Climate Change
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, in the coming days, thousands of politicians from 200 different companies will convene in Glasgow, Scotland, for the U.N. climate summit. They will step off their private planes and into meetings about the need to reduce global emissions, and I am not sure many of them will see the irony of their actions. These leaders will try to paint fossil fuels as the world's greatest enemy. They will make lofty and, yes, unrealistic commitments to eventually transition to clean energy sources. At the same time, they will completely ignore the realities of the current energy landscape.
Around the world, energy shortages are having a costly impact on working families. Here at home, Americans are experiencing sticker shock at the gas pump. Gas prices, after all, have gone up by more than 55 percent from just 1 year ago. If you are driving a pickup truck, you will spend almost $32 more to fill up your tank today than you did last October.
In States like California, the problems are even worse. Last week, the price of a gallon of regular gas in one town hit $7.59 a gallon, and premium was nearly $8.50 a gallon. It is hard to imagine how somebody operating on a fixed income or working a minimum-wage job would cover those sorts of expenses, especially since it is lower income Americans who typically have to travel farther because of the high cost of living and housing in our major urban areas. So low gas prices are the only thing that will allow them to get by.
But gas prices are not the only growing energy expense in family budgets. As we head into winter, heating bills are expected to soar. Households could pay up to 54 percent more than they did last winter. It will cost more to heat your home, more for your family to visit for the holidays, more to put holiday meals on the table, and more to buy gifts for under the Christmas tree. This holiday season is shaping up to be a pricey one.
Costs at home are growing by the day, and our friends across the Atlantic aren't faring any better. Europe, in fact, is in the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis. A supply shortage has caused prices to skyrocket. For example, since the start of the year, natural gas prices are up almost 600 percent. The situation is so dire that utility companies have switched from natural gas, which is the cleanest burning fossil fuel, to coal and fuel oil.
This global energy crisis serves as the backdrop for this summit in Glasgow, where the world leaders will discuss plans to further reduce the use of fossil fuels. They are not saying what they would do as an alternative; they just want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg when it comes to low cost, cleaner burning energy like natural gas. Now, making promises to curb emissions sounds pretty good if you could, in fact, do it. It sounds good until you realize this is what you get: unreliable and unaffordable energy.
In Europe's case, there is also a very dangerous power dynamic at play. The supply of energy to the continent could be increased, but the guy controlling the spigot--his name is Vladimir Putin. One of Russia's top priorities is Nord Stream 2, a pipeline to carry more gas directly from Russia to Europe. This project, of course, has been years in the making and has faced considerable opposition around the world, especially among our colleagues on this side of the aisle.
President Biden has already handed Moscow a massive victory by stepping aside and refusing to impose sanctions on the company building Nord Stream 2. Now Putin is withholding desperately needed gas from Europe until the pipeline is approved. Yes, he is using energy as a weapon against those who are totally dependent on Russia for that energy.
This is a problem with the global efforts to quickly move--too quickly--before we are ready, away from fossil fuels. Phrases like ``energy transition'' appeal to some activists but fail to deliver results in the real world in real time. Renewables are great, but they don't come close to generating enough reliable energy to power our world because the wind doesn't always blow, and the Sun doesn't always shine.
We can't just sit in the dark until Mother Nature lets us turn the lights back on. We need a base supply of reliable energy, and as much as some of our colleagues hate to admit it, natural gas is our best current option. If the United States and our allies scale back production to pursue arbitrary emission benchmarks, they will leave the world turning to countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela for their energy. Today, we are experiencing how costly that reliance is, and in years past, we acknowledged how downright dangerous it is. In January 2009, Russia effectively turned the gas off to Ukraine for almost 3 weeks, and at least 10 countries in Europe were affected.
By transitioning solely to renewables before the output matches the demand, we are placing ourselves in a very, very vulnerable position, and the same is true for our allies. President Putin has demonstrated as much.
Unfortunately, I don't expect those kinds of real-world concerns to dominate the conversations at this summit in Glasgow, and President Biden certainly won't be advocating for America's energy independence-- to the contrary. We were only a few hours into the Biden administration when they launched the first attack on American-produced energy. Within hours of taking the oath of office, President Biden canceled the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. For some strange reason, he is OK with Nord Stream 2 from Russia to Europe, but he is not OK with the Keystone XL Pipeline here in America. I don't get it.
There is no question that the biggest losers from this decision were the energy workers whose jobs evaporated and the communities that stood to benefit from the tax revenue. The biggest winners, unfortunately, from President Biden's decision include countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, who now hold too much power on the global energy market. We will see how that is playing out.
That same day, the Biden administration halted all new leasing permits on Federal lands and waters. Rather than responsibly harvest our greatest natural resources and share those resources with the rest of the world, the administration sent more business to our adversaries and to OPEC producers.
President Biden piled on with another attack on our energy producers by rejoining the Paris climate accord--an agreement that no one seems to follow. Yes, they will pay lipservice to it, but they actually don't do anything about it. A report published last week found that countries around the world aren't sticking to the lofty commitments that they made. The world's major economies are not on track to meet the climate goals set in the Paris accord. In fact, according to this report, by 2030, these countries are expected to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels required to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord.
Then there is the fact that China, which plays by nobody's rules except their own, which also happens to be the world's leading polluter, is completely AWOL from any of these efforts. Not only is China ignoring global efforts to curb emissions, the country is in the process of building hundreds of new coal-powered powerplants. Last year, China built three times as many new coal powerplants as any other country in the world combined--three times all the other countries in the world combined.
Rather than pull out of the agreement that is weakening our global energy security, President Biden is making even bigger promises-- promises that he cannot keep. He nearly doubled the emissions reduction goals set by President Obama in 2015. President Obama pledged to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, and we are nowhere close to meeting that goal. But President Biden has doubled down and vowed to cut emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030--a complete fantasy. He hasn't explained how he would accomplish meeting that goal, nor, if he tried, would he be able to explain it because it is simply infeasible.
To be clear, I am a strong supporter of efforts to reduce emissions. There are more ways than one to skin the cat. Texas has been a leader, in fact, in efforts to develop cleaner and more diverse sources of energy. We are truly an ``all of the above'' State. We produce more electricity from wind turbines than any other State in the Nation. New solar farms are being built all across our State, and private companies are making incredible investments in carbon capture and other emission- reducing technologies. I am proud of this work and a staunch supporter of efforts to preserve our greatest natural resources for future generations. But what we are seeing from the administration isn't a thoughtful effort to reduce emissions; it is virtue signaling.
When the President addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this year, he spoke about the challenges to reduce carbon emissions. He said: If we do it perfectly, it is not going to matter. How he expects to do it perfectly, he did not say, nor could he. But if that is what he is thinking, why drive up energy costs to the point that Americans can't afford to turn the heat on in winter? Why would he give Putin the power to regulate Europe's only source of energy--natural gas? Why curb domestic energy production and let China run wild? These actions may earn votes in support from some corners, but they will inflict serious pain on the American people, as well as our allies around the world.
As an armada of Biden administration officials pack their bags for Glasgow, I want to remind them that there is far more at stake than just the President's credibility on this score. It is our future economy. It is our ability to provide good, well-paying jobs to hardworking American families, and it is our ability as Americans to export energy, which allows some of our friends and allies around the world not to depend solely on the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source