Solutions to Climate Change

Floor Speech

SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE CHANGE -- (Senate - May 21, 2008)

Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, earlier this spring, I introduced legislation to address the challenge of how to deal with greenhouse gases. The bill is called the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Atmospheric Removal Act, or the GEAR Act.

Members of this body have discussed various proposals to regulate the output of greenhouse gases. Some advocate doing it through a cap-and-trade approach. Others have advocated a carbon tax. Such proposals are aimed at limiting future carbon output into the atmosphere. Many proposals have been introduced and debated using this approach of dealing with carbon output.

We want to protect our environment and we want a strong economy. The way to have both is by thinking anew and acting anew. It is time to use our untapped human potential and the American spirit to develop the technologies we need.

The Senate will soon be debating climate legislation. I believe we should identify solutions through imagination, innovation, and invention, not through limits.

It is my hope and my goal that the GEAR Act will foster the kind of solutions that we need to address the concerns about climate change.

Recently, there was a very thoughtful editorial which was printed in ``Wyoming Agriculture,'' which is published by the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation.

The editorial was written by Ken Hamilton. Ken is the executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau. I believe he does a terrific job of summing up the feelings of Wyoming people on the need to find practical ``real'' solutions to climate change.

I recommend it to my colleagues and ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

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