will come to order the many on energy and commerce and our distinguished friends from the committee on science and technology are having a joint hearing today amongst the two subcommittees which have the responsibility of addressing the problem of climate change and energy security the join hearing held by the committee on energy and energy and air quality and the subcommittee on energy and environment of the committee on energy and technology has been scheduled for a goodly while and i want to welcome my colleagues from both of the committees especially our colleagues from across the hall in particular chairman gordon and subcommittee chairman lanson by agreement amongst the majority and the minority of both committees there you will be conducted under the rules of the committee on energy and commerce as such members who were here when the committee was called order will be recognized in the order of seniority alternating between the two subcommittees and other members will then be recognized in the order in which they have arrived members of both full committees who do not serve on the relevant subcommittees will not be able to participate in today's hearings many of them are seated in the front row of the audience and i want to thank them for their efforts and their interest in these important subjects under the rules of the committee all written statements of the members will be inserted into the record and all members may ask additional questions of the witnesses in writing through the chairman of the committee on energy and congress these questions will be included in the official hearing record along with the response of the witness i'm sure all will know that the committees will seek to see to it that this matter is handled with the full satisfaction of all all will be notified in the subject rather in subsequent days of the proper procedures for submitting statements and questions by agreements with our good friends and colleagues in the minority only the chairman and ranking members of the full committees and relevant subcommittees will be recognized for opening statements other members will be permitted to make their opening statements which will be inserted in the record in proper fashion our first witnesses been dedicated to the issues of energy security and global warming throughout his career we're delighted to welcome him back to this room where he served with such distinction for so long his resume includes many impressive titles including cagney ward winner most notably former member of the committee on energy and commerce which is i think perhaps the most important of his accomplishments and incidentally he also served as vice president of the united states as we will recall for eight years and it was a democratic nominee for the president of the united states for allow the vice president to interact with our members as much as possible but sure will forgo his opening statement was  of the rules package that stated it had hearings like this members of the committee that are not a member of the subcommittee and members of other committees that wish to to  attend would be welcome to to sit and then i noticed that we have at least three members of the energy of the energy and commerce committee or the science committee in the audience and there may i see several other members i'm not sure if they're members of the science committee i would like to know why it is that they're not allowed to to sit up on the diocese i respect the right t may not be able to ask questions because this is a joint hearing but i do not understand why we're violating the rules that we just adopted in one can't even for sit at the dyess with the other members of the committee that their member of  you have we have here a gathering of members which is at least as large as either of the two committees and there are problems with availability of seating the chair will work with the judgment to try and resolve these questions time that he and i are taking for these purposes are probably denying members the opportunity to be heard at a later time and ask questions i have two more parliamentary inquiries gentleman is recognized on this last parliamentary and i'm not going to press the point and ask for a actual parliamentary ruling in appeal the ruling of the chair because i support the fact that we're holding this hearing but i will ask the chairman if he's going to use his good offices to try to find seats for the members of the full committee at the diocese generally inform the gentleman the chairs thinking very actively on this matter and w think it's a rule of every committee that witnesses voluntarily agree to testify and are required to have their testimony in writing forty eight hours in advance yet mr gore is not only a former vice president he is a former member of the house a former member of this committee and i believe a former subcommittee chairman of this committee we  the minority received his written testimony at about seven a m this morning it apparently got to the majority offices about one a m this morning how are we supposed to prepare questions for our esteemed witness when we're basically given the testimony two hours before he shows up and that is a clear violation of the rules well if the gentleman would permit the chair will respond first of all it is not a violation because this is a matter which as you dress the discretion of the chair and the chair has made the decision that we would not enforce rule according to its absolute terms in view of the power of the chair to act in his discretion on this particular matter the chair will note that i've observed the gentleman from texas and my colleagues on the republican side and i've observed them to be members of great talent and ability and i've watched the i've watched them ask questions for many years and i've never found them to be tongue tied or lacking in the ability to address these questions these statements are available sure the gentleman knows how to ask questions and i have great confidence in him and in the fact that he will ask good questions so i also would  that we have a very fine copy of the vice president's book an inconvenient truth and it's a gentleman wishes to have a little reading that he may enjoy during this during this matter or at later times i would be happy to make my the minority reads them is it parag to the chair to waive written testimony that requires unanimous consent again because of my affection for the esteemed chairman i i'm not going to press that point today because of the importance of this hearing but this is the last day that we're going to just let regular order be be overridden well the chair again with all respect and great affection observes to the gentleman my good friend from texas that under rule for be one of the rules of this committee there is there appears the language requirements for testimony and then i quote the chairman of the committee may waive the requirements of this paragraph or any part under that provision the chair has waived the requirement with regard as production books papers from rec testimony at this particular time and i want to we will try and see to it that that is complied to with whatever the circumstances permit and i do want to accommodate my good friend and have a harmonious consideration of the difficult questions before  i have one more parliamentary in four gentlemen this is actually dishonestly the last one under the rules of the committee individuals who waive their right opening statements are given is going to respond this way this is a rule and it will be rich or rather it will be applied on the insistence of any member  chair reminds my good friend that we are in the position of a fairly limited amount of time we're going to see to it that we try to see to it that the younger members get a full opportunity to be heard and for the more senior members to take advantage of this is simply to deny the younger members the opportunity to ask questions or to have an adequate amount of time for questions so respect this but i want to inform my good friend that i think it would be unwise and perhaps unfair rush to do this at this particular time so i was just chairman seek recognition for any further purpose no sir well with respect and affection then the chair thanks my good friend and the chair recognizes now my dear friend the gentleman who is the chairman former colleague and good friend the vice president lives so the gentleman is recognized for such introduction is seen you know oh i'm sorry i'm sorry i apologize i was going ahead of myself i was the chair my question period which has been the practice because it was right and it will be it will be respected the chair recognizes now the my opening statement so that members will have more time to question later sure thanks gentleman the chair now recognizes the ranking member of the full committee on science and technology who is benefit from it today we're witnessing an all out assault on all forms of fossil fuels and all forms of nuclear energy we have to be energy conscious and sensible enough to know th will continue to be the major source of energy in the near future if we allow this attack on energy to go unanswered and have it result in lessening our domestic reliance on fossil fuels will f dangers of sixty percent presently to recklessly dangerous and likely eighty percent of our total energy supply forcing a continued reliance on opec will make our energy markets more unstable and dismantle job for workers such as drillers to push roughnecks and others who furnish the manpower and the woman power necessary to continue the search in the capture of various sources of energy he would also establish opec countries is even more dominant than they are today abandoning america's endless energy producers would result in the death of an energy industry an industry that helped win world wars and continues to fuel our economic injured today it could also result in the loss of a generation of young american men and women who would have to fight for energy when if the opec nations abandon the usa back canceling all sales and casting their future with others then americans we must press for ener reliance and continue to pursue technology to combat the threat of increased carbon dioxide these two goals are interconnected if we tap into american ingenuity we not only unleash the power of our nation's competitiveness but we also find domestic solutions for our future that are affordable that are reliable and that are clean republicans in congress have taken this pro growth approach over the past several years the energy policy act of two thousand and five for our domestic energy needs i understand that dr lombard's will be discussing the role of energy research and development and how this approach will cost a lot less than the kyoto like policies and yet could potentially have a much greater impac on our climate these are the types of solutions our country needs solutions to create jobs foster american innovation and allow our country to become more energy independent the legislation that the present congressional leadership is advocating brings about ki lack policies that will cost our nations a lot of money and won't stop global warming in the future moreover it's clear that other countries who are major polluters are not willing to help offset the giant cost entailed in this type of legislation you can bring in testimony of expert after expert all of whom can say that global warming is a threat to world health but not one of them will discuss the cost of their recommendations and the lack of the benefit gained if that cost yes the americans and the cost all americans must be a part of this discussion finally the american people will not guess today what mother nature will do a hundred or a thousand years from now and will not be good joe or frightened but later sally denton our lead into a dangerous world that invasion just without a reliable energy supply it's not going to happen because it can't happen working americans will not tolerate shipping our jobs to china one of the world's most polluters we should not abandon our obligation to all americans by allowing the renewed attack on energy by a handful of pro kioto self styled experts who never mention the cost the cost to be paid by us the american people when china russia mexico and others offer more and more pollution and not one penny for the clean up i've used the word cost eight times in the speech alone i've never heard a word used by the keogh died this congress this congress will listen to americans who realize that someone has to pay the c that my time has expired chair recognizes now the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee on energy and her quality of the committee on energy and commerce here who has been performing extraordinarily well in addressing in a very aggressive and responsible fashion the subcommittees review of these important matters the chair recognizes the distinguished gentleman from virginia mr boucher thank energy and air quality the committee on energy and commerce our good friend and colleague the former speaker of the house mr hastert of illinois for this chairman i just want to say thank you for holding this hearing i will waive my opening statement and waived the chair recognizes now the chairman of the subcommittee on energy and environment of the committee on science and technology or a good friend mr lamson of texas for five minutes thank you mr chairman i too will waive my comments and thank you for correct but i finally got tired of hearing about it and i said what they ought not to talk about i'll sneak that way even though out representing the entire state we still shared mutual constituents within  districts and one of those constituents was a lady nine government royal and it was about that time that she had a song out and title i was country when country wasn't cool and certainly albert gore has had a long passion and dedication to make the world understand that global warming was real and it had consequences we all know that recently the i p c c report stated that with one hundred percent  certainty there is global warming this was unanimously adopted by one hundred thirteen nations including the united states and by president bush but over twenty five years ago congressman albert gore j oscar winning documentary countless frequent flyer miles and literally hundreds of small group flags show presentations later the world finally is paying attention and so mr vice president i want to thank you for your passion and dedication i want to welcome you to this unprecedented joint hearing of the science technology committee and the energy and commerce committee and seeing tipper gore here i have to say one last thing today welcome back welcome home for a long time on this committee and in this room and i'm sure that you feel comfortable and welcome and that's the way we want to welcome back thank you so much mr chairman i is an emotional occasion for me to come back to this hearing room i learned a lot from you chairman dingell when i first came here in the fall of one nine hundred seventy six and then became a member of this committee and was sworn in in january of nineteen seventy seven and the chairman gordon thank you for your friendship all these years and for your leadership on this issue and so many others and thank you for calling me on the telephone in tennessee the day after the election last november when you when it became clear that you were going to be chairing the science and technology committee and you were the first to say i want you to come and talk about this issue and we want to we want to work on it and chairman general thank you for calling me and vibing me to come and testify as well and to the ranking members thank you congressman barton congressman hall we were we were close friends before you went over to what we jokingly refer to as the dark side and  both of the committees that are represented here and i'm very grateful for the opportunity to testify before two committees that i did in fact have the privilege of serving on congressman dingell i want to say a special word of thanks to you because our fathers served together this is the second generation friendship and i was reflecting yesterday and doing just taking a pencil and paper and at the time when your father and my father served together in the house of representatives the concentrations of c o two in the atmosphere up there on capitol hill and all over the world were just about three hundred parts per million and they really had never gone above three hundred parts per million at least as far back as a million years and the ice record  and yet here we are today and it's already three hundred eighty three parts per million just in and that short span of time and that ultimately is what brings me here there is a sense of hope in this country that this united states congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis this is the greatest country on the face of this earth and the hopes for freedom and the viability and african sea of self government rest with the legislative branch of our of our government in this and time there been times in the past when when our nation has been called upon to rise above partisanship above political calculations above the pressures that have always been present for to a quarter century from special interests of this that or the other kind and reach across the aisle and do what history calling upon all of us as americans to do america is the natural leader of the world and our world faces a true planetary emergency i know the phrase  shrill and i know it's a challenge to the moral imagination to see and feel and understand that the entire relationship between humanity and our planet has been radically altered we've quadrupled human population in less than one century from one point six billion and one thousand nine hundred to six point five six billion today population is stabilizing of its own accord as girls are educated and women are empowered and family planning that's culturally acceptable in country after country becomes widely available and most importantly as child survival rates increase and infant and maternal mortality mortality decreases when those things happen and especially when literacy among women and creases around the world the birth rates come down death rates come down and then the birth rates come down and it's stabilizing but having multiplied by for the numbers of people on this planet and we're going from over six and a half to over nine point one almost certainly within the next forty forty five years that in itself causes a big change in the relationship between humanity and  planet secondly our technologies are thousands of times more powerful than any our grandparents had at their disposal and so even though we're more skillful and more effective in doing the things we've always done exploiting the earth for sustenance providing for our families and going about productive lives the side effects of what we're doing sometimes now outstrip the development of extra wisdom to make sure that we handle these new powers in a way that doesn't do unintended harm and somehow we've also adopted a kind of a short term way of thinking that is also different from what our grandparents more commonly used we in the markets that congressman bartlett said this is the global warming's the biggest market failure in history i kind of agree with that if you look at the markets that short term focus is just dominant now quarterly reports day traders if you look at the entertainment business in the media business and even the news business it's overnight polls and how many eyeballs can you glued to the screen you know the p and then the honorable profession of politics back in that year when i first came to serve on these two committees i never took a public opinion poll and that was partly because back in those days it wasn't very common and also as congressman gordon knows it's largely a district and you get out and meet people and but that's all changed now and by the time i left politics overnight polls were were common now as you all know the so called dial meters is just one big long continuous polling i don't think the results for our democracy are all that good but the short term focus is a part of the problem that we call the climate crisis and we we in the united states of america and you in the congress are the repository of the hopes and dreams of people all across this earth it's an unusual time one of the popular movies out there now it's three hundred about the small group that defended a pass that from offaly to save the prospects for democracy there are times rare though they'd be when a relatively small group is called upon to make decisions and show courage because the results of what they do will shape the prospects not only for themselves and for their can but for all future generations this congress is now the five thirty five really and truly it's one of those times congressman dingell you are perhaps the youngest member of the greatest generation having fought in world war two as a very young man and we owe you you and your generation as we've all acknowledge many times of great debt but you were part of a relatively small group that saved the world and when you and your colleagues on the ground in that sea and in the air one the struggle against global fascism in the atlantic in the pacific simultaneously your generation came back home transformed no longer nineteen twenty twenty one year olds having walked through the fire having emerged victorious you came home with a different capacity for vision a deeper moral authority and when your wartime leaders like george marshall said we ought to lift up our adversaries from their knees and walk with them from the battlefield toward peace and prosperity we need a european recovery act that became known as the marshall plan your generation said yes we don't want to have a repetition of these world wars coming out of europe but you knew it took vision and a fifty year timeframe time that we steered by the stars and not by the life of every passing ship and your generation said yes that's right and here in the congress republicans are th and others stood up and reached across the aisle and said we're america first and democrats reached across from the other side and under presidents of both parties we stood down communism and for fifty years we were faithful to that mandate i say all that mr chairman because what we're facing now is a crisis that is by far the most serious we've ever faced and the way we're going to solve it is by asking you on both sides of the aisle to do what some people have as you know begun to fear we don't have the capacity to do anymore i know they're wrong i know that politics can seem frustratingly slow like it doesn't move an inch a year but when there are enough people who become seized of the gravity of a challenge and talk with you and you yourselves immerse yourselves in it and learn what's at stake all of a sudden it can move very quickly i came here today mr chairman with some messages to the congress and they'll be delivered to your offices there from five hundred and sixteen thousand people who just in the last few days have responded to an e mail request that i sent out to say this hearings been scheduled and i'd like to be able to tell the members of these committees that i'm not here by myself there are lots of americans who who feel as strongly as i do and and so the folks that are i contacted al gore dot com we've been getting a hundred new contacts per second in the last couple of days and we just started this short time ago this is building and it's building in both parties the faith communities the evan jellicoe communities the business leaders ten of the c e o s of the biggest corporations in america just the day before the state of the union address last month most awesome in their personal lives been supporters of  president bush that's irrelevant to this issue they had a press conference today for save the union address calling on you to act adopt legislation that will address this crisis this is not these are not normal times congressman gordon i want you to tell peggy happy birthday and i felt the emotion in your voice that you got to the end of your statement i have felt that too because i promise you i say this to each of you as individuals i promise you a day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they will ask one of two questions either they will ask what in god's name were they doing didn't i see the evidence didn't they realize that four times in fifteen years the entire scientific community of this world issued unanimous reports calling upon them to add act what was wrong with him or they too blind  numbed by the business of political life or daily life to to take a deep breath and look at the reality of what we're facing did they think it was perfectly al right to keep dumping seventy million tons every single day of global warming pollution into this earth's atmosphere did they think all the scientists were wrong what were they thinking or they'll ask another question they might look back and they'll say how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the pro of american democracy and do what some said was impossible and shake things up and tell the special interests ok we've heard you and we're going to do the best we to take your considerations into account but we're going to do what's right i'm going to do my part to make sure that you have all the support that i and lots of other folks can muster for you