[Senate Hearing 107-153]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-153
S. 1008--THE CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY AND TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION ACT OF
2001
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
on
S. 1008
TO AMEND THE ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 1992 TO DEVELOP THE UNITED STATES
CLIMATE CHANGE RESPONSE STRATEGY WITH THE GOAL OF STABILIZATION OF
GREENHOUSE GAS CONCENTRATIONS IN THE ATMOSPHERE AT A LEVEL THAT WOULD
PREVENT DANGEROUS ANTHROPOGENIC INTERFERENCE WITH THE CLIMATE SYSTEM,
WHILE MINIMIZING ADVERSE SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL
IMPACTS, ALIGNING THE STRATEGY WITH UNITED STATES ENERGY POLICY, AND
PROMOTING A SOUND NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, TO ESTABLISH A
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM THAT FOCUSES ON BOLD TECHNOLOGICAL
BREAKTHROUGHS THAT MAKE SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS TOWARD THE GOAL OF
STABILIZATION OF GREENHOUSES GAS CONCENTRATIONS, TO ESTABLISH THE
NATIONAL OFFICE OF CLIMATE CHANGE RESPONSE WITHIN THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE
OF THE PRESIDENT, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES
__________
JULY 18, 2001
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
_______
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75-474 WASHINGTON : 2002
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MAX CLELAND, Georgia PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi
JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
MARK DAYTON, Minnesota JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Staff Director and Counsel
Holly A. Idelson, Counsel
Timothy H. Profeta, Legislative Counsel to Senator Lieberman
Hannah S. Sistare, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Paul R. Noe, Minority Senior Counsel
Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statement:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Thompson............................................. 2
Senator Stevens.............................................. 7
Senator Voinovich............................................ 21
Senator Collins.............................................. 24
Senator Bennett.............................................. 26
WITNESSES
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
Hon. Robert C. Byrd, a U.S. Senator from the State of West
Virginia....................................................... 4
James E. Hansen, Ph.D., Head, NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies........................................................ 9
Thomas R. Karl, Director, National Climatic Data Center, National
Environmental Satellite Data and Information Services, National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration......................... 11
Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Center on Global Climate Change.. 30
James A. Edmonds, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist, Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory, Battelle Memorial Institute..... 32
Dale E. Heydlauff, Senior Vice President-Environmental Affairs,
American Electric Power Company................................ 34
Jonathan Lash, President, World Resources Institute.............. 36
Margo Thorning, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Economist,
American Council for Capital Formation......................... 38
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Byrd, Hon. Robert C.:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Claussen, Eileen:
Testimony.................................................... 30
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 75
Edmonds, James A.:
Testimony.................................................... 32
Prepared statement........................................... 79
Hansen, James E.:
Testimony.................................................... 9
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 51
Heydlauff, Dale E.:
Testimony.................................................... 34
Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 84
Karl, Thomas R.:
Testimony.................................................... 11
Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 68
Lash, Jonathan:
Testimony.................................................... 36
Prepared statement........................................... 91
Thorning, Margo:
Testimony.................................................... 38
Prepared statement........................................... 98
Appendix
Statement entitled ``The Future Course of the International
Climate Change Negotiations,'' printed in the Congressional
Record on May 4, 2001, submitted by Senator Byrd............... 112
Statement entitled ``Climate Change Strategy and Technology
Innovation Act of 2001,'' printed in the Congressional Record
on June 8, 2001, submitted by Senator Byrd..................... 114
Article from The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2001, entitled
``Scientists' Report Doesn't Support the Kyoto Treaty,'' by
Richard S. Lindzen............................................. 118
Prepared testimony of Richard S. Lindzen before the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee on May 2, 2001.......... 120
Prepared statement of John P. Holdren, Professor, Kennedy School
of Government and the Department of Earth and Planetary
Sciences, Harvard University................................... 125
Prepared statement of David G. Hawkins, Director, NRDC Climate
Center, Natural Resources Defense Council...................... 134
Copy of S. 1008.................................................. 144
S. 1008--THE CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY AND TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION ACT OF
2001
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2001
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Thompson, Stevens, Voinovich,
Collins, and Bennett.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. The hearing will come to order. I
welcome our witnesses and our guests this morning. I would like
to thank them for joining us to present testimony regarding the
Climate Change Strategy and Technology Innovation Act of 2001,
which has been introduced by our colleagues, Senators Byrd and
Stevens. In the long term, I think there is no greater
environmental challenge facing the United States and the world
than global climate change. It is also a most complicated
international matter, to devise an appropriate response.
Two recent scientific reports, one by the United Nations
and the second by the National Academy of Sciences, confirmed
some of the worst fears about climate change. These reports
conclude that the Earth is warming; that the warming is caused
by human activities; and that, unless we reverse this trend, we
will face dire consequences, including rising sea levels,
widespread drought, the spread of diseases associated with
warmer weather, and an increase in extreme weather events.
Most everyone agrees that there is a problem and on the
need for a strong response, except frankly some here in the
United States. One need only look to Genoa and Bonn, where
thousands of protesters are gathering to demonstrate against
President Bush's decision to walk away from the Kyoto Protocol,
to appreciate the depth of conviction associated with this
problem of global warming and the extent to which the United
States has now separated itself from most of the rest of the
world on this subject.
Personally, I feel that we need an international agreement
with binding targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. I say that because in the aftermath of the Rio
Treaty, which the Senate ratified on October 15, 1992, which
set out a series of targets and timetables that were meant to
be voluntarily complied with, but were not, that the answer, I
believe, is that we need binding targets and timetables.
I know that some of my colleagues feel otherwise, but the
truth is that we are not here today to debate those questions,
although I would guess that we will hear some of the differing
points of view on them. That is because our two colleagues,
Senators Byrd and Stevens, have, I think, put together a
legislative proposal that creates common ground that all of us
can occupy and from which we can move forward together.
Achieving a bipartisan consensus on this legislation can, I
believe, be an historic turning point in the United States'
response to global climate change.
The legislation Senators Byrd and Stevens propose will
create a focused, comprehensive effort within the Executive
Branch that will provide the leadership and creative work that
the problem of global warming requires. The bill will establish
a new National Office of Climate Change Response in the White
House, comparable in some ways to the current Office of
National Drug Control Policy, to develop a peer-reviewed
strategy to stabilize the levels of greenhouse gases in our
atmosphere, in order to prevent dangerous disruption of the
climate system.
That is a goal that we have all agreed to in the
aforementioned Rio Treaty on climate change, which again the
Senate ratified in October 1992. This bill will also create the
infrastructure needed to develop the innovative technologies
that will be necessary to address global warming and it will
authorize funding for those efforts. With this bill, research
and development activities on greenhouse gas mitigation would
have a home centered in the Department of Energy from which
they could be aggressively pursued, and in crafting a climate
change strategy, the office within the White House would be
instructed by this proposal to consider four key elements:
Emissions mitigation; technology development; adaptation needs;
and further scientific research.
As Senator Byrd has said, this bill is meant to complement,
not replace, other greenhouse gas mitigation measures by
creating a process by which we receive expert evaluation of the
challenge we face and fund research work to meet it. This
legislation, I think, will become the tree from which other
climate change measures will branch. In the end, I believe our
shared responsibility is clear. We have got to take action and
take it soon to deal with this problem that will affect our
children and grandchildren and theirs, more than it will
directly affect us.
I would close by saying that in their long and
distinguished careers in the Senate, Senators Robert C. Byrd
and Ted Stevens have not only made history, they have shown
they understand history and the responsibility for leadership
that history places on those of us who are privileged to serve
here. In this bipartisan breakthrough proposal on global
climate change, they have once again shown the rest of us a way
to move forward together. For that, I thank them.
Senator Thompson.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR THOMPSON
Senator Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing on legislation pending before the Committee on the
important issue of climate change. The risk from human-induced
climate change is a risk that we should responsibly try to
manage. When contrasted against the Kyoto protocol, S. 1008
offers a potential for a reasonable way forward, I believe. S.
1008 would require the development of a national climate change
strategy and authorize new funding for the development of
breakthrough energies technology needed to reduce the risk of
climate change.\1\
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\1\ Copy of S. 1008 appears in the Appendix on page 144.
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We are going to need these technologies if we want to meet
the objective of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate
Change, which the United States has ratified. The objective was
the long-term stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas
concentrations in the future, and to meet this, we are going to
have to develop fundamentally new ways of producing and using
energy that give us the energy we need without the emissions
that we do not want.
But reducing CO2 emissions is not as simple as
putting a scrubber on a smokestack. We are going to need new
technologies, and we must seek a global solution, one that
involves all nations of the world and not just the developed
ones. These are some of the reasons why I applaud the
President's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol. I also support the
President's effort to define the new way forward, both
domestically and internationally.
The flawed Kyoto Protocol would place unfair, expensive
limits on the United States. It could have rationed the amount
of energy the United States could have used, even though energy
is key to American prosperity. It could have caused
significantly higher energy costs. It could have significantly
reduced the rate of economic growth, affecting millions of
jobs, eliminating the surplus and threatening American global
competitiveness. Some of our biggest economic rivals would be
exempt from the emission limits.
It appears that a new approach to managing the risk of
climate change is needed, and the President is providing it.
The President's plan will focus on managing the risk of climate
change using American technology, ingenuity and innovation. It
will involve quantifying and understanding the risk of climate
change through improved climate observations and models. It
will involve developing the tools we will need to reduce the
future risk of climate change, advanced energy technologies.
Such useful concepts are reflected in S. 1008. I also
understand that several of my colleagues, including Senators
Murkowski, Craig and Hagel, may soon introduce legislation that
could make positive additions to S. 1008. There is a great deal
of controversy surrounding the politics and science of global
climate change. While I am concerned about spending such large
sums of money in creating new bureaucracies, there may be broad
support for the notion that we will need significant investment
in R&D to be prepared to address the challenge of climate
change.
There is significant disagreement on other policy options,
like mandatory caps on emissions, and as the National Academy
recently pointed out, there are still significant uncertainties
in our scientific understanding of climate change. But perhaps
we can start by reducing the gaps in our scientific
understanding to quantify the risk we face, and we can develop
the energy technology tools we are going to need if we want to
act dramatically to reduce the risk of future climate change.
I look forward to hearing from our distinguished witnesses.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Thompson. We
have been following a procedure here where we have opening
statements just from the Chair and the Ranking Member, so I am
going to ask Senator Byrd to testify now. But then obviously,
because Senator Stevens is a co-sponsor, I will ask him, if he
wishes, after you conclude, to speak.
Senator Byrd, we are honored to have you here and look
forward to your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF HON. ROBERT C. BYRD, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF WEST VIRGINIA
Senator Byrd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson,
Senator Stevens, Senator Voinovich, Senator Collins, other
Members of the Committee. I thank you very much for inviting me
to speak on behalf of S. 1008, the Climate Change Strategy and
Technology Innovation Act of 2001. I thank you for holding this
hearing on legislation that Senator Stevens and I have
introduced and which we believe incorporates the interests of a
wide range of members on both sides of the aisle.
I have spoken twice in recent months on the Senate floor
about the issue of global climate change. My desire to discuss
this important issue derives not only from my sense of personal
concern, but also from my optimistic belief that we can meet
the climate change challenge if we are willing to make a
commitment to do so. It is my position that all nations,
industrialized and developing countries alike, must begin to
honestly address the multifaceted and very complex global
climate change problem.
At the same time, I believe that our Nation is particularly
well-positioned with the talent, the wisdom, the drive, in
leading efforts to address the problem that is before us. It is
for these reasons that my friend, Senator Stevens, and I
introduced the legislation that is under consideration before
this Committee today. The Byrd-Stevens climate change action
plan recognizes the awesome problem posed by climate change. It
puts into place a comprehensive framework, as well as a
research and development effort to guide U.S. efforts far into
the future.
This legislation authorizes a major new infusion of funding
for the research and development efforts to help create and
deploy the next generation of innovative technologies that will
be needed to address the climate change challenge in the coming
decades. S. 1008 establishes a regime of responsibility and
accountability in the Federal sector for the development of a
national climate change response strategy.
That strategy, Mr. Chairman, calls for a new framework to
deal with a comprehensive climate change approach. To implement
this strategy, this legislation provides for the creation of an
administrative structure within the Federal Government,
including an office in the White House to coordinate and
implement this strategy. S. 1008 also creates a new office in
the Department of Energy that will work on long-term research
and development of a type that is not currently pursued in more
conventional research and development programs today.
The bill creates an independent review board that will
report to Congress to ensure that these goals are achieved.
Under S. 1008, we can begin to take action on climate change
through a comprehensive and aggressive approach. It is a
bipartisan initiative that is intended to supplement, rather
than replace, other complementary proposals to deal with
climate change. This bill is technology-neutral and does not
carve out special benefits for any one energy resource or
technology.
We must put a portfolio of options on the table if we are
to have any hope of solving this dilemma. This legislation
provides for the broad framework necessary to address the
climate change challenge. It reaffirms the goal of stabilizing
atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration. It leaves the
technology decisions to energy experts and the marketplace, and
it recognizes the vital need to support public-private
partnerships in developing these technologies.
Senators we have an opportunity before us that we should
not let slip away. It is not just an opportunity. It is also a
very heavy responsibility. As this Senate begins to address our
Nation's many energy and environmental concerns, climate change
legislation must be part of that equation, and the Byrd-Stevens
climate change action plan can help to chart that course.
Addressing global climate change takes clear-headed and strong
leadership. It requires extraordinary leadership.
While our current menu of climate change policies and
programs is an important first step, this approach only pays
lip service to the awesome challenge that we face. We must go
further than just making small incremental improvements in our
existing research and development programs. It is a huge
challenge. I hope that this Congress and this administration
are willing to step up to the plate. Rarely has mankind been
confronted with such an undertaking, the need to improve the
energy systems that power our economy
This is the greatest Nation in the world when the issue is
one of applying our talents to push beyond the next step, and
instead to visualize, conceptualize and then to achieve major
leaps forward. We have put a man on the Moon and brought him
back to Earth. We have helped to eradicate insidious diseases
that have ravaged the peoples of the Earth. Our Nation is a
world leader in medical and telecommunications technologies. We
should also be a leader when it comes to revolutionizing our
energy technologies. Such a commitment would be important for
our economy, our energy security, and the global environment
overall.
But I must ask how long are we going to wait to develop
these technologies? This is a huge opportunity for our Nation,
but our efforts will only be rewarded if we can make a
concerted commitment and dedicate ourselves to the task ahead,
and that will not be easy. Make no mistake about it, global
climate change is a reality. There are some who may have
misinterpreted my stance on this issue, based on S. Res. 98 of
July 1997, which I co-authored with Senator Hagel. That
resolution, which was approved by a 95-0 vote, said that the
Senate should not give its consent to any future binding
international climate change treaty which failed to include two
important provisions.
That resolution simply stated that developing nations,
especially those largest emitters, must also be included in any
treaty and that such a treaty must not result in serious harm
to the U.S. economy. In other words, we needed to proceed with
our eyes open and we asked the administration--the then-
administration--to provide to the Congress the estimates of
cost of the treaty, cost to the various industries in this
country, the automobile industry, the mining industry and so
on. Those estimates have not yet been provided.
I still believe that these two provisions are vitally
important components of any future climate change treaty, but I
do not believe that this resolution should be used as an excuse
for the United States to abandon its shared responsibility to
help find a solution to the global climate change dilemma. At
the same time, we should not back away from efforts to bring
other nations along. The United States will never be successful
in addressing climate change alone.
