Posted by Matt Dempsey matt_dempsey@epw.senate.gov

Video and Transcript of Kerry 30 Minute Opening Statement at EPW Hearing 

Senator KERRY:

Well, Madam Chairman, thank you very, very much. Thanks for the privilege of appearing before this committee.

Senator Inhofe and all the members of the committee, many of whom I've met with individually, talking about this -- excuse me -- and all of whom I really want to sit down with and talk about this, because we need to find the path forward.

I -- I listened carefully, Senator Inhofe, to your comments, and I will address some of them as I -- as I go along, and I'd like to.

But I want to thank Chairman Boxer first of all for her passionate, determined, inspirational leadership on this issue. She has been a gracious and invaluable collaborator in this effort, and I am personally grateful to her, as are many people, for her effort to push this along.

You may disagree with her, but she is determined to try to put America in the right place on this issue, and I hope in the course of this -- these hearings, we'll all understand how we're doing that.

Today we begin the formal legislative process to lead the world in rolling back the urgent threat of climate change. I believe, and the vast majority, overwhelming numbers of scientists and peer- reviewed studies across the globe, leaders of countries across the globe, presidents, prime ministers, finance ministers, environment ministers all across the planet have all determined that we need to move forward to deal with climate change and that in doing so, Senator Inhofe, we will actually improve every sector of our energy economy from coal to nuclear to wind and solar.

We will take crucial strides towards energy independence, which strengthens America's national security. And critically, we will create millions of jobs, new jobs, and entire new industries will stay in the United States of America. We will create jobs that cannot be exported, because we will create our energy here at home, which makes America stronger at which in fact strengthens our competitive posture.

It's no surprise that somebody like Jim Rogers, who runs a multi- billion-dollar company, a CEO Fortune 500 company, Duke Energy, is one of the leaders. He's the chairman of America's Competitiveness Council. He's responsible in that capacity for creating jobs and for making America more competitive, and he is one of the leaders in saying that we need to set a fixed target of pollution reduction in order to challenge our economy and in order to grow our economy for the future and remain competitive.

Now, we're not going to do these things if we don't have an aggressive, forward-looking climate and energy combined piece of legislation. Let me share with you very quickly. I'm not going to spend much time on this, but I do want to share with you why there is an urgency to this.

Senator Inhofe, you just talked about the costs of doing some of this. Are there some costs? Yes, sir. There are some costs. But almost every study that looks at the cost does not factor in the impact of energy efficiency or the impact of new technology or what the impact is of becoming more energy independent.

And most importantly, they none of them factor in the cost of doing nothing. That's far more expensive for your folks in Oklahoma or for your folks in any of the other states represented on this panel.

So we need to be honest and realistic as we assess how we in fact best protect the interests of our country. There's a reason that the leaders of the G-20 in Italy recently affirmed that we cannot let the temperature of the planet rise more than two degrees Centigrade.

And the reason is that all of our best scientists in peer- reviewed studies tell us that if it goes over two percent -- two degrees Centigrade, we risk catastrophic changes to the climate, to our crops, to our water supply, to the ocean currents, to the ecosystems that we depend on.

And I will say to you the science, Senators, is more definitive than ever. The science is screaming at us to take action. A few years ago the scientists told us that the Arctic ice would be melted perhaps by 2030. It is not going to be summer ice-free by 2013, and already Russia has gone ahead and planted a flag underneath the ocean to say, "We have the right to take these minerals out of here," because they have an ability because it's ice-free to be able to go up there and do that.

There are huge conflicts that will come out of what we are allowing to happen without addressing it adequately. In -- in the 21 years that we've had hearing on this in the Senate, Al Gore and I shared the privilege of having the first hearings on this in 1988 when Jim Hansen first told us that it was happening, and the evidence is now clearer than ever before that a voluntary approach just doesn't work.

We went down to Rio with President George Herbert Walker Bush, a Republican administration, with the efforts of John Sununu and Bill Riley, put in place a voluntary framework for global effort to reduce emissions, because in 1992 we determined that we needed to do this. What happened?

In every country in the world, emissions have gone up faster than is allowable to meet the two degree Centigrade standard. And it's because voluntary doesn't work. Everybody's waiting for the next person to move. Nobody wants to sort of curve in their economy as -- as you have said, Senator Inhofe, because they are afraid they'll be noncompetitive.