in both parties when you do the right thing in tough districts face pressures that just are overwhelming i would ask you to walk through that far i've got a few specific suggestions that i'd like to make before and thank you for the courtesy of giving me a longer than normal opening statement first of all the new evidence let it be said here that's come out just in the last few months shows that this may well be even worse than has been described three days ago two new studies were reported in the peer reviewed science journal science magazine one of them shows that the arctic ice cap is melting more rapidly than had been predicted one of them shows that it could completely disappear in summer time in as little as thirty four years most of the computer runs and this is a respected computer modeling group peer reviewed stretch it out thirty five forty five fifty five could be as little as thirty four years this problem is burning a hole at the top of the world in the ice cover that is one of the principal ways our planet cools itself if it goes it won't come back on any time scale relevant to the human species another study shows that the earth is shaking because of what's going on on greenland relational earthquakes size mog refers all over the planet or hearing them hundred ninety three we're seven of them between four and a half and five on the richter scale by ninety nine the number doubled to fourteen this past year there were thirty two point four point six and five point one on the richter scale one of the science magazine articles are referred to points out in detail why the international scientific report decided that it was impossible to include the fate of greenland and west antarctica in their projections because they don't or they don't understand how this could be happening so quickly another study shows that there are among the billions of tons of frozen methane in the tundra areas that have locked it up and ice melting is receding more quickly than anyone had predicted much more powerful as a global warming gas and c o two that twenty three times i say as powerful we need to turn the thermostat back down before that melts fires some of y'all from the wealth of had a terrible time with fires new study car lights at precisely with the warming temperatures and not just the warming temperatures the you and what it shows is that the drier soils lead to dry our vegetation and that means kim ling and the incidence of large fires in the west in russia in it's correlated with these warming temperatures there are many other signs that we we do not have time to play around with this we do not have the luxury of making it a political football and exercising politics as usual here's what i think we should do number one i think we should immediately freeze c o two emissions in the united states of america and then began a program of short reductions to reach at least ninety percent reductions by twenty fifty all of the complex formulas of how we might start reduction is years from now and have a little bit in the first year and a little bit more in the second year i think we need to freeze it right now and then start the reductions secondly i believe and i know how difficult this is the contemplate but i believe that we should start using the tax code to reduce taxes on employment and and production and make up the difference with pollution taxes principally c o two now i fully understand that this is considered politically impossible but part of our challenge is to expand the limits of what's possible right now we are discouraging work and encouraging the destruction of the planet developing we are also in a new world mr chairman we've talked many times about the competitive challenges that america faces an outsourcing world and with information technology empowering these developing countries with large and fast growing populations and lower wage rates our biggest disadvantage is in the area of our high wage rights and we don't want to lower our wages but we shouldn't worsen that disadvantage by stacking on top of the wages the full cost of our health and welfare and social programs i understand is a longer term shift but we ought to start making that shipped it would make us more competitive it would also discourage pollution while encouraging work i understand how difficult it is i'll say again but carbon pollution is not presently priced into the marketplace it does not have a price tag it's considered an extra nalang and there are reasons for that but if you think about the extra analogies include air and water i internalize air and water as most of us do and i think the economic system should do and i think that one way to do it is by this new revenue neutral tax shift third a portion of those revenues should be must be earmarked for those in lower income groups who will have a more difficult time making this transition unless you and the congress make sure that we are giving them the assistance that they need forth we need to be part of a strong global treaty now i'm in favor of kyoto but i fully understand that kyoto as a brand if you will as been demonized i remember mr chairman when i first came to this congress one of the issues i worked on was new their arms control some of the members here  i worked with closely and those years former president carter had a treaty pending the salt two treaty and for a variety of reasons including the invasion of afghanistan by the former soviet union it was withdrawn and the name itself became a political liability president reagan was elected and i worked across the aisle with president reagan on arms control and after only a couple of years in office he came to a realization we need nuclear arms control he had been against it but the realities of the situation made it clear that we needed to move forward and he came up with even deeper reductions and a new name called the start treaty and people who had been opposed to salt through salt two all of a sudden we're in favor of the start treaty i think that we should work toward defacto compliance with kyoto if we can ratify it fine but again i understand the difficulty but we should work toward the facto compliance and here's my formal proposal we ought to move forward the date the starting date of the next treaty now chits if you will all of the the goodwill that comes out of the of that election campaign and the new inauguration not just on trying to fight a rear guard action and a bitter battle to ratify a treaty will expire by the time it's ratified but to work toward defacto compliance and then start an all out sprint to negotiate and ratify a new tougher trading that will began in two thousand and ten and we have to find a way a creative way to build more confidence that china and india and the developing nations will be a party to that treaty sooner rather than later land cover and methane and s maybe opportunities to have provisions that are binding upon them sooner rather than later but some creative way must be found to make them a part of this effort next this congress should enact a moratorium on the construction of any new coal fired power plant that is not compatible with carbon capture and sequest and that means that we should have an all out push to develop carbon capture and sequestration next i believe mr chairman that just as this committee on the science and technology committee were instrumental in the early years of assisting the scientists and engineers to take what was then known as arpanet and darpa net and developed the new switches and the new high performance computers and assist them in their creation of what became the internet i believe that this congress should develop an electron that a smart gri just as the widely distributed processing processing of information everywhere in this country and around the world led to the biggest new surge of productivity that we've ever seen in this nation we ought to have a law that allows homeowners and small business people put up photovoltaic generators and small windmills and any other new sources of widely distributed generation that they can come up with and allow them to sell that electricity into the grid without any artificial caps at a rate that is determined not by a monopsony of course you know that's the flip side of a monopoly you can have the tyranny of a single cell or you can also have the tyranny of a single buyer and of futility sets the price then it'll never get off the ground but if it's a tariff if it's regulated according to what the market for electricity is same way public utility commissions do it now then you might never need another central station generating plant in the same way that the internet took off and stimulated the information revolution we could see a revolution all across this country with small scale generation of electricity everywhere let people sell it don't reserve it for the the single the single big seller next i believe that we should raise the cafe standards and i support your initiative congressman markey but i support your idea of chairman dangle as well that it ought to be part of a comprehensive package and i've taken note of your statements and also some of the automobile industry statements that long as it's part of a comprehensive package that includes the utilities and includes buildings and all the other sources don't single out cars and trucks and pretend that that's all the problem it's only a slice of the problem and it's not even the biggest part of it but it is a big part of it make it a part of a comprehensive solution but let's not bring up the rear any more on these auto standards basically the problem is cars coal and buildings so you've got to address all all three of them in an intelligent way next i believe that along with using the tax system and a cap and trade treaty approach you should also not shy away from using  regulatory power and i believe that this congress should set a date in the future for the ban on in can death and lightbulbs give the industry enough time to make sure they've got all the socket sizes worked out and all the different features like the emerson rest that people wall in the quality of life they'll do it you set the day tell i'm not going to be able to sell that old inefficient wasteful kind at a set date in the future that was just longer but it plays by the same rules they'll adjust and they will surprise you next where buildings are concerned i'd like to see it pass a law that i call conny may a carbon neutral mortgage association and here's why i used to be in a small way in the home building business but before when i came back from the army and before i was elected to the congress and the price the selling price of a new house is something the market is very sensitive to some of you all know that's a lot better and i do because you've been in the big business in a bigger way and so the selling price is what people look at both the sellers and  but all of the things that we need to do to cut down on carbon emissions are things that add to the selling price but don't pay for themselves until a couple or three years have passed and so the appropriate thickness of insulation the window treatments the the the improvements that will sharp we reduce the operating cost of that that home or building is routinely excluded from the initial purchase price because the market discriminates against it we ought to set up a carbon neutral mortgage association where all of those costs are set aside they will pay for themselves but just like fannie mae and freddie mac put them in an instrument that is separate from the purchase price and when you go to closing on a house you sign the mortgage and they'll say well now here's your county my home improvement package here you don't have to worry about paying for that because it'll pay for itself the congress the united states is made sure of that i recommend that strongly next i think that you ought to require this comm oversees financial services i think the f c c ought to require disclosure of carbon emissions in the corporate reporting just day before yesterday the largest pension funds in this country four trillion dollars worth of assets managed by i am called upon the f c c in the congress to require disclosure because it's a material risk there are lots of companies where investors need to know if there's a exposure to carbon constraints if they're going to be in real trouble because of some aspect of the climate crisis that they're not disclosing to their investors stockholders ought to know that and those those disclosures ought to be required now i want to close mr chairman and thank you and and also thank all of you for again for the courtesy of allowing me to present these ideas to you i'd like to close by referring back to the un press the nature of the challenge as many of you know the the way the chinese and the japanese both of them use the so called conjured characters express the concept of crisis that used to symbols together and the first one means danger and second means opportunity this is the most dangerous crisis we've ever faced but it is also the greatest opportunity we've ever been confronted with and there are people who look around the world mr chairman and look at the genocide in darfur and the chronic civil wars in places like congo fought by child soldiers and i look at the tens of millions that dive easily preventable diseases and the destruction of the ocean fisheries and the rainforest and these other things and they say we just have all these problems in it in a terrible well there were problems back in those days after world war two as well but when your generation rose to meet them the vision they acquired and facing down fascism served them well and giving them the ability to see that these other challenges were not political problems they were moral imperatives and that's what our opportunity is today not only to solve this and to say to the future generations we did our part this was arthur ma paly we defended civilizations again we rose to the challenge but also say in the process we dug deeply and we found a capacity we didn't know we had it's there we all know that and that's what will give us the ability to successfully solve these other crises that's the greatest opportunity of all that comes out of this i mean crisis it really is up to this congress and mr chairman and to all of you i cannot possibly overstate the the the strength of the hope and good feeling that people all over this country have about this congress and the new approach that they feel is being taken here and i'm going to be out there as i said trying to stir up as much support for y'all doing the right thing is awesome we can i wish you well as you undertake this istar challenge  committee thing where your presence and for your very valuable statement and for your help i want to welcome you back we've worked together in this room for a lot of years and you have made a valuable contribution to the public in this room for which we're all thankful and i would appreciate your recalling the friendship that has existed between our two families for more years than i think either of us can remember for five minutes and we're going to we're going to adhere to those five minute limitations very carefully its conclusion gentleman from tennessee chairman of the science and technology committee thank you  gentleman wishes he could have that i have that additional five minutes the chair does remind you however that five minutes at this level is going to deny members at the other levels five minutes  e distinguished gentleman from virginia mr represents how this really can be and should be a bipartisan solution cheri has been a long advocate of the concerns about climate change here we're glad you're here my friend and ranking member the science committee mr hall raised a good question earlier and so i want to i want to follow up on that and that is the cost was going to cost associated and i noticed mr vice president in your written statement you made the following statement and i'll quote there are some who will say that acting to solve this crisis will be costly i don't agree if we solve it the right way we will save money and boost productivity would you mind elaborating on that thank you very much mr chairman and i too i meant to acknowledge chairman boehlert and i i want to thank him publicly for agreeing to work with me on the alliance for climate protection which is a th we will we will launch a three year mass persuasion campaign completely bipartisan in nature it will involve television and radio advertisements in all of your districts  very active internet based campaign this is not going away the problem's not going away it's getting worse the the efforts to build public support for a solution to it are going to be increasing steadily to we used to get testimony from this fellow at the rocky mountain institute amory love and sees one of these guys are so smart you feel like you're drinking out to fire hoses at the same time and he doesn't get as much traction for his ideas as he should because people can't keep up with they can't understand him always but he's been right for thirty years on a lot of this and one of the things he used to say in talking about the cost of this the alleged he said they've got to sign wrong they've got to sign wrong well see i thought he was a smart he's not be talking about trigonometry with cosigns and whatever the rest of that stuff is and then i realize no no  he's he's brought it down to where i can get to it he's talking about a plus sign a minus sign and what he means is that if you go about this in the right way instead of putting a minus sign in front of the expenditures that are needed to solve this crisis you need to put a plus sign in the sense that it's going to save you money and it's going to help make the economy stronger harry truman once said when he was present he said i spend ninety five percent of my time trying to convince people to do things that they all down will do for their own benefit anyway and sometimes the people who really work with the details of the solutions of the climate crisis feel exactly the same way now it's not that easy because when you look really closely at it there are some solutions that have minded as well as block signs but let's take for example the in sweden they have this  program to have zero carbon buildings ok and in some areas they can't you can do is unless it's zero carbon well the people to do that they put in the expenditures for more insulation in the window treatments and they use the new computer assisted design to orient it to the sun just right and you know there are things they can do now that are fairly simple once they understand what they're doing and it ends up being zero carbon well if more than pays for itself and that's an example of a of a plus sign where we're going to benefit from the expenditures there are some other approaches that would be costly but if we pick and choose correctly we can improve our economies productivity and performance and save money now this shouldn't this is not some alchemy or some mysterious process pollution is w you've got to buy raw materials in order to make pollution and you can figure out how to be more productive and put more of those raw materials into your product and less into the waste stream you're going to save money in the process now the stern report came out in the united kingdom and i've i was asked to serve as an advisor to the government over there it's been an interesting process and it's done like i just came back from there this past week and i'll say this to my friends on the republican side of the committee over there the tories and the labor party are all on the on this you know the same side on this they're competing with one another vigorously but they're competing on the basis of who can present the most effective solutions for it they don't argue about the size the bang on science is over well and so now the stern report which came out there sa that the cost to our economy of not solving this crisis would be devastating and so if we go about it in the right way we can save money if we don't confront the problem that cost the economy would enormous i'm sorry take up your time first i do want to again welcome the vice president and i sincerely don't agree with your conclusions but i sincerely appreciate your passion and your willingness to try to make a difference and i it's honestly commend you for standing up for what you believe in and in being willing to put your considerable prestige on the line so thank you congressman appreciate that i will point out in passing that your actual testimony varies very little resemblance to your written statement i would hope that we could get your legislative recommendations which were numerous in writing so that we could actually study them will that be possible could i have permission to revise  science of global warming as portrayed in the vice president's film an inconvenient truth this is something that i think we did we actually have to get right even the mainstream media mr vice president are now noticing that global warming science isn't even involving we need to be deliberative in careful when we talk about so called scientific facts in your movie you display a timeline of temperature and compare it to c o two levels over a six hundred fifty thousand year period as reconstructed from ice core samples you indicate that this is conclusive proof of the link of increase e o two emissions and global warming a closer examination of these facts results reveal something entirely different i have an article from the science magazine which i will put into the record at the appropriate time that explains historically iraq is and c o two concentrations did not prece temperatures but actually lag the temperature by two hundred thousand years yes lagged c o two levels went up after the temperature rose it appears that the temperature appears to drive c o two not vice versa on this point mr vice president you're not just off a little you're totally wrong and it's not just this one article the present a national academy of science scientists agreed under oath opening statement correctly said was three hundred eighty parts per million indeed c o two levels in the past have exceeded over a thousand parts per million and the average earth temperatures have been much higher than they are today we know the but because some of these levels occurred millions of years ago reliable data regarding the details of these is limited we don't know where the temperature rose before or after the rise in c o two levels that for back but it remains a fact and it is clear from the data that we do have that for hundreds of thousands of years c o two levels followed temperature rise not the other way around if you preach you've also asserted that global warming is going to cost sea levels to rise over twenty feet twenty feet the reason i p i t c c report indicates a rise of at most twenty three inches inches twelve inches equals a foot you state that there will be more and stronger hurricanes because of the i p c c report does not support this klein you've also stated that malaria has been exacerbated in nairobi because of global warming the world health organization report does not support this allegation in fact malaria is not exclusively warm weather disease inhabitants of siberia have long experience malaria outbreaks your ideas aren't all bad mr vice president you list a number of thoughtful responses to global climate change with this committee to consider they include more efficient use of electricity and heating who in appliances and lighting more energy efficient buildings and businesses more fuel efficient cars both hybrid and fuel cell cars better designed cities mass transit and fuel efficient trucks increased use renewables and carbon capture and sequestration these are good ideas they're not just reasonable responses to climate change with their good energy policy as well we have before before you one of your one of your tables from your book i believe and i'm happy to report that in the last congress under the chairmanship of myself with the strong and able support of mr dingell the current chairman we reported out in passing a law that you know policy act of two thousand and five on a bipartisan vices if we look at that piece of legislation we'll see that many of the things that you recommended we've already done you want more efficient heating cooling systems lighting appliances electronic equipment in the energy policy act we did that in titles one nine and thirteen you want to end use efficiency design of buildings  title seven eight nine thirteen in fifteen you want to make other changes and in transportation efficiency better use of mass transit systems and heavy trucks we do that in titles seven and nine you want to increase renewable energy wind solar environ biofuels we do that and he p a titles to seven eight nine twelve thirteen fifteen sixteen seventeen and eighteen and finally you think that we need to research and try to capture and store carbon from power plants  factories we start that process and e p a titles for nine and seventeen so many of the things that you recommend we not only agree with you we've already done it some of your ideas though mr vice president we thank you i think are just flawed your suggestion of a carbon tax is something that would harm our competitiveness raise costs american families export jobs and actually do very little to improve our environment likewise  and trade system for c o two will mainly increase the price of electricity while providing