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Issues

Environment

Climate Change Testimony

7 January 2003

U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee testified today at a Climate Change hearing, during which the McCain-Lieberman plan to require U.S. industries to reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases was be unveiled. Some of Inslee's remarks follow:

The U.S. Senate has been caught in the act of leadership today, and we need it. We need it because we need leaders who will not sing Nero's song, which he sang as Rome burned, which was, ``We need more research.'' And you have decided to sing a different song, that of ``We ought to take action.'' And I think if you look back in a few decades, you may find that today's hearing was one of the most important hearings of this Congress.

I just have two comments and perhaps one suggestion.

My first comment is that I believe that what you have proposed is entirely consistent with two basic American values. The first is a basic American value of American realistic common sense. And the second is the basic American value of optimism in our technological abilities.

In the causes of realism and common sense, Americans now are becoming familiar with this graph, which is an absolutely unambiguously, scientifically unchallengeable fact of nature. The concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are not only rising, they are exploding. As you can see, this chart doesn't just rise, it explodes, unless the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House in this Congress take some action. People know, because it's an unambiguous fact that CO2 has some warming propensity, that there's going to be some changes to our climate. And people get that.

And senator, let me tell you how much they get it in my neck of the woods. In the Yakima Valley, which is a largely agricultural producing area, eastern Washington, we've got the Yakima River system. It irrigates apples, peaches, hops -- tremendous agricultural area.

Those folks who drive tractors and figure out their budget have now figured out something else. They have got to spend close to a billion dollars developing new irrigation storage facilities to make up for the snow pack that's going to be gone when the snow level rises in the next several decades. And they are now coming to Congress -- or shortly will be -- to try to help finance this multimillion dollar project to solve this problem.

The reason I mention this is that when people, on a day-to-day basis, factor into their business decision making the necessity of dealing with this problem, it's high time for us to do the same thing in Congress. And we've all heard the apocryphal stories, which are true, of dead Intuit Indians popping up to the surface of the tundra in the Arctic because the tundra is melting and the Polar Ice Cap being 10 percent reduced in scope and 30 to 40 percent already reduced in depth.

You know, in Glacier National Park the dark humor is they're going to need to change the name to Puddle National Park in several decades. And that is a realistic projection of what could happen if we don't act here in Congress.

But the American people are exercising their common sense and realizing that we've simply got to act. Unfortunately, all the U.S. government has offered to date is a voluntary system. We know that you can run a bake sale on a voluntary system. But you can't run a global climate change program on a voluntary system. Your stepping into the breach is very much appreciated. I'm working with a group in the House to try to change the ostrich position to the eagle position when it comes to climate change.

The second comment I want to make, is that this plan is consistent with an American value of optimism. I posit that it is a debate between the optimists and those who are not so optimistic about our technological abilities. Those of us who are optimists believe that the nation who followed John F. Kennedy to the moon can follow the U.S. Senate and the House to some meaningful reduction of global climate change gases.

That's a theory of optimism. And it's well placed.

Look at what British Petroleum did. Here is an American corporation, certainly not an avant-garde environmental outfit. Under the leadership of Chairman Brown, they decided to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels in 11 years. They made a corporate decision and it was a pretty visionary thing for a corporation to do.

And what did they do? They reduced their emissons by 10 percent. And they did it in three years instead of in 11 years. Here is a hard-headed, bottom line corporation, which showed the way to the American business industry that this can be done. This is real world. This isn't simply academia.

So we know that this job can be done.

And I also want to suggest that this is an economic issue. You had the missile gap in the 1960's. You've got a clean technology gap that's widening right now.

Why should the leader in clean cars be Japan? Why should the leader in wind turbine technology be Denmark? Denmark is ahead of the United States on wind turbine technology. Why should the leader in solar cell technology be Germany? We should be the leader in all of these technologies because the world is going to beat a path to the door. And we need some federal leadership to do that.

We're starting to do it in the state of Washington. We've got the Xantrex Corporation making inverters up in Mount Vernon. We've got the largest wind turbine generator in North America in southeastern Washington State.We have the capability. This is an economic development issue.

Let us not forget the national security ramifications of reducing our addiction to foreign oil. There was a study done by the last administration, which concluded that if we had continued our efficiency gains of the late 1990's, we could potentially save five million barrels of oil a day. To put that in perspective, we only import about eight million barrels a day. That's a significant reduction of having to be addicted to the Mideast fuel.

If we adopt the renewable energy technologies that are already available, the studies show we could save three million barrels a day. We have these technologies now. We need some leadership. And I want to thank you.

Third, just a small suggestion. I think it's very important that all of us, when we talk about limiting greenhouse gas emissions, we try to incorporate in our proposals ways to get there. And I hope that, in all of our bills we pass, we'll have a commitment to the R&D budget increase that is necessary from the U.S. federal government to help the emergence of these new technologies. Perhaps this is something we can incorporate in these bills, as we go through, to make sure that we stay on the message of optimism.

In that spirit of optimism and can-do, I want to thank and stand for any questions that I might be able to answer.

U.S. Rep Jay Inslee