January 30, 2007
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton Statement before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works Hearing Senators’ Perspectives on Global Warming January 30, 2007 Thank you, Madame Chair. I thank you for holding this important hearing and for doing it in such an open way. I think it speaks volumes about your leadership that you have made climate change your top priority for the Environment committee and that you are starting by inviting all members of the Senate to come here to express their views. This is a complex issue, but to me, the bottom line is very simple: it's time to act to reduce the growing threat of global warming. While some scientific uncertainties remain, the picture grows clearer with each passing year. On Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, will release part of its "Fourth Assessment Report," which will summarize the current state of climate science. The document is being finalized this week, but here are some of the conclusions in the draft, according to press reports: It is virtually certain the warming observed over the last 50 years cannot be attributed to natural causes. In fact, the report will note that the warming occurred during a time when the most significant natural climate forcing factors, such as volcanic activity, would have been expected to produce cooling rather than warming. Temperatures are likely to rise by between 2 and 4.5 degrees Celsius over the coming century. It is likely that in the coming century that heat waves will be more intense, longer-lasting and more frequent, and tropical storms and hurricanes are likely to be stronger. That’s just a sampling from the draft, which will come out in final form on Friday. To me, the new report reinforces what I have believed for a number of years now: we know enough to know that it is time to act. We need to start on a path to slow, stop and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. It will require moving to new energy technology solutions. This is a daunting task. But I believe that inaction is the riskier course to both our environment and our economy. The longer we wait, the harder the transformation required by this challenge will become. Many U.S. business leaders now agree. Last Monday, a group of business and environmental leaders known as the U.S. Climate Action Partnership called on Congress recommendations for how to go about it. The report they released, "A Call for Action," is one of the most significant climate change policy document in recent years, both for what is says and for who is saying it. I urge all of my colleagues to spend the five minutes to read it, and I ask unanimous consent that it be entered into this hearing record. I was particularly struck by one paragraph in the report that I want to share with this committee: "In our view, the climate change challenge, like other challenges our country has confronted in the past, will create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy. Indeed, addressing climate change will require innovation and products that drive increased energy efficiency, creating new markets. This innovation will lead directly to increased U.S. competitiveness, as well as reduced reliance on energy from foreign sources. Our country will thus benefit through increased energy security and an improved balance of trade. We believe that a national mandatory policy on climate change will provide the basis for the United States to assert world leadership in environmental and energy technology innovation, a national characteristic for which the United States has no rival. Such leadership will assure U.S. competitiveness in this century and beyond." Madame Chair, that is a statement endorsed by Alcoa, BP, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Dupont, Florida Power and Light, GE, Lehman Brothers and PNM Resources. It's a diverse set of companies, many of whom have major investments in status-quo energy technology. Yet they acknowledge the imperative to act believe that it represents an opportunity to increase U.S. competitiveness. Madame Chair, I strongly agree. In October of 2003, we debated the question of limiting greenhouse gas emissions for the first time in the Senate, and I was struck by the pessimism that many of my colleagues expressed about dealing with the issue. Even some who conceded the need to act seemed resigned to failure or disastrous economic consequences of taking the issue on. As I said at the time, I reject the idea the America--the most innovative, creative nation the world has ever seen--cannot cope with this problem. I strongly believe that if we put the right incentives in place, then we will drive American enterprise to tackle this problem. That is why I have been working to address climate change since I arrived in the Senate in 2001. I worked with you and others on legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions, mercury and other pollutants from power plants. I traveled with Senate colleagues to the Arctic and to Alaska to see first-hand the dramatic impacts of climate change that are already occurring and to try to draw attention to the issue. I have proudly supported the bills put forward by Senators Lieberman and McCain in 2003 and 2005, and have joined as a cosponsor of the updated bill that they introduced in this new Congress. I expect they will describe it in some detail, so I won’t go into details, but I think some based mechanisms to get there, provides for investments in new energy technologies, and offsets impacts on low-income Americans. Senator Sanders and the chair of this committee have a proposal of their own. And we will hear from many others today about their ideas. As a Member of this Committee, I will work to pass a strong, effective, flexible bill from this committee. But Congress cannot succeed without support from the President. For six years now, he has refused to acknowledge the problem, and we have wasted valuable time as a result. Had the President made good on his 2000 campaign pledge to limit carbon dioxide from power plants, we would be much further along today. Last week, the President did finally acknowledge the issue in his State of the Union, but he did not offer a serious solution. Instead, the President continued to talk about technology and voluntary solutions. I agree with the President that technology is the key to solving this problem. But technology doesn’t come out of a vacuum. We need to set the conditions that will drive innovation. I don’t underestimate the task. Action by the United States alone cannot solve this problem, but American leadership is critical to bringing developing countries into the solution. Here at home, we will need to pursue a range of technologies and strategies. But we know what many of them are and it’s time to get serious. Energy efficiency is an enormous and underutilized energy resource. It’s the fastest, cheapest, and cleanest solution, and we ought to be doing more. California has done a particularly good job on efficiency, holding total electricity use flat for the last 30 years will the economy has boomed. We need to get serious about the next generation of clean coal technologies, particularly carbon sequestration. Our bill has strong incentives to promote more rapid deployment of this technology. There are many other examples. Another important priority is to change our tax system so that we quit subsidizing oil and gas and do a better job at promoting renewable energy and efficiency. I have proposed a Strategic Energy Fund that would do just that. Madame Chair, there are so many things we can and should be doing. And I am increasingly optimistic that this Congress will do them. One of the big reasons for that is that more and more people understand the issue. For that I think for that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Vice President Gore for his tireless and creative advocacy. In conclusion, I want to restate my belief that we must act and that we can do it in a way that makes economic sense. But global warming is much more than just an issue of competitiveness, of weighing the costs and benefits. This is a profound moral question that confronts us. With the knowledge we now possess, do we face our responsibility to act or do we continue to look the other way? Do we act or do we accept the risk of handing a degraded, and perhaps broken, planet to our that many of us would not even recognize, with disappearing islands and shorelines, increased floods and droughts, and the extinction of plants and animals that cannot adapt to changes in climate? I think the answer is clear: it is time for us to act.
Comments (0)
by Peter
Comments (0)