any environmental benefit of these proposals especially considering that neither of them includes large emitters of greenhouse gases such as china and india and all the common sense test that any legislation should meet they provide a little benefit at a huge cost instilling a carbon tax on the american people aren't instituting a cap on carbon without participation of nations like china and india is an attempt to reverse global warming similar to a doctor telling an overweight said sedentary chain smoker that he or she needs to wear a seatbelt china is adding a coal power plant a week and will add more coal fired electricity generation this year then the entire state of texas currently has when you were vice president and you get it in just signed the kyoto protocol you  requests that people like myself and chairman dingell to insist that china and the developing nations be included in that same protocol let's look at what's happened in europe as they've tried to instigate their carbon cap and trade in germany electricity wholesale rights have risen thirty to forty percent and they're facing huge job losses despite all the efforts of the european nations that signed to go to almost none of those countries are on target to meet their and trade isn't working in europe it will not even be tried in asia and it should not be unilaterally opposed in the united states of america you just gave us an idea for a flat straight c e o to freeze i correctly i think that's an idea that scott's it's flawed if you take that literally we can add no new industry no new cars and try some of the straights and apparently no new people like us people areas with an eye on four basic principles we first want to be sure that it actually helps the environment we want to keep our lives on at an affordable price we want to keep the american economy strong and we want to keep american jobs here in america and finally we can get out in front of things that are not technologically possible at the current time because i've noted on some of your ideas we agree and we've already taken action and hopefully in this congress will take additional actions and i wan him how last night hundred seconds this question you said that you support a cafe increase do you support the cafe increase like they have in japan it's over forty five mpg or do you support a cafe increase more like they have in china which is around thirty five miles per gallon and what your time frame for this increase that you do support well thanks very much congressman i'd like to respond to several of the things that you national academy of science not only in this country but in every major country in the world has endorsed the scientific consensus and is calling upon you to act the i p c c is the most  extensive and elaborate and highest quality international scientific collaboration in all of history has now four times in the last fifteen years as recently as six ago unanimously endorsed the consensus scientific american had a special issue in september saying the debate on global warming is over the editor in chief of science magazines that it's very rare to have a consensus in science as strong as this one one of the leading experts sa d it's a stronger consensus than on practically anything except perhaps gravity so i think the consensus is something that we ought to acknowledge and accept now the fact that more c o two traps more heat in the lower part of the earth's atmosphere is really beyond dispute i mean it's not that's not me saying that that's what the scientists have known for one hundred eighty years and for a hundred years they've done the calculations on pretty much exactly what the magnitude of the of the heating affected and you know for those who say that there may be some kind of magic solar system phenomena at work here how come it's getting cooler in the stratospher when c o two goes temperature goes up that is why twenty of the twenty one hottest years ever measured in the human record have been in the last twenty five years the ten hottest have been since ninety nine and the hottest was two thousand and five the hottest in the united states of america was two thousand and six the hottest winter ever measured globally was december of last year and january and february of this year last month this is going on right now the planet as a fever if your baby has a fever you go to the doctor if the doctor says you need to intervene here you know say well i read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem if the cribs on fire you don't speculate that the baby is fla retardant you take action the planet has a fever and five degrees may not sound like much you know the range that is in the range that's projected but the difference between ninety eight point six one hundred three point six is five degrees we have to take action on this now in the in the ice core record as i've said every time i give my slide show the relation it's a couple system they go up and down together and indeed there have been times when since the entire glaci record is driven the scientists tell us by these solar by the cycles the earth's orbit around the sun gets thinner and wider on one hundred thousand year cycle the tilt oscillates a degree and a half on a forty one thousand year cycle there is a called precession on a twenty two thousand year cycle and when those three overlap it creates that historic pattern that's been true for three million years well sometimes the sometimes in future goes up before you see sometimes i was sometimes that has been true in the past the opposite has also been true in the past but what's happening now is that we the cause of human action are overwhelming all of those cycles well just a couple more brief points if i could m there is no consensus linking the frequency of hurricanes to global warming and i've never said there is it's the intensity of hurricanes it's also true the scientists say you can take an individual storm and say this is caused by global warming members by our distinguished witness the chair recognizes now the distinguished gentleman from virginia mr boucher for five minutes thank you very much mr chairman and mr vice president we welcome you here this morning thank you for taking time with us and thank you also for the groundbreaking work that you have done in drawing global attention to the human contribution to climate change and the need to have greenhouse gas emissions we congratulate you on that work  we are planning our committee for later this spring the drafting of a greenhouse gas control measure we have not made decisions as of this point about the control methodology and we're evaluating a number of different alternatives that could achieve significant reductions i would welcome your advice today on what those various methodology is might be if you mentioned in your testimony a possibility of a cap power plants and that program has been a sterling success in fact it succeeded far better than even those of us responsible for drafting that thought that it would the european union on this that's success decided to apply a cap and trade regime to its to satisfy and its kyoto treaty obligations on greenhouse gases but i think the consensus now after several years of experience with that in europe is that their program was flaw is an approach that we should seriously consider for adoption here in the u s as we devise an approach to greenhouse gas controls well thank you mr chairman that's a great question and i do recommend a cap and trade approach and when  the first president bush first proposed the sulfur dioxide cap and trade system i was a supporter of it but you're right even the most enthusiastic supporters underestimated how effective that was we got much sharper reductions at much lower cost trusts the market make it work force instead of against us now the european system is in fact working and it's beginning to work extremely well i disagree respect they're not meeting their targets it's a europe wide target and they're they're all they're going to be on track to meet it it's not individual countries some of them are ahead ahead of their internal targets others are behind as a as a region it's not they're not only meeting them they just adopted binding targets last week when i was over there that go much deeper than their obligations under under kyoto a twenty percent reduction and they'll take it to thirty percent if we join in the regime so they're finding that it's much easier to do and that they're they're moving more and more quickly now here's what they did wrong when they started they made calculated their base year and so since all the reductions have to be measured against the base year it matters a lot if they get that wrong they also had a first phase a start up period that was way too long now they've recognized that and they've adjusted both of those things they're really on this case at the prime minister level they had all of a meeting just last week this is the number one issue up there in lots of of those countries and again as in the u k it's bipartisan it's crossed party lines and people are up in arms about it and the the business leaders are are demanding that the government act and the governments are acting so i think they fix the two problems that they have now the u s is about twenty three percent of the ongoing annual carbon emissions on historic basis we're responsible for thirty percent of the of the c o two that that's up there and if we stop completely tomorrow to be one hundred years before half of it fell out so it's a difficult challenge but since we are not participating in the cap and trade system it's a little bit like a bucket with a hole in it you can still use a bucket with a hole in it but it'll be a lot more efficient if that twenty three percent hole is plug then what you'll find is the global market in carbon trading will reach much higher levels of efficiency now here's what it's doing at the company level i spoke i gave the keynote speech last week at a conference call point carbon where they have thousands of companies from all over the world simultaneous translation for japanese and in that in the other and they're there are a focus on how this trading system works a year ago at the same conference they did a study of the thousands of companies represented there and asked them how many of these companies are reducing internally their carbon and managing it was fifteen percent last week this year sixty five percent so just in one year's time you've had that big increase and i think the same thing's beginning to happen here in this country thank you mr vice president the chair recognizes now the distinguished gentleman from texas  alongside our sam rayburn have read of and some people think i remember sam houston another great tennessee although from films that came from tennessee and our garden is really helping me i don't states a good statement to make but i want to i have to differ with you on some things and let me tell you i have admired you we said right side by side on these committees and worked together we were held a conference one time a hearing on my boat out in front of thomas jefferson's home there and when your little one was injured you had the prayers of everybody up here thank you you know there are two just don't agree with you on you said that you said there are some who say that acting to follow this crisis will be costly i don't agree then you go on to say some ways to where it won't be costly but i think if you're going to we're going to hear from  c lomborg here in just a little bit and in his testimony he said and we're talking about the kyoto protocol which even if it had been successfully adopted by all signatories including the united states and australia and even  annually and it would hold off global warming for years that looks like a very good deal for me and who's going to pay for it asked janet what they think about paying for it ask mexico ask india ask a number of other countries it's just a symptom and my question though to get around to my questions is that the if the united states and china and india do not incur the cost of reducing their emissions at the same time are you concerned that the united states will be at a competitive disadvantage i may go a little further if developing countries are not required to take action at the same time as the united states what will happen to the united states manufacturing sector when you add in the cost to reducing emissions to the products produced domestically versus those products produced overseas that do not incur such a cost at the same time i guess my question is how would you prevent the united states manufacturers from being harmed congressman paul ralph if i may thank you so much i i was thinking remembering finally that evening on your boat out there and i love do that again sometime we'll do it any time you want to thank you i enjoyed working with you when we were on the committee together and i really do believe what i said earlier ralph that we've got to find a way to reach across the on china and india very serious challenge and here's the reality of it every single global treaty since the end of world war two has had the same basic design that the countries that have a higher per capita incomes are put in one category and the countries that have you know just one one hundredth in some cases of what the per capita income in europe and japan the u s is there in another category and they say look we don't have the the the ability to to bear that burden in the same way we don't have the technologies and you all created this problem you start and then we'll come along and in every three days that's been written since nineteen forty five that has been the approach that's had to be taken i don't you know i wish it could be otherwise but in a negotiation when you've got all these poor countries banding together nobody's found a way to correct that while not open with another kind of formula the way to improve the odds that they are going to come on board is for the united states to take the lead now we've got something else going for us and that is that these countries now are beginning to understand very clearly that they have to act in their own self interest you take china for example both the yellow river in the yangtze river originate in the ice fields on the tibetan plateau they're having terrible water shortages in many parts of china particularly northern china they're having terrible pollution problems related to their coal expenditures they now have these massive demonstrations over there believe it or not they're not covered in their news media of course but they're really having a difficult time that's why there are two top leaders have both made important speeches just in the last two weeks saying that they have got to address this they've expressed their determination to i don't put much stock in those words until they follow it up but the way to to improve the odds that they do is for us to show the leadership and i think most of thank you mr vice president for joining us today your public service is most appreciated one hundred forty five united states army published a book cautioning our country about our reliance on fossil fuels it's been sixty two years since that message was published and such statements published and even you with your message your powerful positions that you have held have been had a very difficult time getting the message out to the rest of this world that you hopefully is going to play off and we thank you for that i have two questions if i can get them both in first if we take action to address our climate change challenges don't we also address many other problems that we face for example can we also achieve air quality benefits greater energy independence and reduce traffic congestion and maybe even more and would you comment on that please is that both your question or that's just one i'll get to  same time when they modernize and upgrade and i still think that's the way to go but there's no doubt that if you cut down on the global warming pollution you're also going make the air cleaner asthma rates will likely go down lung diseases will likely be less severe congestion if we enact some of the sensible solutions on transportation yes you'll solve some of the problems that need to be addressed anyway i agree with you totally so significant potential absolutely things as we probably all know coal is the least expensive and most abundant fuel that we have in this country and a field that is also most available in india and china as well recently in texas t x you  e a plan to build a new coal fired plants and that caused a great deal of controversy due to concerns about air quality and carbon dioxide emissions what do we need to do to make clean coal viable and what are the key areas of research investment that we need well first of all i want to compliment the people of texas who rose up in mass to block that cynical plan but to execute a move forward and you know if you look at what happened it was republican mayors alongside democratic mayors virtually every significant mayor and state of texas was involved in protesting that going forward you and your group were just terrific in that and this the easy assertion that if you just use it for enhanced oil recovery that's sequestering it because the geological deposits have to be ones that are not porous we can't pretend that it won't come back up through you know if it's put in the wrong places but if it's done right then this does open up the opportunity to continue using call now pulverized coal according to the old approach where they  just heat it up and then you're producing so much nitrogen along with the c o two there's no way to capture it you know a new new designs with oxygen enrichment you know this above my pay grade but they say that there are ways  to design these plants that make them capture and sequestration friendly now a lot of times the problem is you have to have the geology a logical formation close enough to the coal deposits and also close enough to the places where you're going to sell the electricity to make it all economically feasible the places that are doing the best job appear to be in norway and iceland and they're storing it offshore under the sea bed where the water pressure holds it in place safely but but kohls future depends on getting an accurate price for carbon in the marketplace and the speedy development of carbon opportunity as chairman scored welcome to this committee and welcome back the energy and commerce committee we appreciate you and professional on bergen appearing before us today to discuss the very important issues surrounding global climate talk about capital investment research and development but all those have costs and you are able gentlemen sit down please and i can talk  develop the base of able to pay for things cos you go to places you can tax the american people and tax american industry or you can have the old fashioned way the things that our forefathers did basically is have economic activity and market economy and investment and coming from the free market in people's pockets  there's two ways to get money out of people's pockets vestment taxing i was it was somewhat amazed to go through your ten or fifteen issues here your recommendations think a lot of those recommendations i can agree with but a lot of those regulations are more right recommendations are more regulation and more taxation and we find out in this track this economy this world where we tend to regulate ten to tax you depress the ability of the free market to work and sometimes people in this dark side of the aisle as you said talk about l regulation and less taxation to make our economy work to give the free people freedom to invest let me just say mr vice president i agree with you i agree with you that nature to extent of man's contribution but that all that history to debate determine what that is the fact is you laid out some things that were places that we need to go and as a thinker as a personality and now a movie star you can come back with those general themes those broad things and say do this rin tin tin was a movie star i just chairman of the of the energy subcommittee i think there are answers the fact is fifty percent of our energy is coal energy is coal there's more energy under gillette wyoming there is of all sorts saudi arabia we have the potential in states like virginia and kentucky and southern illinois and southern indiana and wyoming and montana and others to be able to harness that energy but as the colon issue well jessel natural gas we have some oil but we can't sustain the need for the growth of energy in this country that we're going to need the next ten years forty percent trees because we do have an increase in population and although our population is curve down probably doesn't keep up with the rest the world but that's a fact i have a new grandson i'm proud of it i hope i will be as grandsons to come but that is the fact that we're going to have to have that growth so how do we meet that how do we do it how do we find the new technologies and the new ideas and new science to be able to do it that in times out of ten it's going to be individual investments going to be people saying this is a good idea i'm going to put money in this idea and i'm going to help create a better world because of it and by the way we may make a little profit off of an aside that this happens to be how this country works so i think we can find answers to use the coal energy do use the natural gas the energy that we have to use a real noble for you diesel and there's another issue too we need to use atomic energy and we have the ability to day you know i wrote the public utility act in illinois nine hundred eighty four but fourteen nuclear units were coming on line and the cost went from  four hundred million dollars to five billion dollars per unit and i predict that we never see another nuclear plant built this country to twenty five years and ironically i was right but it's time to review this and redo it because  can have clean air with nuclear energy but there is a problem there's a gentleman over in the senate that has his hand veto hey i'm not a veto and the debate in the filibuster and  mountain where are our rate pairs put eighteen billion dollars into that to make it happen so that's a political reality but we need to change that we need to find that solutions that we c deposit nuclear waste i would say mr vice president there are a lot of things that we could do that is a lot of potential for the future of this nation and i understand the problems with china and india and mexico and brazil and other nations that you say have low income but you find out today that china's mass more capital real capital than the almost any other country in the nation will last five years that capital needs to be spent not just on highways but they're building coal fired plants in but also be invested in new technology and new ideas and that needs to be done because they're building the equivalent of five hundred megawatt plant of pure though cleaning up every week and no better what we do in this country every car that we have stop every car stop every coal fired electric plant and we could match in our drop in energy but they add an energy pollution every year every week so we have a challenge but i'd only have a challenge this country certainly have a global challenge and you know i was there in kyoto i watched the this development i also remember when you came in and sign the agreement and changed it a bit fact is that everything's worked and i believe and international relations i believe that we need to have international contacts but we also need to make sure when we do that they do work so what i'm asking and what i'm saying is that i think there are answers and should use the resources we have i know you disagree with us on coal but i think there's ways that we could use the coal in this country but there are some things we can do with atomic energy there are some things that we could do with renewable fuels and the other part of this is we have to we have become so dependent on foreign fuel costs that we're tied  sheiks and dictators and who knows what countries like venezuela and saudi arabia and iran and iraq and guitar and all to purposes and  jobs and we lose the ability to produce in this country i spent last weekend detroit the whole of our steamed chairman and i happen to be the rust block after block after block of empty factories where people once worked story after story after story closure people used to do commerce and buy things and as we increase regulation we force jobs out of this country and if we cut off c o m h c o two emissions and froze of today we would have literally tens of thousands of jobs that would be moved to china and india and other i had a new grandson also just two months ago and it's you're going to love it and it's really you know without being corny about it it really is for them that we're all trying to find our way to the right solutions here i know that  short of the part of the consensus where that that that acknowledges that human activity is the principal cause of the warming i think i said that ok good i just want to make sure that because once that's   you know the investments in t x you that were mentioned earlier came to naught because they the investors decided that there was such  unpredictability about the price of carbon that they just couldn't go forward with the plan and so they had to completely rejigger it i believe that i don't think we should raise taxes