We are all in the same boat, and what comes around goes
around. The pollution that begins with China and Indonesia and
Mexico, Brazil, and other developing countries, comes around to
the United States and to Great Britain and to the European
countries. It is a global problem that requires a global
solution. It is critical that nations such as those I have
mentioned, China, India, Mexico, Brazil and other developing
nations, adopt a cleaner, more substantial development path
that promotes economic growth while also reducing their
pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
In the Senate's fiscal year 2001 energy and water
appropriations bill, I inserted language that created an
interagency task force to promote the department of U.S. clean-
energy technologies abroad. Such an initiative is complementary
to the efforts proposed in S. 1008. The clean-energy technology
exports initiative is now underway and will help foreign
nations to deploy a range of clean-energy technologies that
have been developed in our laboratories.
These technologies are hugely marketable. Many of them have
resulted from our clean-coal technology, which I initiated in
1985, with $750 million committed to the task. It has been an
immensely successful program. The private sector has come
forward with more than it was required. It was required to come
forward with 50 percent of the cost. It has put two-thirds of
the cost on the barrelhead and several technologies have gone
forward and proved to be successful
If nations like China continue to depend on coal and other
fossil fuels to grow their economies into the future, it is
incumbent upon the United States to accelerate the development,
demonstration and deployment of clean coal and other clean-
energy technologies that will be critical to meeting all
nations' energy needs, while also providing for a cleaner
environment. I believe that S. 1008 maps a responsible and
realistic course. That road may be bumpy and I am sure that
there will be disagreements along the way, but it is a journey
that we have to take. We owe it to future generations.
S. 1008, if adopted and signed by the President, will
commit the United States to a serious undertaking, but one that
should no longer be ignored. If we are to have any hope of
solving one of the world's and one of humanity's greatest
challenges, we must begin now. Mr. Chairman, I again thank you
for holding this hearing. I again thank my colleague, Senator
Stevens, for his vision, his leadership, for his cooperation,
for his joining in the promotion of this legislation. I look
forward to working with you, Senator Lieberman, and with you,
Senator Thompson, Senator Stevens and the other Members of this
Committee on this important and timely legislation. It is not a
moment too soon.
I ask unanimous consent that my May 4, 2001 and June 8,
2001 climate change statements printed in the Congressional
Record be made a part of the record.\1\
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\1\ The statements submitted by Senator Byrd from the Congressional
Record on May 4, 2001 and June 8, 2001 appear in the Appendix on pages
112 and 114 respectively.
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Chairman Lieberman. Without objection.
Senator Byrd. That completes my statement, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Senator Byrd, for
a very thoughtful, very important statement, and one that has,
I think, the appropriate sense of urgency.
Senator Stevens.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR STEVENS
Senator Stevens. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
and I, too, join Senator Byrd in thanking you for holding this
hearing, and I commend my good friend from West Virginia for
his leadership in trying to establish a major research effort
to reduce carbon emissions and deal with the whole subject, the
myriad of subjects that are included in global climate change
strategy. I thank you very much, Senator Byrd, for allowing me
to join you on this, because it is a matter of great importance
to me and my State, as you know.
I think, Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson, Members of the
Committee, in days gone by, Senator Byrd and I might have just
added this to an appropriations bill.
Chairman Lieberman. We still were hoping that eventually
you might do that. [Laughter.]
Senator Stevens. The difference is that we know this is
such a complex subject, one that needs congressional approval
before we forge into this area. We want to make sure that you
are all behind us before we try to put the taxpayers' money
where our mouths have been. We need funds for this. I view this
as being next to major medical research in terms of issues that
this country faces, and I want to tell you I am particularly
interested because of the last hearing I chaired, Mr. Chairman,
as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, was a field
hearing in Fairbanks on the impacts of global climate change on
the Arctic environment.
I would welcome and urge you to think about bringing the
whole Committee up to see what global climate change means.
There is no question that the change has taken place more
rapidly in the Arctic than anywhere else on the globe. Many of
the witnesses at our hearing noted that climate activity stems
from a number of factors, including human activity. I do not
think we can assess it totally to human activity.
The degree to which any particular phenomenon or activity
contributes to climate change is not yet well-understood.
Regardless of the cause, there has been a dramatic warming
trend in the Arctic areas, as I said. Let me tell you, pack
ice, which is the ice that insulates our coastal villages from
winter storms, has shrunk 3 percent per year since 1970.
Increased storm activity has caused significant beach erosion,
which now has required us to consider ways to displace entire
communities along the coastline of Alaska.
The sea ice is thinner than it was 30 years ago, and the
sea ice is the platform on which most of the reproductive
activity of marine mammals takes place. It is back from the
shore now. This is permanent ice that is thinning. As a matter
of fact, I was told it was three inches thinner this year than
last year. The Northwest Passage has been opened now for 3
years. I remember so well, as a young Senator, when I went on
the MANHATTAN and tried to accompany many people and see if we
could use the Northwest Passage to transport Alaska's oil to
the East Coast, rather than build a pipeline; and it failed, as
you know, because of the ice.
We spent days riding that ice breaker tanker, grinding
three, four, five miles a day of ice. That is gone now. It is
not there. The Northwest Passage is just one of the
indications. I would invite you to come up and see our northern
forests. Our northern forests are now farther north and further
west, as the permafrost is melting, and the permafrost melting
means a great deal to us. Half of the coal in the United States
is in that area, of the permafrost of Alaska. Whether we will
ever be required to use it, I do not know, but under current
law, we would have to replace the contour of the land if we
took the coal out. Of course, that is an impossibility.
Now, the powers-that-be, the Good Lord, is melting that
permafrost and the contour may not be the same in future years
as it is now. It might be easier to get to the coal. But this
legislation provides us a balanced approach to climate change
and will help us deal with the issue of greenhouse gases and do
so without harming the economy of the United States, and to
increase the capability of Third World countries to improve
their economy. By making necessary research and development
efforts now, I think we can inspire a generation of
technologies that will enhance America's chance to be the
leader in dealing with global climate change.
It will increase research and development funding, so we
can better understand this global climate change. We can plan
to develop the capabilities that technology will lead us to,
and I think we will be able to react to global climate change
in a very positive way if we follow the Senator's lead, and I
am glad to be his partner in this effort. This bill will
require, in my judgment, that we double the technology
investment for research and development related to global
climate change, just as we doubled the investment in health
research in the last 5 years. This will lead us into a new era
of funding for research in this area.
I think there should be no misunderstanding about it,
because I have joined Senator Byrd in making a commitment that
this money will be made available to the research community, so
we can better understand these changes and take whatever
actions we can to offset them. It will create a process for the
United States to take seriously this issue and to address it
promptly. I thank you for holding the hearing, and again I
repeat my invitation to you to come up and see what is
happening. I was told in Fairbanks that while the world as a
whole may have increased in temperature by about one degree,
the Arctic has increased in temperature by seven degrees, and
we took our committee to Antarctica to see if the same
situation was developing down there.
They have increased ice pack down there. They have
increased problems down there, but they are not as much
involved in global climate change as we are in the Arctic. The
Arctic is the place to understand global climate change and I
am proud, Senator, that you allowed me to join you in this
effort, and pledge that we will fight this battle together. We
need this information. We need to develop this technology as
rapidly as possible.
Thank you very much.
Senator Byrd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Senator Stevens, thank you very much
for that very compelling testimony, and particularly for the
memorable reports from Alaska and the Arctic. I accept your
invitation. I think Senator Thompson and I ought to figure out
a way to see if we can bring the Committee exactly to the
places you described. In a way, it may be that Alaska and the
Arctic are the early warning system or, to use an old and worn
expression, the canary in the coal mine, in the case of climate
change. I thank you.
Senator Byrd, thank you very much for your time. I know you
have a busy schedule and I appreciate very much your being here
today.
Senator Stevens. Please excuse me, too. I have another----
Chairman Lieberman. Oh, you have a busy schedule, too. It
is always great, not only to have your leadership on a critical
problem like this, but to know when we have your leadership,
the prospects of funding such a bill are quite high.
[Laughter.]
Thank you. We will call the second panel: Dr. James Hansen,
Head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; and Thomas
Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center. Dr.
Hansen, why don't you proceed? We have a clock going. Your full
statement, which we appreciate, will be printed in the record
in full, and I ask you to try to stay pretty much as close to
the 5 minutes as you can. Then it is the tradition of the
Committee now to give each Senator 10 minutes. So if any of my
colleagues want to make opening statements, that hopefully will
give them the opportunity to do that, as well.
Dr. Hansen.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES E. HANSEN,\1\ Ph.D., HEAD, NASA GODDARD
INSTITUTE FOR SPACE STUDIES
Mr. Hansen. Thank you, Senator Lieberman. I will talk about
options for influencing future climate. The most popular
prediction for future climate change is based on the business-
as-usual scenario, in which the annual increments of the
forcing agents that drive climate change grow larger and larger
every year. This scenario leads to a prediction of dramatic
climate change, several degrees by the end of the century.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hansen with attachments appears
in the Appendix on page 51.
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It is a useful warning of what could happen if we let the
growth of climate-forcing agents run wild. For the sake of
contrast, my colleagues and I have defined an alternative
scenario for climate change in the 21st Century. In this
scenario, the growth rate of the forcing agents that drive
climate change decelerates, such that global warming in the
next 50 years is less than one degree and the stage is set for
stabilizing atmospheric composition later in the century. How
can we achieve this? What are the climate forcing agents?
My chart,\1\ which is over here, but is also in your
handout, shows the estimated climate forcing agents that exist
today. Red is used for forces that cause warming, blue for
cooling. Carbon dioxide, the bar on the left, causes the
largest forcing, 1.4 watts-per-meter-squared. But the forcing
by other greenhouse gases, the next four bars, adds up to at
least as much as carbon dioxide. Methane causes a forcing half
as large as carbon dioxide. Tropospheric ozone is also
important; and then there are several aerosols, which are fine
particles in the air. Black carbon is soot from diesel engines
and coal burning. It causes warming. Organic aerosols and
sulfates from fossil fuels cause cooling. Aerosols also affect
the properties of clouds (that is the large blue bar here) and
cause a cooling, but the magnitude of it is very uncertain. The
net forcing by all of these is positive, consistent with
observed global warming.
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\1\ The chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 62.
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The question is: How will these forcings change in the
future? The added climate forcing in the next 50 years will be
only one watt and greenhouse warming less than one degree
provided, (1) we halt the growth of the non-CO2
forcings, and, (2) fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions
continue, but at about the same rate as today. The resulting
forcing of one watt would cause some climate change, but less
than one degree in 50 years.
So, first, can we stop the growth of the non-CO2
forcing? Not only can we, but it only makes sense. Black carbon
is the product of incomplete combustion. You can see it in the
exhaust of diesel trucks. The microscopic soot particles are
like tiny sponges. They soak up toxic organics and other
aerosols. They are so tiny that, when breathed in, they
penetrate human tissue deeply. Some of the smallest enter the
bloodstream. They cause respiratory and cardiac problems,
asthma, acute bronchitis, with tens of thousands of deaths per
year in the United States, also in Europe, where the health
cost of particulate air pollution have been estimated at 1.6
percent of the gross domestic products.
In the developing world, the costs are staggering. In
India, approximately 270,000 children under the age of five die
per year from acute respiratory infections caused by this air
pollution. The pollution arises in household burning of field
residue, cow dung, coal, for cooking and heating. There is now
a brown cloud of air pollution mushrooming from India.
Tropospheric ozone is another pollutant whose growth could be
stopped, as could that of methane. We have only one atmosphere
and it is a global atmosphere. We need to reduce the pollution
that we put into it for other reasons, human health,
agricultural productivity, and in the process we can prevent
the non-CO2 climate forcing from increasing.
In the United States, for example, we can reduce diesel and
other soot admissions. We might also work with developing
countries to help reduce their pollution. One possible long-
term solution would be electrification, a clean source of
energy.
Now, the other part of the climate problem is
CO2. It is the hardest part of the problem, but is
not as intractable as it is often made out to be.
In 1998, global CO2 emissions declined slightly.
In 1999, they declined again, and, in 2000, another small
decline. This is just the trend needed to achieve the
alternative scenario with only moderate climate change. In the
near-term, my opinion is that this trend can be maintained via
concerted efforts toward increased energy efficiency,
conservation and increased use of renewable energy sources. On
the long-term, we probably need a significant increasing
contribution from an energy source that produces little or no
CO2.
In my written testimony, I note some possibilities, which
include zero-emission coal; nuclear power; the combination of
solar energy, hydrogen and fuel cells. Each possibility has
pros and cons, and R&D is needed. It will be up to the public,
through their representatives, to make the choices.
Finally, the relevance of all this to your hearing is that
there is more than one way to control climate change. The
forcing agents that cause climate change are complex and, in
some cases, poorly understood. These forcing agents have other
effects on people and the rest of the biosphere that should be
considered. We need to take a broad view of this issue. We will
need a strategy, and that strategy will need to be adjusted as
we learn more and see the effect of the actions that we take.
This is a long-term issue.
Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Hansen. Mr. Karl.
TESTIMONY OF THOMAS R. KARL,\1\ DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CLIMATIC
DATA CENTER, NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITE DATA AND
INFORMATION SERVICES, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC
ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Karl. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
inviting me here today, and Members of the Committee. I have
been invited to talk about the science of climate change.
First, I want to emphasize two important fundamental issues.
First off, there is a natural greenhouse effect. It is real. A
small percentage of the atmosphere, about 2 percent, is
composed of greenhouse gases. This includes water vapor, carbon
dioxide, ozone, and methane. These effectively prevent part of
the heat from the Earth escaping and lead to temperatures
warmer than what would otherwise be the case.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Karl appears in the Appendix on
page 68.
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In addition to the natural greenhouse effect, there is a
change underway in the greenhouse radiation balance. Some
greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere because of
human activities and increasingly trapping more heat. Direct
atmospheric measurements over the past 40 or so years have
documented a steady growth in atmospheric abundance of carbon
dioxide. Measurements, using air bubbles trapped within
accumulating layers of snow, show that atmospheric carbon
dioxide has increased by more than 30 percent over the
industrial era, compared to the relative constant abundance
that it had over the previous 750 years.
The predominant cause of the increase in carbon dioxide is
the combustion of fossil fuels and burning of forests. Other
heat-trapping gases are also increasing as a result of human
activities. The increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases due
to human activities are projected to be amplified by feedback
effects, such as changes in water vapor, snow cover, and sea
ice. So as atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and
greenhouse gases increase, the resulting increase in surface
temperature leads to less sea ice and snow, thereby reducing
the amount of the Sun's energy reflected back into space,
resulting in a higher temperature.
As greenhouse gases increase, evaporation increases, which
leads to more atmospheric water vapor. The additional water
vapor acts as important feedback to increase temperature. Our
present understanding is that these two feedbacks account for
about 60 percent of the warming. The exact magnitude of the
feedback effects and others, such as changes in clouds, remain
a significant source of uncertainty related to our
understanding of the impact of greenhouse gases.
Increases in evaporation water vapor affect global climate
in other ways besides increasing temperature, such as
increasing rainfall and snowfall rates. The increase in
greenhouse gas concentration implies a positive radiative
forcing and has a tendency to warm the climate. Particles or
aerosols in the atmosphere resulting from human activities can
also affect climate. Aerosols vary considerably from region to
region. Some aerosol types act, in a sense, opposite to the
greenhouse gases and cause a negative forcing or cooling of
climate, as Dr. Hansen's chart shows.
