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EXAMINING THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL 

POLICIES ON ACCESS TO ENERGY AND ECONOMIC 

OPPORTUNITY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

APRIL 13, 2016 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma, Chairman 

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

MIKE CRAPO, Idaho 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

ROGER WICKER, Mississippi 

DEB FISCHER, Nebraska 

MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota 

DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska 

BARBARA BOXER, California 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island 

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon 

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York 

CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

RYAN JACKSON, Majority Staff Director 

BETTINA POIRIER, Democratic Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

APRIL 13, 2016 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

Inhofe, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma .................... 1 

Boxer, Hon. Barbara, U.S. Senator from the State of California ........................ 3 

WITNESSES 

Nelson, Rev. Dr. J. Herbert II, Director, Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Office 

of Public Witness .................................................................................................. 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 8 

Breen, Michael, President, Truman National Security Project ........................... 17 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 19 

Sirico, Father Robert A., President, Acton Institute ............................................ 23 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 25 

Scales, Robert, Major General (Ret.), Senior Military Analyst ............................ 37 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 39 

Responses to additional questions from Senator Vitter ................................ 47 

Epstein, Alex, President, Center for Industrial Progress ..................................... 48 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 50 

Responses to additional questions from Senator Vitter ................................ 53 

(1) 

EXAMINING THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL 

POLICIES ON ACCESS TO ENERGY AND 

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016 

U.S. SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m. in room 406, 

Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. James M. Inhofe (chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Senators Inhofe, Boxer, Barrasso, Capito, Crapo, Fischer, Rounds, Sullivan, Whitehouse, Gillibrand, Booker, and Markey. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. INHOFE, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA 

Senator INHOFE. Our hearing will come to order. 

Today we have a very distinguished panel. They are all five distinguished, but the two on the right I just don’t know as well as 

I know the other three. 

Senator BOXER. Yes, because they are our witnesses. 

Senator INHOFE. I know it. I know that, Barbara. And we are 

very happy that they are here. 

First of all, the three that I have known before for a long period 

of time, Father Sirico and General Scales. General Scales, the reason for his military success is that he got his training at Fort Sill 

in Oklahoma. And Alex Epstein, whose book I have not finished, 

but I have it. 

During the State of the Union address, the President said, ‘‘No 

challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate 

change.’’ Well, he is wrong. The far greater threat is what the 

Obama administration is implementing in the name of climate 

change. This Administration has spent significant time and taxpayer dollars promoting a sense of fear and urgency around climate 

change, exploiting any recent catastrophic event to justify Obama’s 

economically devastating policies. 

For example, his statement tying terrorism to climate change, 

those statements are not only dangerous, but demean the men and 

women who have pledged their lives to keep this country safe. His 

climate change policies aren’t protecting this country; they are killing the coal industry, undermining our global competitiveness, putting thousands of Americans out of work while shipping their jobs 

overseas, and costing hardworking taxpayers hundreds of billions 

of dollars that will take generations to pay down. 
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Rhetoric aside, President Obama’s climate policies have nothing 

to do with the environment. The EPA did not even bother to assess 

whether the so-called Clean Power Plan, that is what he has been 

talking about over in Paris, and that is the centerpiece of the President’s entire climate agenda, and the EPA didn’t even bother to 

talk about that and what the source would be and how he would 

accomplish it. In fact, it costs hundreds of billions of dollars each 

year and has minuscule benefits that would be completely undone 

by a few months of economic activity in China. 

The President’s claims that his efforts are about protecting the 

health of this country or national security are equally disingenuous. In fact, they stand to undermine our economic well-being, 

which is the foundation of this country’s domestic success and global respect. A Children’s Health Watch study from May 2013 found 

that high energy costs can cause families to go without needed 

medical care and increase the risk of eviction and homelessness. 

Recently there has been a fad to demonize fossil fuels. But fossil 

fuel development has been a game changer for economic opportunity around the world and also is integral from a strategic military perspective. Fossil fuels help lift communities out of abject 

poverty. The aggressive regulating by the Obama administration to 

promote his climate change agenda, such as the Climate Action 

Plan and the Paris Agreement, will do more to harm than good to 

vulnerable communities. Incidentally, we had a hearing on this 

yesterday and were able to get into this issue. 

Of course, climate is always changing, we understand that. But 

whether you believe that it is man that is causing it or not, it is 

in our best interest, from any perspective, to continue to use fossil 

fuels because they are important to our economy, our military, and 

our quality of life. 

