I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 1358, which was introduced earlier today. I ask unanimous consent the bill be read three times and passed, the motion…
I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 1358, which was introduced earlier today.
I ask unanimous consent the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
Mr. President, I did not plan to come down to the floor and speak today about the global warming legislation. But I heard bits and pieces of my friend Senator Inhofe's speech about essentially why we will never approve global warming legislation, why it is a bad idea, and his usual litany of ``horribles'' about what will happen. My friend Senator Inhofe and I work very well together on most issues that come before our committee when it comes to building the infrastructure; the State Revolving Fund, we have been a team; the highway trust fund, we have been a team. He has been very helpful on most of our nominees, if not all. So I am very grateful to him. But I could not allow his words to be the last word here on the global warming legislation as we get ready to leave for our week to go home and work.
I disagree very strongly with those who say that if we attack the problem with global warming head-on, we are moving into territory where we are
going to regret the fact that we did it because it is going to hurt our people, we are going to lose jobs, it is going to increase energy costs, when, in fact, we know the opposite is true. It is not just me saying it. I come from a State--California--where we have taken the lead in addressing the environment. We always have since the very early days. And what we have proven is that when you do it, you have a much healthier base for economic growth.
If you look at the per capita use of energy in my home State over the last 20 years, it has stayed absolutely flat, if you were to look at a graph. The rest of the country has gone up like this. So the difference between remaining on a flat line--in other words, keeping your per capita energy use stable--even with the creation in that time of computers and bigger TVs and all the rest, and a lot of other comforts, I might add--bigger homes--we have been able to do it. The rest of the country has gone this way with their per capita use. The difference between energy efficiency and the rest of the country, we have a lot of room for improvement, and it has been tried and it is proven and it makes a lot of sense, whether it is better energy-efficiency standards, which have been absolutely key to us, or better fuel economy, which has been key to us. We are the State that happens to buy the most, for example, hybrid cars. We have shown that we can keep per capita energy use down. A lot of us in our State have changed to the lightbulbs that make sense, the compact fluorescent bulbs. We know we have laws that will move that even faster. And we have not given up one ounce of our quality of life. We have a very good quality of life.
So by addressing the issue of global warming and getting the carbon out of the air, the first way to do it is through energy efficiency. That is what I call the low-hanging fruit. Renewable standards for our utilities--very important. We have done it in California, and I know my friend who is in the chair is on the Energy Committee, and I am very grateful they did renewable portfolio standards, although I would like to see it a little tougher. Be that as it may, we are on the road.
These are the things we can do that actually will tackle the problem of global warming, but there is so much more we can do through a system where we expect our industries that are emitting the most carbon to gradually bring it down so that we make sure we don't suffer the ravages of increased temperatures.
The science is so clear, and my friend Senator Inhofe and I have disputed this for a long time. He insists that the science is not clear. Well, he is not a scientist and I am not a scientist. So I think the best way to do this is to look to the most qualified scientists in the world. And we are very fortunate that we have had those scientists working at the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and they have come out with a series of reports, all of which tell us that temperatures are going up even more rapidly than we thought, the icemelt in the Arctic is occurring faster than we thought would happen. We all see the pictures of the polar bears. That picture is worth so much to us because we can see what is happening to the habitat there.
I will be leading a trip to Alaska for a couple of days at the invitation of Senator Mark Begich. He wants to show me and a group of Senators--and also Senator Murkowski has been gracious enough to say she will join us in this. We are going to see ground zero for global warming in Alaska. I know in Greenland, where I went, you can just see the ice melt. You can sit and actually see the ice break off from these giant icebergs and watch them go out to sea.
So the scientists have proven it, and we know it is absolutely true. So when Senator Inhofe comes down here and he flies in the face of science, those of us who have been working on this--and I see one of our great leaders, not only, I say this, in the Senate but, frankly, in the country and even in the world community, John Kerry, who has joined us. Just for his information, I will be speaking for about another 10 minutes, and then I am going to be so happy to sit and hear him because he has such an important vision on this.