There may also be other natural factors that exert an
influence on climate: Changes in the sun's energy, and changes
in volcanic eruptions. These effects, however, such as volcanic
eruptions, are short-lived. The forcing estimates in the case
of greenhouse gases are substantially greater than those for
these other two forcing agents. What do the changes imply?
First off, there is a growing set of observations that yields a
collective picture of a warmer world. There is just simply no
question the climate of the last 100 years is increasing the
temperature. We have ample evidence: Widespread retreat of
glaciers in non-polar regions; snow cover, and sea ice extent
has decreased; thickness of sea ice has decreased; and duration
of ice on lakes and rivers also all have decreased.
It is also likely that the frequency of extreme events have
increased as global temperatures have risen. This is particular
evident in areas where precipitation has increased, primarily
mid- and high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Other
extremes have decreased, such as the frequency of extremely
cold weather, and the frequency of frost during the period of
instrumental record. There is a new and stronger evidence that
most of the warming over the last 50 years is attributed to
human activities. Scenarios of future human activities indicate
continued changes in atmospheric composition throughout the
21st Century.
Based on these scenarios and the estimated uncertainties in
climate models, resulting projections of global temperature
increase by the year 2100 range from 2.3 to 10.1 degrees
Fahrenheit. Such a projected rate of warming would be much
larger than observed over the 20th Century and would very much
likely be without precedent over the past 10,000 years. It is
important to emphasize that greenhouse gas warming could be
reversed only very slowly. The quasi-irreversibility arises
because of the slow rate of removal from the atmosphere of
greenhouse gases and because of the slow response of oceans to
thermal changes.
It is presently not possible to generally define a safe
level of greenhouse gases. There are still large uncertainties
related to the projected rate and magnitude of climate change.
The determination of an acceptable concentration of greenhouse
gases depends on narrowing this range, as well as the knowledge
and risk of vulnerabilities to climate change. Analysis reveals
that sectors and regions vary in their sensitivity to climate
change, but generally those societies and systems least able to
adapt and those regions with the largest changes are at
greatest risk. This includes the poor nations and sectors of
our society, natural ecosystems--those regions that are likely
to see the largest changes, for example, in the Arctic.
In terms of our understanding, there is still considerable
uncertainty of how the natural variability of the climate
system reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols.
Current estimates of the magnitude and impacts of future
warming are subject to future adjustments either up or down. To
address these uncertainties in several areas, we think it is
important that we embark on understanding the complex climate
system. Progress in this area will be limited by the weakest
link in the chain. At the present time, there are several weak
links that need to be addressed.
First and foremost, a climate observing system is needed to
monitor decade-to-century scale changes for basic variables
needed to describe the climate system. Current observing
systems yield large uncertainties in several key parameters,
especially on regional and local scales. Although we have been
able to link observed changes to human activities, it is not
possible to quantitatively identify the specific contribution
of each forcing factor, which is required for the most
effective strategy to prevent large or rapid climate change.
This will require better understanding in several areas: The
feedbacks of the climate system; the future usage of fossil
fuels; carbon sequestration on land and in the ocean; details
of regional climate change; and natural climate variability.
Finally, we found that no matter how good our understanding
of future climate change might be, we ultimately must
understand how this impacts natural and human systems. To
achieve this understanding will require first an
interdisciplinary research that couples physical, chemical,
biological, and human systems, improved capability to integrate
scientific knowledge, including its uncertainty, into effective
decision support systems, a better understanding of the impact
of multiple stresses on human and natural systems, especially
at the regional and sectorial level.
Thank you, and I look forward to working with you on these
issues, and thank you again for inviting me to appear today.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Karl. Let me begin
questioning. Although we asked you here to discuss the science
of climate change, I think it would be interesting to ask if
you have any response, having the expertise you do, to the
Byrd-Stevens proposal that is the focus of our hearing today,
and to the coordination of the response to climate change that
it would enact. Do either of you have a response?
Mr. Karl.
Mr. Karl. One thing I would highlight is, as I indicated in
my testimony, this is an extremely complex issue, one which
encompasses many areas of science. It encompasses areas of
social science, as well as the physical sciences. So, to move
forward, it is very clear a coordinated effort is clearly
needed, and I think that is one of the highlights of the Byrd-
Stevens bill.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Dr. Hansen.
Mr. Hansen. I was delighted to hear the discussions by the
several Senators. I agree with Mr. Karl. It is a very
complicated issue and we need a broad approach to look at it.
Chairman Lieberman. Do you think that the Byrd-Stevens
proposal, as you understand it, meets that standard?
Mr. Hansen. I do not think it is appropriate for me to take
a position with regard to it, but certainly the discussions we
heard today seem to be right on the mark.
Chairman Lieberman. Understood. It is my impression that
there is not really remaining dispute regarding whether climate
change is occurring. In fact, I noticed last week that our
colleague, Senator Hagel, who was one of the co-authors,
obviously, of the Byrd-Hagel resolution, was quoted in USA
Today as saying that, ``There is no question there is climate
change. We are beyond that debate.'' Would you agree with
Senator Hagel, Dr. Hansen?
Mr. Hansen. Yes, I was one of the authors, as was Mr. Karl,
of the recent National Academy of Science's report in which we
reaffirmed the reality of global warming and that there is the
possibility of disruptive climate change later this century. I
think we also took pains to stress some caveats about what will
happen. It depends very much on how these climate forcing
agents develop, and it is certainly within our capability to
influence that and to influence the amount of climate change
that will occur.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Karl.
Mr. Karl. Yes, there is no question that the climate is
changing in ways which we have now seen from the observational
record and our past paleoclimate data. One of the important
attributes of climate, though, is much broader than just
changes in temperature, and as I indicated, there are some
unsettling things we do not know about--for example, changes in
some of the extreme precipitation events in all areas of the
world.
So I think it is really going to be key, as we continue to
change atmospheric composition, to look at changes in all the
elements of the climate system, particularly for potential
surprises, accelerated changes. That is one of the areas I
would like to emphasize. Although we are sure climate is
changing in significant ways, we do not have all the answers
today.
Chairman Lieberman. In other words, there are questions
about whether some of the extreme precipitation or extreme
weather that people are experiencing is related to the climate
change that we know is a reality.
Mr. Karl. Part of the difficulty we have, if you look at
our observing system, is that in the mid-latitudes and some of
the higher latitudes, we have enough data to make what we think
are reasonably confident statements. But if you look at the
rest of the world, the observing systems really are not capable
of delivering that kind of information which we so badly need.
Chairman Lieberman. One area of focus of the Byrd-Stevens
bill, S. 1008, which is, I thought, very interesting, was the
need to help us--Americans--adapt to the already inevitable
consequences of climate change, or at least that is the way I
read one of their four goals. I wanted to ask you to what--
perhaps you have answered it already, but just to come at it in
a different way--to what extent do you believe that some
climate change is already inevitable? In other words, that
there will be consequences already. And what measures would you
recommend to help adapt to that change?
Mr. Hansen. I think that we have evidence that some
additional warming is on the way. There has been warming
already of about half-a-degree Celsius or one degree Fahrenheit
in the past century, and I think that there is about another
half-a-degree Celsius, which is already in the pipeline,
because of the greenhouse gases that we have added to the
atmosphere and which the system has not yet responded to, due
to the long time constant of the ocean. It takes a long time
for the ocean to warm up in response to this forcing.
If we can slow down the growth rate of these climate
forcing agents, then I think the additional warming in the next
50 years will be less than one degree. That is a magnitude
which we could adjust to probably without a great deal of
difficulty, although even now climate fluctuations are a major
factor that we need to pay more attention to, making ourself
less vulnerable to those fluctuations.
Chairman Lieberman. How serious would the steps be that we
have to take to control or contain climate change within the
next 50 years, to the degree that you describe?
Mr. Hansen. Well, there are two things that we need to do:
One is, as I mentioned, stop the growth of these non-CO2
forcings. I think there are very good reasons to do that
anyhow, which to a large degree could pay for themselves. They
are not going to happen automatically. We have to see that they
happen. They are basically air pollution and they affect
everybody--I gave numbers for people that die from it--but
there are even more people who do not die, but suffer
consequences of air pollution.
The CO2 part: How do we keep the rate of
emissions of CO2 from increasing? Again, that is
debatable. There are people who feel that just from
conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy sources,
we can keep the emissions similar to what they are today. Most
energy experts, however, believe that we will need some clean
energy sources such as--I gave you examples: Nuclear power,
which has disadvantages; or capture the CO2 from
coal--that is now technically possible, but it adds to the
cost. So there are things that appear practical--but they will
require a real effort to do them.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Karl, how about your reaction to
the extent to which climate change is already inevitable,
perhaps also your evaluation of Dr. Hansen's alternative
scenario?
Mr. Karl. Yes, I would like to address that and emphasize
as well, one of the great problems we face, as Dr. Hansen said,
which I agree with, we already have in the pipeline some
additional warming, something on the order of half-a-degree,
and it is clear that greenhouse gas concentrations are likely
to continue to increase. One of the real difficulties we have
is trying to ensure that new systems that are expected to have
a lifetime of many decades now begin to incorporate, not just
the past climate, but projected changes in climate, to ensure
that their design efficiency is as good as it could possibly
be.
Chairman Lieberman. How do you mean new systems?
Mr. Karl. For example, we have noticed that the design
standards for buildings are being exceeded in many parts of the
country and engineers are using climatologies based on earlier
records in the 20th Century. So in order to ensure that we have
efficiency in our energy systems, we would really need to think
about how we use the climate of the past and what we might
expect into the future, and that is a very important area of
adaptation, because quite frankly, at this time, people are a
bit scrambling, trying to decide exactly what to do.
Chairman Lieberman. Are we seeing elsewhere, in your
experience, the rather dramatic examples that Senator Stevens
gave us about what is happening in Alaska and the Arctic
region, of the effects of climate change?
Mr. Hansen. The Arctic region--it is not the entire Arctic.
For example, Greenland has actually cooled in the last 50
years. So there is a change in the long-wave patterns at the
high latitudes, such that the region around Alaska and the
center of Siberia warm substantially. Those are the regions
where we have seen the largest warming. I do not think there is
a comparable warming in other parts of the world. As we said,
the average warming is about half-a-degree Celsius, but in
those regions it has been significantly larger than that.
Chairman Lieberman. Go ahead, Mr. Karl.
Mr. Karl. I think it would be worth emphasizing that the
expectations of warming are larger over land areas compared to
the ocean areas, and large over places like North America and
mid- and high-latitudes, significantly larger than the average
temperatures that you hear being discussed in terms of
projected change.
Chairman Lieberman. Why is that?
Mr. Karl. The oceans are a great reservoir of heat, and we
have just conducted some research in our agency which showed
that the ocean heat content has increased. So part of the
warming being taken up into the oceans is being transported
down to deep layers in the ocean.
Chairman Lieberman. But why more of an impact in North
America?
Mr. Karl. North America is similar to other major, large
continental areas. So you can make the same statement for
Eurasia, as well.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, both. Senator Thompson.
Senator Thompson. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you
very much for being with us here today. It seems to me that one
of the things that comes out of reading from your works and
other experts' work is that there is a great deal of
uncertainty and complexity involved in what we are dealing with
here, from the work of the National Academy of Sciences and
also the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and
others.
Obviously, many are strong proponents of Kyoto, but in
1999, more than 17,000 scientists signed a petition against it.
It seems to me that there are questions with regard to the
extent of the warming. There are also questions with regard to
the causes of the warming. The question presented to us as
policymakers is how much do we know at this point and what are
the responsible policy options and choices in light of what we
know and what we do not know.
Getting to the question of the extent of the warming, I
have read--or some scientists have pointed out or alleged--that
the climate is always changing and always has. In the Middle
Ages, we had another warming trend. Thirty years ago, some
people were concerned about climate cooling. Is that
technically accurate and, if so, what is the significance of
that?
Mr. Karl. I would be happy to address that, Senator. One of
the major improvements that we have been able to achieve in the
last 5 years is the use of paleoclimatic data or proxy data,
and what this encompasses are measurements from tree rings, ice
cores, corals in the ocean and historical records. These
records have been painstakingly analyzed over the last 5 years
by a number of different scientific groups to try and estimate
what temperatures have done globally over the last 1,000 years
or so. Unfortunately, the measurements are not complete enough
to go back 1,000 years in the Southern Hemisphere, but for the
Northern Hemisphere, we think they are.
This analysis suggests that our concepts of things like the
Little Ice Age, the medieval warming period, perhaps were
rooted in the accounts that we read from Europe. If you look at
the globe or the hemisphere as a whole, what you see is a
remarkable consistency in temperatures across the Northern
Hemisphere the last 1,000 years. So when you put on top of that
the instrumental record of the 20th Century, you see that the
warming that we see in the last 100 years is substantially
greater than anything we have seen in the last 1,000 years.
By no means do we have all the answers. We would like to be
able to narrow uncertainties. I think the statements we are
using now are saying things like, ``It's likely that,'' because
we want to leave a little room for additional observations. But
the best evidence suggests the warming today is very unusual.
Senator Thompson. Can you determine that there have been
periods of time in our history where there has been a cooling?
Mr. Hansen. Certainly there have been. There was a cooling
from the 1930's and 1940's until 1970, and that does relate to
your comment about some scientists talking about mechanisms
that would cause cooling. That actually is in my chart. The
blue bars--the aerosols, most of the aerosols, tend to reflect
sunlight and therefore cause a cooling, and it is a possibility
that the cooling that we observed in that period was related to
the aerosols.
As we started to get our energy systems going, we were
producing a lot of aerosols and CO2. Recently, in
recent decades, we have tried to reduce some of those sulfate
aerosols, which are pure white and cause a cooling effect. The
reason to reduce them being that they cause acid rain and other
undesirable things. So it is good to try to reduce those. In
the process, though, we accelerate the tendency toward warming.
So that is why it is important to also attack not only sulfate
aerosols, but the black carbon aerosols, because those aerosols
cause warming.
Senator Thompson. May I ask this? Do we know enough about
this particular subject and this history?
Mr. Hansen. We do not know enough to----
Senator Thompson. Extrapolate that the current trend is
going to continue?
Mr. Hansen. Right, because, you see, there are uncertainty
bars on these, the black vertical bars. In fact, the aerosol
changes are very uncertain. We do not have the measurements. It
is clear we need to try to do some things, and we will need to
adjust our strategy as we go along, as we learn more.
Senator Thompson. If my suggestion is correct, it does not
mean that we should not do anything about it. It does not mean
that we should not try to deal with it, or err on the side of
safety in the long-term. But it does seem to me, from all I can
gather and my limited knowledge of this area, that there is
still an awful lot we do not know. It would be very difficult,
based on where the science is and where the history and the
historical analysis has been, to extrapolate any trend with
confidence. It is kind of like budgets and deficits and
surpluses around here. Whatever is happening at the moment is
what we predict is going to continue to happen. I hope
scientists do not do the same thing, but it is a good thing to
keep mind, I think, as we go forward.
I also understand that some satellite measurements have
been different than others in terms of the extent of the
warming. Obviously, you have got regional considerations to
take into effect. Some parts of the world are cooling, many are
warming. In some cases, surface measurements have been
different from satellite measurements--have they not?
