Climate Change
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, today, the world leaders, more than 100, are gathered in Paris to talk about an existential threat to all of us. This is not just the Syria issue, it is not just Iraq, it is not just terrorism, but it is about this planet's ability to continue to sustain life as we know it. It is about climate change.
Here in Washington, it is as though it is a different universe, not the universe in which we live, but a completely different one.
What I want to do is to basically cover this issue today of climate change. Let's start with the underlying problem, the emission of carbon into our atmosphere.
For thousands and thousands of years, the atmospheric carbon has remained below 300 parts per million. This little spike here at the end--this year we reached 400 parts per million, and the consensus of scientists around the world is that this level of carbon will significantly increase the ambient air temperature of the world and the temperatures of the ocean, having a profound effect on the world's ability to sustain itself, like the production of food.
The last 2 years--2014 and this year--are going to be the hottest ever recorded in recent centuries. What does that mean? Well, it means that the ice in Greenland is rapidly melting, as it is in the Arctic Ocean as well as Antarctic. Sea levels are rising and will continue to rise both because of the melting ice and the warmer temperature of the ocean, which causes the water to expand.
All of this is a serious problem for us if we care about the production of food and if we care about our ability to survive. Here in Washington, yesterday, on the floor of this House of Representatives, it was a different universe.
It was not the universe in which we live. It was not the planet on which we live. It was some very, very strange place, because yesterday the majority in the House of Representatives passed two pieces of legislation that would wipe out the Clean Power Act, an effort by the administration to reduce the production of coal energy here in the United States.
Now, there is a problem in the rest of the world with the use of coal, and we still have that problem here in the United States.
In The Washington Post yesterday there was a picture of Beijing, China. You couldn't even see across the street. The article goes on to say that it is principally from the production of coal.
So while we have a chance here in the United States--and we have been at this for many years, reducing the effect of coal and the production of coal both in terms of pollution as well as in terms of its carbon emissions--the House of Representatives, the majority party, yesterday voted to take not a step, but to take a whole mile backwards and eliminate the ability and the effort of this Nation to continue to reduce our consumption of coal and the pollution that is caused from there.
Not only that, Mr. Speaker, but today, maybe tomorrow, we will be taking up H.R. 8, a bill that would again turn us away from the world problem and the solutions to it and to take a mighty step back into the last century. H.R. 8 is said to be energy security. Well, it is the security of the coal and oil industry to be sure, but not the security of our Nation's ability to survive in a climate-changed environment.
It does, in fact, increase the production and the use of coal. It does, in fact, allow for the export of oil. We want to be energy independent, but this legislation would allow the export of oil without any regulation at all and without any consideration for the American economy or the American automobile user.
We are going in the wrong direction here. We ought to recognize, as 120 leaders in Paris are recognizing today, that we have a serious climate problem. We must address it not with the policies that we are seeing here on the floor of the House of Representatives this week, in complete denial of what is happening around the world.
Mr. Speaker, it is time for us to wake up. It is time for us to be aware of what is happening.
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