Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to not talk about a transportation bill.

I am on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but it has turned into an energy package, and I just want to expose the fallacy of this so-called green infrastructure package. Let's just look at one part of it.

Let's look at all-electric vehicles. Let's assume that we could go to all-electric vehicles in the U.S. overnight. What would that mean? We hear a lot of talk about electric vehicles, and it sounds good, but what would it actually do for greenhouse gases? The answer is not nearly as much as my colleagues across the aisle would like for you to believe.

First, the people who write this legislation must be the same ones who think that food comes from the grocery store and electricity comes from the wall outlet. Just like the food in the grocery store, energy has a supply chain, and less than 10 percent of it is coming from wind and solar. In fact, between 60 and 70 percent of electricity comes from coal and natural gas. And guess what? It is going to keep coming from coal and natural gas unless we build nuclear power plants, and I haven't seen proposals from anyone on the left to be building any nuclear power plants.

I have got some science and engineering to share with my friends about their wind and solar daydream without coal, natural gas, or nuclear power: It won't work.

I realize the truth about this might hurt people's feelings, but science is science. And just in case you didn't catch that: Wind and solar without coal, natural gas, or nuclear power will not work. If you don't believe me, I challenge you to watch the movie called ``Planet of the Humans,'' and maybe you will believe the left's very own Michael Moore, who basically says the same thing in that movie.

Let's do some quick math on what all-electric vehicles would do for greenhouse gas emissions. I don't think anybody denies the fact that the U.S. emits 15 percent of the world's greenhouse gases and that transportation is the largest sector of that, making up 28 percent of all greenhouse gases. Well, 28 percent of 15 percent is 4.2 percent. So of the global greenhouse gases, transportation in the U.S. makes up 4.2 percent.

But passenger cars aren't all of transportation. They make up only 32 percent of transportation. So, 32 percent of 4.2 percent is 1.34 percent.

That is how much greenhouse gases passenger vehicles in the United States emit. But, remember, when you plug the electric vehicle into the wall, that power is coming from somewhere, somewhere that is making electricity at 60 to 70 percent with fossil fuels.

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, electric vehicles versus internal combustion engines are 25 percent less greenhouse gases. So, all- electric vehicles in the U.S. would mean that we would reduce global greenhouse gases by one-third of 1 percent.

It would also require a tremendous amount of mining and other activities that my friends oppose.

America needs cleaner air and a sustainable environment and sound energy policies. H.R. 2 fails on all of these. We need sound policy to make existing energy sources cleaner and more efficient, and we need to work on next-generation nuclear energy. Then we can talk real numbers on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

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