at all i think that we should shift the burden away from from working people and small business people and put it on pollution instead and i think if we do that we're going to make our businesses more competitive some of the rust  belt devastation that you described some of it has been due to the fact that old any sentient polluting approaches no longer work in a competitive world economy and actually focusing on reducing the pollution turns out often to be one of the shortcuts to finding the most competitive new approaches that can restore jobs and make us more productive and more competitive in the global  economy you mention nuclear i'm sure that'll come up again i'm not i'm not an absolute is and being opposed to nuclear i think it's likely to play some role i don't think it's going to play a major role but i think it applies some additional role and i think the reason it's going to be limited is mainly because they're so expensive and they take so long to build and at present they only come in one size extra large and people don't want to make that kind of investment in an uncertain market for energy demand to time the gentleman has expired there is going to recognize next a distinguished gentleman from north carolina mr butterfield for five thank you very much mr chairman for convening this hearing today you told us a few weeks ago that you going to exert bold leadership in this area and and today is an example of your leadership thank you so very much i also want to thank the vice president for coming forward today and thank you for your past leadership on this issue and your future leadership on this issue thank you very much for coming mr vice president as i was telling you in the ante room before we started and i will continue that now some of my friends on the other side of the hour make the argument that greenhouse gas emissions substantially consist of water appreciate your focus on this water vapor is indeed the most common greenhouse gas but there are ten things about it that are really significant number one the residence times only a few days in the atmosphere up to ten days and that it recycles constantly second and most important it is slave to c o two and other words it goes up and down depending upon the warming  that is unusually driven by the c o two there are other whatever the cause is whether it's methane in the ancient past these long term hundred thousand years cycles whenever it's warmer the water vapor and creases and it magnifies the warming phenomena but in the in the time frames that we're dealing with and in the policy framework that in the science that they tell us is relevant to the policy choices we have it is completely slave to c o two so let's see o two reduces the water vapor at the same time if it magnifies it any other direction it's clear mr vice president from your film that you have spent a good amount  of time and there is a perception here that the chinese are doing nothing absolutely nothing to control their greenhouse gas emissions but the big four accounting firm ernst and young in the case of china is one of the top ten countries for clean energy investment and it is closing fast on our country what are the chinese really doing to promote clean and if you well they have announced a grand plans of but as i said earlier i think the proof is going to be in the in the putting there's no question that the top leadership in china is so use of this issue they've made bold commitments on it the leader of china who has made several statements on it they've made it a prominent goal in their new five year plan co equal allegedly with g d p a gentile how the premier is made two speeches in the last ten days on this they're deeply concerned that their coming out party at the olympics is going to be spoiled by all their pollution as the yellow river often doesn't reach the sea anymore some months and the melting of ice on the tibetan plateau has been one of the one of the major factors and driving uncertainty about water supplies in many parts of china principally in northern china but throughout china they are deeply concerned about the sea level issue i have given my slide show multiple times in china and went to the trouble to get it all translated into the mandarin and so forth and when i was vice president i gave the presentation the great hall of the people and they have scientists that are right out there on the cutting edge and they've got national leaders who can can  describe the problem and tell you why it's serious they are writing a tiger in the sense that their growth is so rapid and they're having trouble they say with their regional leaders i think they can do this if they want and i think that they're preparing to initiate big policy changes but again the way to improve the odds that they will get on board with this he is by the united states showing leadership their emissions of c o two will sars within the next two years or so and that again puts the focus on the follow on to kyoto which i think should be moved forward to two thousand and ten do you agree or disagree that it's too late to dioxide emissions from increasing to four fifty i do not agree that it's too late at all and may i say you know i respect those who try to set some concentration level to aim at four fifty five fifty whatever i think the present level is too high and i think for fifty would be fixed exceedingly dangerous i understand that we are now at a time where the maximum that's considered politically feasible now still small still fall short of the minimum that will really address the problem so our challenge is to expand the limits of what's feasible and the good news is once we commit economic suicide they're making money at it because they've figured out that they can be more productive and more profitable starting their mission and i think it's more businesses get on get with that program we're going to find is a lot easier i think we run out of  thank you mr chairman thank you miss your for being here i'm one of those people that paid to see an inconvenient truth thank you and i want to know that there are power points that i would have paid to get out of a lot of them  but this is one i actually enjoyed seeing and it is great work and i appreciate the early work that you've done there as a conservative i think it's important to note a couple things one is we really should internalize the external that gives a conservative i believe in markets and the only way the market can work is if it rightly judges the price of a product and actually that's not just economics that's it's local notion the concept that i can't do on my land something that hurts your land i will keep on milan the products of my land and not harm your land that's the basis of biblical law it's the basis of english common law it's what we've got in our country now it's a conservative concept also i think we've got wonderful conservative opportunities with things like net metering what a deal if i can invest in my house and make it a profit center recoup some of the my investment in my roof by making it create along but you got to do the right thing even nobody's watching that's when conservatives believe servitors also believe and we struggle around here a lot with dynamic as opposed to static scoring you know we get upset see below all the time for not dynamically stor scoring our tax bill i think we've got a dynamically score this can do american spirit that finish the trends trends and konak railroad that finish the panama canal and then went to the moon there is a way generation nuclear power and hydrogen power for our cars so i agree with you that it doesn't necessarily have to be a lose proposition that really this can be a win proposition for the american  economy now the question is how do you get there because there are some scary costs that we face and mr hall is mention that word and there are tradeoffs and i've got a case study to put before you one of those a nuclear plant which he would prefer to build or a coal fired plant which he would prefer not to build but the problem is it's very difficult to get all the ducks in a row you will for the nuclear plant although that's really would be their preference i wonder if you could having established a series of agreements hearings where you would agree that part of the solution here is to make it possible for a duke energy to build that nuclear power plant rather then to build that coal fired plant which is twenty four seven three hundred sixty five days a year go two is that something we can agree on to advance this nuclear option so that this real world decision right now being made within by the way the next several weeks they're going to make this decision will signal them that they could be bipartisan agreement here that they get a future in that nuclear plant i have for small congressman thank you for your statements and i know you went to antarctica with former congressman  lert and i've noticed some your statements over the last few years and i really i yearn for the day when there are far more of you on your side and i think the numbers increasing all the time so that we can have a really healthy debate where you bring your core principles to the table and and the democratic side brings their core principles the table and then we try to get the most effective solutions that i couldn't agree more that's what's happening in the united kingdom as i said earlier that's the way we ought to be doing it and yes our faith traditions teaches about this and without proselytizing all of the different faith traditions teach similar things come out of the judeo christian tradition as you do and i'm taught the earth is the lord's in the fullness there i believe the purpose of life is to glorify god and we can't do that if we're heaping contempt on the creation and there are multiple teachings that all point in the same hands of the individuals in the small business people and that's one of the reasons why i think the single best thing we could do on electricity is to adopt what's called a feed in tariff system to eliminate the limits on the ability of individuals to sell the centralized electricity back into the grid and have a fair rate for it and that will avoid the difficult choice that you say jim rogers is facing right now i think that the centralization is the wave of the i have deep questions about it i'm concerned about it i used to be so easy as think about it back when i represented congressman gordon's district t v i had twenty one nuclear power plants under construction and then later i represented ridge were immune to the effects of nuclear radiation you know so i was very enthusiastic about it but but nineteen of those twenty one plants were cancelled and i'm sure bart gets the same questions i used to get about whether those partly finished cooling towers might be used for grain silo but people are upset still that they have had to pay for many not be able to get an electricity form and i think that the stoppage of the nuclear industry was really less due to three mile island and chernobyl and environmental concerns and more due to the fact that after the opec oil crises of seventy three and seventy nine the projection for electricity demand went from seven percent annualized compound down to one percent and when energy prices are going up the uncertainty over how much they can plan for also goes up now lecturing us the ought not follow the price of oil but it does because there's just enough fungibility between oil and coal on the margins that electricity chases oil back at sixty dollars a barrel where is it going to be a year from now we don't know but the fact of the uncertainty is itself the reason why these utilities do not want to place all their chips and one large bet that doesn't mature for another fifteen years at a very expensive cost the new generation may there may be smaller incremental power plants standardize safer more reliable perhaps so we may get a solution to the long term storage of waste issue i'm simming that we will reactor air but going up in this case you know we've got a real lot of company offering to build that nuclear plant that would produce no c o two that does produce create ration as a speaker pointed out we need a place to put that wa is a problem but comparing that to the c o two this kind of come out of that plant twenty four seven three six five days a year now seems to me to be a wonderful case where a company is willing to put that much capital at risk and actually help solve the problem we seems to me should help them out south carolina and say we get fifty five percent of our power from nuclear california understand it's fifty five percent from natural gas i can't imagine a worse use of a natural gas resource than burning it to make electricity so that being the case should we be moving as quickly as possible this is not theoretical this is a decision that could be made in the next several weeks to decide to do something  actually reduce c o two levels now and that little bit of time that i have left let me ask you this question i wonder if there's a way to the concern is china and india and the other countries that won't agree to anything and that's been well stated on our side i think that  very legitimate concern but if you've given any thought to the possibility of some sort of a system where the developed world has an agreement that if you're going to build a plant in our areas then you will comply with our notions of c o two if you build a plant in china or in india so that in other words in order to get a permit back here you have to agree that they are you will you will abide by the rules that are going on here it sort of takes it beyond the chinese and the indians and says we need because this is this fungible layer or going to help you make this decision so that it also reduces one reason for export of jobs by the way because it then becomes i don't know if you give me thought to that kind of yes i have i you know it's very difficult to integrate the social and environmental factors into the world trading system but i think we should do it more effectively than we have i think that using the market is a more effective way to do it i'm not opposed to including it in the terms of trying to agreements to the extent that we can do that but a quickly across national boundaries so that we get the sharpest reductions globally thanks five of the gentleman has expired that you're recognizes now is a distinguished gentleman from georgia mr barr thank you mr chairman mr vice president thank you for being with us here today and as you've stated a number of times today the debate in the scientific community over whether there's a problem whether we're behind it and whether we can do anything about it may be over but as you can see today the debate in the political community about a couple of core issues still goes on we get folks who agree with the idea that there is some change with the will quibble with whether or not we're the cause of it i don't agree that there's a change this isn't climate change going on but they'll quibble with the question of whether or not we can do anything about it so and just in the in the hearings we've had i detected something of a pattern on this subject and we opened up with a hearing with the representatives of the scientific community who came before us and says no one certain terms there's a problem we're behind and we've got to do companies the private sector the ambulance we have a series of respect this is about eight hearings that i can remember we've had so far on the subject and in the course of these hearings in the course of them i detect a sort of a pattern that's emerged when the experts on the problem were here there wasn't much going on it wasn't much back and forth on the subject of whether there was a problem and i but we get into the solution hearings and the impact hearings we get a lot of folks who are put to him are putting down the issue and raising questions some of which we've heard today one of the questions i want to follow up on is sort of like a follow up to what congressman butter field was asking earlier yes about the question about the relationship between water vapor as a greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas i want to follow up on some of the statements we made because just just recently earlier in the series of hearings in march march seventh there was a statement made by one of the members of this committee to the effect that natural image overwhelm manmade emissions the ratio of emissions of greenhouse gases that we haven't got our fingerprints on it can't do nothing about what do you say to folks who argue that natural emissions overwhelm manmade emissions in this scenario well congressman first of all thank you for the time you put it put  n delving into this issue we've known each other almost twenty years now and i appreciate your service very much the each one of the c o two molecules has a kind of a chemical signature and they can determine with a very high degree of accuracy that the extra amount that's been added to that most fear in the last hundred years hundred fifty cent's the beginning of the industrial revolution but really in this past century  manmade now sometimes you'll hear about the vast volumes of missions that come from volcanoes for example here's what the scientists say is the difference there they are heavy particulates and they fall out of back to the ground over a period of a year and a half or so and for that brief period of time they can have an impact mount pinatubo had an impact way back in eighteen fifteen i guess it was we had a year without a summer because of a huge volcano in indonesia and they one of the ways they've improved their understanding of the whole science of global warming is by studying these natural emissions but most of them have these short residence time short lifetimes in the atmosphere what the problem is is you know too now methane is also a problem not yours oxide is a problem but the vast majority the problem is c o two seventy million tons every single day that we're putting up there and it stays there for so long as i mentioned earlier it takes a hundred years for half of it to come back out so we really it's the old saying a journey without mile starts with a single mr vice president welcome you today and we appreciate your your testimony i want to say that it is you ticked off a number of different recommendations and i think there are a number of them that many of us can support and i would no that in the hearing and in the last couple of weeks my chairman mr boucher said this any deal which we report must have bipartisan support and industry support it must be economy wide not restricted to just certain economic  sectors it should be capable of passing not just in the house but in the senate as well we take that as a good challenge and we intend to work on a bipartisan basis to see that some of the things specifically that i appreciated in your comments were these obviously you move for clean coal technology something that we've started and we need to finish and we really do need to use the tax code in a number of different ways for me coming from michigan where we have the the congress what we're seeking is not on funded mandates but actually to try and help the auto industry and therefore the consumers and they get better mileage in fuel economy standards for their vehicles when electricity obviously those those are metric tons less of carbon between now and twenty twenty but the questions that i have for you and i and i really start missing in the debate as related not only to your book but also in the movie you've touched on it barton and mr dingell that were truly helpful to begin to try and see the funding for yucca mountain and i remember that it was your old boss mr clinton who on a campaign stop back in the ninety's indicated to the voters in nevada that if he was elected president he would veto that bill and i think that's in essence what happened we had we had to run over a to get where we were and you were quoted not too long ago at least according to the nuclear energy information resource center as i did not support any increased reliance on nuclear energy moreover i have disagreed with those who would classify nuclear energy as clean or renewable now today we're seeing a new new coal fired plant being built in china almost every four days literally two every week many of these as i'm told don't have scrubbers and as you talk about the big dog in this fight  the nuclear energy industry i know that france is about and i think ninety percent reliant on nuclear energy in this country we're about twenty percent right now there's about twenty four twenty five different nuclear plants  being promoted around the world none of them in the united states i'm glad to hear my friend mr inglis talk a little bit about do power down in south carolina because i am a supporter of nuclear energy and i do think that that can be an enormous asset for this country and the consumers i'm one that believes that the energy cost sixty dollars a barrel they're going to stay there they're only going to go up and so as we look at the relationship between the cost of energy and where we are nuclear i think that this is one of the savings that we can have and i would hope that because just was missing in the debate in your book in the movie that perhaps in light of today's hearing perhaps you'll have a little change of mind and i yield my eighteen seconds back for you to not a reflexive opponent of nuclear power powers i'm just a skeptic about nuclear powers viability in the marketplace i think that if we let the market allow the most competitive  forms to surface what we'll see is the centralize generation widely distributed we'll see an emphasis on conservation and efficiency and renewable energy but where nuclear power is concerned i've expressed my views previously i'm not a reflexive opponent i think there will be some new nuclear power plants but you mention china look at their five year plan right now you're right they they plan fifty five new nuclear power plant new a coal fired power plants per year only three nuclear plants per year now why they could they don't have any opposition that they can't overcome pretty easily from beijing but they see the same problems just in practical terms that a lot of our utilities see these things are expensive and complicated they take a long time and you know one of the fragility of the operating regime is already been s i've been to chernobyl i've been to three mile island and i don't want to exaggerate those from i think that we can come up with solutions for the dangers of operator error i think we can come up with solutions for long term storage of waste i don't think off the mountain is it and know need to be can going to need to be contained for tens of thousands of years in a place that it's really not appropriate for now that's my reading of what the the geological survey has said about that but i'm not opposed to it as a category thank you very much mr chairman the vice president a pleasure to see you and i want to commend you for the enormous leadership role you're playing on educating the american people and today educating the congress about the greatest threat to our planet it's a threat not only because of the environmental problem but it's threat as well to our national security because the burning of fossil fuels makes us more and more dependent on young stable sources of petroleum from the middle east when we look at this issue it seems to me when we talk about market forces if government did nothing there's no reason why any business would want to spend the money to be do see missions unless they knew that every one of their competitors had to do it so when we hear about market forces but don't put any requirements on industries that that just won't work because then the incentives are to pollute more because you don't want to be it at a competitive disadvantage when we put something in place to deal with this problem it strikes me that what we need to do is to is to is to look for renewable energy to look to alternative energy and greater energy efficiency i introduced a bill yesterday of a safe climate act and we tried to use this comprehensive approach of looking at all these areas but we tried to use market systems as well in order to drive the technology the market systems would be a cap and trade but the levels that we've called for for  reductions in our pollution would be to get to nine hundred ninety levels by twenty twenty and eighty percent below that by twenty fifteen i'd i'd like to know whether you think these kinds of reductions are the kinds of reductions that the scientists are calling for whether people want to do less because i think it's more politically palatable but if we're going to deal with this problem let's follow the science  my view and get to the reductions we need oh you think you think these are realistic and important levels for reductions i really do congressman waxman and i commend you on your legislation i saw it yesterday and i don't feel that i have the expertise to get into every part of all the different bills that have been introduced but i sure do like your legislation a lot and i think the the level of reductions that you're calling for are in keeping with what the scientists would want us to do and someone would want to do even more as i said earlier i think that the current levels of three hundred eighty three parts per million are already dangerously high i mean if we see the disappearance of the arctic i and the next few