Mr. Karl. It is an interesting aspect of trying to
understand some of the details of what we see.
Senator Thompson. Do not try to make me understand it. We
do not have time enough for me to understand all that. But I
have a couple more questions, if you can give me a summary.
Mr. Karl. It is clear that if you look at the middle of the
atmosphere--I think you were referring to satellite
measurements--if you go back to the late 1950's, where we have
weather balloons, the middle atmosphere and the surface warming
is very comparable. If you look at the last 20 years, a smaller
period where satellites have been able to provide additional
information, you do find significant differences that we do not
entirely understand today.
Senator Thompson. Alright, sir. Getting to the causes of
warming, Dr. Hansen you especially have made the point that
perhaps we are not emphasizing enough the non-CO2
aspects. I notice this bill creates an Office of Carbon
Management and so forth. Obviously, CO2 is
significant, but actually I believe that has been rather
stable. CO2 emissions have been rather stable over a
period of time--haven't they--while the other particulates and
so forth have gone up?
Mr. Hansen. The CO2 emissions have been, in the
last 20 years, increasing at about 1 percent a year. That
compares with about 4 percent per year from the end of World
War II until the oil price shock in the 1970's. So we changed
the growth rate from 4 percent to 1 percent. But if we allowed
even 1 percent per year growth to continue 50 years, we would
be in trouble. So we really need to change that 1 percent to
more like 0 percent, and that does require some effort and some
technology.
It is often assumed that CO2 is all the problem
or almost all the problem. That is under the assumption that
CO2 emissions continue to increase, so that every
year we burn more fossils fuels than the year before, and that
is not necessarily true. If we can decrease that growth rate
down to 0 percent, then its contribution is not so
overwhelming.
Senator Thompson. Both of you worked on the National
Academy of Sciences report that did an evaluation of the work
of the IPCC, and it has been somewhat controversial. The
summary that came out was used in the media, in many cases, to
say that what you were doing was endorsing Kyoto or certainly
at least endorsing the IPCC conclusions.
One of your fellow panelists, Richard Lindzen has written
in the Wall Street Journal about it, and says, ``The panel was
finally asked to evaluate the work of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on the
summary for policymakers, the only part ever read or quoted.
The summary for policymakers, which is seen as endorsing Kyoto,
is commonly presented as the consensus of thousands of the
world's foremost climate scientists. Within the confines of
professional courtesy, the NAS panel essentially concluded that
the IPCC's summary for policymakers does not provide suitable
guidance for the U.S. Government. The full IPCC report is an
admirable description of research activities and climate
science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The
summary for policymakers is, but it is also a very different
document. It represents a consensus of government
representatives, many of whom are also their nation's Kyoto
representatives, rather than scientists. The resulting document
has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty and to conjure up
some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.'' \1\
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\1\ The article by Richard S. Lindzen referred to by Senator
Thompson appears in the Appendix on page 118.
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Would you concur or disagree with his assessment of the
work of the NAS in this instance?
Mr. Hansen. I am disappointed that the media takes such a
simple perspective. We reaffirmed that there is some global
warming going on, and that there is a danger of large climate
change later this century. But that does not lead to the
conclusion that therefore the solution to this is Kyoto. We did
not address the appropriate policy responses. We did take pains
to stress some caveats that should be associated with the IPCC
assessment. In particular, right at the very beginning, our
second paragraph of the summary, we said that the projections
of IPCC that get very large climate change are based on the
premise of a business-as-usual scenario, which has larger and
larger emissions.
It is not obvious that will happen. In fact, in the last 20
years, there has actually been some deceleration in the rate of
growth of climate forcings. The peak rate of growth occurred in
1980 and there has been a 25-percent reduction in that rate,
due to the fact that we decided to phase out
chlorofluorocarbons and the methane growth rate declined. So
that is an example of the kind of strategy, that you can have
other benefits from reducing some of these climate forcing
agents. That is what we are trying to argue, that we need to
look at the entire picture, not just CO2.
Senator Thompson. I am over time, but if you want Mr. Karl
to respond to that, it is fine with me.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Karl.
Mr. Karl. Commenting on Mr. Lindzen's comment, one of the
things, I think, we tried to point out in the Academy report is
any time you are necessarily taking a very large volume of
work, like if you look at the IPCC full science report, and
then you look at the technical summary and the summary for
policymakers, it shrinks down. So it is very clear that you do
not have the time to or the length of paper to explain all the
uncertainties and all of the details of the changes.
So I think it is only natural, when you look at a briefer
summary, that you do not spend a lot of time reading all the
uncertainties, and clearly they are there in the IPCC report,
and often beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and people can
take all of those reports and selectively pull out individual
sentences and try and craft either a very uncertain future or a
very certain future.
Senator Thompson. Sometimes commentators or politicians
using scientific research and analysis to justify their
opinions is not a pretty sight; is it?
Mr. Karl. It is not a pretty sight, but one thing I would
say is in Shanghai, as we said in the Academy report, every
change that was made to the report--because we went there with
a draft--there were suggestions from the floor. They did not
understand some comments that were made. They suggested
alternative language. But for every change that was made, there
was a scientist who was responsible for that section, who
formed a group and eventually agreed to whatever change was put
into the report on the summary for the policymakers.
Senator Thompson. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thompson. Senator
Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The two of us
are on two committees, this Committee and Environment and
Public Works, and I am not sure sometimes which committee I am
before. I noticed that there is a movement to move climate
change into our Subcommittee in Environment and Public Works.
Chairman Lieberman. That is correct.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. I thank you for calling this hearing
today. I think that this legislation does a good job of calling
more attention to the issue of climate change without jumping
to some of the conclusions, regarding the science and other
issues, which have plagued other approaches. I am pleased, in
particular, that it recognizes the need for the continued use
of coal. I was interested in Dr. Hansen's comments.
Coal is now and will continue to be the most economical way
of producing energy in this country for many years. We have a
250-year supply of coal and we need to encourage clean-coal
technologies. Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, the previous
administration was anti-coal and did everything it could to
discourage its use, instead of promoting clean-coal technology
and working with the utilities to improve their emissions to
protect the environment and public health, and to provide low-
cost energy.
I sincerely believe that until we pass a multi-emissions
bill and deal with the issue of new source review, that we are
not going to be able to utilize the technology available for
coal so that we can have low-cost energy and move forward with
improving our environment. The same applies to nuclear power.
We cannot examine climate change and a national energy policy
and ignore the fact that nuclear power is something that should
be looked at, and again, until we deal with the political
football of what we do with nuclear waste, we cannot move on
with that option. But it is one that we need to move forward
with.
As you know, Mr. Chairman, we did have a hearing in the
Public Works Committee which examined the state of the science
in terms of climate change, and I was impressed with the fact
that there are still many uncertainties regarding climate
change and the state of consensus on the issue is, I think,
greatly exaggerated by climate change proponents and most
members of the press. I noticed that Senator Thompson mentioned
Dr. Lindzen's testimony and I am going to ask if that testimony
that he gave in the hearing can be inserted in the record for
today.\1\
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\1\ The prepared testimony before the Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee by Richard S. Lindzen on May 2, 2001 appears in the
Appendix on page 120.
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Chairman Lieberman. Without objection
Senator Voinovich. I am encouraged, although I think that
President Bush handled this Kyoto Treaty issue--maybe from a
public relations point of view, he could have handled it
differently, because I know that Europeans are up in arms, and
I ran into that when I was at the Organization for Security and
Cooperation meeting in Europe and also at a NATO meeting. But I
am encouraged that President Bush announced last week a broad
policy initiative to further study climate change and the
potential impacts, including an important joint venture with
Japan to develop state-of-the-art climate modeling.
The models that the U.N.'s IPCC has relied upon need
additional research before we base a major policy initiative on
them, such as what is called for by the European Union. We have
to really improve the modeling substantially. I think this
legislation is a positive step forward in the sense that it is
bipartisan and tries to answer the many uncertainties involved
with this issue.
My concerns with the legislation are the costs, which are
substantial, and whether or not creating a new bureaucracy in
the Department of Energy and in the White House is going to
enhance our ability to deal with this challenging problem or
whether it is going to make it even more difficult. It
authorizes some $4.8 billion, and I am interested in finding
out how much is already appropriated to various agencies and
departments for climate change and whether or not there is an
overlap in terms of the funding.
In addition, I would like to make sure that the new offices
in the Department of Energy and the White House actually reduce
bureaucratic burden instead of increasing it. I want to again
underscore what Senator Thompson said, and that is the National
Academy of Sciences, in their report, said, ``Because there is
considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the
climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of
greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the
magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and
subject to future adjustments either upward or downward, and
reducing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in current
model predictions of global climate change will require major
advances in understanding and modeling of both the factors that
determine atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases and
aerosols and the so-called feedbacks that determine the
sensitivity of the climate system and prescribed increase in
greenhouse gases. There is also a pressing need for a global
observing system designed for monitoring climate.''
It is really important that Senator Byrd and Senator
Stevens are trying to bring some more objective evaluation of
where we are to this subject. Would you agree that we need a
whole lot more work in this area?
Mr. Hansen. Yes, absolutely. I have been arguing for some
years that--some people would say that the error bars that we
have on these forcings are actually underestimated--that we
have to measure what things are actually changing. If we are
going to project the future, we have to know what is happening
now.
Mr. Karl. There is absolutely no question, as I indicated
in my oral statement, that we need fundamental observations for
the long-term, not just a 2- or 3-year effort. We need to make
sure that we put into place an observing system that can
guarantee 50 years from now that we will know what actually
happened to some of these very important variables that we have
discussed here today.
Senator Voinovich. This legislation funds clean-coal
technology, and Dr. Hansen, you mentioned that. With your
understanding of the science today, do you believe it is
possible to address the concerns of the climate change
proponents and continue to rely upon the burning of our current
coal levels?
Mr. Hansen. Coal has at least two--it has several
emissions. Black carbon is one of them. I think that scrubbing
the sulfate and the black carbon is something that can be done.
I think that, as you have mentioned, the technology for that
has been worked on. That will take care of part of the problem.
In the long-run, if coal were to be a major contributor in the
next 100 years to our energy needs, we may also need to
actually capture the CO2. That is possible, and
there are now experiments intended to prove that this can be
done in an economic way and we can dispose of the
CO2. There are experiments where this is being
tested, the CO2 injected into the ocean, and the
ocean can absorb it all. So I think that it is technically
possible. We need to support that technology, but it will raise
a practical issue because it will increase the cost. We need to
make sure that it is not so costly that it would discourage
some countries from actually using it.
Senator Voinovich. Do you think that it could be
compensated with more attention to carbon sinks?
Mr. Hansen. Carbon sinks, if you mean in the biosphere of
forests and soils, there is a limit as to how much you can put
there. It can help, but by itself, that is not sufficient if
we, in fact, continue to have fossil fuels as a major energy
source.
Senator Voinovich. And what do you think of nuclear power?
Mr. Hansen. Again, these types of issues, of course, have
to be decided by the people through the representatives, and as
you know, there are pros and cons to each of these. Nuclear
power, from our standpoint as climate scientists, we can say,
``Well, it looks great from that standpoint.'' It produces
essentially no CO2. So, if it were acceptable, then
that is certainly a good candidate for an energy source.
Senator Voinovich. I know that you seem to be reluctant to
comment about the organizational structure, when you were asked
a question earlier.
Mr. Hansen. I do not think it is appropriate really, for me
to do that.
Senator Voinovich. May I ask you this? We have the
Department of Energy, President Clinton had a task force with
the Council on Environmental Quality in the White House, and
there are many agencies right now that are dealing with this
issue. From your observation, do you think that these
activities are well coordinated?
Mr. Hansen. I think there is a NAS report--Mr. Karl can put
in his word here, too, but I think there is pretty widespread
agreement that it is not as coordinated as it should be.
Mr. Karl. As I mentioned earlier, this is an exceedingly
complex issue, ranging from understanding the physical aspects
of the climate system down to the impacts, and I must tell you
one of the most frustrating experiences as a scientist is when
you try and go interdisciplinary and try and link up the
information from one specific scientific specialty to others,
to really understand almost every problem we have, relate to
multiple stresses. It really requires a lot of coordination. So
the statement that it is not nearly as well-coordinated as it
could be, I think goes without saying.
Senator Voinovich. So you would both agree that, whether
through this proposed legislation or some other vehicle, there
is a need for better coordination between all of the agencies
that are dealing with this problem?
Mr. Karl. Yes.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Voinovich. Senator
Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. I want to begin by thanking you for
holding this hearing. Climate change is a serious and growing
problem. Global temperatures have increased by approximately 1
degree over the last 100 years. According to the scientific
community, much of this warming is likely due to human
activities that have increased greenhouse gas concentrations in
the atmosphere. This warming is expected to accelerate. The
best predictions forecast an increase in global temperatures of
anywhere from 2.5 to 10 degrees by the end of the next century.
According to a report recently prepared by the National
Academy of Sciences, such warming could well have serious
adverse effects, including droughts, floods, sea level rise,
and far-reaching changes to ecosystems. Senator Byrd and
Senator Stevens deserve praise for their efforts to address the
difficult issue of climate change by crafting legislation that
would position the United States to address climate change in a
comprehensive manner and with adequate resources.
I am therefore very pleased to join the Senators as a co-
sponsor of their legislation. By more than doubling authorized
funds for research and development to create new technologies
to deal with climate change, this legislation would
significantly advance the United States' efforts to address
climate change, as well as better position the United States to
become a leader in the energy technologies of the future. The
Climate Change Strategy and Technology Innovation Act is an
important step in creating an appropriate U.S. response to
climate change.
But, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that it is not the only
step that we should take. We also need to continue making
improvements in energy efficiency, further develop our
renewable energy resources, and take action to reduce
emissions. In fact, the Chairman and I are co-sponsors of
legislation that would attempt to bring about those changes. By
taking these actions in combination with the groundbreaking
legislation proposed by Senator Byrd and Senator Stevens, I
believe that we can create an energy strategy that will save
consumers money, make America less dependent on foreign energy
sources, and protect society and the environment from the
detrimental effects of climate change.
Mr. Chairman, I am very fortunate to have on my staff a
climatologist. I suspect that I may be the only Senator who is
not a member of the Environment Committee that has a
climatologist on my staff, and I have to tell you that he
speaks very highly of the work done by the two scientists who
are appearing before us today.
Dr. Karl, my staff tells me that you have done
groundbreaking work on the analysis of global temperature
trends, and your work has made a significant contribution to
our knowledge of global warming. Given your expertise on
measuring temperature trends, could you discuss an issue that I
understand has been hotly debated with climate change, on the
differing results between ground-level and satellite
measurements of temperature trends.
I understand that ground-level measurements have often
shown greater warming than satellite measurements. So the
question that comes to my mind: Is there a problem with one set
of measurements or are ground temperatures really warming
faster than those in the lower atmosphere?
Mr. Karl. That is a very good question, Senator, and I will
try to briefly answer that. As I indicated earlier to Senator
Thompson, that if we take a look at the temperatures in the
middle part of the troposphere, they have been measured by
satellites since 1979. If we go back farther in time, using
weather balloons, we can get an estimate of the temperatures in
the middle part of the troposphere back to 1960. If we see what
is happening at the surface and compare that to the middle part
of the troposphere, we find a reasonably consistent picture
over that longer 40-year period. If we focus on the last 20
years, we find a significant difference.