But the consequences of that are -- are really traumatic. The best experts tell us that the last 10 years have been the hottest decade on record in -- in -- since we've kept records of temperature. Our oceans have become 30 percent more acidic, and that has a profound impact on the spawning grounds and on the krill that feed the whales and on the cycle of the oceans.

Pine needles -- pine beetles have destroyed 6.5 million acres of forest land in the western states. I recently listened to Governor Ritter from Colorado come in and tell us how in Colorado alone they've lost a million acres, because beetles that used to die off because it got cold now don't die off, and so the cycle has changed.

One hundred eighty Alaskan villages are losing permafrost, literally melting the ground beneath their homes and feet, the citizens of Newtok, Alaska. Ask Lisa Murkowski. Ask, you know, Mark Begich. They'll tell you what's happening in Alaska. The citizens of Newtok, Alaska, recently voted to move their village inland because of the rise of sea level and the lack of sea ice in the winter, and that's at a cost of some $400 million.

The fact is that there is enormous melt-off of our glaciers in the western part of our country. Water supply is already at issue. The principal supply to American agriculture is at issue. And the rivers around the world are at issue.

The Chinese have taken enormous note this. I was in China two months ago. They are fearful that the great rivers of China, the Yangtze, the Yellow River, are going to dry up -- the Mekong. And that affects a billion people and the agriculture of their nation.

Southwestern states in our country are projected now to experience permanent drought conditions by mid-century. And the area that's burned by western wildfires is projected to nearly triple.

The fact is that the Siberian ice shelf study, which just came out this last year, shows that because the permafrost lived is melting because the oceans are getting warmer, we have columns of methane rising now in the ocean. And if you were to stand at the place where those bubbles of methane actually burst out into the open air and light a match, it would ignite. Methane is 20 times more dangerous and damaging than carbon dioxide, then CO2.

So we have an enormous challenge facing us in order to be able to do this, and all of the scientists who -- in these peer-reviewed studies are telling us that these changes may be irreversible for a thousand years.

You know, an organization as innocent as the Audubon Society has reported that there is now a 100-mile swath of -- of wide belt in the United States where there is a transformation in the -- in what plants -- and flowers and bushes and shrubs and so forth will grow in America. There's already a migration that has been predicted by many scientists.

So that is why, Madam Chairman, the countries of the world -- and there are many other impacts; I'm not going to go into all of them here and now -- but that's why the countries of the world, including India, China and the United States, have agreed to limit this global rise to two degrees Celsius.

Now, why is that so critical? Because the current warming level of -- of Earth, scientists tell us, is already at about .8 degrees since the Industrial Revolution, and what is already out there in the -- in the atmosphere, which we can't get out, has a half-life -- that is, it will continue to do the damage it's doing today for another thousand years, perhaps.

That means that what we've put up there that has done the damage that has raised the temperature .8 degrees is guaranteed to raise that at least another .8 degrees. That means we're going to be at almost certainly 1.6 degrees Centigrade before we even do anything, Madam Chairman. And that gives us a question of about .4 degrees before you reach the two degrees, which they say could result in catastrophe.

Now, I can't tell you that it absolutely is. I can't sit here and tell you with certainty that I know the answer to that. But I can tell you as a public person that if the best scientific minds we have in the world in peer-reviewed studies are all in unity telling us this is the potential consequence, I think is public people we have a responsibility to try to respond.

And if we're -- if we're wrong, you know, we will have created new jobs, become more energy independent, moved to the point of having better health in America, and -- and increased the -- the security of the United States. If we're -- if we're right and someone else is wrong and we haven't done anything, the results are obviously absolutely catastrophic. That's the balance here.

Now, I believe there's a workable mechanism to get this done, Madam Chairman. And if you -- if you look at our legislation, we ask America to do our part, and we have to work, obviously, to convince others to do theirs.

Let me make it clear that by putting this target in place, I believe we will attract private investment and spur a new industrial revolution in America. We had the great movement of wealth, if you will, in the 1990s when we moved to the tech economy. That's an economy that was about $1 trillion large, and it had about a billion users.

What we're looking at now is an economy where most estimates say it is a $6 trillion economy with six billion users. Energy economy is the mother of all economies, and right now the United States of America is watching China, watching Germany, watching India and other countries race to this marketplace at the expense of the jobs of our nation.

I believe that the pollution reduction measures that are in this bill are very tightly focused for maximum impact. And -- and I want to emphasize that, you know, that some people argue the effect on the economy.