But here is the good news. The good news is that this is an enormous opportunity to move our country forward. Again, I could quote Thomas Friedman, who did an extraordinary job of writing books and articles, and he testified before the Committee on Environment and Public Works very clearly on this, that the country that does this now and does it right and sets up a price on carbon--and I am sure he now knows that a cap-and-trade system is a very good way to do that--is going to be the leader in the world, not just an environmental leader, which is very important for our kids and our grandkids--we don't want to turn over a planet to them where temperatures are so high that we see people dying in the summer from the high temperatures or see our kids swimming in rivers that have turned so warm that organisms now live in those rivers. We have seen some of that already happen, where toxins exist that couldn't exist before, where we can be harmed because of the kind of life that lives in these warmer waters that can, in fact, harm our children. So we do not want to know those stories. We do not want to see hordes of refugees coming to our shores because countries are inundated due to rising seas.
Look, our own national security teams--the Department of Defense, the CIA--all of those that worry so much about national security--have told us--and Senator Kerry has the quotes chapter and verse--that this is a national security issue.
So when my friend from Oklahoma comes down here and says: Don't worry about it, you know, don't worry about it at all, the science is divided, it is just not so, just not so.
I guess there were always people who said smoking doesn't cause cancer. I guess there still are. I guess there are some people who say HIV doesn't cause AIDS. You know, I know there were people when I was a kid who said: Forget about polio, there is nothing you can do about it. But Dr. Jonas Salk figured out we could do something about it.
The science is clear. The world is getting warmer. Yes, to a certain degree, we can handle it, but above that it gets very dangerous. None other than the Bush administration's CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, told us that it is unequivocal that the dangers are lurking. They started the work to say that there would be an endangerment finding, that our people are in danger if we don't act. And now President Obama sees it clearly, and his EPA has picked up the ball and they have issued a draft finding that we are in danger. So Senator Inhofe and other Senators can stand up and say that we are not, but this work started in the Bush administration, and Bush administration officials participated in a lot of these U.N. meetings. So it is clear.
We have a great recession we are dealing with, and we have this great challenge of global warming. The great news is that when we act to solve global warming, we act to solve the problem of this great recession. Why do I say that? Because we know from the venture capitalists, many of whom live in the Silicon Valley, that the amount of funding from the private sector, not the public sector, that is going to flow into clean energy is going to dwarf that that went into the computer industry, that went into high-tech and biotech. This is testimony from those who are venture capitalists. And that, matched with the cap-and-trade system, which will have the ability to really help agriculture, which will have the ability to help our manufacturers, which will have the ability to make sure we have fair trade at the border when products come in, that means we are going to see technologies invented, cleanups start to happen, we will stop the ravages of global warming, and eventually, when all of this technology kicks in, the average family is going to pay less for their electricity. In the short run, if you have to pay just a little more-- and I mean a little more, like 50 cents a day more maybe, probably less--we have the wherewithal to give you a credit for that funding.
I think the House of Representatives has worked very hard to make sure they have the bill that will keep people whole, that will transform this economy to a clean energy economy, will get us off foreign oil, which is only to the good.
You know, Iran has been in the news, and our hearts go out to those who are
trying to take their country back, if I could say that. We all stand with those demonstrators. We will not forget what they have gone through in their struggle.
I ask unanimous consent that when I am done, Senator Kerry finish this time on global warming, followed by Senator Coburn if he would like to be recognized at that time.
Good.
So what Thomas Friedman--again, writing his great column, as he does--says is that Iran would not be such a formidable power in the world if oil was not so sought after in the world.
We do not buy any Iranian oil for obvious reasons, but the rest of the world does. The fact is, if we can create these clean alternatives, it is going to make every difference--every difference--in the world.
So in closing--and I am so pleased Senator Kerry is here--let me say this: My ranking member, Jim Inhofe, made a comment. I just want to say we are good friends, and anything I say here I say to him, and vice versa. My ranking member said in the press--and I do not know if Senator Kerry saw this--my ranking member, Senator Inhofe, said to me in the press I should get a life--get a life--and stop trying to pass global warming legislation because it is not going to happen.
I want to say to him very clearly today, I have a life, and I am spending it getting the votes I need to make sure we take advantage of this momentous opportunity. I want to thank those over in the House who seem to understand this golden moment of opportunity for our economy, for our foreign policy, for the creation of millions of new jobs, for energy independence--that is what they are fighting for over there--and for great opportunities for our agricultural sector, our manufacturing sector.
This is an opportunity we should not lose. I am very pleased at the progress we are making over here, and I want to send that signal: We are making great progress.
Mr. President, I thank you very much.
I yield the floor.