Part of that difference, we think we understand in terms of
the timing. It is a short record, remember, 20 years, the
timing of El Nino events, the timing of volcanic eruptions--
Mount Pinutubo, for example, all have big effects in a short
record. Also the way in which the Earth is sampled differently
from ground-based measurements compared to balloons and from
satellite data impacts the difference. So we can go some way
toward explaining the difference in the last 20 years, but part
of that difference still remains unexplained and it is one of
the challenges of the scientific community to understand.
Now, are there still problems with both surface and
tropospheric temperature measurements? Certainly we try to put
error bounds on the data, and we think even given the error
bounds that we put on these two different sets of measurements,
in the troposphere and at the surface, there still remains an
unexplained physical difference that we do not quite have
resolved yet today.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Dr. Hansen, I have a question for you, also. In your
written testimony, you speak extensively of the importance of
combating air pollution as a means of addressing climate
change. As you point out, this would have substantial
collateral benefits. Your statistics on the impact of air
pollution in Europe are really stunning: 40,000 deaths and
500,000 asthma cases a year in France, Switzerland, and Austria
alone. In your judgment, does the Kyoto Protocol adequately and
efficiently address the global warming impacts of black carbon
and other forms of air pollution?
Mr. Hansen. No, it does not. It, in fact, does not include
black carbon. It does not include tropospheric ozone. As you
notice in my chart, if you add up our estimates of those two
forcings, it is comparable to that of CO2, and I
think it is important that they be included. Given the
difficulty, the cost of the kind of agreements that you would
need for the Kyoto Protocol, I just do not see us having two of
these. So I think it makes much more sense to combine the air
pollution issue and the CO2 issue, otherwise we are
just not giving enough attention to this aspect of the problem.
I do not know how many people are dying from global warming
right now, but I do not think it is very many, and I do not
think there are as many people being affected by that. So it is
just inappropriate to neglect this air pollution aspect.
Senator Collins. And that does appear to be a significant
weakness of the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr. Hansen. In my personal opinion, yes.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Collins. I
remember being at a seminar on global warming in which--this
was one of those Aspen programs in which we had a bunch of
scientists talking to a bunch of us members of Congress, and
one member of the House, who happened to be a Republican, at
the end said--it was Jim Greenwood who said, ``So let me get
this straight,'' to the scientists, ``If you are right,'' and
they were mostly very proactive about global warming, ``and we
take appropriate remedial action, we will have saved the planet
as we know it. And if you are hyperventilating a bit, all we
will have done is to clean up the air and keep a lot of people
healthier than they otherwise would be.'' So, not a bad trade-
off. Thank you.
Senator Bennett, thanks for being here.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT
Senator Bennett. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. If I
may, I would respond to that with another set of trade-offs.
There is no agreement in the scientific community about what is
causing global warming. There are hypotheses that are
vigorously argued one side or the other. There is, as nearly as
I can tell, absolute agreement in the economic community that
Kyoto would be a disaster, economically, to the United States,
if it were to be put into place. My point is that the greatest
enemy of the environment is poverty.
Dr. Hansen has talked about India and the brown cloud that
hangs over India. The reason India puts up with that is not
that they like air pollution, but that they cannot afford in
their economy the kind of scrubbers that we have. So if we go
chasing down the cliff, and I consider it a cliff, of Kyoto, we
run the risk of impoverishing the economy that drives the rest
of the world, and thereby end up with people in underdeveloped
countries causing greater global warming than otherwise. So I
would have argued with your Republican friend if I had been
present at that particular Aspen Institute.
Dr. Hansen, I do not want to mousetrap you or blindside you
in any way. I have here a report written by Patrick Michaels.
Are you familiar with Mr. Michaels?
Mr. Hansen. Yes, I am.
Senator Bennett. Rather than debate it, I would ask you to
supply for the record your rebuttal to Mr. Michaels' argument,
so that those who do not know what we are talking about will
understand this. I am quoting from this report, he says, ``NASA
scientists--on June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen
testified before the House that there was a strong cause-and-
effect relationship between observed temperatures and human
emissions into the atmosphere,'' and then you presented a model
based on that assumption where you predicted an increase of .45
degrees centigrade from 1988 to 1997, and Mr. Michaels has a
chart where he shows that prediction was wrong on the high side
by a fairly significant amount.
I would appreciate it if you would respond to that chart
and give us your analysis. If you can do it quickly here----
Mr. Hansen. Yes, I would like to quickly respond to that.
It is a very curious charge, because, in fact, if you look at
my 1988 testimony, what I showed was three scenarios for the
future. One of them, scenario A, was business-as-usual, in
which the emissions increase, every year you have more than
before, and the other--scenarios B and C had more flat
emissions. In fact, the real-world emissions have been between
scenarios B and C. If you look at our climate model
calculations for the forcings which have actually occurred,
they are right on the money. So Mr. Michaels did a very
interesting thing. He took our chart--by the way, in the Senate
testimony I said----
Senator Bennett. In the House testimony.
Mr. Hansen. In my Senate testimony in 1988----
Senator Bennett. Oh, OK.
Mr. Hansen. I testified to both the House and Senate in
1988 and showed exactly the same projections--but I said the
most likely scenario is scenario B, not scenario A. But Mr.
Michaels took this chart, erased scenarios B and C, and showed
scenario A. So it is a very simple answer to this.
Senator Bennett. I appreciate that, because I suggest or
believe that the New York Times has taken scenario A and
enshrined it in conventional wisdom forever and ever, as they
tell us what scientists are saying. I appreciate your
clarifying that, because what you are saying is that there is
no absolute certain prediction upon which everybody can depend
with respect to the future. There is a great deal of
uncertainty.
Mr. Hansen. That is exactly right. There is no reason that
we need to follow scenario A, the business-as-usual.
Senator Bennett. You are saying now that we did not follow
the scenario----
Mr. Hansen. We have not, no. I mentioned a little earlier
that, in fact, the growth rate of emissions declined 25 percent
in the last two decades because of chlorofluorocarbons being
phased out and because of methane slowdowns. So we have already
taken some very helpful steps for reducing the future climate
change and we need to take some more in the next century.
Senator Bennett. I would hope that if there is any
representative of the New York Times here, that they would call
your answer to the attention of their editorial writers, so
that they could become a little less hysterical.
Mr. Hansen. I actually tried to do that. I wrote an op-ed
article a week ago, but they did not publish it.
Senator Lieberman. We can sympathize with that. [Laughter.]
Senator Bennett. You will not get opinions that are not
fully orthodox ever reported in the New York Times, unless you
can get Bill Sapphire to write the column about it.
Chairman Lieberman. That explains why I like those
editorials, they are fully Orthodox. [Laughter.]
Senator Bennett. Very good. You have maybe answered this
question, but I would like you to get into it a little bit
more. We are talking about temperatures going up in the last
100 years. In fact, they went up for 30 years. They went down,
admittedly at a lower angle than they went up, for about 30
years, and then they started up again for 30 years. So, instead
of this being the chart for the last century, it is this, this,
and this. [Indicating.]
Can you tell us what caused that 30 years of temperature
going down, roughly between 1945 and 1975?
Mr. Hansen. We cannot do it with confidence. It could be
unforced variability. The climate system is a chaotic system,
which fluctuates from decade to decade, just like the weather
fluctuates from day to day, because the atmosphere and ocean
are fluids, which are chaotic and have an unforced variability.
It could also have been forced. As you know, as we have talked
some time today, there are both positive forcings and negative
forcings, and the negative forcings probably--the aerosols have
not been increasing so much recently. In fact, in the United
States and Europe, they have been decreasing because of acid
rain concerns. It could be that the aerosol increases caused
that cooling trend, but we do not have the measurements to
prove that.
Senator Bennett. You are underscoring once again the
uncertainty here.
Mr. Hansen. Right.
Senator Bennett. We do not really know what caused it to go
up so rapidly in that first 30-year period or what caused it to
come down in 30 years. We think we have got a better handle on
what is causing it to go up now, but even there, we cannot be
absolutely sure. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Hansen. That is exactly right.
Senator Bennett. One final question. As I looked into this,
I asked a layman's question and was a little stunned at the
answer that I got. I hope you can help me understand it. I
said, ``How much CO2 is there?'' We talk about
CO2. How much CO2 is there and what
percentage of it comes from human activity? I am told that
roughly three--maybe generously 4 percent--of the total
CO2 that the planet has released into the atmosphere
every year comes from human activity, and that the rest of it
is all generated by the planet itself.
My question is, is there a difference out there in the
atmosphere or troposphere or wherever it is you wander, between
naturally-generated CO2 and human-generated
CO2? Let me tell you why I want to know that.
Because if indeed there is no difference--let's take the 4
percent number, which is the largest number I have heard for
human activity generating CO2, and take the 25
percent figure, which the New York Times quotes as coming from
the United States, that means the United States is producing 1
percent of the total CO2 out there, and if we do
Kyoto, we reduce that by less than \1/10\ of 1 percent. I
wonder why savaging the American economy to reduce the total by
less than \1/10\ of 1 percent is a good idea.
Now, that is where the math is. Once again, is there a
difference in the atmosphere between naturally-generated
CO2 and human-generated CO2 that affects
this whole equation?
Mr. Hansen. There is not a difference which is relevant to
their ability to cause warming. However, I do not understand
where your 4 percent comes from, because there are various ways
to do these numbers.
Senator Bennett. It comes from the Department of Energy and
cross-checked with the Congressional Research Service at the
Library of Congress.
Mr. Hansen. Let me tell you what I think the relevant
numbers would be. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the
amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 280 parts-
per-million. It did change over time scales of tens of
thousands of years with the Ice Ages and things, but the last
several thousand years it was about 280 parts-per-million. It
is now about 360--is that right, Mr. Karl? So it is about a 25-
or 30-percent increase, and we are pretty darn sure that that
is almost entirely due to human activity. So, based on those
numbers, it is not a 4 percent increase. It is more like a 30
percent increase, and the United States has contributed a
fairly large fraction of that.
Senator Bennett. Clearly, we need a resolution to this,
because I have gone to every source I could find to say what
percentage of the total CO2 currently being sent
into the atmosphere comes from human activity, and the answers
have been amazingly uniform.
Mr. Hansen. The way you get that small number is to look at
the fluxes. There are fluxes that go up and down, because the
plants are growing and decomposing--there are fluxes up and
down. But the point is, if you look at those total fluxes, yes,
the human contribution may not look so large. But the net
impact of that human contribution--it is always one sign.
Humans are the cause almost certainly for almost all of this
increase from 280 parts-per-million to 360 parts-per-million.
So I think it is more appropriate to say that humans have
contributed an increase to atmospheric CO2, which is
about 30 percent of what is there now. There is really no
scientific disagreement about this.
Chairman Lieberman. You got your answer, Senator Bennett.
Senator Bennett. I will go back to the Department of Energy
and the Library of Congress now and see what comment they have.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much. You raise some
important questions, including the ones about the economic
consequences of Kyoto, which I believe that some of our
witnesses on the second panel will testify to. If they do not,
I am going to ask them about it. Thanks to both of you.
Did you want to respond at all, Mr. Karl, to Senator
Bennett's questioning?
Mr. Karl. I might just want to make one statement, and that
is absolute certainty is very rarely going to be found in these
complex environmental issues. So when we say we are nearly
certain, that is pretty high statement coming from scientists
in an area that is fairly uncertain.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much to both of you. I
would like to now call the final panel: Eileen Claussen,
President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change; Dr. James
Edmonds, Senior Staff Scientist, Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory, Battelle Memorial Institute; Dale E. Heydlauff,
Senior Vice President, Environmental Affairs, of the American
Electric Power Company; Jonathan Lash, President of the World
Resources Institute; and Margo Thorning, who is Senior Vice
President and Chief Economist of the American Council for
Capital Formation.
Thanks to all of you for coming this morning. We really
look forward to your testimony about the Byrd-Stevens
legislation and about the problem overall.
Ms. Claussen, welcome back.
TESTIMONY OF EILEEN CLAUSSEN,\1\ PRESIDENT, PEW CENTER ON
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Ms. Claussen. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members
of the Committee. Thank you for this opportunity to testify on
S. 1008, the Byrd-Stevens Climate Change Strategy and
Technology Innovation Act of 2001. My name is Eileen Claussen
and I am the President of the Pew Center on Global Climate
Change. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan and independent organization dedicated to providing
credible information, straight answers and innovative solutions
to the effort to address climate change. Thirty-six major
companies in the Pew Center's Business Environmental Leadership
Council, most included in the Fortune 500, work with the center
in assessing the risks, challenges and solutions to climate
change. There is a list of who they are up there on the chart.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Claussen appears in the Appendix
on page 75.
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Mr. Chairman, I believe that enacting the Byrd-Stevens bill
will be an important first step in developing a serious
domestic climate change program, a step that should be taken
quickly. This bipartisan bill will integrate our energy policy
with the long-term goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse
gas concentrations. It will respond to concerns often raised by
other nations that the United States has no basis for domestic
action. It will continue investigation into the uncertainties
of the science and economics of climate change.
Most important among the many provisions of the Byrd-
Stevens bill is the one that requires the development within 1
year of a U.S. climate change response strategy with the
objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. To meet
this goal, the strategy will rely on emission mitigation
measures, technology innovation, climate adaptation research,
and efforts to resolve the remaining scientific and economic
uncertainties.
At the Pew Center, we believe enough is known about the
science and environmental impact of climate change for us to
take action now. As we have learned from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, confirmed recently by the National
Academy of Sciences, the scientific consensus is very strong
that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as
a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures
and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.
As a consequence, there likely will be substantial impacts
to human health, agriculture, ecosystems and coastlines. The
high probability of these outcomes indicates the need for some
action now. Even as we act, however, we need to refine our
scientific understanding, particularly on the impacts of
climate change. But the best scientific evidence tells us that
we have already bought a changed climate, to which we and our
children will need to adapt.
Obviously, the more quickly we mitigate, the less we will
have to adapt. But some amount of adaptation appears
inevitable. The Byrd-Stevens bill creates a sound basis for
giving priority to and investigating how we must adapt to
climate change. We also applaud efforts to further analyze the
uncertainties regarding the economic impacts of climate change.
Work done by the Pew Center suggests that no existing model
accurately predicts the economic effects of any given measure
to mitigate climate change. We are hard at work to fill in many
of the gaps of the models, but additional efforts would be most
welcome.
Second, the Byrd-Stevens bill will promote technology
innovation. In May, Senator Byrd said from the Senate floor
that to address global climate change, ``What is required is
the equivalent of an Industrial Revolution.'' We think he was
exactly right. To effectively address climate change, we need
to lower carbon intensity, become more energy efficient,
promote carbon sequestration, and find ways to limit emissions
of non-CO2 gases. This will require fundamentally
new technologies, as well as dramatic improvements in existing
ones.
New, less carbon-intensive ways of producing, distributing
and using energy will be essential. The redesign of industrial
processes, consumer products and agricultural technologies and
practices will also be critical. These changes can be
introduced over decades as we turn over our existing capital
stocks and establish new infrastructure. But we must begin
making investments, building institutions and implementing
policies now.
Third, under the Byrd-Stevens bill, the climate change
response strategy will be required to incorporate mitigation
approaches to reduce, avoid and sequester greenhouse gas
emissions. This will force us to take a hard, needed look at
our policy choices. We believe that it will be extraordinarily
difficult, if not impossible, to muster the kind of sustained
effort needed to reduce, avoid and sequester greenhouse gas
emissions without the force of legally-binding commitments.
