Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010
Floor Speech
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (Senate - July 29, 2009)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague from Oregon in discussing the challenges and opportunities America faces as we look to ensure our economic leadership and prosperity for the 21st century and beyond.
America has always been a land of innovation and entrepreneurship. We led the way during the industrial revolution, which began at Slater Mill in Pawtucket in my home State of Rhode Island. We led the way in the information technology revolution that began in Silicon Valley. It is in American DNA to think boldly and through hard work to translate bold thinking into practical solutions, solutions that improve people's lives all over the world and bring prosperity to our shores.
It is time for us to lead again. A clean energy economy beckons, and we must not, we cannot ignore the call. Congress must act to pass clean energy legislation that will promote, here at home, cleaner, cheaper renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and biofuels. I stand here today in strong support of such legislation.
Our transition to a clean energy economy is past due. This country has run on the same fuels at basically the same efficiency levels since the start of the industrial revolution over a century and a half ago. This was acceptable in 1900, perhaps even in 1950, but where does it leave us today, in 2009?
First, it leaves us dependent on foreign oil. Approximately 40 percent of our energy needs are met through oil, and more than 70 percent of this oil, at a cost of $630 billion out of the American taxpayers' pocket every year, comes from foreign sources including Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and other regimes that do not wish us well. It is the largest transfer of wealth in history, and we are on the losing end of it, and international big oil is only too happy to profit off America's decline.
Second, while we enrich hostile foreign governments and international big oil, other countries have embraced the development, manufacture, and export of renewable clean energy technology, such as wind turbines and solar panels, so that now half of America's existing wind turbines are manufactured overseas. The United States invented the first solar cell, but we now rank fifth among countries that manufacture solar components. The United States is home to only one of the world's top 10 companies manufacturing solar energy components and to only one of the world's top 10 companies manufacturing wind turbines.
Recently, two wind turbines went up in Portsmouth, RI. One was manufactured by Vestas, a Danish company, and the other by an Austrian company with a Canadian distributor that delivered the components to Rhode Island. These turbines are very welcome. It was like a barn raising when they went up. People came out to watch. As a result, Rhode Island and America got the benefit of cleaner, cheaper energy, but we missed out on the manufacturing jobs these projects should have created for American workers.
Other countries that have embraced the demand for clean energy technology, such as China, Germany, Japan, and Brazil, are all investing more per capita in clean energy than the United States.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a Washington Post article dated July 16, 2009, ``Asian Nations Could Outpace U.S. in Developing Clean Energy.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. We have some catching up to do, and while we do that catching up, millions of Americans are out of work.
My home State of Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in our country. Across my State and across our country, couples are sitting at the kitchen table at night after the kids are in bed, with the bills on the table in front of them, and they are trying to figure out how to make ends meet and it is not adding up. That is the reality many Americans face when we cling to the failed policy of the past, when we care more about keeping big oil happy than about finding new, inventive ways for the average American worker to find lasting, secure employment in the tradition of American entrepreneurship.
Remarkably, there are those in Congress who would have us do nothing, who would remain wedded to tired, centuries-old technologies and left in the dust as other nations race for leadership in the new clean energy world. I submit this do-nothing caucus is selling America short. Don't they trust that when it comes to inventing new technologies and manufacturing valuable products, we are the best in the world?
If Congress passes strong clean energy legislation that creates the necessary incentives for the research, development, manufacture, and sale of clean energy technologies, that spirit of innovation and entrepreneurialism will again lead the world, as it has so often over the centuries. We can have confidence in that.
We have already seen some progress. It is clear, at least, that people outside the beltway get it. In the last 10 years, jobs in the technology sector have grown nearly 2 1/2 times faster than overall. In 2006 alone, the American Solar Energy Society estimates that Federal, State, and local governments spent $8.6 billion on energy efficiency, creating 64,000 direct jobs and 83,000 indirect jobs. Their investment of an additional $3.2 billion in expanding new energy production created more than 7,000 direct jobs and nearly 9,000 indirect jobs.
