in line and slowly but surely we are attempting to remove the subsidies in various areas which lead to very uneconomic practices. We are learning how to do that.

You know how politically and sometimes economically difficult that is, but it is slowly but surely happening. At the same time, our scientific community is working closely with the Brazilian scientific community and not only in the transfer of technology and knowledge, but also in the broad awareness that tearing down the rain forest for agricultural purposes is counterproductive.

As you know, most of the wealth in the rain forest is found in the canopy of the rain forests and not as we have in North American, in the soils. So if you tear down the rain forests, you are losing the wealth in the canopy. The soils are fragile and thin, might raise crops for a couple of years, might support cattle for five or eight and then they are gone.

Teaching, as we must, how to harvest the rain forest, how to prospect in the rain forest, how to use the rain forests more productively is an effort we continue to work on with a country that is increasingly aware of this and increasingly concerned itself about what is happening in its own backyard.

Mr. ROTH. The issue of the rain forest is extremely important to people all around the world. When the President says look what you are doing in Alaska, we are doing a good job of managing our forests. Our loggers, I commend them for the job they are doing. You know, we have to be aware that yes, we are concerned about the spotted owl, but we are also concerned about jobs.

Mr. GEJDENSON. If the gentleman will yield

Mr. ROTH. Yes. What are we-this is in the Senator's department. What are we doing diplomatically now to protect the rain forests?

Mr. WIRTH. We are working with the Brazilian Government. It is their rain forest, not ours. We are working with them to do ev

erything we can to implement the Biodiversity Treaty. We agreed the United States would sign the Biodiversity Treaty, which gives us the opportunity to work more carefully with the Brazilians and others in the examination of the biological wealth that exists in the rain forest and to, in the words of America a hundred years ago, "prospect in the rain forest."

Just as we once prospected for gold in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, we can prospect for biodiversity and biological wealth in the rain forest and learn how to use that productively and harvest the rain forest in a fashion without tearing it down. Mr. ROTH. How about the foreign aid dollars that were going to build a road into the rain forests?

Mr. WIRTH. I am not sure that I know that there were recently dollars that were there. When we were in Brazil and Chile in 1989, there was a major road being built through Amazonia designed to go over the Andes and to the Pacific Coast and in that way to allow the Japanese to have access to the inside of the rain forest which, it was agreed upon, would have been a great tragedy for the rain forests.

We went to President Bush, who spoke to the Japanese leadership, and that road stopped. I think that was the last major road that was being built in the rain forest having the impact that early roads might have. There may be others being begun, but I don't think so. I think we have learned a lot about that and much less of that is going on.

Mr. ROTH. I appreciate President Bush doing that.

I yield.

Mr. GEJDENSON. It is important to note that we have worked on debt-for-nature swaps, and we are currently working on a fund to encourage other countries to join us for nature swaps and retirement funds. However, we should not minimize what you said at the beginning of this process. We argue that we have to keep timber harvesting in the Northwest because lumberjacks need their jobs to maintain the economy of the region.

In the rain forest, people are talking about harvesting crops for survival. We have to recognize that their challenge isn't simply a question of standard of living. We need to work with them to find some way to end the destruction of the rain forests. Environmentalists argue that we are destroying the rain forests with our lifestyles. Or, in the case of the Tongass, we were subsidizing the Japanese devastation of the environment because most of the pulp went to Japan for rayon.

On the other hand, farmers wiping out rain forests are doing it for the survival of their families. I think that in our role as a world leader, we need first to do a better job managing environmental issues here, thereby giving us a stronger moral base with which to lecture other nations regarding their own policies..

Mr. ROTH. When you cut down a tree in Wisconsin or Alaska, you can always replant that tree and you have good forest management through logging; but when you destroy the rain forest, that forest is destroyed.

Mr. GEJDENSON. I think we can finish this debate another time. If you are looking at the rain forest in the Tongass, you can't simply replace the trees. You are destroying a habitat. The structural

damage that kills a habitat also can destroy a species. So I think we have to be a little more sensitive to what we are doing.

Mr. ROTH. One more question for Senator Wirth. What bothers some of us-we want to work with you, but from the testimony we have today and the reason I am asking this question is so you can respond that we have nations, for example, attending the Rio Convention. How many nations were there?

Mr. WIRTH. I think 160-plus nations were in Rio.

Mr. ROTH. Virtually the United States is the only country coming up with specific goals as to how to meet the mandates of the convention. Today you again had mentioned that the United States has to be a role model and we have to make the sacrifices; we have to set the example. We are not asking those other countries to do anything.

It seems we are always coming down on our own people and not asking the other countries to do their share. That bothers me.

Mr. WIRTH. I would be bothered as well if we had reached a time when everybody agreed that action plans are in place and everybody should be taking steps. We are not there yet. The first meeting of the followup to Rio will occur in June in New York, the first 2-week period of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

At that time, all of the parties who are part of that commission will agree upon the criteria and will agree upon the dates and the deadlines for the development of action plans and the way of monitoring those action plans. There is not yet an international agreement on when they should be in place, how we are going to monitor them. That is the next step coming out of Rio, and we are working on that now.