There is little incentive for any company to undertake real
action unless ultimately all do and are in some manner held
accountable. Markets, of course, will be instrumental in
mobilizing the necessary resources and know-how. Market-based
strategies, such as emissions trading, will also help deliver
emissions reductions at the lowest possible cost. But markets
can move us in the right direction only if they are given the
right signals. In the United States, those signals have been
neither fully given, nor fully excepted.
Three decades of experience fighting pollution in the
United States have taught us a great deal about what works
best. In general, the most cost-effective approaches allow
emitters flexibility to decide how best to meet a given limit,
provide early direction so targets can be anticipated and
factored into major capital and investment decisions, and
employ market mechanisms to achieve reductions where they cost
least. To ease the transition from established ways of doing
business, targets should be realistic and achievable. What is
important is that they be strong enough to spur real action and
to encourage investment and development of the technology and
infrastructure needed to achieve the long-term objective.
A good first step to get our house in order is to
immediately require accurate measurement, tracking, reporting
and disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the
government could enter into voluntary enforceable agreements
with companies or sectors willing to commit to significant
reductions. While such efforts can help get the United States
on track, the long-term emission reductions needed can be
achieved only with a far more comprehensive and binding
strategy.
I should add that congressional debate over the mitigation
measures should start now and not await completion of the
strategy, especially since the debate will take some time, we
believe, to resolve. As Senator Byrd said when he introduced
his bill, this legislation is intended to supplement, rather
than replace, other complementary proposals to deal with
climate change in the near-term on both the national and
international level.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, the Byrd-Stevens Climate Change
Strategy and Technology Innovation Act of 2001, if enacted
quickly and implemented in a serious manner, will provide an
excellent foundation for climate change policy in this country.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Ms. Claussen, for that
excellent testimony.
Dr. Edmonds, welcome. Thank you for being here.
TESTIMONY OF JAMES A. EDMONDS,\1\ Ph.D., SENIOR STAFF
SCIENTIST, PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY, BATTELLE
MEMORIAL INSTITUTE
Mr. Edmonds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Committee, for the opportunity to testify here this morning on
the Climate Change Strategy and Technology Innovation Act of
2001. It is a privilege to be invited here and to have the
opportunity to share a position on this panel with such
distinguished colleagues as Dale Heydlauff, as well as, Eileen
Claussen, Jonathan Lash, and Margo Thorning. My presence here
today is possible because the U.S. Department of Energy, EPRI
and numerous other organizations in both the public and private
sectors have provided me and my research team at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory long-term research support.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Edmonds appears in the Appendix
on page 79.
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That having been said, I come here today to speak as a
researcher and the views I express are mine alone. The focus of
my comments today are on the funding portion of the Climate
Change Strategy and Technology Innovation Act of 2001, not on
its organizational aspects.
My observations draw upon the work that was conducted under
the Global Energy Technology Strategy Program to Address
Climate Change, an international, public-private sector
collaboration advised by an eminent Steering Group. Analysis
conducted at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, as well
as in collaborating institutions around the world during Phase
I, supports three general conclusions: (1) It's concentrations
of greenhouse gases that matter. For CO2, cumulative
emissions by all countries, over all time determine the
concentration; (2) technology is the key to controlling the
cost of stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases; and
(3) managing the cost of stabilizing the concentration of
greenhouse gases, at any level, requires a portfolio of energy
R&D investments across a wide spectrum of technology classes.
My first point is that: It's Concentrations Not Emissions.
The United States is a party to the Framework Convention on
Climate Change, which has as its objective the ``stabilization
of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level
that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with
the climate system.'' This is not the same as stabilizing
emissions. Because emissions of the greenhouse gas,
CO2, accumulate in the atmosphere, its concentration
will continue to rise indefinitely even if emissions are held
to current levels or even at some reduced level.
Stabilization of CO2 concentrations means that
the global energy system, and not just the United States'
energy system, must undergo a fundamental transition from one
in which emissions continue to grow throughout this century
into one in which global emissions eventually peak and then
decline.
Coupled with significant global population and economic
growth, this transition represents a daunting task even if a
concentration as high as 750 parts per million is eventually
determined to meet the goal of the Framework Convention--though
no consensus yet exists as to what concentration will prevent
``dangerous'' interference with the climate system.
My second point is that: Technology Controls Cost.
Stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere will require a credible commitment to limit
cumulative global emissions of CO2. Such a limit is
unlikely to be achieved without cost but that cost will in
large measure be shaped by the character of the energy
technology options available to limit cumulative global
emissions of CO2.
My third point is that: There Is No ``Silver Bullet.'' No
single technology controls the cost of stabilizing CO2
concentrations under all circumstances. The portfolio of energy
technologies that is employed varies across the world's regions
and over time. Regional difference in such factors as resource
endowments, institutions, demographics and economics,
inevitably lead to different technology mixes in different
nations, while changes in technology options inevitably lead to
different technology mixes over time.
Technologies that are potentially important in stabilizing
the concentration of CO2 include energy efficiency
and renewable energy forms, non-carbon energy sources such as
nuclear power and fusion, improved applications of fossil
fuels, and technologies such as terrestrial carbon capture by
plants and soils, carbon capture and geologic sequestration,
fuel cells, and advanced energy storage systems, and commercial
biomass and biotechnology. The latter holds the promise of
revolutionary change for a wide range of energy technologies.
Many of these technologies are undeveloped or play only a minor
role in their present state of development.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to testify. I
will be happy to answer your and the Committee's questions.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Edmonds. Thanks very much.
Mr. Heydlauff, welcome.
TESTIMONY OF DALE E. HEYDLAUFF,\1\ SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT-
ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, AMERICAN ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY
Mr. Heydlauff. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a
privilege to be here, Senator Thompson, Senator Bennett. My
name is Dale Heydlauff. I am the Senior Vice President for
Environmental Affairs at American Electric Power Company. We
are headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and have the distinction
of being the country's largest consumer of coal. As a matter of
fact, I think we burn more coal than anybody in the Western
Hemisphere. We are the third-largest consumer of natural gas.
We are the largest producer of electricity in the Nation.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Heydlauff with an attachment
appears in the Appendix on page 84.
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As a consequence of that, we recognized early on that the
concerns about global climate changes were ones that we needed
to take seriously. We have been heavily engaged in the debate
since literally Dr. Hansen testified before the Senate in 1988.
We have been following this debate very closely. We have been
participants and observers in the international negotiations on
this issue, and importantly, we have sought to find and
identify ways that we can effectuate meaningful emission
reductions, avoidance or sequestration through our activities
and our operations, both domestically and around the world.
It is in that context that I wanted to testify before you
today, and with your permission, I will submit my written
statement for the record and just summarize my oral remarks.
The simple thing for me to do is just to say I concur
completely with the statements of those who have preceded me on
this panel. We are one of the founding members of the Pew
Center on Climate Change Business Environmental Leadership
Council and we are honored to be in that position. I rarely
find myself in disagreement with the wisdom of our President,
Mrs. Claussen. Dr. James Edmonds and I have known each other
for a number of years now. The Global Energy Technology
Strategy Program that he referenced in his testimony is
research that we helped fund and have funded for years. Quite
honestly, it has guided substantially what I want to say here
today.
Let me start and say if I could summarize my remarks in one
line, it would be this: Accelerating climate friendly
technology development through very dramatic increases in
energy technology, research and development, both by the public
and private sectors, and then deploying the fruits of that R&D
on a global basis is by far and away, in my judgement, the most
sensible, cost-effective and ultimately sustainable strategy
for addressing the climate change issue.
I do not think there is going to be any other way you are
going to do it. If you believe that atmospheric concentrations
of greenhouse gas emissions need to be stabilized in the
future, it is only going to come about as a result of a
technology strategy, one that can help be facilitated by the
legislation that we are testifying to today. Let me talk a
little bit about the challenge that befalls this country in
doing that, and indeed the world, because this is truly a
global commons problem.
The first is, in real terms, energy technology R&D in this
Nation in the past decade has fallen by 47 percent, both in the
public and private sectors. The energy industry itself, I am
somewhat embarrassed to report, today invests \1/2\ of 1
percent of total national revenues on technology R&D. Compare
that to the chemical, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications
industries, which routinely spend about 10 percent of annual
revenues on R&D, or the U.S. industrial average of 7 percent,
and you can see the challenge we have confronting us.
To compound the problem, however, what we are spending our
dollars on today could be characterized as evolutionary
improvements in existing technology, which certainly have some
societal good, and particularly even some climate change
benefits, because in many cases we are attempting to squeeze
out more efficiency from existing technologies. But it simply
is not going to be a successful strategy, because what we
really need to do is develop those bold breakthrough
technologies that the Byrd-Stevens legislation would help to
facilitate.
A couple of other points I wanted to mention, specifically
with respect to the Byrd-Stevens legislation. One is I think
they have done a commendable job in the construct of the
national research program and agenda. First of all, you need
leadership, and that leadership can only and should only be
governed from the top of the Executive Branch in the White
House. I commend them for the establishment of the White House
office.
Second, you do need a bureaucracy. I hesitate always to
differ with the Senator from my home State, but in this case, I
think you do need leadership, you need management of an effort
of this magnitude. Third, quite honestly, as significant as the
level of expenditures would be under this legislation, they
will ultimately be inadequate, and I realize we are just
talking about public sector investments with respect to the
authorizations that we derive from this legislation, and
hopefully the private sector would be willing to step up and
come close to matching that level, because you are going to
need investments of that magnitude ultimately to be successful.
You look at the four paradigms of the Byrd-Stevens bill,
and I think they have got it right. It would establish the
solid foundation upon which to address the climate change issue
for a very long time to come. So, with that, I would admonish
the Committee to exercise the same degree of speed and
forthrightness that you took to scheduling this hearing so soon
after the legislation was introduced and proceed on to pass it
out and send it over to the House.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Mr. Heydlauff. It
strikes me that for somebody who may be either here in the
room, and not very familiar with this dialogue that has been
going on, or watching on television, that the favorable
testimony and very proactive testimony that you have given,
representing the company that is the largest consumer of coal,
might be surprising, because some might think that you would be
avoiding a solution. So I admire the fact, and it is typical of
a whole group of companies in a similar position, that you are
forward-leaning, are part of the solution, and I know from
previous conversation you want the certainty that will come
with a legislative leadership and solution. So I thank you very
much for your testimony.
Mr. Lash, welcome back. Good to see you again.
TESTIMONY OF JONATHAN LASH,\1\ PRESIDENT, WORLD RESOURCES
INSTITUTE
Mr. Lash. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Thompson, and
Senator Bennett. It is a pleasure to be here with you today. I
was very struck by Senator Byrd's opening statement and by his
co-sponsor Senator Stevens' comments at the beginning of this
hearing. These comments are most important because they signify
a recognition that climate change is a problem that needs to be
systematically addressed and is a priority for our country.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Lash appears in the Appendix on
page 91.
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I would actually like to address the legislation that is
before us, rather than the science or the strategies that might
emerge. Senator Byrd commented, as he did when he introduced
the bill initially in the Senate, that this is a part of a
broader effort on climate, not a substitute for action, and I
want to address it in that context. It is essential that, at
the same time, the Senate continue to deal with complementary
proposals for addressing the problem of climate change
including legislation that Members of this Committee have co-
sponsored. I will come back to why I think that this is so
important. But S. 1008 is particularly important because it
recognizes that climate change represents threat to the
Nation's interests and that we need a national climate change
strategy that is informed by a public dialogue which can help
the country to understand what is at stake in the issue and
what is at stake as we approach the solutions.
The strategy should take as its goal, the stabilization of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at safe levels. That
recognition is an important step in our debate. This was the
goal accepted by the United States almost a decade ago when
then-President Bush signed and the U.S. Senate ratified the
Framework Convention on Climate Change. Now the United States
does not have a strategy on climate change, and as many
commentators have noted, we are clearer about what we are
against than what we are for.
Second, S. 1008 recognizes that climate change
considerations should be integrated into decision-making at
every level of the government. I offer no view about the
specific administrative arrangements proposed in the bill and
the highly-detailed requirements, but I think that the effort
to ensure that climate change considerations enter into energy
policy and environmental policy decisions is essential, at all
levels of the government.
Third, S. 1008 recognizes that economic consequences of
inaction on global warming may cost the global economy
trillions of dollars. As Senator Bennett pointed out several
times earlier, there is no free effort to respond to climate
change and there is a great deal of discussion about the costs
of any strategy for a response, but we need to recognize the
costs of failure to respond as well.
Fourth, S. 1008 recognizes that current research and
development budgets are grossly inadequate to meet the
challenge of climate change. As the bill's findings correctly
state, stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will
require transformational change in the global energy system, as
well as research and development that leads to bold
technological breakthroughs. I agree very much with what Mr.
Heydlauff said a moment ago about the importance of research
that is not just at the margins, but, of research that helps us
understand the significant kind of changes that we could make.
Today we have technologies available that companies part of
the Pew Center are using to reduce emissions. It is not
impossible for us to respond to climate change this week, next
week, or next month, to improve efficiency, and to adopt new
sources. At the World Resources Institute, we work with a group
of companies who will soon purchase several thousand megawatts
of wind energy in an effort to reduce their reliance on carbon-
based fuels. But none of this is a substitute for large-scale
research on major new technologies.
Finally, S. 1008 recognizes that our national energy
strategy cannot be shaped without paying close attention to the
challenge of climate change. I want to go back to what I said
at the start and emphasize again the need for early action. I
think there are three reasons for slowly taking action now.
First of all, if we begin to slowly take action, we will learn
the answers to some of the questions that are troubling many
Senators about the costs and technological and social
difficulties of change. If we start slowly, we can add to our
store of information about how to respond pragmatically.
Second, a slow start gives us a chance to make a stable
transition. Mr. Heydlauff's company, I believe, burns 80
million tons of coal a year. Part of the national energy
strategy will certainly be to encourage companies like AEP to
build new plants for the generation of electricity. I do not
know how AEP managers can effectively represent the interests
of their shareholders if they do not know what policies
government may impose in 5, 6, or 8 years that will add to the
costs of burning coal. Without knowing what regulatory costs
will be managed, they do not know how much to invest in
efficiency, how much to invest in gas, how much to invest in
pollution controls.
Finally, I do not think it is to the benefit of the United
States' competitiveness to fail to invest in more efficient
technologies for producing energy. Whatever long-term strategy
we ultimately develop to try to stabilize concentrations, what
we do in the first 10 years will likely have to be the same.
Whatever the path we ultimately are going to follow, it will
still involve early efforts to reduce pollution and control
CO2.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Mr. Lash, for that
very interesting testimony.
Ms. Thorning, thanks for being here. We look forward to
hearing you now.
TESTIMONY OF MARGO THORNING,\1\ Ph.D., SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
AND CHIEF ECONOMIST, AMERICAN COUNCIL FOR CAPITAL FORMATION
Ms. Thorning. Thank you very much. I appreciate the
opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to appear before this Committee and
to appear with such a distinguished panel of climate policy
experts. I would like to request that my written testimony be
included in the record.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Thorning appears in the Appendix
on page 98.
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Chairman Lieberman. It will, without objection.
