Consumer First Energy Act of 2008--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

CONSUMER-FIRST ENERGY ACT OF 2008--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - June 05, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, the issue we are addressing this week, global climate change, is a challenge with so many dimensions. Some are moral, some are economic, and some are scientific. I want to spend my first few minutes today talking about the science because we cannot get the policy right unless we get the science right.

I come from a State that believes in science. Minnesota is home to the Mayo Clinic and other great medical institutions. It helped launch the green revolution in agriculture half a century ago. Today it is home to a great research university in the University of Minnesota and high-tech companies such as 3M and Medtronic.

We have brought the world everything from the pacemaker to the Post-it notes. My State believes in science. Over the last few days, we have heard a great deal of debate about the science of climate change. I believe the debate should be over. The facts are in and the science is clear.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the evidence of global warming is now unequivocal and apparent on every continent of our planet. It is plain in erratic weather patterns, in shrinking wildlife habitat, and the melting of the permafrost.

Just last week, a new report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and written by some of our top environmental researchers reached the same conclusion. They wrote:

There is robust scientific consensus that human-induced climate change is occurring. Observations show that climate change is impacting the nation's ecosystems in significant ways, and those alterations are very likely to accelerate in the future.

The result? Ocean levels are rising, glaciers are melting, and violent weather events are increasing--we have seen some recent ones in my State--and soon entire species will be threatened.

This is not just an environmental danger, it is also an economic danger.

First, we can see what we would predict as we see increases in temperatures in this world. The estimates are that temperatures will go up somewhere from 3 to 8 degrees in the next 100 years. To put it in perspective, it went up 1 degree in the last 100 years. We have already started seeing changes. That doesn't sound like a lot. It has only gone up 5 degrees since the height of the ice age. And the prediction from our EPA is 3 to 8 degrees.

Here we go when we look at the increasing of temperature: A 1-degree increase means increasing mortality from heat waves, floods, and droughts. This is predicted by 2020; a 2-degree increase, millions of people face flooding risk every year; a 3-degree increase, global food production decreases, and so on.

I can tell you in my State people are already seeing these changes. They have seen the economic impacts of these changes. Lake Superior is near its lowest level in the last 80 years, and that is an average. It goes up and down a little. It went up a little, fortunately, this year. But overall, we have seen decreasing levels so that overall it is at its lowest level in 80 years. That has impacted our barges, it has impacted the economy because we need more barges because they are sinking lower.

Why is that happening? The ice is melting quicker and so the water evaporates and we see lower levels in places such as Lake Superior.

We also have seen changes for our ski resorts. Overall, when we look at the trends, we have seen decreasing snow which means less money for them. Those are just some small examples of the economic costs of climate change.

We can see that the insured and uninsured costs of weather-related climate change events are going up and up, and we are all paying the price. A problem so serious demands a serious response.

This is a chart showing the weather-related economic losses and how they have increased. Look at the decades from 1960 to 1969, 1970 to 1979, 1980 to 1989, and then look at the last 10 years. These are economic losses. These are the amounts that are insured, and then this is the total of economic losses due to weather-related issues.

A problem so serious as this demands a serious response. I believe that as a Nation, we are up to it. Look at a little history. In the 1970s, after the first OPEC oil embargo caused world oil prices to quadruple, Congress passed the first CAFE standards, fuel economy standards for the Nation's cars and trucks. At first, the skeptics said Congress had overreached and the CAFE standards were unrealistic. Then business put its mind to the challenge. Auto companies developed more efficient engines and lighter automotive components, and they competed to meet customer demand for fuel-efficient cars.

Recently, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that those CAFE standards have now saved our country 2.8 million barrels of oil a day and cut oil consumption by 14 percent annually. With the higher fuel economy standards we adopted last year after many years of inaction to build on that initial CAFE standard, estimates are for an average family, depending on the price of gas, they could save $1,000 a year. We will continue to save, but we must set those standards so we have an example where when those standards were set, business went to the challenge, and we actually saved money.

That is not the only example. In 1987 and 1992, the Government adopted new energy-efficient standards for household appliances. Again, the American business community responded, competing to develop new technologies and energy-efficient products. I call it building a fridge to the next century. Soon you could walk into any appliance store and find efficient ENERGY STAR air-conditioners that give consumers even higher quality but at much lower energy consumption.

Look at this chart on light bulbs. We can see, if every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we could save more than $600 million in annual energy costs and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

Now we are starting to develop all kinds of technologies to save money for consumers and make big reductions in carbon emissions. The American Council for Energy Efficient Economy estimates these higher energy-efficient standards saved consumers $50 billion from 1990 to 2000 and will cut U.S. electricity consumption by 6.5 percent within this decade.

What did all of these examples have in common? The public sector and the private sector worked together in a partnership in which each performed at its best. The Government took leadership, set high standards, and provided a nationwide mandatory framework so everyone played by the same rules. Then the private sector responded to that signal using a classic American combination of technological innovation and market competition.