While that is going on in these international fora, we believe that we in the United States do have a responsibility to lead and that as we go and participate in the CSD and other international negotiations, that if we in the United States have our ducks in line, that we are in much better shape not only to exercise our responsibilities as the remaining leader of the world, as the remaining superpower, but also to help show other countries how to get from A to B to C to D.

That process started in the previous administration with the first action plan. We have learned from that and will have a full action plan done by the end of August. We believe that that is the ked of leadership that we ought to exercise and we believe that that is a step in helping the rest of the world come to the goals of reaching the 90 targets by the year 2000 that I think most people agree we would like to get to.

Mr. ROTH. I understand your explanation. I just don't know if I agree with it.

The National Action Plan for Global Climate Change, which I think is very well done, in this chapter on energy production and consumption, they talk about the United States using more energy. Our needs for energy have grown. If we are going to cut the greenhouse gases, does this mean that we are going to have to use less energy?

Mr. WIRTH. We can use energy much more efficiently, as you and I both know. I think the assumption that the only way you can

have economic growth is to have a growth in energy are a set of assumptions that were pretty well dismissed during the 1970's.

After the oil crisis in 1973, we saw the country adapt very dramatically and learn how to use energy much more efficiently. We still have a long way to go.

As I noted earlier, we are still half as efficient as the Germans and the Japanese in the use of energy. If we were as efficient as they are, our economy would be much, much more competitive than it is today.

Mr. ROTH. So we know your goal. What are you striving for? Can you give us a couple of sacrifices we would have to make to fall in line with what you are thinking is?

Mr. WIRTH. I don't know whether you would call them sacrifices or not. We talked earlier about clean car technologies. We believe that that is an enormously promising area for the United States in terms of our technology, in terms of the economy of the country, and for the environment.

We think that there is a great possibility there for the United States to emerge as a dramatic world leader in this set of technologies. We are working on that right now. The automobile companies are very enthusiastic about setting up a partnership.

You heard that discussed in a number of places. That is an example. A second example

Mr. ROTH. A partnership. Does that mean the government will be in partnership with the companies?

Mr. WIRTH. The research and development done by the U.S. Government increases on a steady basis in various areas, and we have done that for a long time, in computer technologies, in energy technology, in science and technology, ship building in Connecticut, in a variety of places and would hope to continue to do so. I suspect there is probably a significant amount of U.S. Government research and development related to the dairy industry in Wisconsin. I can't speak to that for sure. So there is nothing new about this partnership. It is a matter of where we focus it and are we willing to look at long term targets of opportunity.

Mr. ROTH. But I thought the President was interested in downsizing the government, downsizing our Government.

Mr. GEJDENSON. I think the President talked about a partnership. If you look at what we have done in the last 20 years, I can remember when the automobile companies said you could never get to a car that had 25 or 30 miles per gallon. Think about the 1960's when automobiles regularly got 6 and 8 miles to the gallon. Although some may argue that the consumer will be harmed by a Btu tax, when we increase the efficiency of his automobile by 15 percent, any increase in the cost per gallon of gasoline is more than compensated for.

When I had my first car in 1966 I paid 35 cents per gallon of gasoline, but got only 6 or 7 miles on each gallon. Today I pay $1.25 for a gallon of gasoline, but I average around 22 or 23 miles per gallon. As you can see, it is a lot less expensive to use gasoline than it was in 1966.

Mr. Manzullo.

Mr. MANZULLO. That is because you had a Cadillac. I had a Ford Falcon in 1964 that got 25 miles a gallon and gasoline was 17 cents a gallon.

Mr. GEJDENSON. The gentleman needs to check not just his tax facts, but also my driving facts. I had a Mustang GT, which got just as bad mileage.

Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Wirth, I appreciate your coming here this afternoon. I do have a suggestion in terms of the research that I think is long overdue. There is obviously a delicate balance between growth and consumption of energy and the environment.

My wife is a microbiologist. We have a game preserve on our farm in conjunction with a small cattle operation, the two exist side by side. One of the things I would like to see the administration do is an environmental impact study on people's lives as they are reflected whenever any type of energy taxes are increased.

For example, energy taxes will increase the cost of bus fares. It keeps going down the line. Energy taxes will increase for example the cost that my brother charges for food at his restaurant because he has to pay more to the people trucking food to his restaurant. He has to raise prices in order to offset the price increase to him.

So we are in a situation where raising the cost of energy in order to conserve energy puts us in a situation where we may have spiraling inflation. We may have people pushed to the wall where they cannot afford to pay any more for the energy than they are presently paying.

I appreciate the tough stance that you are taking for the environment. I would suggest that people are part of the environment also, and the impact of taxes has to be weighed upon the people of this nation.

Thank you very much for coming.

Mr. WIRTH. Thank you very much. I know the President agrees with you. We have to be very careful about the impact on people, the impact of the deficit, and the impact of interest rates are very significant indeed. If we are not able to alleviate that burden it will be enormously difficult for our children and grandchildren to enjoy the level of living that all of us in this generation have had.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you for your efforts here today and your work in the past. We look forward to working with you. We have a significant challenge ahead of us, but this challenge is also a great opportunity to leave a better planet for our children and our grandchildren, and to make our industries more efficient and more competitive. The President could not have chosen a person better than you to instill confidence in us that the job will be completed successfully.

Mr. WIRTH. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. Congressman Roth and Congressman Manzullo, thank you.

[Whereupon, at 3:00 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]