Ms. Thorning. My written testimony includes a discussion of
some of the issues you asked about, including the macroeconomic
impact of the Kyoto Protocol and near-term emission limits, the
impact on U.S. budget surpluses of actions that would slow
economic growth, international trading systems, and a
discussion of the fact that the European Union itself will not
be able to meet its Kyoto targets, and a discussion of the
science. Although I am not a scientist, I did want to raise the
issue that, as we heard earlier, the science is not clearly
understood. Much further work, much more study, needs to be
done on that.
Before launching into a little discussion of S. 1008, I
would like to draw your attention to the story on the front
page of the Washington Post this morning, Steven Pearlstein's
story about the economic impact of global slowdown. The
implication of the Pearlstein story is the United States is the
engine of world economic growth. If we are unable to regenerate
the strong growth that we have experienced in earlier years, it
is going to be much harder for the developing economies and for
Europe and for Japan to pull themselves out of their slump.
Therefore, I think it is appropriate to weigh very
carefully any major policy decisions, such as measures to, in
the near-term, sharply reduce the growth or cap CO2
emissions. The studies that we have looked at and that are
described in my testimony suggest such policies would reduce
U.S. levels of GDP by 2 to 4 percent a year, which would be a
significant negative drag on the U.S. economy and on our
trading partners. Also, there is a substantial body of research
by scholars such as Robert Crandall at Brookings, McKibben and
Wilcoxin, Yale professor Bill Nordhaus, that suggest that the
cost of going ahead with sharp, near-term caps on emissions far
exceed the benefits, even when you take account of the
possibility of some changes to climate.
So I think the evidence suggests we need to take a cautious
attitude before deciding what is the best strategy to address
the potential threat of climate change, and I do not think the
scholars whose work I am mentioning suggest that nothing needs
to be done. Clearly it does, but we need to move forward in the
most efficient, cost-effective possible way, so as not unduly
burden the U.S. economy and our trading partners.
I would like to make a few comments about S. 1008. I think
Senators Byrd and Stevens are to be commended for their
recognition of the importance of technological innovation as
the principal means of dealing with the possible threat,
potential threat, of climate change. S. 1008 contains some
helpful initiatives that could further the goals of maintaining
strong economic growth and energy security, while reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. The bill also appears to be
supportive of some of the initiatives put forth by the Bush
Administration, including advancing clean-coal technology.
I was very pleased to hear the other comments about the
importance of coal to the U.S. economy. It is clearly going to
be a major energy source for the foreseeable future, and we do
need to accelerate the development of clean-coal technology.
However, I would like to suggest that S. 1008 falls short in
some ways, in terms of promoting many of the policies I
suggested in my testimony for encouraging technological
innovation.
For example, S. 1008 does not address the question of how
to deploy new technology. We need to develop it, but how do we
get it adopted? How do we get it into the system? One thing I
would like to draw your attention to is the U.S. Tax Code,
which taxes new investment much more harshly than most of our
competitors, whether it is productive investment or whether it
is pollution-control investment. As Table 1 of my testimony
shows, the United States has very slow capital cost recovery.
We rank near the bottom of a list of eight countries that
Arthur Andersen surveyed. If we could improve depreciation or
tax incentives for pulling through, it would help to pull
through the kinds of equipment that would enable us to both
grow and reduce CO2 emissions.
So, taking a look at the tax code and, as the Bush
Administration moves forward with tax reform, hopefully that
would be part of hopefully better depreciation, particularly
for energy-efficient or pollution-reduction--would be part of
any tax code reform. Second, S. 1008 does not address nuclear
power. That has clearly got to be a major component, at least
over the next several decades, of U.S. energy supply; France
manages to produce 80 percent of its electricity and the United
States only 20 percent. So it suggests that we ought to be able
to move forward to rely on a source of energy that is much less
polluting.
We also need more bilateral cooperation with developing
countries to promote the use of existing and emerging
technology. We need to expand incentives for landfill methane
and biomass, the EIA Clean Technology Initiative report shows
that those were the two most effective programs, and I do not
believe S. 1008 addresses those. Finally, we need to avoid caps
on CO2 emissions by U.S. industry and avoid setting
targets at this time. We need further study of this issue. We
need to move forward, but in a cost-effective, careful way.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much. Thanks for your
testimony. I appreciate the effort that all of you put into
appearing before us.
Ms. Claussen, let me start with you, and you talked about
the critical need for a national strategy on climate change.
You have extensive experience in government. Now you are in the
private sector, working with some of America's largest
corporations. Just give us your reaction to what you think the
impact would be of a central White House office focused on
climate change, and I want to ask the question implicitly, is
it worth it? In other words, we do not want to continue to
proliferate offices in the White House, but how do you see it
here?
Ms. Claussen. Senator, I was in government for about 25
years, and I participated in interagency process in the Reagan
Administration and the first Bush Administration. In the early
part of the Clinton Administration, I actually ran an
interagency process. I hope I learned from the first two
administrations and applied some of it in the third, but the
fact is, this is a monster of an issue and everyone has a
legitimate reason to be involved across the government for a
variety of different reasons. If you do not have a way to focus
the effort and coordinate the effort, you just have everybody
doing their own thing based on their own set of objectives and
the culture of their own agency. You do not have a coherent
policy. It is extremely hard to do, but I think you have to
center it in the White House and you have to put some real
effort into making it work.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Let me go now to the
economic consequences and, in a sense, some of the questions
that Senator Bennett raised about the costs of complying with
Kyoto or the cost of responding to the climate change problem.
I was interested that, I think, Dr. Edmonds and Mr. Lash, in
your prepared testimony, talked about the economic consequences
of inaction here. I wonder if you could both expand on that,
and if there is any way in which we could begin to quantify the
economic cost of inaction.
Mr. Edmonds. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Global Energy
Technology Strategy Program has shown that cost does matter and
is an important element that must be taken into account in
framing an effective response to climate change. The climate
change issue is essentially an intergenerational problem. This
makes the climate change problem far more difficult than local
environmental problems involving short-lived gases and
aerosols, with which we are more familiar.
We largely live with the climate that we inherited from our
predecessors, while we are in turn laying down the foundations
of the climate that we will pass on to the next generation.
But, we have very little margin to change our own climate. The
actions that we take to mitigate emissions are therefore
largely undertaken out of an altruistic motivation-care for our
children and grandchildren. Under such circumstances the cost
of emissions mitigation matters a great deal.
This observation in turn leads us back to the importance of
developing technologies and energy systems that can limit
emissions in a cost-effective manner. And, that is the heart of
S. 1008. Without cost-effective energy technologies and systems
even the best-crafted tactics to limit cumulative global
emissions of carbon to the atmosphere will ultimately prove to
be either too expensive to implement, or will more likely lead
to higher concentrations and greater climate change for future
generations.
On the other hand, if energy technologies and systems are
developed and made available at reasonable cost, all tactics
for controlling emissions begin to look much more attractive,
as do lower cumulative global carbon emissions and long-term
CO2 concentrations.
I think the thrust of everything we have learned under this
global energy technology strategy program is that cost does
matter. It is a very important element. It has to be taken into
account. The climate change issue is essentially an
intergenerational problem, and we largely live with the climate
that we inherited from our predecessors, and we lay down the
concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are
passed onto the next generation. So, in fact, most of our
margin is not on our own climate. It is an altruistic
enterprise, and under those circumstances, we do altruism. We
save for our kids education and we do things for the future,
but cost really does matter and it matters a lot.
I think what comes out of this global energy technology
strategy program is that addressing the climate change issue
seriously requires that we deal with this as a century scale
problem, not as a year by year problem, and that if the
technology to address climate change is not available--that is
the core of what S. 1008 is about--if it is not available,
pretty much independent of the best crafted tactics to limit
cumulative global emissions of carbon to the atmosphere are
ultimately going to turn out to be too expensive, and we will
either not do it or we will not do as much as we could.
On the other hand, if the technology is developed and is
made available, all the tactics begin to look much more
attractive and it is a lot easier to do the job right. I think
that is the important lesson, that if we have the technology,
it is going to be a lot easier job and costs are going to be
minimal.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Lash.
Mr. Lash. Two brief comments--first, looking at the costs
of action, one gets very different answers depending on the
assumptions used in the models that do the calculations and on
the policies that one analyzes. If the models assume that the
economy is very good at changing sources of fuel, that we would
use more gas and less coal as a response, and that new
technologies would develop, the cost is low. If the models do
not assume that kind of flexibility in our economy, the cost is
high. If the models account for benefits, the cost is low. If
the models do not account for benefits, the cost is high. Most
models do not account for benefits because to account for
benefits is very difficult.
For instance, Dr. Hansen was talking about the number of
people who die from air pollution who might be saved if we
reduce pollution. Certainly, it is very important what policies
are used. If you have a rigid regulatory system that imposes
huge and sudden cost on utilities or on the auto industry,
reductions will cost a lot. If you have a market-based system
that allows companies to choose how they are going to proceed
over a number of years, reductions will cost less. It is
important to make those distinctions as one is analyzing costs.
The same is true for the benefits of action and the costs of
inaction. Because we are uncertain about precisely what will
happen 25 years from now if we do not take action--any
assessment we make of those costs is going to involve the kinds
of scenarios that Dr. Hansen was talking about, and guesses
about impacts, both here and externally, and it makes counting
them difficult. The assumptions going in determine the numbers
coming out.
Chairman Lieberman. Mr. Heydlauff, it might be interesting
to ask you to comment on this from the perspective of one
company, a big, significant company, America's largest
generator of electricity, generating about 6 percent of the
U.S. figure, comparable to the annual electric power
consumption of Mexico and Australia. I am just reading from
your testimony--6.1 million customers. So the question is, from
your company's point of view, you are supporting action here, I
assume, as an act of good citizenship, but also because there
has been a calculation made within the company and you
dispatched your responsibility to shareholders that this is the
right way to go economically, as well. I wonder if you could
talk about that a little bit.
Mr. Heydlauff. I would be happy to do that. One thing I
believe has come out of the research that we help fund, is that
you cannot solve this problem without new technology. We
believe as a company that it would be a shame if the country
adds new generation, utilizing existing technologies, and does
not take advantage of advanced, more efficient, less carbon
intensive technologies to meet the energy needs of the Nation,
and most importantly, then, if we also do not take that
technology and deploy it around the globe. Let me give you a
concrete example of where I think the challenge is greatest,
and that is in the developing nations, which are going to
utilize their indigenous energy resources to grow their
economies. Case in point is China.
China's total coal burned in 1996, I think, was 600 million
or 700 million tons a year. They are projected to burn 2.1
billion tons a year by 2015, the year at which they are also
projected to have their greenhouse gas emissions equal those of
the United States of America. A number of years ago, the
Chinese came to us recognizing our expertise in coal-fired
generation. They said we are going to build lots of new coal-
fired generation, approximately at the time they were talking
about building 15,000 megawatts of new generation a year, and
we would like to talk to you about building some of those
plants for us. We told them that, initially, our real interest
was in trying to take these innovative clean-coal technologies
that are much more efficient and much cleaner and deploy them
in China. The problem is there is a price premium for that,
that neither we nor our shareholders were willing to eat, nor
were the Chinese willing to pay. That is one of the reasons
why, for a number of years, Senator Byrd has had legislation in
saying we need to figure a way to subsidize that delta between
conventional technology and innovative technologies.
We built a power plant in China, relatively clean, but it
was utilizing 1940's, 1950's technology because that is all
they were willing to pay for. I felt real bad about it,
honestly, until I understood what we were displacing, which was
the direct use of coal to heat and cook in residential
dwellings. We brought electricity to a community that never had
it before, which is obviously far cleaner and more efficient
than what they were doing. But it was not what we should have
accomplished, which was that leapfrog in technology use
internationally. I do not believe AEP will build another coal-
fired power plant like we have in operation today. I believe it
will be much more efficient. I think coal has been the bedrock
fuel for electric generation in this country for 100 years, and
it will continue to be.
We have got to find a way to burn it more efficiently, more
cleanly--which the Byrd-Stevens legislation would accomplish. I
applaud President Bush in his initiatives that he announced
late last week, which is to advance research on carbon capture
and then either utilizing the carbon dioxide for enhanced oil
and gas recovery, or more appropriately probably because the
volumes will be so significant, disposing of it in a safe and
permanent manner in geologic formations; deep saline aquifers,
abandoned oil and gas wells, coal mines, whatever. That is how
you keep coal in the fuel mix, which I think is essential.
Chairman Lieberman. I am going to yield to Senator Thompson
and maybe he wants to take up this line of questioning. I take
it from what you said in your earlier testimony that
notwithstanding the need for transformational new technologies,
energy technologies, you do not see the private sector here
investing the necessary money in research and development,
which is why we need the kind of focused, expanded effort that
is part of this research and development effort through the
Federal Government that is part of the Byrd-Stevens bill.
Mr. Heydlauff. That is correct. Certainly, history would
suggest that the levels of private sector investment in those
revolutionary bold breakthrough technologies is pretty much
nonexistent. There is very little of it going on today, and
perhaps this legislation will motivate that.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, thanks very much. Senator
Thompson?
Senator Thompson. I wonder why the R&D has been so low in
this area, compared to other industries. It looks to me like
you are being besieged at all sides. I know you and I share a
commonality in that we both represent entities that are being
sued by EPA right now. I am referring to TVA, saying that we
are keeping the old plants on too long, and the modifications
are not permitted under the Clean Air Act. So, in fact, it is a
mini-Kyoto situation, it looks to me like. You have the factor
of your need for a global approach to it, because the pollution
in the area is destroying the Smoky Mountains National Park, by
the way. You have automobile emissions and the coal emissions
from the TVA plants, but a lot of it comes from your part of
the country and it settles right down in that area.
No company or entity wants to be disadvantaged. So you are
going to have to have a global solution, more or less. The
costs are said to be astronomical if we do it any differently.
The rates will go up in the TVA area if we correct the problem
and nobody knows really how much, but the damage being done is
clearer there. It is more imminent. It is more polluted on the
top of the Smoky Mountains most days than it is on the streets
of New York City. So if we cannot have some kind of regional
solution to that, I am wondering how we are going to take on
the world.
I get back to my point. I wonder why, with all this
pressure and commentary, industry is not doing more. Clearly
the government needs to step into this. That is what we do best
up here. We mandate all these different things, all these
different entities, and we come to what seem to be logical
conclusions about what ought to be done about all of these
problems. We pass some bills not knowing what we are doing,
unintended consequences run rampant. This is what we do well up
here, research and development, but industry, I think, has got
to do more too.
I would like to work with you some in the future and talk
about some way we can approach this regional problem that is
doing a lot of damage. Nobody wants to put anybody at a
competitive disadvantage, but maybe if we do it together----
Mr. Heydlauff. Just to respond very quickly, one of the
other things that Congress can do and can do well is resolve
conflicts in Federal policy. Nowhere is that more in evidence
than in the issue that you raised about new source review. The
Clinton Administration came to us early on and said they were
going to meet the aim of the framework convention on climate
change to reduce emissions levels by the year 2000, but they do
not want to rely on new bureaucracies and new regulations. They
want to tap the ingenuity of the American public, and in
particular, American industry.
The electric utility industry stepped up to the plate and
put together a very robust program of response measures. We
literally combed our company for opportunities to improve the
efficiency with which we convert coal into electrons, and we
took a number of measures at our power plants to do that. I
would submit to you that everything we did that improved the
efficiency with which we converted energy into electrons,
simultaneously reduced those air emissions that you are
concerned about in the Smoky Mountains. Yet, we are in the
unhappy position today of having been sued for taking some of
those actions. We are improving the efficiency of the plant, we
are reducing emissions, yet the government is telling us that
was a violation of new source review rules and, consequently
and unfortunately, we have halted those measures until we have
resolved this issue.