But the existence of abundant fossil fuel resources in this country alongside American ingenuity and innovation have fueled our 

path to becoming the global powerhouse we are today. The American people understand the value of fossil fuels, which is why they 

have consistently rejected costly climate policies, and the Congress 

has acted accordingly. 

Clearly, the true purpose of the President’s climate policies have 

nothing to do with protecting the interests of the American people. 

Instead, they are meant to line the pocketbooks of his political patrons while promoting his self-proclaimed climate legacy. 

So we appreciate all of you being here, and I want you to know 

we are going to have a much better attendance today. I think some 

of our colleagues want to wait until our opening statements are 

over before they show up. They have other things to do. 

Senator Boxer. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Inhofe follows:] 

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. INHOFE, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Today we have a very distinguished panel to discuss the real impacts the President’s climate policies are already having on the American people. In particular, I’d 

like to welcome Father Sirico, General Scales, and Alex Epstein for joining us. 

During the State of the Union, the President said, ‘‘No challenge poses a greater 

threat to future generations than climate change.’’ He’s wrong. The far greater 

threat is what the Obama administration is implementing in the name of climate 

change. This administration has spent significant time and taxpayer dollars pro-
3 

moting a sense of fear and urgency around climate change, exploiting any recent 

catastrophic event to justify Obama’s economically devastating policies. For example, his statements tying terrorism to climate change are not only dangerous but 

demean the men and women who have pledged their lives to keep this country safe. 

His climate change policies aren’t protecting this country—they’re killing the coal 

industry, undermining our global competitiveness, putting thousands of Americans 

out of work while shipping their jobs overseas, and costing hardworking taxpayers 

hundreds of billions of dollars that will take generations to pay down. 

Rhetoric aside, President Obama’s climate policies have nothing to do with the environment. The EPA did not even bother to assess whether the so-called Clean 

Power Plan—the centerpiece of the President’s entire climate agenda—would have 

any impact on the environment. In fact, it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars 

each year and have minuscule benefits that will be completely undone by a few 

months of economic activity in China. 

The President’s claims that his efforts are about protecting the health of this 

country or national security are equally disingenuous. In fact, they stand to undermine our economic well-being, which is the foundation of this country’s domestic 

success and global respect. A Children’s HealthWatch study from May 2013 found 

that high energy costs can cause families to go without needed medical care and 

increase the risk of eviction and homelessness. 

Recently there has been a fad to demonize fossil fuels. But fossil fuel development 

has been a game changer for economic opportunity around the world and also is integral from a strategic military perspective. Fossil fuels help lift communities out 

of abject poverty. The aggressive regulating by the Obama administration to promote his climate change agenda, such as the Climate Action Plan and the Paris 

Agreement, will do more harm than good to vulnerable communities. Even the Pope 

has tried to turn climate action into an international moral imperative. 

But whether you believe in climate change or not, it is in our best interest—from 

any perspective—to continue to use fossil fuels because they are important to our 

economy, our military, and our quality of life. 

But the existence of abundant fossil fuel resources in this country alongside American ingenuity and innovation have fueled our path to becoming the global powerhouse we are today. The American people understand the value of fossil fuels, which 

is why they have consistently rejected costly climate policies, and Congress has 

acted accordingly. 

Clearly, the true purpose of the President’s climate policies have nothing to do 

with protecting the interests of the America people. Instead, they are meant to line 

the pocketbooks of his political patrons while promoting his self-proclaimed climate 

legacy. 

I thank our witnesses for being here today and look forward to their testimony. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA BOXER, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Senator BOXER. Thanks. 

Well, I have to remind myself this is the environment committee, 

because listening to you, Mr. Chairman, it sounds like the pollution 

committee to me. Now, I would say if 9 out of 10 doctors tell you 

you need a heart operation, you wouldn’t listen to the one outlier; 

you would get the operation. You wouldn’t yell at the doctors and 

say they were liars and stupid and on somebody else’s payroll; you 

would get the operation. 

Well, 97 percent of respected scientists, respected scientists tell 

us there are dangers to climate change and that our activities are 

causing it, most of it. So let’s stop all this posturing and attacking 

President Obama, who has a 50 percent approval rate. His approval rating is higher than Ronald Reagan’s was at his time in the 

presidency, when the Republican Congress has 18 percent, and in 

addition to that, big majority support action on climate change. 

