Paris Agreement is Fundamentally Flawed

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Part of what happened was that they danced through a lot of different hoops to try to make sure that they didn't have to have it be a treaty. If they could at least make the argument that it was not a treaty, because they knew they couldn't get Senate confirmation.

And, in fact, the Democrat champion, Senator Pell, who was the chairman at the time of the appropriate committee, actually put in their committee report that should there later be a conference--and they were talking about the original conference that we had entered into, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which this is not an extension of--many people say it is, but they had to adopt all new rules and all new aspects, because they knew they couldn't just add this on to the original one.

But Senator Pell says, ``The committee notes that a decision by the conference of the parties''--referencing the U.N. commission--``to adopt targets and timetables would have to be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent before the United States could deposit its instruments of ratification for such an agreement.''

Now, the Paris accord, the Paris treaty, ostensibly says that there are targets and timetables. But even the Democrats recognized in 1992 that if you were to put in targets and timetables, you had to have that document submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent. So, a decision by the conference to adopt targets and timetables would have to be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent before the United States could deposit its instruments of ratification for such an agreement.

Clearly, they anticipated that someday there might be timetables and targets and they wanted to make sure that everybody knew that in 1992, just because we joined that conference, did not mean that we had agreed to later being bound to timetables and targets.

Now, we are doing very well on those timetables and targets without having announced we are leaving. And even if we are not a member of the Paris accord, agreement, treaty, whatever you end up calling it, we are doing very well at reducing our carbon footprint.

The Chinese are producing about twice as much carbon dioxide as we are today. They have the number two economy and we have the number one economy per job, and from a production standpoint we are doing a lot better. They are not even bound until 2030 under this so-called treaty agreement. But it is very clear that in order to bind us to anything, it had to be approved by the Senate and it has not been approved by the Senate.

So, what we are arguing about, in essence, is merely a political point for the people on the other side of the aisle, because these targets, as they currently exist without ratification from the Senate, are merely suggestions. We are doing what we can in a reasonable way. We need to do more on research so that we can continue to have the jobs and have the wealth and be the number one economic nation and continue to reduce our carbon footprint.

Now, I've got to tell you, I get a little amazed sometimes at some of these folks, because the World Bank decided they weren't going to invest in any more coal-fired power plants--now I know I am going off subject, but let me run. The World Bank decided they weren't going to invest in any more coal-fired power plants. The top ten donors to the World Bank include nine western countries and Japan. So, basically, the west and Japan decided that they were not going to invest in those things. So guess who is investing? You can guess.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. It is China. And Russia is probably doing some, too. But China is heavily out there. And they are getting a two-for because the developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, want to have power and energy for their people, because they want their people to not live in the dark and have electricity. They want their people to have jobs. They know that in order to have better jobs, they have got to have electricity in their country across the board, not just in the big cities. They have got to have a source of power, and they have coal. For them, that is their most affordable source.

So what the Chinese are doing, they are basically laughing at us. We are going to agree to these timetables that haven't been ratified by the Senate and these targets, while they get to continue increasing. Even though they are the number two economy in the world, they are going to continue to increase their carbon footprint, and they are going to build coal-fired power plants in sub-Saharan Africa for which they get a lot of goodwill in the foreign affairs and foreign relations department. But wait, there is more.

In many of these cases--I can't say all, but the ones I have read about--they are, for a fee, going to run those coal-fired power plants for the nations that they are building them in. So not only are they going to build goodwill and good relations around the world using coal in contravention of these goals set forth in the Paris accord, but they are going to make a profit at it, as well.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Well, your amendment would certainly do that, and I will support that amendment. While I can't support the underlying bill, I can support that amendment because that does make the underlying bill better. If we are going to bind our hands and seal our fate to be the number two or number three or number five economy in the world, instead of being the number one economy in the world, if that is what we are going to do, then there ought to be votes taken down the hall. Men and women in the United States Senate should put their name on the line and say yes or no. The American people then will know who has voted yes and who has voted no. They won't be hiding behind any games or circumstances or procedural maneuvers. Then the American people can use the power that was given to them by our Constitution and an inalienable right granted by God to use the ballot box to make a decision as to whether or not they wanted to be bound, whether or not they wanted to have their economy reduced, and have their children and grandchildren to be lesser than what we have today in our economic wealth.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. It is that simple. You shouldn't hide behind games or trickery to say, well, this is not really a treaty that has to go to the Senate because the targets are merely aspirational. If they are merely aspirational, why are we spending billions of dollars on it and why are we participating at all, which I think was the President's point.

