Paris Accords Were Flawed
Floor Speech
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Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for hosting this today. This is extremely important.
Mr. Speaker, I have the honor and privilege of representing the First Congressional District of Georgia, a district that includes the entire coast of Georgia, over 100 miles of pristine coastline. We are very proud.
The coast of Georgia is my home. That is where I have lived all of my life, where I was born, and I was raised, and where I intend to live the rest of my life. I love the coast of Georgia, and I have always said that I am going to protect the coast of Georgia, and I am.
Mr. Speaker, climate change is real. Protecting our environment is real. We understand that. Since day one, the climate has been changing. Yes, industrialization has had an impact on it as well. We understand that.
In order to represent my constituents, I believe our Nation needs to be working in a responsible way, a responsible way to prepare ourselves for future weather events while striving for cleaner and more affordable energy sources.
Mr. Speaker, in an 11-month period, we had two major hurricanes on the Georgia coast: Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Irma. The number of hurricanes appears to be increasing and there are those who would argue that the intensity of those hurricanes are increasing. That is something we are concerned with.
Mr. Speaker, I serve on the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, as well as on the Environment Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and that is very important. That is where I need to be as the Representative of the coast of Georgia. I need to be on those committees. This is where I want to be.
Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, to address this problem, the majority party, the Democrats, have offered H.R. 9. It is coming to the floor this week and it is not a solution. It is not a solution to climate change.
What it is, is government overreach at its best. It disallows the President from withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. It puts our economy, our national security, and our ability to make our environment cleaner in danger, while other nations, as was pointed out by my colleague from Louisiana, other nations just simply continue on. They aren't held by these same principles.
China right now is responsible for 30 percent of the pollution in the world, and yet they aren't abiding by this. They aren't even a part of the Paris climate agreement. They are not even participating in this until 2030.
As my colleague pointed out, again, they can just continue to increase pollution while here in America, if the President is not allowed to get us out of this climate agreement, we are going to have to adhere to that. That is not fair, and it is not going to help if China is not held to the same principles that we are held to.
Mr. Speaker, between the year 2000 and 2014, the United States decreased emissions by more than 14 percent, in fact, by more than 18 percent, but China's emissions have increased. They have doubled since the year 2000, and they are significantly higher than the U.S. right now.
The U.S. is already leading the way without the Paris climate agreement. We are leading the way. We are the economic leader, and we can't let a half-baked policy like H.R. 9 jeopardize that status.
Companies in our country are responsible, and they are leading the way. As my colleague from Louisiana mentioned, we had a meeting earlier today of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. We had witnesses who told us about companies that are involved in this that already, on their own accord and on their own initiative, are doing things and putting in place programs that are going to help with climate change.
For example, there is a startup called 4Oceanis that has collected 4.2 million pounds of ocean garbage. If we put our economy at risk through expensive regulations and mandates, then we risk losing companies like this and the capital that they have necessary to invest in these projects.
As my colleagues stated earlier, we have to have an all-of-the-above approach. In order to control climate change, we need three things: We need adaptation; we need mitigation; and we need innovation.
Mr. Speaker, H.R. 9 is bad policy. Again, as my colleague pointed out earlier, it was brought about without even a subcommittee hearing. It was rushed through. This is a very important subject. This is a very important subject that can't be rushed. We can't take this lightly. We have to take this seriously. We are taking it seriously in the Republican Party.
The Democrats didn't think about the real consequences of this bill. Here we have the Green New Deal, pie in the sky that would ruin our economy by $93 trillion, and it includes things such as healthcare for all. Now, what has that got to do with climate change? Absolutely nothing.
We need to concentrate; we need to focus; and we need to have real, commonsense solutions to this. That is what we are proposing. But here we have politics as usual on Capitol Hill with Democrats bringing this to the floor. They couldn't care less about the impact on our economy or the impacts on real people.
This legislation, H.R. 9, quite frankly, would be better off being called the ``U.S. Energy Disadvantage Act.'' That is what they ought to call it.
Having said all this, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you--and I mean this sincerely--I am excited. I am excited about the future of clean energy. I am excited about the future of innovation in America. We have the greatest innovators in the world right here in America. We have the smartest scientists in the world right here in America. If we simply give them the chance to do their work, then they will do it. I am convinced of that.
Yes, we need to incentivize it and we need to encourage it, but we don't need to be an obstacle, and we don't need to be in the way.
Look at the internet, arguably one of the greatest inventions in modern times. Where did that come from? Right here in America.
I am excited. I am convinced that we can come up with real solutions to this. Unfortunately, H.R. 9 is not one of those real solutions. H.R. 9 is going to ruin our economy.
The Green New Deal, are you kidding me? That kind of pie-in-the-sky type of legislation has no place. We need real solutions. Citizens sent us up here to come up with real solutions, not some pie-in-the-sky idea.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote against H.R. 9 and deliberate on real solutions that will make our world cleaner and improve our environment without destroying our economy.
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