People are smart. They don’t care how you mock people. They 

know 2015 was the hottest year on record, and 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st century. Just this 

year scientists reported sea levels are rising many times faster 
4 

than they have in 2,800 years. The 2015 wildfire season was the 

costliest; just ask my State, with a record $1.71 billion spent. So 

we see that climate poses a risk to our national security. 

How about the Department of Defense? We have a military expert here. He may disagree. But the Department of Defense’s 2014 

Quadrennial Defense Review linked climate change with national 

security: ‘‘Climate change poses a significant challenge for the 

United States and the world at large. The pressures caused by it 

will influence resource competition, place additional burdens on 

economic society and governance institutions. These effects are 

threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad, such as 

poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social 

tensions, conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other 

forms of violence.’’ 

So don’t say it is the President out of context who is talking 

about violence and terrorism. It is the Department of Defense. 

Now, thank goodness we have an Administration that isn’t cowed 

by the kinds of rhetoric that we heard from my Chairman, who I 

really like. But the fact is his words just don’t make sense to me. 

The efforts undertaken as part of the President’s Climate Action 

Plan include: new fuel economy standards for cars and heavy duty 

trucks; finalizing the Clean Power Plan, which will cut carbon pollution 32 percent. 

And I would ask to put my whole statement into the record, and 

I will finish my last couple of minutes this way. 

The American public understands the need to act. According to 

a New York Times poll, two-thirds of Americans support the 

United States being part of an international treaty to limit the impacts of climate change. So the Republicans on this committee are 

so out of step with the American people. It is unreal. A recent poll 

found 60 percent of American voters support the Clean Power Plan, 

and 70 percent of voters want their State to cooperate and develop 

a plan to implement these new standards. 

While we face rhetoric like we heard on the floor, trying to go 

after the President’s plans, the people are with the President, and 

the President’s approval rates show that people think he is going 

in the right direction. 

And there are benefits. I want to read you the benefits. Here is 

the point. Sometimes when there is a problem the solution brings 

other problems. In this case, the solution, reducing carbon pollution, has co-benefits, and they have been quantified. By 2030, just 

the Clean Power Plan alone will prevent 1,500 to 3,600 premature 

deaths because we are cleaning up the air, up to 1,700 heart attacks, 90,000 asthma attacks in children, and how about this, 

300,000 missed work days and school days by 2030. 

Look, I often say this, if you can’t breathe, you can’t work. And 

when we take the carbon out of the air, we are taking all these 

other pollutants out of the air, and no one—and I don’t think anyone has had this situation where a constituent comes up and says, 

Barbara, the air is too clean, please make it dirtier. No. They want 

me to continue to clean up the air because it has so many benefits. 

So I haven’t even gone into the number of clean energy jobs that 

await us, all kinds of good things. And yes, in the dislocations we 

have to be prepared to help those who are dislocated. But if we 
5 

took this attitude, we never would have moved to the automobile 

because all those people who drew the horse-drawn carriages would 

be unemployed. We can make sure that people are brought along. 

So I am excited about what the President is doing, and I am not 

excited about my colleague’s opening statement, but he did it probably even better than he has ever done it before. Thank you very 

much. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Boxer was not received at 

time of print.] 

Senator INHOFE. Oh, thank you. That is very nice. 

I want all of you to know that Barbara Boxer and I get along 

great on roads and highways and infrastructure and a lot of things. 

All right, I am going to start over here with you, Reverend Nelson, and what I would like to ask you to do, we will have more 

members coming here. We do have staff present representing members, and I would like to ask you if you could hold to your 5-minute 

opening statement, it would be appreciated. 

STATEMENT OF REV. DR. J. HERBERT NELSON II, DIRECTOR, 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH U.S.A. OFFICE OF PUBLIC WITNESS 

Rev. NELSON. Hello, my name is Reverend Doctor J. Herbert Nelson II. I direct the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Office of Public Witness here in Washington, DC. Chairman Inhofe and Member Boxer 

and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to testify 

today. 

I come to you today not only with 30 years of pastoral experience 

in a community that bore the harmful impacts of industrial pollution, not only as the director of the denomination’s national advocacy office, but as a representative of an ecumenical Christian community that understands the urgent moral imperative to act on climate change and protect God’s creation. 

