Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008 - Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
CONSUMER-FIRST ENERGY ACT OF 2008--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - June 05, 2008)
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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, today we are discussing two issues which, in fact, are related to each other. No. 1 is the outrageously high cost of oil and gas. The second is the planetary crisis we face as a result of global warming. There are some people who think we have to address the price of high oil prices today and not worry about global warming. Some people think we have to worry about global warming and ignore the reality facing millions of people who cannot afford oil and gas. I think we are actually smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time. We can and must address both these important issues.
My office has recently published a small book. It is called ``The Collapse of the Middle Class, Letters from Vermont and America.'' It talks about what is going on not only in my State but all over this country, where the middle class is declining, people are working longer hours for lower wages, losing health care, pensions, their good-paying jobs. After all that, when you have gas at $4 a gallon at the pump, home heating oil outrageously high, many people throughout the country have now fallen over the economic cliff.
In terms of oil and gas prices, the time is now for the Congress to tell our friends at ExxonMobil and other oil companies enjoying recordbreaking profits--last year ExxonMobil earned more profits than any corporation in the history of the world; last year the head of Occidental Oil, a major oil company, had enough money to provide $400 million in compensation for their CEO--to stop ripping off the American people. It is time for us to pass a windfall profits tax which says: Enough is enough.
But it is not only the oil companies that are ripping off the American people. The other day at the Commerce Committee, there was an important hearing in which George Soros and major economists testified it is not only oil company greed but speculators on Wall Street who are driving prices up, which results, perhaps, in a 35-percent increase in what the price of a barrel of oil should be. We have to deal with that issue as well. This is the so-called Enron loophole. Right now, through hedge funds, through unregulated markets, there is a massive amount of trading on oil futures which is driving up oil prices. We should be regulating that speculation. It should be transparent. In the process, when we do that, as was the case with Enron and electricity, as was the case with propane gas, as was the case with natural gas, if we begin to address speculation in terms of oil futures, we can drive down oil prices.
Bottom line: We have to do that. In my State, as in rural States all over this country, where people are traveling long distances to work, they cannot afford, on limited incomes, to pay $4 for a gallon of gas. When the weather gets 20 below zero in Vermont, people cannot afford to pay twice as much this year as they did a couple years ago for home heating oil. So let us have the courage to take on the speculators. Let us have the courage to take on the oil companies and fight to lower oil and gas prices.
In addition, we can't ignore the crisis in global warming. My friends come to the floor and say: Well, the scientific evidence is not clear.
That is not true. Virtually every leading scientist who knows something about the issue, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said, with 100 percent certainty, global warming is a reality. In fact, what they have told us is the situation is more dire than they had previously predicted. If we are concerned about the drought we are seeing today which will only get worse, if we are concerned about the hunger we are seeing as a result of that drought which will only get worse, if we are worried about the severe weather disturbances we are seeing right now, if we are worried about flooding, about disease, it is absolutely imperative we address the crisis of global warming and address it now.
Some people say: There may be economic dislocation if we do it. There may be, and we have to address that. But I believe there are enormous economic opportunities. I believe the evidence is clear we can create millions of good-paying jobs as we move toward energy efficiency, as we produce automobiles, not that get 15 miles per gallon but hybrid plug-ins which get 150 miles per gallon, as we rebuild our deteriorating rail system so people do not have to get into a car to go where they want to go but can get on good rail, that we deliver cargo via rail.
There is enormous opportunity not only in terms of energy efficiency, in saving huge amounts of fossil fuel, but also in sustainable energy. I have tremendous optimism in what we can do with the technology that is already on the shelf, not to mention the technology that will be coming in the near future.
In terms of solar thermal plants which are now being built in the southwestern part of this country, as well as all over the world, you have plants, solar thermal plants, that are being built which can provide as much electricity as small nuclear powerplants, with no, or virtually no, greenhouse gas emissions. We are talking about producing 15, 20 or more percent of the electricity the United States needs right from solar thermal plants.
In addition to that, as Germany is doing, as California is now doing, there is tremendous opportunity with photovoltaics. We can put photovoltaics on 10 million roofs in this country. The more we produce, the more the price goes down, and we create jobs in the process.
Wind is the fastest growing source of new energy in the world and in the United States. It is also becoming less and less expensive. I am not just talking about large wind farms in Texas, in the Midwest. We are talking about small wind turbines that can be placed in people's backyards all over rural America.
Geothermal, biomass--there is huge potential. We must go forward for the sake of our kids and our grandchildren.
I thank the Chair.
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