decades that would be a radical and dangerous change for our planet and so look you know a few years from now we're going to be back here or will be in conversations all of us about this and the world will look so different and what we're you know the range of things we're talking about now are just going to seem so small compared to what people are going to be demanding then i'm telling you the awareness on this is just on a straight to upwards trajectory and it's not partisan it is not partisan this is not a political issue it is a moral issue and our children are going to be demanding that now so in terms of your legislation i think you've done a great thing there and i think it is related to the energy security crisis that we will have a carbon crisis or bar and all this money from china invite all this oil from unstable places and burn it in ways that are destroying the habitability the plan that's that old patterns got it just mr vice president  we on this committee far conventional air pollution in the clean air act and we have a strong clean air act good good legislation consensus legislation that we adopted in one nine hundred ninety by conventional air pollution can also contribute to global warming should we work to address conventional pollutants like black carbon even while we press forward on reducing carbon dioxide emissions absolutely and the so called for pollutant standard for p i think is the most efficient for utilities most efficient for industry if they're going to retrofit and of course if they're going to expand the law requires them to to upgrade they should be doing all four of them at the same time i agree with you totally i hear a lot from people who express hesitancy about this issue they say it's going to destroy our economy well that's smacks of fear fear can be very paralyzing also hear people say well they've got a magic solution nuclear power i think your approach is a smart one it's a business like approach nuclear power is an option you don't want to rule that out by the certainly no magic solution almost becomes a theological expression whenever i hear the discussion of these environmental issues my view i think it's what i hear you saying is well let's unleash the ingenuity of the marketplace you know get people to do the incentives to do the right thing and then just watch out because people are going to develop technology that we don't even know about today that will help us deal with this problem but if we don't put something in place to insist on those reductions we jeopardize our planets and some people told us we only gentleman from maryland mr barton for five minutes thank you very much mr vice president my wife notes that she thinks there ought to be some relationship between conservative and conservation and indeed i think it's probably possible to be a conservative without appearing to be an idiot mr vice chairman there are there are several groups that have common cause with you in wanting to reduce c o two levels and go to production through conservation the recession see and through more use of renewables these include those who are concerned with national security the fact that we have only two percent of the world's oil use twenty five percent of the world's oil importing almost two thirds of what we use those that are concerned that fossil fuels are not infinite that we're probably reached about the midpoint of oil which is peak oil that's going to be downhill after this those who are concerned about a challenge for increased economic development more manufacturing export which certainly could come from a focus on moving through renewables and the general environmentalist who understands that when you produce c o two you've also produced other pollutants and isn't the air polluted enough thank you we don't have to agree with the premise of these other groups but i'm a member of each of those groups i would like to note to embrace a common solution and my question is how can we get together to combine our forces the second question i want to ask stems from a trip that i just took to china i led a delegation of eight other members to china and we want to talk to them about energy and i was stunned they began their conversation by talking about host oil and they have a five point plan the first of which is conservation second  third diversify your energy sources get as much as you can from your own country and for the kind to the environment to the planet they know they're awful polluters they're asking for help and the fifth one is international cooperation they recognize international cooperation and they need whichever one of these camps you the long to vote warming our national security or peak oil it's going to require international cooperation my second question is are we adequately reaching out to china in these other countries i don't think we are i think that the the the group that and that was put together with the u s and china and australia in a couple of the countries has been unfortunately just an opportunity to talk and not really do anything in order to have have success with them i think that we do need to take action ourselves and i think that there are aspects of this  challenge beyond c o two involving methane and land cover for example that may offer some interesting possibilities for getting them to join earlier rather than later and of course they and now if they're the outlier and if the rest of the world is acting i don't think there's any doubt that they will join i really think that that's the best way to get them on board but but we don't have an option of just forcing them to do it i wanted to say congressman that i've followed some of your comments over the last several years and you heard me quote one of your comments in my opening statement i do think that one of the the keys to getting a true bipartisan dialogue here is by focusing early on one of the realizations that you expressed early on that there are some places where the market is currently failing to internalize enough of the cost to give us an accurate sure of what the choices are and if the if the decisions of polluters ferdie and you can dump as much of your pollution as you want on to everybody else  then the actual costs there are misleading you because you're seeing them as free they're really not free and the way to take to get our businesses to give them a better chance to really compete effectively is to internalize those costs so that they can make accurate more accurate calculations and get with the program as soon as carbon has a price you're going to see a wave of investment that just will see the boggle the mind you know just last week morgan stanley executed the first trade in the marketplace for carbon emissions post two thousand and twelve no legal regime out there the market is seeking to put a price a new law which mandated the doubling of the fuel economy standards for the automotive fleet in the united states from thirteen and a half miles per gallon to twenty seven mpg over the next ten years american dependence upon imported oil dropped from forty six percent to twenty seven percent by nine hundred eighty six we had made a dramatic change in our relationship with imported oil but that number has stagnated since then and actually declined even as other countries have had increase their fuel economy standard requirements so as part of this discussion and i know it's in your book you've referred to it in your testimony there is a conclusion reached by the national academy of sciences in two thousand and two that using existing automotive technologies not including hybrid technology that we can improve optional economy standards to thirty five miles per gallon over a ten year period and that period of time back out all of the persian gulf oil and as a result reduce carbon emissions the equivalent of about one hundred and seventy coal fired plants per year could you talk about that issue when the sensuality of our need to improve dramatically and the fuel economy standards for our vehicle well i support your legislation congressman and i congratulate you on your new select committee in any way i can help you want to and we've been friends and allies on so many things for all these years now and i'm really excited about their leadership on this issue i mentioned earlier that in addition to supporting your bill i also support the general idea that your legislation should be part of a and i think that it's easy to see how congressman dingell would be concerned as anyone would that representing an area where there is a concentration of a very important legacy industry and future industry in our country if it seems like that being thing allowed and so i respectfully suggest that we ought to i encourage the passage of your legislation and as part of a comprehensive package and the cap and trade system could lead to some very interesting bargains between the fuel suppliers and the industries that make cars and other things that burn the fuel and find the most efficient ways to get the reduction now let me say some controversial i don't think it's controversial but i know it's not necessarily welcome i really believe that the old saying and i'll say this to you congressman was you've heard saying be careful what you pray for i think it could be a be careful what you lobby for because successful lobbying for the lowest auto efficiency standards has not been good for our automobile industry and we all know that the less efficient vehicles that cost more money to operate when the price of oil goes up which was not completely unpredictable by the way  hard sell now and the companies that are doing better are ones that have more efficient vehicles now it's a complicated story we need solved all that we need national health care and get that off the backs of the auto companies as well and solve interconnected but efficiency goes hand in hand with marketability in this new age that's rushing toward us here well i want to say and i thank you very much that i obviously sat here with you thirty years ago and what you were saying about information technologies what you were saying about environmental issues back then now retrospective really really do make you look like a prophet i mean you had your finger on the pulse of the issues of the twenty first century and  committee you would be the last person i think that i would probably have to say that we were all recognize that we live in a pretty polarizing country today with a gentleman  just for a housekeeping matterhorn i apologize will not take it out of the gentleman's time we're going to have a vote in about five minutes or show on the house floor and our distinguished witness has informed us that he has to be elsewhere and so the gentleman from kentucky will be the last member of the committee that will be recognized for purposes of the questions and then the chair would observe that we will after that ridge or over to the house floor and vote and we will return to hear our next witness and i hope that our members will come back because the chair wants to have both a complete record for protest a patient of the members and very frankly an opportunity for all members to appreciate the seriousness of the matters before us in the scientific community agrees that there is global warming caused by human activity and that i was reading a statement either you made or as a part of your movie an inconvenient truth and it said we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin of epic destructions involving extreme weather floods droughts epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced and those kinds of statements i think one of the attributes that you have is that you're very passionate about these issues and that's what one of the things that attracts people to you that passion but it's the same time and i don't i'm not quoting these for their truthfulness but simply this for i these are some statements that we read in recent articles about these kind of statements it says this overstating are certain this is overstating our certainty about knowing the future we agree on fundamentals that warming is real but we do not agree on the later today after where we vote and he brought a group of women that economists to copenhagen and they looked at major issues facing humanity today and the point was that the world's financial resources is limited and so how should we spend these resources to the most effective use and help humankind today and they whatever and climate change came down is the very last issue that should be addressed and so the i guess the comment that i would make i think everyone agrees that we do have global warming but then the question becomes what is the urgency of it what is the consequence of it and when you have people coming from diametrically opposed positions how are we what advice would you give us and into trying to address this and spending the limited resources well thank you very much congressman again the initial quote that you attributed to me i don't i don't recognize those words  similar to that but i've tried to say it more carefully and then different ways let me tell you exactly what i do believe and it's not coming from my analysis of the science it's coming from  scientists whose judgment i most respect on this way back there i used to hear people say we only have ten years this kind of thing and i'm never endorsed that i never endorsed a first time i made a statement similar to that was less than one year ago and i'll tell you why the scientists that i most respect including that of jim hansen who runs the the most sophisticated modeling program for nasa and others have now have recently come to the conclusion within the last year that the evidence now does show that we may have as little as ten years within which to to begin making dramatic changes lest this problem gain so much momentum our ability to forestall it will be lost to us and let me tell you what they're referring to the arctic ice cap with a couple of areas the arctic ice cap greenland west antarctica the frozen methane and frozen carbon and other forms not only in siberia in alaska but also in the shallow seas where they have these formations that they've now seen are vulnerable to  just died a couple weeks ago he was a member of the house of representatives he was the captain of the novelist's who made the first voyage to the north pole in a nuclear submarine one hundred fifty eight for for almost fifty years they have kept a record of that sickness finally they declassified it in ways that could make it usable to the scientists those and other data series now make it clear that this floating ice is melting very rapidly ninety percent of the incoming solar radiation that hits that ice cap now bounces off it only gets up there six months of the year but inside and our summer it bounces off it's one of the ways our planet cools itself if it melts as it is melting the open ocean of sorbs eighty percent so that's a big change that's not just a gradual change that's a big change that's already why the temperatures in the arctic are increasing more than twice as fast as anywhere else on the world outside antarctic peninsula and if it goes completely if it just goes to the seasonal ice which is just you know one or two feet thick then it'll be gone and that'll become the biggest heat sink on the planet and if that happens our ability to retrieve this favorable climate balance that we've developed and as a species would be potentially lost us now if the arctic ocean starts heating up radically that puts more pressure on greenland there is an amount of ice on greenland that seventy thousand feet thick a huge ice don't it's equal to a six to seven major increase in sea level worldwide in the past it has broken off in some of these ancient eras and it has right sea level that much if greenland goes then again our ability to retrieve this problem might be lost to us west antarctica same thing more stable than greenland believe but they this science magazine are that just came out three days ago shows and i commend it to the committee i'll provide it along with my testimony it shows exactly why these ice sheets are moving far more rapidly than anybody predicted if it is really shocking the scientists and if that goes that's another six to seven meters now then the frozen carbon methane and other forms of par tendre jealousies there have been tipping points and ancient past where temperatures reach the point where that funneling that's released methane's twenty three twenty two twenty three times as powerful a greenhouse gas at c o two if we don't stop turning the thermostat up before we cross that tipping point that's another reason why the signs are saying we have a short timeframe and which to act and i hear the bells mr chairman if i may briefly conclude by expressing my deep thanks to you to chairman gordon to your ranking members to the other to the subcommittee heirs and ranking members and to each member of this committee my apologies to the extent that i may have contributed to the longevity of this dialog at the expense of your time i'm very grateful for the honor of being here and participating in this dialogue and i wish you well in the crucial legislative task you have for you mr president we thank you for your kindness to ish the chair recognizes first gentleman from texas as compartment for me we thank you mr vice president and we look forward to continuing the dialogue we appreciate your sincerity on this issue  that you were back or were you we remember you with great affection and respect from your time on this committee i learned about another new rule look from you just this morning mr chairman every time i come here i'm freshly educated about the rules of this is really unprecedented as well as on behalf of the whole united states congress as well as your new grandson oscar we thank you for my testimony they'll pay you happy birthday thank you vote on the floor at this time it will be followed by a number of other votes the chairs advise we will therefore return i'm not quite sure exactly when that will be but fifteen minutes after after the last vote has been concluded at that time we will hear from a distinguished witness suggested by the minority mission dr berger yarn blumberg from copenhagen consensus center and will look for you hearing your testimony service committee stands in recess then so fifteen minutes after the last  consensus center at the copenhagen business school professor lomberg is author of the skeptical environmentalist great title and professor rhomberg we'd like to your comments for as much time as you'd like within reason thank you thank you very much mr chairman thank you members i'm very happy to be here and i think it's a very important issue that we're discussing obviously i'd like to go through i have a power point up  presentation i'll move beyond recognizing the importance of global warming and ask how we should deal with it how we should do it and how we should put it in perspective and so i'll make four basic points which will come edition as mr al gore also pointed out second the consequences of statements about strong army has been immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly exaggerated as all also be showing  later on the third point is we need smart a solution so basically yes we need to focus on solutions but the very often her posts are excessive even if they're well intentioned they're actually going to talk a lot and do fairly little good and that leads me to the fourth and final point that climate change is really not the only issue we need to listen as this hearing asks for to make a global perspective on global warming and say climate change is not the only issue on the agenda there are many other issues and we need to ask where can we do the least the most good first and so i think it's important to say if i should sum up what i'm going to be saying here is we need to be frank al gore and the many people he's inspired have good will and great intentions  however he's got carried away in time to show only worst case scenarios and i think we need to recognize that this is unlikely to form the basis of good judgement the problem is compounded in that if we follow  recommendations will likely end up choosing very bad policy policies to solve the many problems that we agree need to be addressed in short course logic with all its good intentions and sincerity would in effect percent an obstacle to saving millions of lives but i think it's also an opportunity this very debate is a remarkable occasion to recapture our goodwill as of course it's hard to talk about early it's a chance to recast our policies it is an opportunity i would argue for america to reclaim its leadership both in acting sensible global warming policies and smartly addressing the many other ills of the world and so i'd like to you know focus instead of rhetoric actually try to present you with some of the important facts i think are important to have this conversation next like the first point and i'm simply going to go through these four issues i pointed out that is the global warming is real and it's manmade it's on the agenda thanks to all gore and i think we need to make sure to thank him for that the best information comes from the un climate panel the like the temperature rise by twenty one hundred is going to be about five degrees fahrenheit the total cost of global warming is about fifteen trillion dollars that's a remarkable sum of money we should be realizing that not of course ought to make it clear that we need to make sure we do the right thing about this on the other hand we also need to put it in perspective the total net worth of the twenty first century is about three thousand trillion dollars opening five percent of the total cost and that puts it in perspective we need to take this seriously we also need to have smart policies the second point and i'd like to dwell just well just a little bit on the us as the consequences this quote and gore couldn't quite recognize it but i can assure you it's at least correctly comes from his website for the movie where he says talk about a planetary emergency we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin of epic destruction involving stream weather floods drought epidemics killing heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced obviously there are many many more of these kinds of statements i'd like to just take you through four of these issues heat death sea level rise hurricanes and malaria let me take a look at the first one if you talk about heat deaths it's absolutely true that with global warming we'll see more heat death but basically have an increase in heat death so if you look at the u k where we have some of the best estimates for two thousand and eighty we will probably see about two thousand more heat that that's definitely something we should now have or we should also realize as a real global warming will need fewer cold deaths and we need to be able to say both of these global survey in two thousand and six peer reviewed as for the u s there will probably be about one hundred seventy four thousand net fewer cold baths and heat tasks in the u s we need to have this information it doesn't mean that there are no problems with climate change but it does mean that if we only focus on one part of the argument we like way to make bad judgments likewise if we look at sea level rise sea levels will rise that's absolutely true but it's not going to be a catastrophe the u n climate pa estimates that it's probably going to be a thirty centimeters or one foot over the next hundred years in the standard scenario a one b it's not going to be al gore's twenty feet and again it's important to say one foot is something we can deal with twenty feet been would be very very hard to deal with of course we need to realize that we also saw one foot of sea level rise of the last hundred fifty years now was not a big problem it was certainly something we dealt with the thing i like to ima this if we ask and an old survivor from from the last century probably an old woman of what she remembers of the last hundred years she's likely to talk about the two world wars the great depression maybe the invention  of the internal combustion engine maybe even the i t revolution but it's unlikely that she's going to say oh and sea levels rose simply because we dealt with these issues and so we need to get a sense of proportion this is a problem but it's not the end of civilization if i could just show you this is the difference between what the u n climate panel is telling us will happen with greenland which is essentially one point four inches and gore's predict that twenty feet i think making that kind of mis representation of the data is just simply not helpful now notice again i'm not saying that al gore has not been good in putting this agenda on the top of putting global warming on the agenda but i'm saying it's unlikely b saturating the it's the at the events of global warming to this point is going to help us it's unlikely that it will if i can look take a look at the next one hurricanes as being pointed out by many  that we'll see ever more damage caused from hurricanes this is actually the essence of the the statistics for the u s for the last hundred five years the damage cost and what you can clearly see is as basically just two thousand and five being really something going on maybe this is due to global warming but of course you actually have to realize that this is predominately because we have many more people living much closer to where harm's way as and with much more