Psalm 24:1 and 2: ‘‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness 

thereof, the world and those who live in it; for he has founded it 

on the seas, and established it on the rivers.’’ We must discuss environmental policy in tandem with economic policy, the care of creation and all of creation, including our neighbors’ health and economic well-being. It is central to our concern in addressing climate 

change. 

I served as a pastor in a poor inner city congregation in Memphis, Tennessee, before coming to Washington, DC. I shared my 

home and my community with some of the most intense industrial 

pollution in this country from a chemical plant to a coal-fired power 

generating station and an oil refinery. Ours was a predominantly 

African-American community, which like so many low-income communities of color in our Nation, suffered disproportionately under 

the health burdens that oftentimes deal with the issues of industrial zones in our Nation. It was widely reported at the time that 

African-Americans were 79 percent more likely than whites to live 

in neighborhoods where industrial pollution was suspected of posing the greatest health danger. 

Memphis residents were often sick and were forced to miss 

school and work because of chronic asthma caused by pollutants. 

I recall one activist I knew, Doris Bradshaw, who lived on land contaminated by near military storage facility. After her grand-
6 

mother’s untimely death from an aggressive cervical cancer, which 

doctors told her was environmentally induced, Ms. Bradshaw 

delved into her own investigation of the contaminants of the land 

and air. She was shocked to find a laundry list of chemicals that 

had been improperly disposed and stored there, and those responsible for the disposal had not been accountable. 

I am certain that the CEOs and profiteers of those companies did 

not live in the areas where the air and water made their family 

ill. As pastor I conducted funerals of people who died before their 

time, made countless hospital visits for maladies my flock should 

not have had to endure, and engaged in organizing to bring justice 

to those afflicted by careless environmental practices. We seek an 

earth restored, where economic development is not paid for with 

the health of our most vulnerable sisters and brothers. 

Presbyterians have established since 1981 that we have an ethical obligation to secure a livable planet for present and future generations. A report approved by the 218th General Assembly of the 

Presbyterian Church U.S.A. entitled The Power to Change: U.S. 

Energy Policy and Global Warming states emphatically that we 

have both a spiritual and moral obligation and responsibility to address this issue of climate change. 

In order to do this in the Reformed tradition, we believe that repentance is required. Repentance in our biblical understanding 

calls for individuals to stop the actions that are contrary to God’s 

desires for sustainable human life and sustaining human life while 

turning to a new way of living that promotes what John 10:10 requires—a vision of an abundant life. With God’s grace, we can receive the power to change. 

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. recognizes that there is no 

greater measure than God’s provision for energy, the earth, the 

sun, and the wind. And therefore we speak very candidly about the 

issues of subsidizing the financial incentives away from fossil fuels 

extraction and toward renewable energy infrastructure in order to 

protect the affordable energy prices that many low-income families 

rely on that are inexpensive and that the way we should be 

stunned by the cost of human health reclamation of God’s damaged 

creation were reflected in the utility bills of everyday Americans. 

We know not what we do. 

I sit here today not just representing Presbyterian Church 

U.S.A., but I do represent faith leaders from across the Nation and 

also communities of faith from across the community, one of the 21 

who have signed an agreement dealing with the issues of carbon 

emission. Given that my time is running out, I will submit my report to you and respectfully submit the letter that you already 

have, actually, and also other information regarding those who are 

supporting. 

I know that there has been a great deal of concern regarding 

whether or not faith communities are standing with this particular 

issue. I am here to say that the petition that has been signed, the 

letters that have been given to you, we are seriously involved in 

this because it is not only a mandate of our holy books, but it is 

the way that we are called as responsible stewards of this earth to 

be caretakers for what God has given to us and to be assured that, 
7 

quite frankly, we have a planet to leave to those who are coming 

behind. 

[The prepared statement of Rev. Nelson follows:] 
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Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Reverend Nelson. 

Rev. NELSON. Thank you so much. 

Senator INHOFE. Mr. Breen. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL BREEN, PRESIDENT, 

TRUMAN NATIONAL SECURITY PROJECT 

Mr. BREEN. Thank you, Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member 

Boxer, and distinguished members of the committee. I thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today. 

I come before you, first and foremost, as a fellow citizen with a 

shared concern for the security and the prosperity of our great Nation. Like many in the post-9/11 generation, I am no stranger to 

the costs and consequences of war. While I am currently the President and CEO of the Truman Project and Truman Center, I previously had the privilege to lead American soldiers in combat in 

both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom 

and to train at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. 

