Lieberman Floor Statement on Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2005

Lieberman Floor Statement on Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2005

Mr. Lieberman: I thank the chair. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Arizona, with whom I am proud once again to sponsor the climate stewardship and innovation act to combat global warming. Senator McCain has, as is his characteristic mode of behavior, talked straight. He sounded a clarion call. He has spoken in words that I would echo right now. This is the challenge of our generation environmentally. And it will be so if we don't act economically. It will begin to affect the way we live on planet earth. We feel so strongly about it that we're going to stick together. And I believe our ranks will grow over time.

I hope before the worst effects of global warming occur, the most cataclysmic effects occur. We're going to get this done because it has to be done. This amendment -- it has to be done.

This amendment that we're offering is the only proposal the Senate will consider that will actually put a halt to the rise in carbon emissions that have caused global warming. It will also spur technological innovations to deal with that problem. Mr. President, in some sense, as I view this -- and I spent a lot of time working on it -- what's involved here is a conflict between science and the resistance to change. Change is frightening sometimes, especially when the worst consequences of not changing are not apparent.

This is why this is such a great challenge to our political system, because though we're beginning to see the effects of global warming; the worst effects are over the horizon. And the challenge to us now is, having been put on notice by science whether the political leadership of our country will take the steps necessary to protect the generations that will follow from the worst consequences of global warming. Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine -- and I paraphrase here, Mr. President -- said one of the tests of every generation is whether we have been good ancestors. Whether we've been good ancestors, whether we've acted in a way that those who follow us will say we had far-sighted ancestors who saw this problem coming and dealt with it. That's the challenge that this amendment offers, and because it is about science, particularly with the distinguished occupant of the chair now, I cannot resist going into a bit of history. One hundred years ago this month, June 30, 1905, Albert Einstein finished a paper with a very dense title on the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Today we know it better as the theory of Theory of Special Relativity - or E=MC Squared.

Why do I bring this up in the context of global warming? Because when Einstein first proposed the theory, it was dismissed as unrealistic. As a dream. Its consequences were widely mission -- misunderstood. Over time the best scientists agreed not only that Einstein's theory was true, but they expanded upon it and used it to the extraordinary benefit of the generations that have followed. With apologies to another great scientist, Darwin, I would say that this process might be called the evolution of theory.

Mr. President, the theory that the earth is warming with dire consequences may have started off with little understanding or acceptance. In fact, when some of us first began to talk about it, senator McCain and I, a lot of people, including a lot of in this chamber, discussed it as if it had a "Chicken Little" [the] sky-is-falling quality to it. The fact is that we were basing our action and our arguments on temperatures that were rising increasingly, but the worst effects that we were projecting were from scientific modeling. Now the best scientific minds in the world have examined the evidence and told us that climate change is real, and its cost to our economies will be devastatingly real. Its cost to our people in the way they live will be devastatingly real if we do not act. Just a few months ago, the head of the international panel on climate change, Dr. R. Pachauri, who was the candidate for that position that was supported by the Bush administration, said -- and I quote -- "we are already at a dangerous point when it comes to global warming. Immediate and very deep cuts in greenhouse gases are needed if humanity as we know it is to survive." "If humanity is to survive." That's the head of the international scientific panel on scientific change. But truth is at this point we don't need the scientists to tell us that the globe is warming. We can see it with our own eyes; the most compelling evidence is the satellite photos of the polar icecaps. Look back 10, 15, 20 years-they're shrinking right before our very eyes. Consider this very real example that's a consequence of that: 184 Alaskan coastal villages - coastal villages in the state of Alaska -- already are facing the threat of relocation because their land and infrastructure are being impacted by advancing seas and warmer temperatures that are melting the permafrost. One estimate I've seen says that it will cost $100 million -- $100 million -- to locate just one of those villages or towns. I hesitate to even articulate this fear, but what would be the price if we needed to relocate New Orleans or Miami or Santa Cruz, California?

One of North America's leading reinsurers, SwissRe, projects that climate-driven disasters could cost global financial centers more than $150 billion per year within the next ten years. That's not senator McCain or me or some environmental group. It is a business, an insurance company, which is on the line for the cost of climate-driven disasters. $150 billion a year within the next ten years. I could go on with stories of wildlife appearing in places where they've never appeared before; of the impact. Even in Connecticut we have certain birds that are lingering longer in our state because it's staying warmer longer, and Maine, our colleagues tell us that the sugar maples are being affected by the alteration in the climate.

And what is the United States doing? The United States, the largest emitter, the largest source of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, what are we doing? Nothing. Literally nothing. In some sense less than nothing because we pulled out of the Kyoto protocol that subsequently has been ratified by enough of the industrialized world. I agree with senator McCain about the proceeding amendment. It's a fig leaf. It may allow some people to say we're doing something about global warming, but it doesn't do anything. It leaves it all to voluntary actions, it supports some research, it asks for reports.

You know, this goes back to the early 1990's when President Bush, the 41st President Bush was very actively involved in the real conference on global warming, supported -- recognized the reality of global warming, supported measures to deal with it, set voluntary standards. They didn't work. That's why Kyoto came along in 1997, because we saw in the intervening years that if you leave standards voluntary, nothing's going to happen. People will continue to do things as they have before; sources of greenhouse gas are not going to change. We've got to show some leadership here. The last amendment I would call fiddling while the earth is warming. It its way more consequential than fiddling while Rome was burning.

The Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, which senator McCain and I introduced as an amendment to this energy bill, is the needed first step and second step and third step. It's the only proposal that will come before the Senate that puts an absolute stop to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions by America. In that sense it brings us back to some point of moral responsibility. This is a problem for the whole globe. We're the biggest source of it and yet we're doing nothing about it while a lot of other countries are. This amendment is the only proposal that will come before the Senate that creates not old-fashioned command and control but a true market mechanism reflecting the punishing social and economic costs of global warming and this amendment, the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act, is the only proposal that will come before the Senate that harnesses these market forces and steers them towards new energy technology that will not only help us meet the standards but will energize our economy, because it will create jobs, and those jobs will create products that will fill a growing global demand for energy-efficient greenhouse gas resistant technologies.

Mr. President, let me briefly state the basics of our bill. The original Climate Stewardship Act, the result itself of a lengthy process senator McCain and I were involved in with the stakeholders, sources of greenhouse gas, environmentalist, and scientists, working together- major role played by the Pew Trust. The original Climate Stewardship Act asked the American people and businesses to reduce our carbon emissions to 2000 levels by the end of the decade, by 2010.

This is much below what Kyoto asked. Kyoto asked to go back to 1990. This was a graph in one of the papers yesterday showing reductions from Kyoto about here, if we do nothing about there, and our proposal, McCain-lieberman, sort of in between. Always nice to be in the middle, the golden mean, and that's exactly what this proposal is. Our proposal then and now will reduce carbon emissions by using the market, by putting a price on those emissions with a cap in trade policy modeled after the one used so successfully in the Clean Air Act of 1990, which, as we all know, has reduced acid rain at far less cost than expected without the old command and control government. Simply put, a business that doesn't reach its emissions target can buy emissions credit from something or one entity who has managed to move themselves under the target. Because the cap and trade market system creates marketplace for greenhouse gas emission, it exposes the true cost of burning fossil fuels and will drive investments toward lower-emitting technologies. It will, incidentally, therefore also help us break our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, which now approaching $60 a barrel and rising, which I fear, as so many others do, no matter how strong we are militarily can, ultimately compromise our national security.

But as the new title of this amendment implies, we've added an innovation section to our original bill because technological change and innovation are the keys in both the fight against global warming and the battle for energy independence. Our amendment would create a dedicated public sector fund for ensuring that investment is directed at the new technologies we need, including but not limited to biofuels, clean coal technologies, solar and nuclear power to name just a few of an open-ended menu of climate friendly technology choices. Instead of turning to the taxpayer to fund these, our bill uses a very creative self-funding mechanism. It empowers the secretary of energy to use some of the money generated through the purchase of emissions credits funneled through a new public corporation our bill would create to help bring those innovations to market. The amendment will ensure the most important and efficient technological alternatives are supported. We don't pick winners and losers here. That's for the market to do. Our bill does make sure, however, that if there are barriers to developing or using these new technologies to meet the standards and cap in our proposal, the resources are available to knock those barriers down.

Mr. President, if we don't help bring these new low-carbon or zero-carbon technologies to market, believe me, we will be buying them from the nations that do. And here's exhibit "a" to prove that point: hybrid cars today are popular. There are waiting lists for them. As a matter of fact, I've heard there's a market where people sell the ticket they got, the point they are in line so somebody can buy a hybrid car. Low-emitting vehicles that consumers have clearly shown they want. Where did American companies get the technology to build those hybrids? They've licensed it from Japan. Our bill will ensure that assistance is provided to American manufacturers to help with the transition to new technologies and energy productions with programs to reduce consumer costs and help dislocated workers and communities. The point is -- we want what we know will be the enormous market for low-carbon, zero-carbon, low or zero greenhouse gas emitting products to be filled by products made here in the U.S.A. When Senator McCain and I sat down to write this bill, we knew it had to pass three tests.

First, it had to guarantee that it would achieve a real reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions across our society. Second, it had to create a true wide open market for emissions reductions. Third, it had to provide businesses and ultimately consumers with a wide range of low emission, low-cost energy choices through technological innovations.

So I say to my colleagues, our amendment meets all three of those tests. The Senate should scrutinize any alternatives that are offered to this amendment that we have produced, proposed and ask whether those meet those same tests. Whether as the planet is warming and the rest of the world is trying to do something about it the United States is fiddling. Mr. President, I mentioned at the outset that 100 years ago this month, that young man sitting in a Swiss patent office changed our understanding of the universe with the power of his new ideas. A century later, we're facing a real threat. To meet it we need to empower our best minds to use the power of new ideas to help provide new sources of power to our world. If we don't take these simple steps now, steps that are well within both our technological and financial reach, the generations that come will rightfully look back to us with scorn and ask why we acted so selfishly, why we yielded to the status quo that didn't want to change, why we cared only for short-term comforts or profits, and why we left them a global environment in danger.

Einstein once said that "the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." Senator McCain and I and our other cosponsors and supporters believe that the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act will not only set standards for reducing his global warming but will lead us to the new thinking, to the new ideas and the new products we need to halt global warming, achieve energy independence, and protect the world as we know it and love it for the generations to come. I thank the chair and I yield the floor.

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