I hope that--and I realize that is an issue not for this
Committee. Senator Lieberman, it is for your other committee,
and in that we can get that issue resolved too. View it in the
context of a multi-pollutant control legislation that Senator
Voinovich talked about, where we can bring a rational approach,
a resolution to all of these issues; the air quality issues,
Senator Thompson, that you are concerned about in Tennessee,
and I know they are concerned about it in the Northeast, as
well as, perhaps, starting down the path that we all hope to go
down in terms of the response to global climate change
concerns.
Senator Thompson. Going to another question here that was
mentioned, I think that several members of the panel,
specifically Mr. Lash, mentioned the uncertainty of the
economic estimates. I saw a June 12 USA Today article, I think
you referenced it in your testimony, Ms. Thorning, that
indicates the Clinton Administration has now acknowledged that
its economic analysis was flawed. Back during Kyoto, they came
up with some rather low numbers as to what it would cost--but,
it seems it was based on China and India accepting binding
emissions limits, which they have not, and Europe and other
countries engaging in emissions trading as a solution, and
apparently they are not making any progress on that. Former
administration officials were quoted as saying, ``That the
thing that made them really uneasy about our analysis was that
if our assumptions do not come true, costs can come up much,
much higher.''
Ms. Thorning, you have done that, I know, in some of your
work. It has been pointed out that it is very uncertain and it
all depends on assumptions and so forth. I would like for you
to address that and I would specifically like for you to
address what we should do and how much is it going to cost?
Kyoto is a good place to start. That is one so-called solution
that is out there, and people can try to measure it. There are,
obviously, other approaches that will presumably have lower
price tags. As far as Kyoto is concerned, first discuss the
validity of being able to analyze the economic aspects. Second,
what does your work reveal in terms of the effect it would have
on: The gross domestic product of this country; our growth, on
gas and electricity prices; and on migration of industry out of
this country?
Ms. Thorning. Thank you, Senator Thompson. The focus of our
work over the past 10 years at the ACCF--and we have spent a
fair amount of time on the issue of climate change--has been
looking at the costs of action, and what are appropriate
policies to respond to this potential threat. A range of
credible modelers, ranging from the Department of Energy to
Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, Australian Bureau
of Resource Economics, Charles Rivers Associates, Professor
Alan Mann at Stanford, suggest that the cost range of complying
with Kyoto would be 2 to 4 percent of U.S. GDP or $200 to $400
billion a year. Of course, the cost varies depending on what
the assumption is about global trading, particularly, as well
as some other variables in the models.
As you mentioned, the Clinton Administration's Council of
Economic Advisers number was really off the chart, which they
have now admitted was erroneous. So it seems to me very clear
that the costs are high. The Department of Energy also
estimated that electricity prices would have to rise perhaps as
much as 80 percent, gasoline prices, 50 percent. So the cost to
the American economy is very significant. Low-income wage
earners would be particularly disproportionately impacted,
because the cost of energy is a much larger share of their
budget. U.S. industry would tend to migrate to countries that
were not CO2 constrained. Alan Mann's work suggests
that by 2020, we might lose 10 to 15 percent of our energy
intensive sector. So there are very serious consequences to
precipitously moving forward to limit--cap CO2
emissions. It seems to me that given the uncertainty about the
science, the focus of your hearing today, which is on the
importance of technology and the development of alternative
technologies for energy production, is very appropriate. We do
need to focus on that.
Senator Thompson. Without China and India and these other
countries being a part of it, would the CO2
emissions continue to rise anyway?
Ms. Thorning. They will continue to rise. There are
numerous projections that show that even if the United States
and Europe shut down and sat in the dark--no electricity, no
cars--the impact on global concentrations of CO2
would be almost negligible.
Senator Thompson. Do you have any basis for reaching an
opinion as to whether or not the European Union could or would
comply, even if we did?
Ms. Thorning. As my testimony points out, there are five or
six new studies that suggest that the European Union will be 15
to 25 percent above its emissions targets by 2010 or 2012. So
it is hypocritical, really, of the European Union to rail
against the Bush Administration's policy of stepping back and
taking another look at how to address climate change.
Senator Thompson. It seems to me that the European Union's
attitude toward Kyoto is somewhat like some of our Democratic
friends'--on the House side--attitude is toward campaign
finance reform, and that is it is a great idea, as long as it
does not happen. [Laughter.]
Ms. Thorning. One of the things that I think people need to
realize about the European Union is the leaders there have 10
years worth of capital built up, political capital. They have
made the case that they need to comply with Kyoto and it is
very difficult for them now to simply back away, I think, and
we need to be sensitive to that situation and help--which I
think the Bush Administration is trying to do--come up with
alternative strategies that will enable them to feel that we
and the rest of the world are going to move forward.
Senator Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thompson. It strikes me
you are one of a small, courageous band of Republicans that
could have made that comment about Democrats and campaign
finance reform. [Laughter.]
Senator Bennett.
Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I could not
possibly have said what Senator Thompson said on that score. As
I sit through the morning, I am beginning to see the emergence
of consensus, and let me try it out and see if you agree,
because obviously I do not want to put words in anybody's
mouth. But it seems to me that technology is the answer to this
problem. Arbitrary limits, such as came out of the Kyoto
Protocol, are not, but technology that is developed to be more
efficient almost always means cleaner, and there are economic
benefits to being more efficient, and cleaner is a wonderful
side effect that comes out, and indeed, as Mr. Lash points out,
has some economic benefit in and of itself.
I am referring to an editorial comment made by Robert
Samuelson, and I liked his opening. He said, ``The education of
George W. Bush on global warming as simply summarized: Honesty
may not be the best policy.'' Greenhouse politics have long
blended exaggeration and deception, and the Bush
Administration, I think, has told the truth about Kyoto and now
is being beaten up for it. But that is not the issue. The issue
is what do we do, and the answer seems to be, coming out of
today's hearing, that we develop the technology to deal with
it, rather than putting on the artificial, politically-
dominated caps.
Now, you are shaking your head, Ms. Claussen. You take the
first shot at me here.
Ms. Claussen. I agree with I think virtually everyone on
this panel that you cannot solve this without technology. But I
do not think that precludes the need for rational, sensible
limits, which I think can also help you move the technology on
the development side and also on the deployment side. This is
not to say you need a mandatory system that will bankrupt the
economy or that will move too soon, too much, but I think there
is a real place for limits which, if done rationally over time
and in a way that the market can sort out, have to be a part of
the system.
Senator Bennett. Let me give you an analogy then. You used
two words, neither one of which can be challenged, but that
create great mischief up here: Rational and sensible. I am not
sure we are ever complying with both of those in legislation
that we pass.
Ms. Claussen. Well, I have great faith in the Senate.
Senator Bennett. But in the automobile industry, CAFE
standards have no doubt produced technological breakthroughs. I
was at the Department of Transportation when the catalytic
converter was introduced, and that was a technological
breakthrough. But it was driven in part by CAFE standards. One
of the interesting side effects of CAFE standards has been the
creation of the automobile industry in Japan, because the
Americans, for whatever reason, did not seem to be able to
produce reliable small cars, and so more and more people
started importing cars from Japan, where they had the
technology to produce these kinds of cars. That is a separate
debate.
In the Samuelson column, he talks about how Europe has
achieved what they have achieved with respect to emissions. He
says there are only three countries in Europe that have reduced
their emissions: Germany, Britain, and Luxembourg. I do not
think we need to worry about Luxembourg. Britain, because of
plentiful North Sea gas, they have shifted from coal. But in
Germany, it is a one-time experience, as they have shut down
the technologically-impaired plants of East Germany that came
in with unification, and once that is done, they are not going
to get another boost, unless there are technological
breakthroughs that can say, when the time comes to retrofit a
plant, we are going to retrofit it with one that is more
efficient and cleaner. Along the lines, to stretch the analogy,
of the CAFE standards, we are going to get rid of the Cadillac
and buy a Toyota, and maybe we have to buy two Toyotas to carry
everybody around, but maybe not, because you can really only
get six people in a Cadillac, and if everybody breathes at the
same time, you can get five in a Toyota.
So I am just reacting here, but the reason I am doing this
is because I find in the environmental community some segments
that are anti-technology. They hate the idea of technology.
Now, the best example of that, and this is obviously
pathological, was the Unabomber, who did everything he could to
attack technology as the source of all of our problems, when,
in fact, technology is the solution to our problems, and the
people who are heavy in the rhetoric, anti-technology, need to
realize that we all need to get on board in the same thing if
we are going to solve this kind of problem.
Now let me give you an example, and maybe Mr. Heydlauff,
you could comment on this. I talked to the electrical
generators in Utah--obvious parochial interest. They tell me
they are very bullish on wind. We have got a lot of wind in the
West and they are very bullish on wind, and they have been able
to design the windmills in such a way that they are not
particularly dangerous to birds anymore. But there is one
problem with wind, and that is that the wind stops, and you
cannot stockpile energy the way you can stockpile Toyotas, and
when the wind stops, you have got to have some alternative.
The obvious alternative is hydro, where you have a body of
water stored, and when the wind stops, you allow that water to
go through the turbine and generate electricity until the wind
starts again, and then, in those hours of the night when nobody
is using the wind energy and you have excess capacity, you pump
the water back up. To me, this is an obvious, wonderful
solution to changing, and many in the environmental community
say we are opposed to hydro in any way, shape or form.
This is a technological solution that can help us, that is
being attacked for ideological political reasons. Does anybody
have a comment on technology? You have taken me on, and I
accept your----
Mr. Lash. Can we disavow the Unabomber first?
Senator Bennett. Yes, let's all disavow the Unabomber.
Chairman Lieberman. We environmentalists do not want Mr.
Kaczynski to be our representative here.
Mr. Heydlauff. Senator, one of the strengths of the U.S.
economy, I think, is the fact that we power it with a wide
diversity of energy sources. Coal is approximately 50 percent
of the electricity base. We have got 21 percent, I think,
roughly is the nuclear capacity. Natural gas is approximately
15 percent; hydro is 10 percent; a little bit of oil and the
balance is going to be these non-renewable resources you talked
about, which is less than 2 percent. I think we need them all
and I think we need to develop them all, and we need to develop
them in a way that is both economically rational, but also
protective of the environment, more so than we ever have in the
past.
We are a diversified energy company. I talked about the
fact that we burn, I think as Jonathan said, nearly 80 million
tons of coal a year, but that is only 66 percent of our
generation mix; 24 percent is natural gas. We do have nuclear
generation, hydro, and we are about to commission a 150
megawatt wind plant, which we are very proud of. It is in
Texas, and we think there is a lot of wind potential in Texas.
You are absolutely right about the intermittent nature of wind
generation, and it is going to be a problem that will keep a
lot of these intermittent renewable energy resources, like
solar and wind, at the periphery of the electricity supply
business until such time as we have a dramatic breakthrough in
energy storage technology, and that has been elusive, as you
know.
As a matter of fact, we would solve the urban smog problem
in Senator Lieberman's State if we could just come up with an
efficient energy storage system, so that people could drive
around in the cars and electric vehicles that do not emit
anything. But we are still going to have an urban smog problem
for as far as we can see, because we have not found that, and
the automobile manufacturers actually have cut back on a lot of
that research and gone to hybrids instead. So that is a
challenge, but it is growing and it will continue to grow and
capture more of the energy market.
Frankly, I think--and we have got experience with this--the
renewable energy systems make a lot of sense in developing
countries, either in those areas where they have no access to
electricity or in areas where their electricity comes from
diesel generation. We, for example, have put in solar
generation, photovoltaic systems, in Bolivia, and in one case
it was to provide electricity for the first time to a
community, and in the other case it is displacing diesel
generation. We are looking at that. We are looking at,
actually, renewable hybrids similar to what you talked about,
small-scale hydro systems, combined with solar and wind
generation.
So there are a lot of solutions, I think, to the energy
challenges of the world, and certainly the country, that we
need to continue to exploit. Your suggestions are correct and
you are absolutely right, there are relatively entrenched
opponents to virtually any form of electric generation. We
certainly have it with coal. You see it with nuclear. You have
it with hydro and we are well-aware of that. It is very
difficult today to site and build a new hydro plant. As a
matter of fact, I think we have pretty much developed all the
economically feasible areas anyway. It is just hard to get them
relicensed today.
Senator Bennett. They are trying to tear them down in my
State.
Mr. Heydlauff. And they are trying to tear them down, I
know, out West. Even the most efficient, clean natural gas
generation, you are having a hard time siting and building in
the Midwest, some States where you would not expect it, like in
Indiana, where they have had enormous difficulty trying to site
new natural gas power plants. We have the old NIMBY (not in my
backyard) syndrome prevalent in ways that we have never had to
deal with when we built the existing infrastructure. But that
infrastructure needs to be replaced. It is getting old and we
have got to replace it.
So we have to come up with a rational energy strategy, and
I guess that is for another committee as well.
Senator Bennett. Thank you. Let the record show that I am
the only member of the Senate who drives a Honda Insight, get
55 miles to the gallon, and I bought it because I was in love
with the technology.
Senator Thompson. How do you get in it, is the question?
Senator Bennett. I have had you in it, the two of us.
Chairman Lieberman. I have actually seen you get in and out
of it, and it is an impressive sight, and quite comfortable.
[Laughter.]
I would say to my friend from Utah--I thank him for his
questions--I think he is right. There is a consensus here about
the need for technology and bold new energy technologies to
deal with the problem of climate change and air pollution and
the rest. I think there is also an agreement, an important one,
that, for various reasons, the private sector is not going to
do it itself. So this is one where the government has, as
Senator Thompson said, some credibility and needs to do it.
But the second part of this, about the private sector, and
this is where we separate for the moment, anyway, is that I
think, as Ms. Claussen does, that we need caps, and the best
reason is actually the example you gave, of the CAFE standards,
of the fuel mileage standards, because what we do here does
drive technology. In other words, if we create standards, the
private sector will figure out ways often to meet them. As Ms.
Claussen said, we have got to calibrate this as best we can,
because we do not want to create economic havoc, certainly, in
the short run.
The other reason that I favor the binding targets and
timetables is that we had this experience in the 1990's after
the Rio framework, which set targets and timetables and made
them voluntary, and nobody did much of anything around the
country and the world, and the problem got worse. So I think
that is what actually led to Kyoto. One may disagree with the
specifics of the Kyoto Protocol. I was actually in Kyoto, and
it was a remarkable experience, watching all those countries
with differing points of few, differing domestic political
constituencies and energy resources, trying to work something
out.
So it is far from perfect and it is always subject to
alteration, but I think that is a point at which we differ. The
good thing about the Byrd-Stevens is it does not require us to
reach consensus on those questions. It creates these
mechanisms, these offices in the Federal Government, that will
stimulate and finance more research and development, that will
force us to come back at this every year and see how we are
doing and create a strategy that reaches toward stabilization.
I come to the end of the hearing, thanking all the
witnesses and my colleagues, feeling that though there are
still disagreements about tactics here, that this bill really
does provide us with some common ground to go forward, and in
doing that, I do think it is a breakthrough.
Senator Thompson, if you want to add anything----
Senator Thompson. Well said, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, all. The hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, the 12:26 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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