Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2007

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (House of Representatives - May 18, 2006)

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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment simply to have an opportunity to comment on what has just transpired on the House floor.

My great mentor and friend through most of my public life has been Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, and perhaps the greatest environmentalist who ever served in the United States Senate. Just before he died, I had my last conversation with him about environmental issues, and he made quite clear that he thought the greatest environmental threat to mankind over the next 100 years was the issue of global warming. And it is time this Congress face up to that fact and does something about it.

I don't know what it takes to have this government get off its you-know-what and start dealing with the most critical environmental problem that confronts the entire planet. If we just take a look at a few of the pieces of evidence that are lying all around: core drillings in glaciers around the world enable us to study bubbles that go back as far as 300,000 years, and we see that we have a higher concentration of carbon dioxide than we have had in the known history of the planet.

Since 1970, the duration and intensity of hurricanes has increased by 50 percent, the number of tornados in this country has now reached the highest number in recorded history, some 1,700 in one year. Two hundred western cities have broken heat records in the past 2 years.

Glaciers, which are serving really as the proverbial canaries in the mines, are trying to tell us something. Twenty-seven of the 38 glaciers in Glacier Park are gone, and the rest of them are likely to be gone before this century reaches its halfway point. The Larsen ice shelf, 700 feet thick, was expected to last 100 years; it suddenly began to collapse in two weeks. The Arctic ice cap has lost half of its thickness in the last half century. The Greenland ice cap, as was referred to on that side of the aisle earlier, is melting at a highly accelerated rate. And, if it goes, one third of Florida goes with it. It will be underwater. If it goes, it could shut down the major Atlantic Ocean current. The current that drives the gulf stream has already decreased 30 percent in 50 years, and that is driven by differences in temperature and salinity of the water.

So this to me is not just an environmental problem; it is a moral problem. It isn't going to affect my generation. All of you who are in my generation are going to be gone within 20 years. But it most certainly is going to affect our kids, it most certainly is going to affect our grandkids. And I would hope that we would demonstrate that we care more about the welfare of the planet than we care about committee jurisdictional dung hills.

But what is apparent today is that this Congress is going to be prevented from making a simple statement of fact that humans and human activity are driving, at least significantly driving, the problem of global warming and that we have an obligation to do something on the national level and the international level to deal with it, and we have an obligation to do it now.

John Sawhill, who served a variety of Republican administrations in a variety of capacities, said this just before he died: ``In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.'' And I think we ought to remember that when we think of this issue.

To me, I think we need to remember what those who were present saw in 1933 at FDR's inaugural when he took the oath of office on the very steps of this Capitol. He is remembered mostly for saying that ``we have nothing to fear but fear itself.'' But the line that got the greatest reaction from the crowd at that time was when FDR said, ``We need action, and we need action now.'' We most certainly do. And I regret very much that the gentleman felt it necessary to knock out this language. If he is going to do that, then I would suggest that the authorizing committees have an obligation to sit down with the White House and begin immediately, not 6 months, not 6 years from now, the real process of producing actions that will indeed save this planet from what is most assuredly going to occur if we continue the drift that is implied by this action today.

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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I knew we still had charter members of the Flat Earth Society walking around this country. I didn't realize there were quite so many in the United States Congress.

Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. I am just curious, were you referring to yourself?

Mr. OBEY. The rules don't allow me to say who I was referring to.

The gentleman says we should have studies, we should have hearings. Your party has controlled this Congress for 14 years. The time for studying is over. The time for studying is past. There is a huge scientific consensus that human beings are driving global warming. And James Hansen from NASA has told us that in his view we may have less than 10 years to deal with this problem before we hit a critical tipping point beyond which we will be facing catastrophe.

He may be right, and you may be right. If you are right, then moving to deal with this problem costs us very little. If he is right, not moving costs us everything. The gentleman refers to an ice age.

If you shut down the ocean currents' conveyors, you are going to have an ice age in one heck of a hurry. So I would suggest the gentleman has committee responsibilities. If he does not want this committee to meet our responsibilities, as we have tried to do, then it is about time you meet yours and actually do something about it rather than denying that this is a real problem.

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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

I would simply say to my good friend that just about the only scientists left in the world who do not recognize that this is a serious and real problem are those who have an economic interest in not recognizing it, and that, in my view, is an absolute fact.

The gentleman talks about not wanting to fall into a trap. What you are going to fall into if we listen to the gentleman is sea levels 20 to 30 feet higher than they are now, and virtually every coastal city in the world is going to be under water, and New Orleans is going to be the norm rather than the unhappy exception. That is what the world is going to face if we do not deal with this problem and begin to deal with it while we still have time.

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