Every day in America, real people and real companies are moving into the clean energy economy. In Rhode Island, Newport Biodiesel is producing a cheaper form of home heating oil for Rhode Island families by recycling restaurant grease. Alteris Renewables is creating jobs in Rhode Island installing solar energy systems on residential homes. I recently visited a home in Charleston, RI, where a family has a new Alteris solar energy system on their roof and heard from them about the significant energy savings they will achieve.
But this is only a fraction of the scale needed to revolutionize our economy. The American people, our researchers, entrepreneurs, and workers from the largest, most sophisticated research institutions and corporations to our smallest local businesses, can create clean energy jobs everywhere in the United States--in urban areas as well as rural, in the Rust Belt as well as the Wheat Belt, in our deserts and on our coasts. All they need is for us in Congress to set the economic parameters correctly, to level the playing field with foreign competition, to meet the market for investment in these products. America is waiting for Congress to act.
As I close, let me address a couple of the points we often hear from the do-nothing caucus and their see-nothing supporters in the boardrooms of the big polluters.
First, we simply cannot drill our way toward a secure energy future. It would take 10 years before we would see any tangible results from drilling, and the result would be negligible when it came. The United States has only 3 percent of known oil reserves. Yet we use 25 percent of the world's oil production. We cannot drill our way out of that math. The United States could supply 20 percent of our energy needs through wind power alone, not even factoring other forms of renewable energy.
The choice is a clear one for the future: Do we continue to enrich ExxonMobil and continue our dependence on foreign oil from places such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela or do we decide to lead the world and tap into America's most abundant resource, the innovation and entrepreneurship of the American people?
We should also be skeptical of the champions of the status quo when they exaggerate the cost associated with transitioning to a clean energy economy. Our CBO has projected that clean energy jobs legislation would cost most American households on average less than a postage stamp per day, and it actually puts money back into the pockets of the poorest families, and that didn't even consider the savings to individuals and companies from energy efficiency practices and technologies. If prices go up a little but efficiency reduces demand and reduces use, families save. They always leave that part out of their see-nothing scenarios. We can easily increase our energy efficiency to cover 15 percent of our energy needs by 2020 and save American families and businesses nearly $170 billion in electricity costs.
Of course, the do-nothing caucus overlooks the cost of doing nothing. Unchecked greenhouse gas pollution has already begun to melt our glaciers and warm our oceans, leading to stronger, more frequent storms and rising sea levels. America's insurers are worried about our coasts, home to over 53 percent of the U.S. population, where we generate over 83 percent of our gross domestic product. We put a lot at risk if we follow the lead of the do-nothing caucus.
We have heard the ``Do Nothing Caucus'' argue that strong environmental legislation would hurt the economy and cost us jobs. It is the same old polluters' argument. It is as wrong now as it has always been before.
In the 1990 debate on the acid rain program, manufacturers warned that the health benefits of the program were unclear and that their adoption could deal a ``crushing blow to U.S. business.'' But when the acid rain program was enacted, the program began delivering $70 billion annually in human health benefits, at a benefit-to-cost ratio of more than 40 to 1. Industry and environmentalists alike now agree the program was a success. Oops to that argument.
In 1995, DuPont warned the costs of phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals would exceed $135 billion and that ``entire industries would fold.'' But when the phaseout became law, compliance costs turned out to be less than 1 percent of the doomsday projection. DuPont made millions selling substitutes for the phased-out chemicals, and we managed to shrink the hole in the ozone layer of our Earth's atmosphere. Oops again.
We are at a crossroads. We can step toward the clean energy economy that beckons and show the world our capacity for leadership in the world economy, as we have done time and time again, or we can cling to the status quo, heads firmly wedged in the sand, and trade in our future for the well being of big oil and the Saudi Arabia royal family.
The right choice is clear, and I am confident we will make it.
I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source