Energy Policy Act of 2003-Conference Report-Continued

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2003-CONFERENCE REPORT-CONTINUED

Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, the Energy bill before the Senate today is the newest chapter in the book that we have been writing throughout this year. The title of that book is "At War With Our Children." This legislation would represent another example of this generation taking the benefits of our profligate behavior and then asking our children and grandchildren to pay the cost.

This chapter begins with the addition of over $30 billion in sanctioned appropriations and some $70 billion in authorized appropriations. This will be added to an already gigantic deficit. If it had been added to this year's deficit, it would have increased it by approximately 7 to 8 percent. This cost will be paid by our children. But this goes beyond just adding to the financial burdens of our future. It adds to the vulnerability of our children and grandchildren-a vulnerability that will be occasioned by the fundamental philosophy of this legislation, which is to drain America first.

There are some small vows to conservation and alternative sources of energy, but the principle that lies behind this bill is to extract as much of our national treasure as quickly as possible and to accelerate the date when we will have depleted our domestic source of petroleum and other critical natural resources.

Our generation gets whatever short-term benefits-physical maintenance of low prices of gasoline, the benefits to the oil and gas industry-that will come from this bill. But we again declare war on our children because they will end up paying for it.

Let me suggest what I think should be some goals of a reasonable, comprehensive energy policy. These would be illustrative of the kind of long-term goals that should be but, regrettably, are not the focus of this Energy bill. As an example, my goal No. 1 was that we must take a long-term approach to energy policy, establishing goals to reach for the next 50 years with milestones for each decade to guide our progress. We cannot be the generation that sets our national energy policy on a course which will inevitably result in totally depleting our domestic energy reserves by the time our grandchildren are adults.

The United States is the model to the rest of the world. We should lead by example, using energy conservation and efficiency measures. We should husband our domestic reserves, particularly of petroleum, for times of international turmoil.

Goal No. 2: We must wean ourselves from our unhealthy dependence on petroleum, both foreign and domestic. Current estimates show that the United States is consuming between 19 and 20 million barrels of oil each day. From the mid-1970s into the 1980s, use of petroleum sharply dropped in the United States. I propose we return to that path and aim to decrease the use of petroleum by approximately 10 percent over the next decade, with the ultimate goal of finding a cleaner and more efficient way of operating automobiles and expanding our transportation options such as high-speed rail.

Goal No. 3: We must reduce our importation of foreign oil, which currently accounts for about 65 percent of the oil we consume. We must conserve our current use of domestic oil and gas in order to stretch their availability as far as possible.

Under current levels of extraction and projected levels of use, in approximately 50 to 75 years, about the time our grandchildren will be our age, we will have exhausted our domestic petroleum reserves at current economic and technological levels of extraction.

This is not a new problem, it is one that has been pointed out to us for more than half a century. In 1946, James Forrestal, then-Secretary of the Navy, said this:

If we ever go into another world war, it is quite possible that we would not have access to reserves held in the Middle East. But in the meantime, the use of those reserves would prevent depletion of our own, a depletion which may be serious within the next 15 years.

Secretary Forrestal's statement is remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, he was looking far over the horizon, beyond the short term, and trying to see what would be happening over the next 50 years. Second, he did not succumb to the mantra of independence from foreign oil through draining America first. Rather, he viewed use of foreign oil as a method of husbanding our domestic reserves.

This Energy bill, with its drain-America-first policy, is a step backward from Forrestal's policy. It will assure that we deplete our own resources in the near future. Forrestal sets the examples of the kind of policy we should be making in this energy Bill today.

Goal No. 4: We must increase the amount of renewable and alternative energy we use. This would include wind, solar, hydro, geothermal power, and municipal solid waste. It should also include clean coal and nuclear as alternatives to current fossil fuel use.

Goal No. 5: We must eliminate our overreliance on a single source of power for electric energy generation. I am becoming increasingly concerned about our tendency to turn to natural gas to solve all of our energy woes. Clearly, natural gas has some significant advantages in terms of emission reduction, but we as a nation, in my judgment, would be foolish to have only a single or even a single dominant source of fuels for our electric supply.

The National Association of State Energy Officials estimates that natural gas used for electricity generation will increase by 54 percent between 2000 and 2015 as new powerplants are built and older plants are converted to natural gas.

In contrast, our friends in Europe are making great strides in expanding their energy portfolios to include renewables. Denmark, for example, has a plan to eventually generate about 20 percent of its energy needs from wind power. The United States should take serious steps to include all available energy sources. One way to accomplish this would be to establish a national renewable portfolio standard. This simple measure would go a long way in putting us on the path to a sustainable energy future, by encouraging innovation in renewable energy technologies and by increasing the demand which would have the result of more efficient production. It would create jobs in America for Americans.

Unfortunately, the Energy bill we are considering today ignores the renewable portfolio outright, even though Senator Bingaman's amendment to this effect was accepted by a strong bipartisan vote by the Senate conferees.