Senator Inhofe, you've raised this. U.S. unemployment, et cetera, why kill more jobs? I have a report here. It's a compilation of reports, different reports by the Center for American Progress, by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, by the energy efficient -- American Council for Energy Efficient Economy, by the College of Natural Resources at the University of California Berkeley.

Every single one of these analyses -- we've done them for each of your states for everyone of you on this committee, and we'll do them for everybody in the Senate -- they showed net creation of jobs in every one of your states.

They show net increase of investment and money moving into your states -- in Idaho, for instance, 7,000 to 14,000 jobs net, according to the University of Berkeley. According to the American Council for Energy, by 2020 2,200 jobs created from energy efficient measures, a savings of $226, by 2030 2,900 jobs created, $700 million. According to the Center for American Process (sic), $700 million will come into Idaho alone, creating 8,000 jobs.

There's a variation here, but there isn't one of these that doesn't suggest an increase of jobs and increase of investment. We're going to create the equivalent of five or 10 Google equivalents that are going to drive the economy of our country.

And that's why people like DuPont, Dow Chemical, Florida Power Light, American Power -- the Florida Power Light, Duke Energy, Cisco Systems, some of the largest companies in America, are all saying, "Do this. Give us a market certainty on the price of carbon. Give us a system where you'll help us to transition."

Now, I want to -- I want to just say a word about that, if I can. Senator Inhofe, this is not economy-wide. Only 7,500 entities in the United States of America are covered by this legislation. Ninety- eight percent of America's small business is exempt. Agriculture is exempt. Transportation is exempt. Small business is exempt.

So you may say to yourself, "Well, what do you do with that other 2 percent?" Well, the fact is that that 2 percent represents three-quarters of America's greenhouse gas emissions.

We are only talking about creating a marketplace between entities that pollute more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. That is the equivalent of the output of 2,300 homes, or 4,600 automobiles, or 130 railway cars full of coal. It exempts office buildings, apartments, homes, malls, stadiums, small firms.

We have to be able to find it in our capacity to reduce pollution from 2 percent of America's businesses that represent 75 percent of America's pollution.

Now, let me say another reason we need to do this. Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil are a significant threat to our national security. There's nothing conservative about remaining indebted to hostile regimes for our energy.

Doubters often talk about the cost of taking action. But I have to tell you, every analysis shows that the cost of not taking action is more expensive. If we think that it's good for America to send $400 billion a year to other countries, so we can put stuff up into the atmosphere that costs us even more to fix, we're crazy. We'd be far better off moving more rapidly the creation of that energy here at home.

Eleven former admirals and high-ranking generals issued a seminal report warning that climate change is a, quote, threat multiplier with the potential to create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today. And John Warner, who will testify, our former colleague -- there's no greater security advocate for the United States -- speaks eloquently about this, as have others.

General Zinni, former CENTCOM commander, said this is going to cost us lives. It's going to cost us the deployment of the American military, because of the crises that will ensue as a consequence of allowing this to go unaddressed.

It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity and human displacement on a staggering scale. And the result is, we risk fanning the flames of failed statism.

Madam Chairman, you can see this today in Africa. Right now, there is fighting between tribes in the Sudan, because they had been forced to move because of the lack of water and the desertification that has taken place. So they move into another area, fight for water, fight for location, and the result is conflict and the destabilization of a whole region.

In an interconnected world, that threatens all of us. And I think you'll hear this from Senator Warner.

Let me quote Anthony Zinni directly. He said, "We will pay the price later in military terms, and that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."

Fourth issue, Madam Chairman, America's leadership is significantly on the line here. Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, the European Community, Japan, Australia have all committed to significant emissions reductions.

Last month, Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged to reduce China's emissions below projected levels. India is working on its own domestic legislation to reduce pollution. It is a myth that China and India have been sitting on the sidelines.

I was just in China. Let me tell you, they've tripled their wind goals and targets. They've determined to be the world's leader in electric automobiles. They are now the world's leader in solar production and in battery storage, et cetera. They have moved to put transportation restrictions on their automobiles -- more strict than the ones that we have in this country, and they've put them in place faster.

And the fact is that they are coming to the negotiating table with an agreement that they will be a constructive and positive force at Copenhagen.

Fifth, the economic opportunities that stare us in the face are enormous. There are millions of jobs, major improvements to every sector of our economy. But I'm telling you, Madam Chairman, if we hang back, you can tell what's happening.