goods if you actually recreate in this was what research did you can see the result of here if you imagine all hurricanes from the last hundred five years hitting the u s as it looked in two thousand and seven you see this graph instead you actually see the highest cost hurricane as the great miami s hundred twenty six of course back then it just basically hit a lot of ships not entirely but it only cost about seven hundred million dollars had it hit today here probably has cost more than can train and dramatically more probably about twice as much as what population of just dade and broward today in florida is the similar number of people as the entire gulf and atlantic coast of the u s in one nine hundred thirty so obviously we will see much more damage today than we would see back then so if you actually ask the researchers how much can we do if we do something about climate change the answer is over the next fifty years if we could stop climate change which of course we cannot but even if we could we probably prevent ten percent of the damage increase whereas if we could end social bomber ability which of course we can't either but we can control part of it we could probably prevent about four hundred eighty percent of the damage in trees so the simple question here is if we really care trying to make people less vulnerable if we want to have them less hit by hurricanes into the future should we be focusing on the ten percent of their or should we be focusing on the four hundred eighty percent and perhaps more importantly the four hundred eighty percent is probably fairly cheap whereas the ten percent is going to be very very expensive so again this is a question about taking the rhetoric down and letting us start having the conversation of where can we do the most good the last thing i just want to show you is malaria  for focuses on malaria a lot of people actually talk about malaria and say with more heat we'll see more malaria that's also weekly trip because it is weakly related to two increasing temperatures on the other hand it's much much more dependent on wealth and essentially if you get rich you deal with malaria if you get a well functioning health system you deal with malaria and so the question is again are we twisting are we turning the right not if we are worried about climate change and let me just show you on the if we look at how much kyoto can do and how much a target my lariat policy can do over the next century the basic point is if we do something about malaria for about three billion dollars a year we could probably avoid about twenty eight billion cases of malaria over the next century if we do it through kyoto which is probably going to cost sixty times as much we'll end up doing four hundred times as little and so the question here is not to say yes climate change is true yes in a perfect world we would also want to deal with climate change but we've got to ask ourselves do we want to be remembered as a generation who did a lot for a little money or do we want to be remembered as a generation who did a little for a lot of money and when i presented life that's obviously not such a hard question now but it is to say look at how we always hear the worst case of whatever it is that we're worried about back then we were enormously about global cooling you can actually see new york there being sort of flooded over by by glacier i'm sure that's actually going to go very slowly but still what you see there is basically that they told us all the worst things that they could from global cooling but it's curious if you think about it if we worry about temperatures rising and saying that's going to mean more malaria how come that when we worried about global cooling nobody said but at least it's going to mean less malaria we never seem to see the other side of the argument i'm not saying that that doesn't mean that global warming overall is not going to be bad but i'm saying it's unlikely we'll make good judgments if we don't see both sides of the argument and if we don't get a sense of proportion so that brings me to the third point namely that we need smartest solutions the ones that we've been proffered right now are just simply very costly and not going to do very much good well let me just briefly show you if we do kyoto this is perfectly standard analysis the cost of kyoto's about one hundred eighty billion dollars a year yet it will do very little about the temperature what you see here as of the next century and not a place to go back of the next century if you look at the black line that's if we don't do anything in the red line is if we do kyoto that is the us also to kyoto and everybody stuck to this for the rest of the century you basically see postponing global warming for about five years next line you've all heard that the e u has just come out and proposed they would do a twenty percent cut of carbon emissions by two thousand and twenty yet the cost of that will probably be about ninety billion dollars and it will do even less than kyoto it'll only postpone global warming for about two years if you look at the last slide here which is gore solution which is the one i've heard him say until today where he obviously said a much greater number he was actually suggesting cutting emissions by ninety percent which is going to be horrendously expensive will probably get back to the questions if you look at the payroll tax proposal that he's come out with in two thousand and six the cost would be about one hundred sixty billion dollars  a one one dollar and twenty five cents rise per gallon of gas and it would basically postpone warming for about four point five years what this essentially tells us is that we can do if we do it right now we can cut emissions yes it's going to be fairly costly and will do very little good that's not a very good idea if i have the next five years alg al gore also in his discussion and many others will say well put it maybe it's not actually going to be costly maybe it's actually going to be an advantage to us and then he also referred to the stern report which actually came out and said yes it's actually going to be an advantage i would like to remind you that all peer reviewed research shows that doing a lot about climate change is essentially a losing position if you look at this is an overview of all these studies that we have the peer reviewed you see over and the left hand side of the corner you basically see the damages are about one percent of  were basically basing themselves on all the other peer reviewed studies so i would say if anything the stern review probably was not very representative of what they were actually purporting to show if anything all peer reviewed research shows a cost benefit analysis we should do fairly little now and i would like to just briefly show you why this as the case and these are the same models that also the stern review and also al gore would base in south on it's basically because the cost comes now the benefits come benefits only cross a far into the next century and of course you have to remember by then will have built up debts so essentially the first generations to start profiting from the things that we do now against climate change are going to be born early in the twenty third century you've got to ask yourself whether there isn't better things to spend our money on first and so my argument would be to say and this is my solution that i think i would like to submit to you to consider is to say we need a much longer term smarter way to deal with these issues that would be for instance investing open you know five percent of g d p in research and development non carbon emitting energy technologies essentially what this would do is it would be much cheaper it would be about twenty five billion dollars a year on a global level it would let each country do what they think is the best way we're not going to be picking winners we've centrally going to let markets do this and at the long term the point is we will be able to solve global warming much better than some of these proposals as we've seen with the e u or with other proposals of cutting emissions like the kyoto this is simply a much cheaper way of doing much more good in the long run that leads me to the last and fourth point i just want briefly mention to you as there are many other things where we need to focus i also noticed that one of the members talked about the copenhagen consensus basically gore talks about our general a generational mission and he talks about that we need to think about what is the future going to ask if i think that's entirely right we need to think about what is the future going to ask of us he says they're going to say what were you thinking what on earth were you thinking why weren't too concerned about doing the most good first and i think that's entirely true but of course what they are going to be asking us is why are you sit by nine hundred eighty billion dollars a year doing virtually no good one hundred years from now when you could have spent that money so much better on some of the other things i'd like to just compare those two very briefly the u n estimates for about seventy five billion dollars a year we could pretty much solve all major basic problems in the world we could give clean drinking water sanitation basic health care and primary education to every single human being on the planet so again the question is do we want to be remembered as the generation who did a little good or a lot of good for a lot of money or a little money you know the basic point here is that it's not that hard of a question and that of course leads me to the copenhagen consensus where we ask some of the world including four nobel laureates to look at all the different things that we can do in the world and we ask them where do you get the most bang for the buck this was what they came up with they basically told us we should prevent h i v s we should prevent my true micronutrient malnutrition and sure free trade and prevent malaria not yet know if we do that for every dollar we spend we probably end up doing about forty dollars worth of social good that's a very good investment on the other hand they showed down the bottom they showed the kyoto protocol and several other ways to deal with global warming basically telling us it's a bad investment not that you waste the money but for every dollar you spend you probably end up doing what twenty five thirty cents worth of good and so the question is do we want to be remembered as the generation who spent dollars and did thirty cents worth of good for each dollar or do we actually want to be remembered as the one who did forty dollars worth of good for the world and so basically my point here is not that there no global warming that it is and our gore should be thanked for putting that on the agenda on the other hand we also need to get a sense of proportion we are in not likely to make good judgments if we vastly exaggerate the consequences of the ba consequences of global warming and forget the positive incidences of global warming and that also means we need smartest solutions and solutions are being proffered right now are doing very little good at very high cost the much better ways to do it for instance invest in research and development that will enable our kids and grandkids to deal with many of the species instead of having situation where we've virtually spent lots of money doing very little good and we also need to remember if we're really talking about generational mission global warming is not the only issue there there's many other things that our kids and our grandkids are going to judge us did you actually do the best you could with the money you're going to spend if you spend it on vast frivolous projects like the kyoto protocol or did you actually spend it on things america thank you we take great pride and our freedom of speech here but i do think it's fair to point out the different speech and opinion and i just want to for the record to give some of the reviews of your work from your home country your home country the danish committee for scientific dishonesty was called to evaluate your work their analysis of your books including the following and i quote the publication is dean clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice whether there has been such pervasion of the scientific message in the form of systematically representation that the objective criteria for holding scientific in america a member norman mayor said that you have not you have not been a fraction of the homework that could give him a preliminary understanding of the science in question and finally the prestigious scientific just want to get this of record again you're welcome here and your opinion is welcome but for the record i learned to know that your opinion has been disputed in your country and elsewhere yes and i go back to balance my that's absolutely true i think it's it's curious given the fact that this is the work not of me but for instance the thing i was presenting here of the priority list of some of the world's most esteemed economists including four no laureates but you do mention the scientific committee of dishonesty yes it's very true that a lot of people want me to be convicted and the committee actually did just what you said however it also turned out on appeal that they actually haven't done their homework they actually have not done any justification for that decision and so what it really shows is that there's a lot of people out there who really would like me to be wrong but they couldn't hold it was actually cancel and the and the and the and the quotation that you made actually comes from a from a verdict vest been overturned i just want to make sure the vat also gets into the record and likewise scientific american took four people to go through my book three who who m i criticize strongly in the book it's perhaps not very surprising that they came with the conclusion that i was wrong now the curious thing i'd like to know i'm not even going to talk about i think a lot of people felt that it was very very bad of nature to do the holocaust you think now but i'd like to take it just a moment too because because it's not really a question of whether you know there's a lot of people out there criticising me it's much more a question i'm saying isn't this at least something we should be considering that maybe are spending a lot of money right now for instance on kyoto is not the best way to do this and at least i would like to engage and that's why i think this is such an important discussion to have it's not a question about you should buy all my views but it's a us thinking that just because there is this great moment of the oh yeah let's do a lot of good for analyses show it's going to be very costly if our analyses show that it's going to do very little good shouldn't we at least consider whether there were smarter ways of moving to what this this goal and that i think is really my my purpose of coming here to make sure that we think this through on this and at least try to be smart about this or that's the reason you're here to give another opinion and we welcome you for that as you say it's compile to the best of his ability the the most recent statistics and studies on not just climate change but a number of other environmental issues and try to get friend from tennessee put into the record the denmark committee on scientific dishonesty what they said in january of two thousand and three about his book the skeptical environmentalist i want to put into the record that was in january of two thousand and three in december of two thousand and three the danish ministry of science technology and innovation of which the d c s the is a subdivision completely rejected completely rejected the d finding that lomberg book was objective really dishonest in fact the ministry founded d c s the decision was not supported by documentation offered no substantiation and was i quote completely void of argument consensus where you've invited leading experts in the environmental community and social welfare community from all over the world to come to copenhagen and try to  rank various world problems and solutions to those world problems is that correct yes now in that ranking where what was the number one problem and where did global warming slash climate change is not important obviously people who work in climate change are going to say this is important and that is indeed what the scientific community is telling us and that's what mr gore is telling us but likewise of course if you ask the malaria expert what's important don't be surprised if the malaria experts say  larry is important and then everybody will say their turf is the most important thing this is what we should be dealing with what we've been trying to do at the top making consensus is essentially try to make menu with prices of all the different things that we can look at yes we can solve all these problems clearly we don't so at least we should have a conversation of well where can we do the most good first and what they came out with was essentially telling us if we invest a dollar in h i v s we'll probably end up doing forty dollars worth of social good and vested in malnutrition from micronutrients will probably do thirty dollars worth of good free trade probably twenty malaria about ten to fifteen dollars worth of good where scioto as you also ask came out next to the i'm probably for every dollar you spend you probably do somewhere between twenty five and thirty cents worth of good so it gives you a sense of what is it you want to shop at the end of day of course it's your job to make those decisions but at least you now have a priceless so we're hoping that instead of you know if you went into a restaurant and just bought a menu and there were all these great options but no prices that would make you a little uncomfortable at least we put prices on there and then of course democracies compare liberate what they want to pick first and finally in my last twenty seconds i pointed out to the vice president in his charts heep are trade that greenhouse gas emissions principally c o two go up and then temperature goes up when in point of fact the the data that we have over the last six hundred fifty thousand years shows that the the temperature goes up first five and an average of twenty two hundred eight hundred years i pointed that fact out to the vice president he seems unimpressed by first of all do i have my facts correct or is the vice president correct you are you're correct and you're also correct with that for a general point i on the other hand i also tend to think that it's a slightly you know it's an interesting discussion i see why he would have picked out that because it's a very strong graph it's probably he's right for the wrong reasons on that particular point you know he was happy with y we can do some great things here in this country as well if we adopt some policies to deal with this issue you come to us given as sort of an analysis largely economic analysis but many of us many of my constituents believe that we have a moral obligation to to damage the planet and they believe because of their belief in a higher power that we have an obligation to take care of the creator's garden and genesis we were given that obligation many people have different faith sure that moral obligation that we're not going to take away the polar bear from our grandkids or the salmon from the streams or the oak orca's or the walrus says or you name it this is a moral obligation that our generation has and i wan make sure i understand you're not here to tell us that under your belief under your belief in a higher power whether you have one or not that that should be diminished and that we should believe in a god that would allow us to destroy the meaningful parts of this planet that we hold dear you're not telling us that are you know i want to make sure that let me i want to make very sure that you've come to us to tell and i was up here in congress that if our constituents believe that they have a belief in a god that gives them an obligation to turn this planet over our grandchildren as good as we found it are you you're not telling us that that's something we should follow our you know kind of a labyrinth slightly not right now we've got five minutes now you have commas and i'll let the other gentleman you will go ahead if you if you want to if you think that doesn't answer the question go ahead basically i think you're absolutely right and i think we want to leave this planet as a better planet however i would also ar that it's hard to imagine that we would have a god that would not want us to save somewhere between ten and fifteen million people from h i v s over the next ten years and so on there's a lot of things the twenty eight billion people who are getting infected by malaria so we definitely want to do all these good things my i think i think i understand your point the best planet we can i think i understand your point your point is to think that the united states is incapable of dealing with hiv malaria and global warming at the same time  maybe denmark with all due specter is incapable of dealing with those things but i'll tell you something about america we are capable of dealing with hiv malaria and the commitment to our grandkids to not to spoil this planet because it is a moral obligation to do all three and we're going to do all three in this country now you have given us an economic analysis and i want to test your economic analysis just how good you are in knowing what the future costs or benefits of these actions will be many of us believe in america because we are the people that a man on the moon we are the people that perfected the internet we are the people that invented the light bulb that this is a tremendous economic opportunity for the united states of america and we believe that we have as much opportunity to grow our economy as opposed to being a cost to our economy and the reason we believe that the united states of america is because we have tremendous innovators in this country who've been a real crackerjack job whenever we've had a next year are you familiar with the auster a solar thermal power there make solar thermal that may be grid competitive in the next eighteen months you know about the very d m a company in seattle washington they make a product that can basically save ten to thirty percent of your electricity because it shut off your p c when you're not using it you know about the range company of georgia it's a company that makes only law success and all that is up there going to start construction shortly that can have miles of the point i want to make is with all the i respect your projections of the costs of what this is going to do you have the sign wrong as the vice president said this morning we believe that this is an opportunity of the world the best clean energy technology ever invented that's a perspective seattle she'll make any comment go ahead thank you very much i appreciate your points i will just really make two points one is you say america has a great country and it's absolutely a great country and it's definitely much bigger than denmark you say also the you will deal with both malaria and global warming and you know we could add on a few was there is like clean drinking water and  education and all the problems in the world i'm very happy here that i would however ask respectfully why you didn't do so the last ten years why haven't you solved all these problems and i would like to at least have you recognize that apparently doing all these things is not so easy and let me just reflect on the point that while gore was vice president the the c o two emissions of the u s increased eighteen percent and the development  assistance declined from a point fourteen to point ten and so does seem to say to suggest to me no you not only can't you do everything but actually you didn't do either of those issues and that seems at least to be an important point the second thing that you talk about that that's an option if you just conclude i'm going to get to other speakers or from if you conclude yesterday surely and the other one on the opportunity and cost and i got the sign wrong i mean it's very easy for the probably imagine that the nobel laureates and all the climate economists that we have are better able to get the sign right than i do you or me so the point here again relies on the on the idea of saying the things that you mentioned if they are  indeed marketable and they actually work in this market now great but then we don't actually have to be considering it here if they don't then at least we have to have the kinds of conversation i'm saying is that where we want to spend our money would we rather want to spend it in a lot of the other inventions of america could also greatly enhance humanity well i will decline your kind offer to comment of what would have happened had the election turned out differently thank you very much i'd like to now recognize mr hall in texas for makes some sense of consequences of an action would be devastating to both environmental and economy that's of course it would be devastating if we could afford even to get to that  about elaborating for us a little bit on that if you would on how investing in r and they would be a smarter way of dealing with this problem and should we invest exclusively in the next generation energy sources that should we also invest in you're absolutely right i didn't think al gore answered the question about cost very well and certainly if the cost really is