Goal No. 6: We must provide Americans with a reliable electricity system. We all know that millions of people were affected by the blackouts of this past summer. What we do not know is how to prevent it from happening again. I am pleased that this bill begins the process, although distressed that this bill does not go as far as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has recommended to give us greater reassurance about the avoidance of August 14 calamities in the future.

But there is even a more basic step we should be taking, and that is to accomplish the goal of a reliable electric grid, we must gather data about the current state of reliability.

It is shocking to realize there is presently no national reporting of outages, which makes it difficult to determine the scope of the problem and the range of solutions. Electricity customers have the means to find information about the price of their electricity should we have such national data. They do not have such an opportunity today.

I propose that consumers should also have the means to judge the reliability of the system that provides them their electricity.

Goal No. 7: We should reduce the impacts of the use of energy on our environment. In the 1990s we proved that the American economy could grow while making meaningful progress to improve our environment. This means we should not drill America first without considering real conservation and real efficiency standards, as well as the effects of such drilling on the depletion of our domestic energy reserves. It also means striving to reduce carbon emissions.

This bill does neither. It focuses, with laser-like precision, at giving big oil every item on its wish list while running roughshod over the rights of the States that depend on, for instance, healthy coasts for their economic security. Section 325 weakens the consistency guidelines of the Coastal Zone Management Act.

Currently, States have the right to review proposed offshore projects and object if they find that these projects are inconsistent with the State's plans or policy. This Energy bill would impose severely restrictive guidelines and deadlines for decisions appealing States' consistency determinations. The practical effect of this would be to limit opportunities for States to comment and provide important information on issues which directly affect their coastal zones.

Coastal States deserve to have a say in the fates of their shores. This is the basis upon which the Coastal Zone Management Act became law. This Energy bill includes provisions to get every drop of oil out of domestic reserves while refusing to improve CAFE standards for SUVs. With advances in technology, it is not difficult to improve the efficiency of vehicles while providing the other features that drivers want. Yet this bill creates the likelihood that fuel efficiency standards will continue to lag. We should resolve to move to at least the 35 miles per gallon level for new cars within this decade.

The National Academy of Sciences says this is a reasonable goal. If we pursued this goal, we would lessen the impact of any oil interruption, we would sharply reduce the amount of money going to areas of the world where the cash might support undesirable activity, and, in addition, we would also make a significant dent in reducing greenhouse gases, an issue which is also ignored by this Energy bill. Any comprehensive Energy bill that doesn't commit to at least some reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases is not worthy of passage.

Furthermore, this Energy bill goes one step further and actually rolls back important environmental standards. One example of this is the exemption of the hydraulic fracturing process from the Safe Drinking Water Act protection for drinking water sources. I have grave concerns about this action from public health, environmental, and legal perspectives.

Hydraulic fracturing is a means by which certain energy sources are retrieved through the use of a heavy hydraulic process. The consequence of this is that after the useful materials have been recovered, there is a significant amount of water laden with materials which contain potentially serious carcinogenic and toxic substances. There are potential serious consequences for drinking water quality in areas where this hydraulic fracturing occurs. In many cases, the fracturing fluids being pumped from ground water contain toxins and carcinogenic chemicals. Diesel fuel is a common component of fractured fluids.

The Energy bill before this conference permanently exempts the oil and gas industry from storm water pollution activities at construction sites. Since 1990, large construction sites have been required to control storm water runoff in order to prevent pollution from entering adjacent waterways, harming wildlife and impairing water quality.

The irony of this is that the Senate will soon consider the transportation bill, the Surface Transportation Act. This act was amended in the Environment and Public Works Committee to mandate that States earmark at least 2 percent of their highway funds to deal with storm water runoff. While we are doing this to our public agencies, requiring them to devote substantial funds and attention to storm water runoff, we are permanently exempting the oil and gas industry at its construction sites from doing so.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 3 minutes to complete my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. Mr. President, in the year 2003-this year-smaller sites were to have been required to adopt the same pollution controls which, since 1990, have applied to large projects. Under industry pressure, the EPA issued a 2-year extension for the oil and gas industry. All other sectors, including small municipalities, still have to comply. This section of the Energy bill adopts a permanent exemption for all construction at oil and gas sites, including those sites that held permits for over 10 years.

These are only some of the examples of environmental rollbacks in this Energy bill related to clean water, clean air, the National Environmental Protection Act, and other important enactments designed to protect the environment and the public health.

The Energy bill we have before us today cannot guarantee Americans that their energy future is secure. Returning to the illuminating remark of Yogi Berra, if we look at this legislation, we begin to get some sense of where we are headed.

With this Energy bill, we have written the next chapter in the book "War On Our Children," and it describes the next battle: Drain America First, overlook conservation measures, ignore strategies to reduce depletion of domestic reserves.

The residue of these outdated ideas will undoubtedly stain the future. Our children and grandchildren will live in an America where water is more contaminated, where air is further clogged with pollution, where access to clean rivers and streams for drinking, swimming, and fishing will be diminished.

The cost of this destruction is not only economic or environmental, it is societal. Future generations will be forced to fix our mistakes instead of focusing on a better tomorrow for their children and grandchildren.

For these reasons, I strongly oppose this legislation and will vote no.