Lugar Speech to Environmental Defense Board of Trustees

In a speech to the Environmental Defense Board of Trustees in Washington, D.C. on May 9, 2007, U. S. Sen. Dick Lugar reported the potential for Congress to make progress on numerous environmental fronts. Specifically, Lugar addressed climate change, the Farm Bill and the Law of the Sea Treaty.

Below is the full text of the speech:

It is a pleasure to be with you today to discuss issues of mutual concern. I appreciate very much the creative work of Environmental Defense on numerous issues of importance to our nation and our world.

In the last Congress, Environmental Defense worked closely with me and my Foreign Relations Committee staff to improve the anti-corruption practices of the World Bank and the other Multi-lateral Development Banks. Environmental Defense's talented professional staff delivered expert testimony before the Committee and offered numerous briefings on bank-funded projects. In conjunction with these efforts, I introduced a Multilateral Development Bank reform bill that was signed into law in 2005. This legislation recognizes that corruption in development bank lending often can have severe environmental consequences. My work on anti-corruption continues, and I look forward to future endeavors with Environmental Defense on this important topic.

Although making environmental progress through public policy is often a frustrating enterprise, I believe the overall sweep of environmental history is not destined to move in negative directions. Environmental setbacks can and do happen, but they are not inevitable. The human spirit possesses remarkable abilities and energies that can be brought to bear on our conditions.

Admittedly, solutions rarely come in neat packages. As Dr. Martin Luther King observed: "All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem." Sometimes we achieve technological breakthroughs only to be frustrated for years by political or social arguments over their application. But rarely are environmental solutions and advancements out of reach if visionary people commit themselves to a determined effort to succeed.

With this sense of optimism, I report to you today that Congress has the potential to make great progress on numerous environmental fronts. Even in cases where legislation is not passed, we have opportunities to build bipartisan coalitions behind more robust environmental stewardship and innovation.

Climate Change

This is particularly true in debate on climate change, where individuals and groups representing increasingly divergent outlooks are becoming engaged in the campaign for an effective response. Our scientific understanding of climate change has advanced significantly. We have better computer models, more measurements and more evidence -- from the shrinking polar caps to expanding tropical disease zones for plants and humans -- that the problem is real and is exacerbated by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.

This morning, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony from leaders of the Military Advisory Board to the Center for Naval Analysis. They had produced a report detailing the risks of climate change to our national security. These former high ranking military officers studied climate change as a problem for defense strategists. They asserted in their report that the drought, famine, disease, and mass migration that could accompany climate change have great potential to stimulate regional and even global conflict.

This type of examination of climate change demonstrates the degree to which the problem is being taken seriously by those whose primary focus is not the environment. Similarly, an increasing number of major corporations are joining climate change coalitions out of concern for long-term economic stability, and a growing number of religious organizations are embracing anti-climate change activities as an element of moral stewardship of the earth for future generations.

I have urged the Bush Administration and my colleagues in Congress to return to an international leadership role on the issue of climate change. Along with Senator Biden, I have co-sponsored S. Res. 30, a resolution that advocates U.S. participation in multi-lateral forums that attempt to achieve global solutions to the problem of greenhouse gases. The resolution passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a voice vote and may soon come to the Senate floor.

Senator Biden and I see this resolution as a vehicle that would expand common ground in a debate that, too often, has been polarized. Supporting the resolution would not require skeptical Senators to suspend all doubts regarding the pace, severity, or causes of climate change. S. Res. 30 states plainly that any negotiated outcome should be in the national security and economic interests of the United States. It acknowledges that greenhouse gas emissions of developing countries will soon surpass those of developed countries and that a successful agreement will require both developed and developing nations to be involved. But passage of the resolution would be a clear expression of the Legislative Branch's intent that the United States act as a global leader in climate change discussions.