negligible or even it's going to be an advantage it's hard it's hard really to see why we need to have these conversations because everybody would just jump on it as centrally if we're there's lots of fifty dollar bills lying around you'd imagine some people would be picking them up and that doesn't seem to be something we need to regulate but at the end of the day i think we need to realize that all here reviewed economic research tells us yes costs are going to be significant they're not going to be damaging our economy i think one of the the democrats pointed out that some people got and scare us with saying that this is going to ruin our economy house but we can definitely spend that money better the second part of your question of how could investment in research and development actually do better well the idea here is really to say right now estimates show that the cost of emitting an extra ton largest cost that we could reasonably invention is about fifteen dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide now the problem is that most of the cost of cutting carbon emissions a much much higher the typical kyoto cost is around thirty forty dollars many of the proposals that we've seen here today also al gore's proposal is probably in the hundred dollars or more that's certainly also true for the stern report so essentially we're standing in a situation where we say the damage is only two dollars but we only have technology to deal with it if we're going to spend a hundred dollars per tonne that's a bad deal we need to get those costs down now there's two ways of doing that one is to say let's cut emissions and thereby force industries and others to do that those cuts and of course they'll probably try to find the smartest way to do it but we pretty much know the answer to that maybe if they can get it down from one hundred dollars to i don't know eighty dollars but we'd much much rather say let's actually spend this money in research and development so that we can get that cost fundamentally much further down and that's what research and development does no it shouldn't just seen renewables it should be in all the different areas and you have people that don't believe in your  conclusions in your home area do you not oh sure and people rag good and bad about you yes well you're normal in the way we suffer that same problem here my time about that i really want to get to you about the global warming cooling scare in the mid seventy's and and have the scientists thought they knew what was causing the cooling and then all of a sudden the debate shifted to global is though i think it's important to sack we have much better reason to worry about warming now so i think we need to recognize that warming is a serious issue and it's people that are much smarter than any of us in the room there's room although i'm not sure i know everyone in here but you know the really best people that we have and the planet telling us that this is a problem i think we need to listen to them but we also need to say that you have how much is going to cost and how much good can you do thank you thank you thank you mr hastert is recognized for five minutes kleinberg really appreciate you coming and spending some time i know we had to fly all night to get here from denmark but appreciate it you know you talk about malaria and hiv aids and asian flu micro nutrients and we talk about the free trade clean drinking water and education i think that's part of the things that i have been to be speaker here for a number of years and every appropriation every foreign appropriation we do we have probably been the world leader in h i v aids and other issues and making sure that children have the nutrients they have along with n g o s and a lot of that is american money as well that's given outside the government but i guess we could always do more and i think that the choice that we can always make and what's available but i want to go back to what our view of our views are you know if if we could do something to help ourselves to to make our environment cleaner make the world acquire vironment cleaner and we can do it i think that's something that we ought to try to do also we find ourselves in this country energy dependent on other countries and you know you haven't had the effect so much in europe but there are people that can turn the spigot and turn off energy or raise the price and the cause of the water jobs and people having huge heating bills and things like that so i one of our goals is energy independence and i think we get down to the point of what can eventually hydrogen if we do the research we also have the ability to look at what we have eighty percent of the energy that we have in this country happens to be coal how do you know i'm a lo how do you do the research to make sure that you can use that energy because that's what we have to have and i think we need to do that research we need to find a way and i'm not sure that we have that research yet i am not sure that we found that way but we need to do the engineering research in the science to do it and i think the key is do it in a clean way so i mean our ancestors have been doing the dirty way for a while and that is just to get out of the ground  is to find what is the future energy source for this country and we all agree is going to be natural gas so in the last fifteen years every energy unit that has been built in this country as well small energy you know this bill this company has to be gas bigger plants today all of a sudden we see the possibility of shortage of natural gas we don't have enough natural gas so that wasn't a good choice  but we invested a lot of money and then we'll have to be able to make sure that our source of gas natural gas keeps flowing fortunately we don't want to have to get liquid natural gas from someplace offshore because that's spic i could be shut off as well so we have a dilemma in front of us first of all how much good can we do and then what are our resources and how do we bring those together and  say probably and i'm speaking probably of my own knowledge here but we probably do more good around the world economically and dollars than any other nation we could probably do more but we do it because of our free market enterprise system and ability to make money and pay taxes and have the government be able to do that and the free and the private sector do it to individuals do you think that course of trying to develop our own resources in a cleaner better way is is reasonable the first short version of yes it would be very obvious to say if you were to increase your research and development you probably do and clean coal you do a lot of carbon capture and that also seems like one of the very promising technologies it's still in the high end again if if the damage cost is two dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide the cheapest carbon capture i've heard about is about twenty dollars so it's still a factor of ten off that doesn't mean it has to be that way in twenty years but the point is don't try to do it now just simply because it makes you feel good that you've so some have done something about the problem if it means that you're just spending a lot of money but not actually using very much for research and development a lot of people will argue that if you put up restrictions it will increase research and development as a byproduct now the radical arguments actually indicate that is at least in the spine true but it turns out that that's actually not what happens if we look at the international data on research and development both in renewables and on consideration where we can look at them from the international energy agency they have been going down and down and down to spite of kyoto so the whole point and if you look at all the countries that have accepted kyoto the point is that when you put out a very strict limits people focus more on how can  duck under those limits and thinking about how can we solve these problems and in ten twenty thirty years down the line and so i would like to just leave you with two things i don't talk about energy independence because that's not a make anomic discussion i fully agree that should do it again that's of course the moral point yes in principle we should solve all problems of the great thing about this nation is that you can virtually do anything you want only you can do all of a once so there still is a discussion of saying w thank you for being here lumberton i'm interested in one of your charts and i don't know if we can somehow get it up on the monitor there but it's the one about cost benefit analysis  i suppose that it's what we're seeing on that chart is something typical of a capital investment right and that is the early years of any capital investment involve more cost and benefit i think and that right i mean a fab buy a new air conditioner for example for my house with higher efficiency in replacing what i've got if you take the number of years to recoup the investment  wonder how standard those lines are in terms of an average capital investment particularly the trajectory of the benefit line going off the chart there intrigues me i mean in other words is it is it continuing on headed up in that fashion if so then it depends on the time frame as to whether that was actually a very good investment if i'm an investor i might buy that product seems to me a fairly standard discussion that you have but any capital investment isn't it yes the difference is that your air conditioner will probably pay itself back if you like air conditioning within you know two three four years and not two or three four hundred years and that's the big difference the real discussion here of course is to say if you couldn't do it better later on then maybe you should do it right right now you know but the point is we expect that all of the costs in complying for instance we see we know for instance renewables been coming pranked down in price of about sixty percent per decade so if we could postpone investing in renewables and make up for it by investing more in them we at least know that there's a backup technology that would make it much much cheaper to do in ten or twenty or thirty years you know that's an interesting point because it the question is what point can you get the market going such that the entrepreneur is inventors drive the market because there is a market for it the the early technology is always going to look antiquated well if it's a fast moving market it's going to air fast moving innovation it's going to be antiquated very quickly but the question of course for a great country is how do you start moving so that you you actually get out of the laboratory in toward the market my goal as a conservative is to have the market drive a lot of this so isn't that the idea we can't really wait forever for the best technology to come along because then you don't have market forces that work right that's you're absolutely right i mean it's a little bit like waiting for a computer you know some point you actually have to buy the brand just say it's going to get better next year  on the other hand you can also buy into really demarcus was a leader and when technology for instance what we did was we put out way too many windmills way too soon because we thought it was it was a cool thing to do the problem is now we actually have to take all of them down because we have much better technology than actually now to put up new windmills that are much more efficient and an argument could certainly be made that we should probably invest in those windmills ten years later and that would overall council showed that overall that was bad enough for denmark now it's probably a good investment and as the chairman also pointed out there are many good things to be done and we should certainly do those but we should actually ask around solve some of these things are great investments do that that's fine but nential increase in the in the problem ensure that kind of projection general that this chart is too general i'm sure to answer this question with the chart but it seems to me that it's perhaps possible that the benefits would change if you assumed that actually those weren't the worst case scenario there were more likely scenarios yes you can change this up would actually have this particular model does allow for that it dramatically it changes that a little bit and so i'm not advocating you should do nothing i'm for instance i and you should put to dog her the carbon tax you should also invest in research and development if you have more probably to a very bad things happening you should a marilyn for five minutes thank you very much i'm sorry i couldn't be here for all of your testimony i would like to refer g your little ranking chart that you had where you showed only energy anywhere on this list no no no  that is just stunning because i think that energy which is why you're putting up all those when the shane thank you energy is probably the biggest challenge of face it we may bumble through the global warming thing if i've been siberia you might have a hard time just stunned that that's not on your list i have when my wife goes to the grocery store shopping one of the things that will be on her list is is that thyroid because she made the great medicine now she has only a very short term view make your list how can you put all those in the chains let me just because it's a good question we actually did spend a fair amount of time thinking about which problem should get in there and what we believe is that for instance for energy the private twenty years you cannot avoid economic consequences if you anticipate it only by ten years there will be meaningful economic consequences and if you do not anticipate it at all which is where we are  can do god can't make a square circle and there are things that the market can't do you can't pump oil that's not there and you can't build a win machines that only a certain rate and you can't exploit with the point of the stern report the the one that al gore was also mentioning points out that from economists point of view there's definitely enough oil at least for the next fifty years or so on increasing demand  you're you would define yourself a center left as an actor just so my democrats understand that just because you're our witness you probably don't ascribe with a lot of the conservative republican ideology but you're an economist and that's what separates you and brings you some credibility to this debate i would much rather trust an economist to understand what the sign is on this  webster cost or a benefit than a politician or a lawyer so you know i appreciate your testimony you did say something response one of the questions and i just want to highlight before roscoe in the future and that's the importance of that debate having said that you did talk about research and development and you made a very good point because our my friends on the other side says put restrictions up and we're going to have research and  said in answer to a question history does not prove that and can you restate it briefly how you respond to that and i would actually like to slightly expand it yes if we do for instance kyoto we do not see increases in research and development being allocated basically because people think about how can we just slip under instead of worrying about how can we develop technologies thirty fifty years down the line the second part is also that doing something about climate change means getting very new technologies that has huge public benefits but it's very hard for private companies to capture them typically because what you develop will not actually go to market in the market will form but will feed into the next process into the next development into the next invention which will eventually lead to something marketable so what you can show is that typically these research development projects perhaps have a return from thirty to fifty percent but companies can typically only  perhaps allocate twenty percent and so that's why you need public investment that's actually one of the very good places to advocate public investment grade i appreciate that i want to get to two other things real quick one is in the vice president's book he talks about this when you go to tell your kids in two thousand and twenty three seventeen years from now based on what the book was printed what are you going to tell him that you failed in the moral leadership i have kids a very real question plot if the sign is a negative cost to the governments of the world and the economy and we slide into a recession there's another question we're going to ask you did you jump for stand up against the demagogues or did you say slow down let's see if this is real science what is a cost benefit analysis i want to read a section that kind of  imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis and points to a way out this theory quickly draws support from leading scientists politicians and celebrities around the world research is funded by distinguished philanthropies and carried out  universities this crisis is reported frequently in the media the science is taught in college in high school classrooms i don't mean global warming i'm talking about another theory which rose to prominence a century ago i don't know if you know it this is te roosevelt woodrow wilson winston churchill oliver wendell holmes louis brandeis alexander graham bell and it was a scientific theory of eugenics which was proven obviously a airable terrible process and if we are not careful global warming will be the next eugenic failure and a scourge on mankind if we don't look at the where is the sign going to be and how do we you didn't have much time eighteen minutes you got it all in and i i encourage my colleagues to go to that presentation thank you for spend your time with us thank you for the comment no because there was no question there if there had been a question i would have been great and we're really delighted to have you here and i just i was going to get into something this a little bit more in the weeds but let me let me first of all say that we appreciate your standing up and i guess apparently some people didn't like to hear what you were saying and yet you're taking legitimate data and just saying hey think about this so we appreciate that my office has been commuting we communicate with a dr jeffrey hall he's an associate director at lowell observatory and flagstaff arizona and and they are looking into the ongoing research on solar influences on earth's climate dr hall has been gracious enough to provide us actually reports from our office and he notes that important component of the discussion about the existence of verity causes and consequences of global warming and the role played by the sun and recent and historical climate change one of the interesting things in his summary was that astronomers have a bit observing so we're cycles so it's a mid sixteenth hundreds of gives us about four hundred years of solar observation from this record i'm the minimum of sunspots is associated with less radiation coming from the sun i was also interested learn that from sixteen forty five to seven hundred fifty there was a period where there were virtually no sunspots observed in so called balder minimum there is a chart that we've distributed i think is now on the on the overheads through direct space based measurements of the sun we didn't start beginning do that till the eighty's there was speculation that the severity of the years of the boulder minimum was associated with less solar energy reaching the earth and that whole time period it is attempting to speculate that a general four hundred year warming trend could be linked to a general increase in solar activity and that type of question is being addressed by current research and let me be clear that dr hall's not saying that all global warming is caused by solar variance but that is a part of the complex phenomenon here's my questions i've heard that some experts are speculating that it's possible that the sun could be heading and do another long term absence of solar activity if so we may be heading into a long term cooling period do you have an opinion on the  patel general cooling because of a possible down to earth and solar activity and what do you believe is the role of solar variance on global climate overall also by throw in as well that we've observed as i understand that the melting the poles on mars which again would not be c o two so if you could respond to those questions please you know again it's important to sound not a scientist i just read basically the same thing as i'm sure you do in many others and  i would say yes it's very interesting it's certainly something we should be aware of i also know that there is a tendency as there isn't any scientific endeavor of some models being more popular than others and so it is harder for instance for some of the solar hypotheses to get through but that said i would still say if we're going to make good public policy we need to base it on the best available research we know today we might be surprised in twenty years and know something else but right now the best scientific knowledge we have i would say comes from the un climate pounds that tells us yes the earth is warming a large part of that is due to mankind and it's due to our use of fossil fuels now there may be other things we should certainly look into that and of course realizing that we're going to be spending an enormous amount of money on this issue it be nice to know that we get it right but we don't have the luxury in any situation in history to act in full and certain information so we just simply gotta say well in two thousand and seven that was as good as we could do it at the time well thank you very much and i appreciate your i read about half of your book skeptical environmentalist and a very very runs against the common thread of others in the field and to incur their criticism i must express for the record how saddened i am that the other side of the diocese is completely empty not a single member from the minority has decided to stay if your testimony i suggest that suggests that they fear what you might say or at least that they are not open minded to hearing it this morning when nice president gore testified the room was full on both sides of the aisle majority showed in full number the majority showed and now for some reason they're afraid to hear testimony or or don't want to get their minds open to it i don't suggest that that suggests a very balanced discussion of this issue here in the congress i want to go over some of the points in your charts to try to reemphasize your point you say global climate change is real you agree with that and and you believe that it is at least in part human caused is that correct on a chart that's about a third of the way and you talk about it and you say that on the issue of climate change being really you say that by twenty one hundred the likely rise in temperature is only two point six degrees you believe that's going to be catastrophic for the world or wipe out humanity you know course not two point six degrees celsius yourself right ok and you point out on that same page that point five percent the cost would be of this global warming fifteen trillion dollars  and that would amount to less than one half of one percent of the twenty first century forty thousand trillion economy g d p is that correct yes so that's a relatively minor scale and minor issue in the grand scheme of things is that correct panels in areas this comes from the un climate pounds and there are some three thousand trillion dollar estimate if you chose another route which was not so economically focused and not so globally focused which you could argue is the kind of approach that suggested by gore and others the u n estimate is that we would end up with about five hundred fifty trillion dollars less over the century so you could very easily end up by trying to solve a fifteen trillion dollars problem and up creating a five hundred fifty trillion dollars deficit that's a bad idea and actually appreciate that point further on a sea level rise you point out that it is expected to be according to the i p c c i believe one foot over the next one hundred years and yet you're aware that in his movie mr gore presented as a rise of twenty feet yes and that's one of the exaggerations that you are critical of i think that's absolutely insist on unsupportable imagine if i went out and made the opposite exaggeration if i said instead of one put it would only be half an inch over the next hundred years that's just as much exaggeration on the to the other side i would imagine a lot of people would come out and rightly so criticizing me and hundred years but this is the best knowledge we have of the last hundred fifty years yes on the next page of your powerpoint and i would urge people to go look at it you point out that with regard to greenland gore is predicting a twenty foot increase in sea level and i p c c is predicting a one point four inch increase is that correct yes that's another example of the kind of exaggeration that you're concerned about in this debate yes that's i'm likely to make good judgments are it points out that many scientists are concerned about mr gore's points being exaggerated and erroneous i think there is there it is true that there's a lot of science it's held back al gore but i think it's also because they are saying well it is possible realistic two goals that mr gore cited for us today are one how realistic is it to