Today, of the five top 30 companies of the world in solar, wind and advanced batteries, only five are based in the United States of America. We invented solar. We invented wind. And we pulled back, and we allowed those technologies to be developed and taken from laboratory to shelf by other countries.

Germany now has created 280,000 new renewable energy jobs, and actually employs more people in its renewable energy sector than in the legendary German auto industry. That's the future.

Wind energy alone can bring tremendous benefits. I'll give you an example.

The state of North Dakota -- and I've talked to Byron Dorgan about this -- the state of North Dakota is ranked by the Wind Power Energy Association as number one wind potential in the United States of America. It is currently number 24 in terms of its production.

Though its regular economy has grown by about 2 percent over the course of the last few years, its energy, renewable energy sector has grown by about 19 percent. That represents the kind of growth in each of your states, if you'll take a look at the analysis of these studies.

In Montana, there's a plan to build a $25 million wind turbine manufacturing plant in Butte, with scientists who are trained at Montana Tech.

In Pennsylvania, the wind turbine manufacturer, Gamesa, has invested over $175 million and put over 1,100 Pennsylvanians to work.

In Norman, Oklahoma, there's a 30-year-old, family-owned company that has become the third largest manufacturer of small wind turbines in the world, with installations in all 50 states and over 100 countries. That business can grow and compete with the Chinese. And that's just a few examples from what comes from a clean energy sector.

Now, I understand there's some concern in the Senate that the process is moving too quickly. I'll put aside my own feelings that a process that began over 20 years ago is actually moving too quickly. That could happen only by Senate standards, frankly.

But within the constraints of the Senate, what's happening here in this committee is just one step. There are five other committees. They're all working. The Energy Committee has done part, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Agriculture Committee, et cetera.

By the time this gets to the floor, a comprehensive energy and climate bill will include the inputs from six Senate committees. And the foundation of all that work has to come through this committee first.

Now, I'll just close. You've been very generous in allowing me the time here.

Let me just close and say, OK, so, why put a target that's mandatory on the reduction of emissions? Some people argue it would be cleaner to have a carbon tax. Well, it might be cleaner.

But I don't believe that you will change behavior with a tax at the level that you might, under some miracle, be able to pass in the Senate. I doubt that there are enough people here who would vote for a tax of any kind.

And therefore, to say you're going to change behavior, you're going to have to have a tax that's high enough to force companies to be able to reduce emissions, because they're going to say, "Whoops. This is too costly. We've got to go find a different way to behave, and we're going to invest in the different technologies."

So, I don't think it's going to work, which is why companies that are big companies have decided to support the idea of a targeted pollution reduction, mandatory reduction. Because it allows them, if they've been good performers and they've reduced their emissions, they can take the difference between where they're at and the emissions target, and sell it to another company that can't yet meet the target or wants to be able to continue its current practices.

That's the marketplace, folks. That's classic American capitalism. It's classic marketplace capacity.

There isn't a dime of public dollar in that. There's not one tax dollar in that. It's not a government-run program.

It's a private company deciding that it wants to behave this way or that way. And depending which way it decides to behave, it gets an asset that is worth something, or it sells the asset. It can buy it and continue to pollute for a period of time while it transitions to a place where they're willing to invest to meet the target.

So, I would just say to all of my colleagues, I respect the passion on this committee. I'm happy to answer any questions.

I think we have to believe in America's technology ability. I do.

We saw this in 1990 with the Clean Air Act. I'll just end on this note. I sat in that room and negotiated with John Sununu and President Bush and Bill Riley (ph), and we heard the same arguments. Everybody said it's going to cost $8 billion, and you're going to bankrupt us, and you'll make us noncompetitive, and we can't do it.

The environment community came in and said, "No, no, no. That's just those studies that sort of exaggerate things. It's going to cost $4 billion, and it'll take four years. And we can do it."

To the credit of George Herbert Walker Bush, he decided to do it. And guess what. We achieved our goals within about a year-and-a-half to two years at the cost of about $1.5 billion to $2 billion. Why? Because nobody has the ability to predict what happens when you set a target, and American ingenuity and genius begins to move to create the technologies and find the solutions to meet that target.

I believe that is exactly what is going to happen here, if we'll have the courage to set the goal and lead the world. And if we do that, I believe we're going to, in 10, 15 years, not only see that we've met the challenge of climate change, but we've improved the health in America, we've created more jobs, we've strengthened American security, we've met our environment responsibility, and we are more energy independent.

Tell me a public policy choice where you get five benefits for one choice. There are very, very few of them.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.