In my view, even those who are skeptical of prevailing climate change science should recognize that absenting ourselves from climate change talks is counterproductive. Many nations and businesses across the globe are moving to respond to climate change in innovative ways. How the United States participates in these efforts will profoundly affect our diplomatic standing, our economic potential, and our national security.

We also should recognize that many of the most important steps that could be taken by the United States to address climate change would yield benefits for other U.S. priorities, especially, bolstering energy security, generating export markets for high technology industries, strengthening our rural economy, and improving air quality.

Farm Bill

Another opportunity in this Congress for environmental progress is the re-authorization of farm programs. As some of you know, I have long advocated a complete overhaul of U.S. farm policy, and I will do so again this year. My office has had the benefit of many excellent insights from the professional staff at Environmental Defense as we have developed and refined this plan.

Current Federal Farm Programs target payments to a relatively narrow sector of American farmers. Most commodity programs provide direct payments to farmers regardless of commodity prices. In addition, the Federal Government provides payments to farmers based on arbitrary statutory price levels. The bulk of farm payments are made to growers of just five crops. Cotton, rice, corn, wheat, and soybean farmers receive about 85 percent of the annual payments provided by U.S. taxpayers. Notably, about 70 percent of these payments go to only 10 percent of our nation's farmers.

Undoubtedly, these programs support the viability of some family farms. But the farm subsidy system is inequitable, inefficient, and disconnected to the core goal of maintaining a family farm safety net. It is also self-perpetuating, in that it stimulates over production and stagnant prices that produce calls for greater government support. I believe that what we need is a true safety net that would embrace all farmers, avoid incentives to overproduce commodities when market signals do not exist, and lower costs for taxpayers.

The Lugar plan would provide a buyout to farmers who currently receive subsidies, ending federal crop subsidies as we know them. Growing bio-energy demand has helped stimulate strong grain prices that are revolutionizing the rural economy. We have an opportunity now, while grain prices are high, to reinvent the future for American agriculture.

The buyout funds would be distributed over the first years of the Farm Bill and would increasingly be placed in individual tax deferred Risk Management Accounts, which farmers could access when revenues fall below historic levels. Farmers also could use these funds to purchase risk management policies and invest in value-added enterprises that increase the profitability of their farms. The Lugar bill would allow farmers to insure against bad weather and other systemic risks through revenue based insurance and mitigate shallow losses through the Risk Management Accounts. Beyond the initial buy-out payments, all farmers would be able to contribute their own funds to their individual accounts. To provide a powerful environmental incentive, federal conservation payments would continue for farmers who embrace environmentally sensitive farming techniques and other conservation practices.

The plan has the added advantage of saving federal resources, which would be invested in conservation activities, nutrition programs, bio-energy research, and deficit reduction.

Law of the Sea

I would mention one more legislative item on which environmental advocacy could make a difference this year. This is the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea. After years of inaction and stalemate, the Senate has a genuine opportunity to pass this environmentally important treaty. Ratification of the Law of the Sea has near universal support from environmental groups and ocean-related industries. It is strongly supported by the Navy and has been endorsed by President Bush. As Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I brought the treaty to a committee vote in 2004. It passed 19-0, only to be blocked on the floor of the Senate.

Ratification of this treaty is vital to U.S. leadership in global ocean policy. Virtually the entire world has ratified the Law of the Sea Convention and abides by its provisions. Until we ratify it, we will be left out of discussions related to critical ocean policy, including navigation issues, seabed resource issues, and claims made by other nations to Arctic waters. If you are not familiar with Law of the Sea, I would urge you to study the treaty and consider how you might become involved, because this is an issue that may be decided this year by a thin margin in the Senate.

Safeguarding the environment should not be viewed as a zero-sum decision, in which limited resources must be diverted away from programs that more directly impact our immediate well-being. To the contrary, the environment is interlinked with our national security, our economy, our energy supplies, our diplomacy, and other elements of national welfare. It is up to us to thread all of these elements together and make potent arguments for a cohesive and creative environmental policy. I am optimistic that together we can do so.