The challenge of climate change presents us with the same opportunity--an opportunity for technology with wind, with solar, with energy efficiency, with the potential of nuclear, and with the potential of clean coal technology. It is a long list with great potential. We must meet this challenge, and we can. If we set standards for the country, the investment, technology, and innovation will follow.

On the Environment and Public Works Committee, my colleagues, Senator Boxer, Senator Warner, and Senator Lieberman have written landmark legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and I am proud to be a cosponsor. This measure establishes mandatory economy-wide, science-based limits on carbon dioxide and other global warming gases so we can cut emissions 20 percent by the year 2020 and nearly 70 percent by the year 2050.

To achieve those goals without disrupting our economy, it would establish a market-driven cap-and-trade system that provides economic incentives for reducing emissions.

Now, we did the same thing with acid rain years ago and it worked well.

To make this system work, however, we need to have full and accurate information about the sources and amounts of greenhouse gas pollution. That is what I want to take a few minutes to talk about today, because of the fact that this was in the first title of the bill, and one that I authored, along with Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine.

The famous British scientist, Lord Kelvin, felt the same way about having to measure things before you do anything. He once observed:

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.

Believe it or not, we don't have full, accurate information on greenhouse gas emissions right now. In fact, I was contacted a few months ago by a National Public Radio reporter who was trying to figure out who was the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the United States. You would think that would be something that would be easy to find out, but in fact it is not because we don't have the kind of accurate information we need.

The EPA collects a lot of data on energy production and consumption, but the quantity and quality of those data varies greatly across different fuels and different sectors. For example, data on crude oil and petroleum product stocks is collected weekly for selected oil companies, while data on energy use in the industrial sector are collected only once every 3 years through surveys. In some cases, the EPA itself collects the data, while in other cases the data are collected through State and other Federal agencies. Some industries report to the EPA and others report to the Energy Department. Some are reporting every year and some are reporting every 3 years. In short, it is a mishmash.

Last week, the Brookings Institution here in Washington issued its own report on carbon emissions in different cities around the country. They too tried to make a comprehensive study, but they admitted they could only estimate emissions from homes to vehicles, not factories or planes or railroads or government buildings.

Then there are State efforts. Thirty-one States, representing 70 percent of the country's population, have formed a carbon registration system of their own. It is a bipartisan project with support from Governors such as Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Governor Schwarzenegger of California. Together, they recently issued a statement saying,

The State climate registries are another example of how States are taking the lead in the absence of Federal action to address greenhouse gas emissions in this country.

While these State projects are very well intentioned, they are a poor replacement for a national standard. Remember years ago how Justice Brandeis, in that famous decision, talked about how the States could be ``laboratories of democracy''? He talked about how one State could have the courage to move ahead, but I don't think, when he said that, he ever meant inaction by the Federal Government. But that is what we have had in the area of climate change, and that is certainly what we have had in the area of trying to measure what is going on here.

We are never going to make progress against global climate change unless we can answer the question of how much people are emitting with greenhouse gases, where they are emitting them, and until we can give an answer with accurate, complete information.

This problem plagued the European Union 2 or 3 years ago. They actually beat us in establishing a comprehensive cap-and-trade system to cut greenhouse gas pollution. But because they didn't start with a good comprehensive registry of the sources and quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, they miscalculated their initial caps and permits and wound up wasting a lot of money and time before they got their cap-and-trade system right.

That is why Senator Snowe and I worked together last year to write this legislation, which is the first title of the bill, establishing a greenhouse gas registry. You can see what this means. It is accurate, comprehensive data on carbon emissions. It requires reporting of greenhouse gas emissions to the EPA, it requires third-party verification, it does have exemptions for small businesses--because we don't want to do anything that is too burdensome--and it also makes the data publicly available on the Internet. I think we know how much people are interested in this issue, and they have a right to know about it.

In addition to setting the stage for cap-and-trade solutions to global climate change, one comprehensive national registry, instead of all the States doing their own, would help the States by streamlining administration costs. It would also help business. Before long, they are going to have to start cutting their own greenhouse gas emissions, and they can't make the right investments or adopt the right technologies without having good data on their own carbon emissions. In fact, some of the Nation's leading corporations have endorsed the national carbon registry. They include: Alcoa, Boston Scientific Corporation, General Electric, NRG Energy, Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, Pacific Gas and Electric, and many more. These executives have now teamed up with some of the country's leading environmental groups, including the Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, and the National Defense Council, to form the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. They recently issued a statement calling on the Federal Government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. They took this historic step because they understood the threat of climate change and they recognized the need for Federal action. These leaders are right. The time has come for us to act.

As I close, I think about the complexities of this historic challenge, and I like to recall a prayer from the Ojibway people of Minnesota. Their philosophy told them that the decisions of great leaders are not made for today, not made for this generation, but for those who are seven generations from now.

That is part of our burden and part of our challenge as we approach this climate change issue. That is why today I urge my colleagues to support cloture on this bill, to not only start measuring what the problem is, but to actually give this country and this world a solution.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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