Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives For The Nation Act Of 2007--Continued

Floor Speech

CREATING LONG-TERM ENERGY ALTERNATIVES FOR THE NATION ACT OF 2007- Continued

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here once again to address my amendment for a national greenhouse gas registry. As you know, this is an amendment that I am cosponsoring with Senator Snowe and two other Republicans, as well as Senator Bingaman.

This is an idea whose time has come. This is an amendment that doesn't actually say what the policy will be with regard to greenhouse gases. It simply requires that on a national basis we collect accurate information so we can make smart policy decisions.

I am sorry to say the other side has not yet agreed to vote on this amendment. It is looking a little bleak as time ticks on, but I am still here. It puzzles me because the senior Senator from Oklahoma, in a trade magazine--Environment and Energy Daily--was recently quoted in a short interview, after repeatedly calling global warming a hoax, as saying that he predicted this measure, this bill, would probably be adopted, if offered. And I think that may be accurate.

We know a number of Republicans are interested in this bill. We have worked very hard and we think it is important. That is why it is very distressing to me that we are not even going to be allowed to have a vote on this.

It is distressing because one of the reasons Senator Snowe and I came up with this amendment is because we did hear what we considered something of an outcry from businesses across this country. As you know, 31 States have come up with plans involving greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, and they are actually starting their own registry out of complete and utter frustration with the Federal Government. It is absurd to think a majority of States is having to put together a greenhouse gas registry because our national Government is so complacent. Back in January we had a number of these companies that gathered together and came to us and said we want action on climate change. We want to get this registry going. We want to have it done by the end of the year.

I have been here long enough to know we are not going to get it done by the end of the year unless we vote on it now.

I want to mention some of the companies that expressed interest in this: Alcan Inc., Alcoa, American International Group, Inc.--that is AIG, Boston Scientific Corporation, BP America Inc., Caterpillar Inc., ConocoPhillips, Deere & Company, the Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy, DuPont, Environmental Defense, FPL Group, Inc., General Electric, General Motors Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Marsh, Inc. PepsiCo, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, PG&E Corporation, PNM Resources, Shell, Siemens Corporation. They all said they wanted us to get something done on climate change.

You can imagine my surprise when we found out that in fact the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed this bill. They never talked to me about it; they just sent out a letter. In fact, they threatened this could be one of the key votes for the chamber this year, depending on how people voted on this little bill that simply asks that accurate data be collected and be able to be posted on a Web site as they do in Canada and other places. But they said it might be a key vote, right up there with the estate tax last year and some of the other votes that were national issues.

There have been a lot of things said about this bill. The senior Senator from Oklahoma actually sent out a letter about it. He talked about how it would apply to virtually every business in America in this letter.

The simple truth is we wrote this amendment with business in mind because we had the impression, from what we had heard, that business wants to work with us on this important issue of climate change. The amendment contains explicit provisions excluding companies for which reporting was excessively burdensome or expensive. The new registry only covers major emitting facilities and major sources of fossil fuels. Utilities already reporting under the Clean Air Act would not have to report their data twice.

For facilities facing costs and purchasing advanced monitoring equipment, the EPA would accept basic information on the amount and type of fossil fuels they consume, which is collected by businesses for general accounting purposes. Section 165(b)(10)(c) of my amendment specifies that confidential business information will not be published under the National Greenhouse Gas Registry.

The legislation also has an exception for small businesses, the exception as defined by the Small Business Administration--businesses that generate fewer than 10,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. And 10,000 metric tons is not an arbitrary number. The American Chemical Society released a report in 2003 which talked about this as a threshold, 10,000 metric tons, a threshold which

..... effectively relieves the agriculture and commercial building sectors from reporting, substantially reduces the number of manufacturing facilities that would report while continuing to capture 80 percent of emissions.

Clearly this is not true.

We also know the current status. We have some businesses, major emitters, reporting to the Department of Energy. Some report to the EPA. Some report every 3 years. Some report every week. Some report every year. This is not the kind of information we expect to have in order to make policy decisions on climate change.

In his letter, the senior Senator from Oklahoma also said organizations such as the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council would be put in charge of third-party verification and have access to confidential business information. This is so inaccurate I do not even know where to begin. Under my amendment, the EPA Administrator may ensure that reports are certified by a third-party entity, but as with the California Climate Registry, third-party verifiers will have to be verified themselves as experienced firms in providing greenhouse gas emission certifications. These are engineering firms; they are not political interest groups.

Finally, they claim this amendment did not go through the committee process. That interests me because a little over 5 years ago, Senator Brownback, the Republican Senator, along with then-Senator Corzine of New Jersey, passed an amendment in this Chamber creating a greenhouse gas registry. This registry would have been voluntary, but after 5 years, if the registry contained less than 60 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.--that is clearly where it is now--mandatory reporting would have been triggered. Sadly, the bill didn't get ultimately through this Congress. But the point is, this Chamber has already voted on this.

Here is a simple truth. This amendment seeks to create common standards for measuring, tracking, verifying, and reporting greenhouse gas emissions by major industries. It requires the Environmental Protection Agency--not exactly an engine of radical reform at this moment--to consider cost and coordinate with existing Federal and State programs to implement this registry.

This is an opportunity that the Senate should be willing to put its head up and vote for. It is an opportunity to at least get the accurate data so we can start talking about climate change reform.

I never knew I would end up here in the Senate. I grew up in a middle-class family. My grandpa was a miner and a logger. My dad was a journalist. My mom was an elementary schoolteacher. I worked jobs all my life--as a pie cutter. I worked as a car hop. I worked as a secretary. I went to public high school. I got a law degree. I went to a law firm, and I ended up being privileged to be the district attorney for the largest county in Minnesota. When Senator Dayton decided he wasn't going to run again for the Senate, I ran for the Senate.

It has been my belief throughout my life that you can get things done if you have right on your side, and if you are able to work with other people, you can get things done and you can change things. It started in the fourth grade when I was the first girl to wear bell-bottom pants, the first girl to wear pants in my public elementary school. I was kicked out by Mrs. Quady, the principal, but I came back the next day and within a year the girls were allowed to wear pants.

In high school they said we couldn't raise enough money to have our high school prom, and we sold Life Saver lollipops and we got it done. In DA, we had troubled crime in a lot of our neighborhoods and we reached out to these neighbors and organized, and they did a lot of good work and we had some amazing examples of individual citizens getting things done on the front end.

Now we are here. We have a major challenge confronting us. That is a challenge of climate change. There are people out there waiting for us to do something about it. There is a scientist out there right now seeing how the sea level is going up. There is another scientist who measures the temperatures and sees how, since the ice age, we have only had a 5-degree increase in temperature and just the last century we have seen a 1-degree increase, with the EPA estimating a 3-degree increase in the next hundred years. There are little kids out there wearing ``Save the Penguins'' buttons right now. There is a hunter in Hinckley, MN, who sees changes in the wetlands. He is waiting for us to act. There is a ski resort on up in Grand Marais, MN, that had 30 percent less profits in this last year because of the decrease in snow. He is waiting for us to act.

That is why I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to allow this important amendment to be heard. It doesn't dictate what the policy will be. It simply asks that we collect accurate information.

I am an optimist. The seat I hold was once held by Hubert Humphrey. At the end of his life, he said the words that are on his grave:

People consider me sentimental but to the end I remain an optimist. I remain an optimist with joy and without apology about this great American experiment in Democracy.

I remain an optimist too. I remain an optimist because I have seen the great work the Senator from New Mexico and others have done in this energy bill, and I believe more can be done. I remain an optimist that this bill will ultimately pass. If not today, this amendment will ultimately pass on another bill.

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