Why would we spend billions of dollars to send to countries, some of whom might actually be kleptocracies, and the money is never getting to where it is supposed to go? Why would we spend billions of dollars on something that we know is not going to be effective? Let's spend our billions of dollars on research and find new technologies.

You may have heard me tell the story, because it has been my favorite story the last couple of weeks, but I have a professor at Virginia Tech who has been working on technology to separate coal from rare Earth minerals. But there is a side effect. It also can make poor coal better coal. And they are selling that technology.

Now they are licensing a company in India for two steel mills--steel, for those who don't speak southwest Virginian, steel mills--and they are licensing them to use this technology, so they can take Indian coal and make it better and then reduce their carbon footprint and still produce the steel.

The Indians aren't going to say they are not going to use the coal and we are not going to produce steel. They want what everybody wants. They want a better economy. They want jobs. They want those people in their country--and I understand there are hundreds of millions--who don't have electricity to have electricity in their homes.

Like everybody else, they want clean air and clean water, too. But it is not going to happen by an edict of the Paris accord. It is going to happen by research that makes sense and that economically says you can have the steel to build new factories, to build new cities, to build new things in your country to make your country better, wherever you are: sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe, America, South America, North America, wherever you are. But you can do it better and you can do it cleaner and you can do it where it is cost effective. That is what we have to focus on, not arbitrary, capricious goals set with different countries having different standards. As an American, as U.S. citizens, we have a higher target, and there is no target for the Chinese.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, what is exciting for the American people, what is exciting for me, I would say to the gentleman, is that we have just mentioned a couple of areas where technology is working, making things better, and reducing our carbon footprint. In our universities and our think tanks across the country, there are hundreds and thousands of ideas percolating out there that can help us move forward.

You may not agree with me on this, but I think we can spend more money from the Federal Government on research to find better ways to use fossil fuels. Wave energy, wind, solar, whatever it is, we need to be leading on the research end of this.

If we think we are going to eliminate fossil fuels, Mr. Speaker, we are mistaken, because the world is going to continue to use fossil fuels. If you say to a developing economy that they have to rely on wind, they are going to know that you are full of hot wind.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. If you say to them, however, that we are going to try to do all of the above, so we are going to help you burn the coal you have; we are going to help you find the fuels that work for you, but we want to try to help you do it in a cleaner fashion; and we want to make that coal a little bit better, to make that oil a little bit better, to make it burn hotter, to make it burn more efficiently, that is how you lower your carbon footprint.

I like what the gentleman from Utah had to talk about in grazing on our Federal lands. If we started using different techniques, we can absorb a lot of carbon. We should probably spend some research money to find out if those crops and those plants that can be utilized to suck up more carbon can maybe produce other products as well.

These are things that we need to do, instead of saying we are not going to use any of this in the future because we might do that to the detriment of our jobs here in the United States. We are going to shift those jobs to other countries where they will use dirtier coal, dirtier oil, dirtier techniques for burning fossil fuels to produce the products that we then buy back, making them the richer nations in the world and we the lesser.

When I am on my deathbed, I want to be able to look my kids in the eye--hopefully, I will have grandkids some day--and say: You know what? We kept the United States of America number one in the economic situation, and we looked out for the planet at the same time.

It can be done, but it can't be done if all you say is, no, we are not going to look at fossil fuels.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. If the gentleman would tell me.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, it absolutely is a better approach. It really does bother me that we are just handing cash over to these countries.

As you said, they don't have transparency. Some of them are known to have corrupt governments, which means that at least a portion of that money is probably ending up in the pockets of the rulers' friends, neighbors, and cousins.

If we are going to spend the money, let's go in and spend the money on something that will make a difference for the folks in those countries.

I am not saying as the richest nation in the world that we don't have a responsibility, but let's make sure that we don't cripple ourselves in the process. Let's make sure that if we are going to spend the money, which I am okay with spending some of it, that we make sure it is going to projects that will improve the environment in those countries and help lower the carbon footprint in those respective nations.

They are not going to sit back and have their people be impoverished just because a group of Western nations got together or a group of nations got together that already have some money and said: You stop using fossil fuels so that the world won't get warmer.

They may be concerned about that, and I think they probably are, but they are not going to impoverish their people to target 1.5 degrees centigrade.

If we can show them a way to get more wealth for their people, to bring electricity to all regions of their countries, and to lower their carbon footprint, they are all in. That is where we can lead.

We don't have to spend money by just handing cash to potentates around the world. We can spend that money on research right here in our own colleges, in our own universities, in our own think tanks with people. Some of them will fail, but some of them will come up with new technology. Like when looking for a way to separate rare earth from coal and they figure out a way to lower the carbon footprint at steel mills in India, those kinds of things happen when you are looking for answers to problems instead of looking for problems.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman.

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