Statement on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

Statement on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Climate Change Adaptation Act of 2007.

Before I describe the merits of this bill, I would like to take a moment to commend many of my colleagues for their ongoing efforts to develop legislative solutions to meet the enormous challenges global warming poses to our Nation and our planet. I feel this bill helps address a somewhat overlooked, but key tool, to tackling this preeminent challenge facing our Nation.

I am proud that Washington State is taking the lead on the issue of global climate change. While my State's contribution to global warming is relatively small--because we are fortunate enough to derive about 70 percent of our electricity from inexpensive, emissions-free hydropower--global warming threatens to seriously impact our economy.

Ironically, one of the primary impacts of global warming on the Pacific Northwest will be to change our rainfall patterns in a way that reduces the amount of water available for hydropower production.

And these changes will not only harm electricity generation, they will also impact billions of dollars of economic infrastructure associated with irrigation systems, municipal water supplies, even ski resorts that depend on our historic snowfall patterns.

Faced with these possibilities, we must ask several simple questions: What are we doing to prepare for these changes? How are predicted sea level rises being incorporated into shoreline restoration projects, siting of public infrastructure, or disaster response plans, among many other examples? What tools do we need to give Federal, State, and local decisionmakers to take climate change into account on long-term, multibillion-dollar decisions?

Unfortunately, we don't have any answers.

As we discovered when I held a hearing on ocean acidification as chair of the Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard subcommittee last May, our Government is ill-equipped to plan for the consequences of global climate change. We simply lack the tools to develop the strategies we need to adapt.

In August, the Government Accountability Office found that the Federal government is not providing Federal agencies with the proper tools or policy mandates to take climate change impacts into account in carrying out their responsibilities to manage public resources.

In September, the National Academy of Sciences concluded there is a tremendous need to improve the delivery of climate change information to Federal, regional, and local levels so they can take climate change impacts into account in planning and managing resources.

The reality is that even if we were somehow able to stop using fossil fuels today, a certain degree of warming and ocean acidification will still occur over the next 2 or 3 decades.

While my top priority is to move our Nation to a clean energy system, we must face the fact that global warming is happening already, and it is only going to get worse.

That is why I am pleased today to be introducing the Climate Change Adaptation Act--a bill to ensure that our government plans for the changes that global warming will inevitably bring. This bill will require the President to develop a national strategy for addressing the impacts that climate change will have on our natural resources. It will also specifically require NOAA to conduct vulnerability assessments on the impacts of climate change on coastal and ocean resources, and to prepare adaptation plans for those resources.

Planning for the future isn't just common sense--it's responsible government.

This bill is complementary to several bills under consideration by the Commerce Committee on which I serve, including the Kerry-Snowe bill that was under discussion at a Commerce Committee hearing earlier today. Their bill contains many provisions I believe are vitally important--including language I authored with Senator Collins on the need for a program to study the threat of abrupt climate change. I'm also proud to work with Senator Lautenberg on legislation combating ocean acidification.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to move all these critical bills out of the committee and through the Senate in the coming weeks.

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