immediately freeze all c o two emissions and to how realistic or economically reasonable is it to reach a ninety per cent reduction by two thousand and fifty if you could reasonably freeze c o two emissions it would be costly but not overly so it would also have absolutely no effect on the climate certainly no measurable effect for the next fifty years probably a hundred years reduction by ninety percent by two thousand and fifty i just thought i'd never heard him say that before and i just think it's ludicrous and it's really not something that's going to happen the british have been talking about and have now decided on sixty percent by two thousand fifty and most people seem to think that that's on the on the verge of not being possible it's certainly going to be very very costly and we know the estimates of trying to do it ninety percent took from the from the cost benefit models and that indicates that the cost is an excess of eighty five trillion dollars and you've got to ask yourself whether that's the right way to you know tell your grandchildren yes we cared so we spend that much money if they were taking it well you do proper research first yeah and then you obviously aren't doing that anymore what made you change your mind would you would you see when you were active in greenpeace that made me turn you away from being a member anymore unfortunately the it's a much more mundane story i just i was a student i ran out of money and i think it's important to say i probably if it wasn't going to be a provocation i'd still be a member of greenpeace i think greenpeace does an important piece of work they point out that ther problems and issues that we should be concerned about but of course we shouldn't trust them exclusively and i think the problem that i have with many green organizations was that they so very one side at least come out and just tell us one side of that story and that's unlikely to make good judgments and that's why i think it's important that we hear sort of the full story both on the disadvantaged yes two thousand people are going to die from heat tough but also the advantages twenty thousand and not going to die from coal dust and get a sense of the proportion of the c that some of these groups like greenpeace and others do present themselves one sidedly like maybe for a present vice president al gore would you agree yes absolutely and you know out of al gore's testimony you know look today you're here now and  you're doing a great job and and this nice crowd as it was with al gore the media is not like in the cameras like they were when he was in here and you see that as you go around why is it so captivating what he's saying to the american people what do you think that's getting their attention and it's important to save lives not something i have any expertise and i would actually imagine politicians would know that much better but i will at least offer this slight thought but i think there is something very soothing about having just one thing that we need to worry about and climate change does give us that sort of purpose a little bit like the cold war was was oddly comforting because at least we knew that there was just one thing we were up against and that was the one coordinating viewpoint of the world maybe it's that i don't know but it's certainly an incorrect in the sense of saying yes climate change is a problem it's not going to be the end of the world as we said before and we need to realize there are many other problems that our kids are also going to ask is why did we do something about tho unbelievable that you can get away with saying these kinds of things he is saying it correctly in the sense that he simply says if greenland melted or if and arctic in miles of it you can come up with a lot of ifs that are not very relevant for public policy that's probably the most played clip from his movie and of course it looks very very dangerous when you look at it of course how do you actually shown a foot and from the same level she wouldn't even have been able to see it on his grass so i can see why he chose to do so but it doesn't make better information the other point is the thing that he said here today that it's actually going to be costco so we're actually going to make money off of it i think we have to be honest and say things that we don't already do and things that are worthwhile having cost money and there's nothing strange about that the whole discussion is to say how much money are we willing to pay for it at least let's be i know that it will cost money how much money are we going to be willing to pay for how much good are we going to get out of it and unfortunately all peer reviewed research shows that it's actually not worth going down the road that al gore suggesting it can remind me dr murray of the yk you know what was going on everyone thought so that's going to be the end of the world too and i'm right i got up the next day and everything seemed to go on fine i think there were some things that needed to be fixed with computers and changing dates and what ever they need to do but i think maybe they did some people did overreact in the financial industry and other things and spent money on the twenty foot sea level now you'd say sea levels are the consensus of scientists is that it would rate rise twenty three inches in the next hundred years is that correct if are if how high would sea levels are he says twenty feet where do you think about a foot is from eighteen centimeters and i mean ok and then in the previous one hundred years prior to that how much of the same rise they rose about twenty centimeters in did that have a detrimental effect to the globe probably have some cost yes every change has a cost but it was a very very slight one and we also know pretty much that it's going to be a future slight one and you think of it in the next ten years  we thank you for your patience today i will feel like i should apologize for some of the questions you were asked earlier when you opened your session let me let me ask you about the copenhagen consensus the the project that you work on the participants in that project and of the reception that you received from them did it to when you began that project did they say do you think they had a concept of going into that project that climate change was going to be so low on the scale of incidents that you had listed there he think they were surprised by the results and that's hard to know actually i don't know i mean obviously all of these people have  know nobel laureates of pretty knowledgeable people i'm sure they've given some thought to these shoes on the other hand i don't think they've ever systematic finds them in the way that we asked them to do so they were probably somewhat surprised i would imagine that you can't be entirely surprised about your own actions even if you get more knowledge but did they suggest to you at any cost and from their comments after the ranking was ascertained and made public were there any comments from the participants that she i thought that like mr bartlett thought energy would have been on there i'm sure you have to do every year when you do the budget you basically realize i can actually do everything and i have to say if i want more of this i'll have less of that never stops us you know i know you have a slight problem with that still but the deeper the issue of course is that actually does affect you and i think that with the main thing that a lot of these people came away with but it does sharpen your mind saying what do you want to do for but at least seems like a part of your argument is that one of the smartest ways to address this problem is to have people invest in their own health and welfare i think that's a fair statement it's certainly important if we care about people that get malaria we've got to ask as much better ways if we care about people who get hurt by hurricanes and they're much better ways to deal with that than investing in global warming and the answer is yes and he also takes a different approach than that kyoto is not every efficient way of dealing with any problem either malaria nor hurricanes and not even global warming what about the the newer economic you need our european union approach not very efficient either now it's starting with you senator gore vice president gore ran through i think about seven things he went through them fairly quickly and we didn't have that in his prepared testimony but i'd just like to go through those quickly with you and get an idea of those which you think are are reasonable suggestions and those which you think are are less reasonable the first one i guess we've individual areas you want to put in general carbon tax not actually as a core second proposal and i fully agree with that of course it should be a scientifically based carbon tax and basically that should be a two dawn carbon tax then you should leave it up to the market to it was yesterday that in order to capture sixty percent of the carbon from coal fired power plants it would require duplicating the existing natural gas pipeline in just this country in order to sequester carbon or the electric net which you talked about the reversed meter  environmentally more in a more sensible fashion more energy efficient fashion sense a lot of these things are going to cost more at the outset of building a house or a business that you'd be able to amortize those over the over the likes of the of the loan or the life of the business because that seems like a reasonable suggestion it's possible but it could be a good suggestion you should also be very aware that many of these estimates have turned out to be wildly exaggerated in the sense we we have there's an enormous technology optimism in many of these kinds of projects i don't know if you remember the similar ata technology optimism against nuclear power in the one nine hundred fifty s now we have a tendency to expect visit going to be very cheap they're going to pay it self back very quickly and the reason why people don't do it is typically because say because i actually am undecided on this issue and try to find a way to move forward into the future i'm completely open minded i appreciate it vice president gore's testimony as well as yours i think california we've experienced energy crises and i live in the palm springs area it's beautiful nine months out of the year but three months are quite hot we've worked in congress to enact public policies that expand the law his program which is public assistance generally speaking for the cold areas to pay for heating costs we've moved into the desert southwest region for people to pay high cooling but i am concerned that we in this town will announce policies too quickly that may cause deaths and i know you said that by two thousand and eight we might have two thousand more heat related deaths because of global warming but i'm concerned that immediately because of flawed public policy will create more does in hot climates because of people not being able to afford their cooling there are some thanking a nd i am actually senator boxer is a constituent of mine we share a reason she moved to my area i love working with her on most issues but on this one i'm concerned today i read in a local paper roll call where she says and i quote if the president to this to veto a bill that sets it up as a huge issue in the presidential election actually said and then she said goes on to say so we will do our best to get as many bills on his desk as we can to deal with greenhouse gas reduction i think it's key that we do that because i do want to set it up for the presidential campaign which is another one of my goals so as a resident of southern california when i see people die every year because they can't afford their cooling costs this sort of thinking scares me and i appreciate your bringing in common sense trying to say it slow the pendulum down from going the other way my question is simple and perhaps i'm setting myself up for a loss but is it possible that we can enact and pass some of these policies that will actually increase does immediate sense that right away these cooling costs will get to be too high for my constituents and i'll see more and more people die it's a very simple question but i'm very frightened that yes i'm absolutely sure you can make bad deals make bad policies i'm sure everyone here recognizes the possibility of making bad political deals so you have to be careful that doesn't mean we shouldn't enact any policies but it means that we need to carefully weigh costs and benefits from both sides now i don't know anything about this particular area of palm springs but it is absolutely to remember that there will also be fewer heat and cold baths and so the whole point here is to say there's something curious about how in britain we have these numbers how people talk incessantly about the two thousand brits who died in in the two thousand and three  european heatwave but don't talk about the about twenty five to fifty thousand britons which die every year from coal and we need to have back conversation it's not the same thing as saying that the that the outcome is obvious but it is to say we shouldn't just go down one road we shouldn't just minded and i appreciate your being here and again as my colleagues pointed out you're not a traditional witness for us and appreciate that you brought to the dialogue a different point of view and that is my concerns at this shouldn't be set up by elections timetables that really out of the set on public policy that really affect people's lives absolutely i mean there's a there's one of the economists point out which i think is very very true that global warming is a hundred year problem and there's something wrong in believing that it's something that we can fix within ten or fifteen years it's go require a long term work between tom and what they say is it's a problem that will need work between continents between generations and between political parties and you can only do that by not trying to force the gavel that's why were you in a cell five minutes dr lumbergh this is really interesting to me for a lot of different reasons and one of them is that you are the sort of designated hitter for the republicans we have a baseball game every year and you're the designated hitter witness for the republican party and you've come across the pond and one of the things you said i think if i understand this correctly that you believe it is an appropriate policy to adopt a carbon tax on energy sources that use carbon and i think i think i heard you something in the neighborhood of two dollars a leader gallon oh no no two dollars per ton of co ok well i'm glad you clarified that but the point is it's stunning to me that if the republicans essentially here brought you to diminish this problem and to diminish the necessity of having a policy to deal with it the only person they could get in the world came here to tell us that we ought to have a carbon tax i tell you why that stunning it does not exactly fit in the republican sort of approach to these issues and what it tells me what it tells me is that at least one economist in the world and that's you believe this problem is bad enough that it deserves a tax on carbon which is a fairly significant event that's what it tells me and i want to ask you why and with this question i know a guy named no take president no take of the marshall islands he's the president of the marshall islands very low a toll in the south pacific he is contemplating a day when he will have to move his entire name ition in and abandon his entire nation because of this one foot rise which is anticipated on a more likely than not basis in the next century now maybe to some of us that's not a big deal but to him it's a really really big deal that he has to move his entire nation and is now already trying to barricade the pacific and we haven't talked about the acidification of the ocean today at all which is killing the coral which according to the science suggests we won't have any coral reefs that are healthy in a century which also protects his island nation i also know again the mayor talked to who's the mayor of sheriff it's an american city it's on the arctic ocean on the northern coast of alaska shishmaref america alaska is going to be the first city in america that has to be abandoned because of global warming maybe that one foot rise doesn't mean much to many of us here but i can tell you the mayor talked to who's lived there his people for four thousand years and because of this issue we're going to have to abandon the first american city not hypothetically but they've got plans to do it and they know where they're going thirteen miles to ten creek alaska they're going to have to pick up and move now what i sense you're telling us in some after listening to you here for quite a while is that this problem is big enough bad enough and serious enough that we ought to have a tax on carbon and i'm not saying i agree with that but i want to know what your position on what is what is your position in that regard yes thank you very much there were a couple of questions in there  t i'm i'm not here because i'm going to support one side or the other i think i was also asked early on i was for probably consider myself a slightly left wing in a danish perspective which probably makes me a socialist or worse here  but but the but the whole point is as the vice president also pointed out if a negative impact from carbon dioxide any economists will tell you you should tax you should essentially make sure that you tax the extra analogy what i'm saying dollars and i hope that i'm also getting that message for is that the only scientifically justifiable amount is somewhere between two and fifteen dollars so that's a much lower tax than what most people are  very constitution with with all due respect the president of the marshall islands doesn't have anywhere to defend it's going to be under water when asked i want to have one other point you have continually questioned the vice prison united states former vice president suggesting that he socially was seen some inaccurate about greenland melting and i believe you have continually repeatedly misstated what he has told the public and i want to read to you with what it says on page one hundred ninety six of his book inconvenient truth which i'll put in the record it says quote if greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea or if half of greenland and half of antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea sea levels worldwide would increase  between eighteen and twenty feet close quote do you agree with that statement yes and the reason you agreed to it is because it's true and that is what mr vice former vice president gore has told people and i frankly am a little bit taken aback that you would try to misstate his statement because he has told repeatedly that we are looking at one foot rises during the next century and more probable than our bases there are there are phenomenon that could rapidly rapidly cause melts that we don't understand and in the last four weeks scientists in my home town house found melting of the arctic way way way beyond anything anywhere he predicted study we have of all the land area and actually shows that we will lose very very little land area because people can actually take action i don't know about the marshall islands i'm sorry i didn't bring that study but i do know for instance about this the shallots of the maldives the tulip to all the other typical islands that we worry about and they are not going to lose significant amounts of land area simply because we are rich enough and they will be rich enough to deal with that and that's very likely also the case that image into the public area which the president has done very clearly with the with the the movie it is being projected as something that could happen he also talks about and i quote from the book  further comments into the record but i've gone way over my time and i'm going to now yield to mr barton for five minutes of texas thank you mr chairman did you ask a full five minute second round or just one question  just read if greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea or if half of greenland in half of an article melted or broke up and slipped into the sea sea levels worldwide would increase by hundred twenty feet now you said you agreed with that my question to you this what's the probability in your mind or in the consensus in the scientific community today of greenland melting in breaking up or half of greenland a half of antarctica melting and breaking up what's the probability of that i don't think we can answer that very well but it's clearly not very big and it was not one that was considered reasonable i mean is is it a what use is it one in a hundred one in a thousand at one in ten one in two i mean probably lower than one in one hundred one no less than one percent change and of course that's why i would like to take issue with with the statement of saying i'm misrepresenting the press and it's clearly the most viewed clip from his whole movie it scares people and it scares people because it makes them think who this might actually happen now it's true that everything might actually happen everything has a non zero probability that doesn't mean it issue you have to present the facts in the best possible way that we can and mr mr vice president al gore certainly didn't do that when he chose to only focus on the eighteen to twenty isn't it and not on the one isn't it true that the hundred years twenty three entrants must be the talk level yes a fifty fifty nine centimeters ok if you've answered this question you don't have to answer it again the vice president seemed to indicate in his testimony that if we just do some of these mandatory things on carbon in the us the chinese would be morally obligated to follow us in your interaction with the international community do you see any evidence that the chinese will will follow us out of some sense of moral obligation given the fact they're building one coal fired plant a week and as far as i know they're they don't seem to be using the best control technology and they're not building many nuclear plants so do you share the vice president's view that the chinese are on the verge  of becoming born again true believers and doing the right thing environmentally even if it costs them four or five times what it would cost them to build the kind of plants are building right now no but i should also say i actually thought al gore was pretty moderate moderate and not particularly estimate he he told us what they say is something very different than what they do and he said it's being more likely if the u s didn't act the greenhouse gas curbs but it probably still purley on low in my view of the chinese and given what they've done on intellectual property what they've done with their military technology in fact what they've done in every area is that they do the least  possible the least absolute possible and still be involved in international commerce that they they have almost no since i say they have none but they have minimal sense of any kind of a western civilization engage in some sort of toyota type protocol they said they wouldn't do it in ten years they wouldn't do it in one hundred years and they finally admitted to chairman ding they probably wouldn't do it in a thousand years that was their position in the early ninety's it's about the cost there is no i'm sorry i have a very specific answer to the question the cost there turned out to be that you avoid or you forego saving about sixty thousand americans each year because you over worry about some very highly publicized but fairly low low incidence for years and forget some of the very many and much more amenable features so there's a great cost of fear and i bring this up because i want to read a quote from a dr stephen schneider who was quoted in discover magazine an october of one nine hundred eighty nine and he says this and i'll just read small part to do that we need to get some broad based support to capture the public's imagination that of course entails getting loads of media coverage so we have to offer up scary scenarios to make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts that we might have this double blind this double ethical blah bind we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being affective and being honest i hope that means being both and this is in response to scientists who have data you know facts or are tough things they have data they know the questions but they for the sake of pushing ethical this is a cost this is not a cost benefit analysis approach this is the ends justify the means let's carry the world let's say there's going to be twenty feet see rises and then the economic assumptions which you have tried to an ally analyzed really get distorted is that so you know very much so and so you have been attacked by the scientific community because you to expose and just say come on scientists let's just use the facts and that's helped that helps the decision makers of portion our public policy on a cost benefit analysis  and i also want to thank our witness today came a long way you've taken a few bulbs you've performed very well i'm sure that we don't really see eye to eye on everything copenhagen and for me and tell them we're going to do some winter been construction and code generation and green building here in this country and we're going to some great things with denmark thank you for being here and we're going to be thrilled we are