National security leadership, on the battlefield or in Washington, 

means taking seriously the risks to those you are charged with protecting. As a combat leader in Afghanistan and Iraq, I often received intelligence that indicated lethal danger to my unit and my 

mission. Regardless of whether or not I personally believed in the 

conclusions drawn from that intelligence or the sources from which 

it came, I would have committed a serious error if I did not act decisively to minimize the risk. 

America’s military leaders have already come to understand that 

climate change is a risk to our national security. The 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, a document of military strategy, not partisan political design, identified climate change as an ‘‘accelerant of 

instability’’ that would place a ‘‘burden to respond’’ on the Department of Defense. The next review, in 2014, designated climate 

change a threat multiplier because its impacts ‘‘increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions.’’ 

Moreover, the Center for Naval Analysis Military Advisory 

Board, which includes 16 retired, high ranking military leaders including former Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan and 

former Marine Corps Commandant General James T. Conway, recently argued in a report co-signed by former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former Secretary of Defense 

Leon Panetta that ‘‘the nature and pace of observed climate 

changes pose severe risks for our national security.’’ 

Those severe risks include drought, famine, flooding, sea level 

rise, extreme weather events, mass migration, and increasingly intense resource competition. Each of these phenomena is currently 

fueling violence and instability around the world, and will for years 

to come. 

According to the Department of the Navy, the United States receives a request for humanitarian assistance from somewhere in 

the world ‘‘on an average of once every 2 weeks.’’ Given that our 

fiercest enemies prey on human misery, the United States cannot 

afford—strategically nor morally—to leave these calls for help unanswered. Unfortunately, climate change makes such requests all 

the more taxing on our military. Disasters are increasing in size, 

scope, and frequency, often ravaging the most fragile of commu-
18 

nities and pushing feeble governments into chaos to the benefit of 

terrorists. 

I am reminded of a senior Bangladeshi military officer I met 

years ago who recognized climate change as a threat to not only his 

nation’s security, but its very integrity. A full one-fifth of Bangladesh’s landmass would be under water with little more than a 

3-foot rise in sea level, threatening to displace more than 22 million people into nearby India. 

Our democratic ally has, in turn, planned for this eventuality by 

building an 8-foot fence along 70 percent of its 2,500-mile border. 

This creates the very real possibility of millions of Bangladeshis 

frantically fleeing a catastrophe only to be repelled from India by 

force. These nations fought a war over the same territory just decades ago. 

NATO, along with senior leaders in our own military, have expressed concerns about prospects for conflict in the Arctic, where 

melting ice is giving way to new strategically valuable waterways. 

Russia has accordingly increased its military exercises and a number of military bases in use in the Arctic considerably since 2007. 

These newly open sea lanes will surely be a source of tension between the United States and an increasingly nationalist Russia. 

I will close with a reminder that we are experiencing climate 

change on the home front as well. More than 11,000 and 50,000 

men and women of the National Guard deployed to our own cities 

during Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, respectively, leading relief 

efforts that cost our Nation a combined $151 billion in repairs and 

rebuilding. 

Extreme heat and wildfires have halted live fire training exercises in Alaska and have required mobilization for emergency assistance throughout the country, such as in Idaho and Oklahoma. 

And sea levels rising at twice the global rate threaten, of all things, 

our own Naval Headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia. I repeat, rising 

sea levels threaten our largest naval base. 

Climate change is a risk factor that makes many of the other 

threats we face both more likely and more dangerous from terrorist 

organizations that prey on fragile and failing states to rising resurgent major powers who are hostile to our values. Demanding that 

we act to address either the threat of climate change or the threat 

posed by a given enemy, but not both, is a deeply misguided false 

choice. The United States fought and won a two-front, two-ocean 

war on behalf of the world. Surely we can confront threats in both 

the short- and long-term now. 

I urge the Congress to do what it has always done when our Nation has been tested throughout history: heed the threat, listen to 

the risk assessment our military leaders make, and grant them the 

tools they need to minimize risk to our service members, our citizens, our Nation, and our allies around the world. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Breen follows:] 
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Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Mr. Breen. 

Father Sirico, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF FATHER ROBERT A. SIRICO, PRESIDENT, 

ACTON INSTITUTE 

Fr. SIRICO. Thank you very much, Senator Inhofe, Senator Boxer, 

for the invitation to be with you today. I am the President of the 

Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. We study the 

interpenetration of ethics, theology, and market economics. I am 

also the pastor of a parish in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

The recent promulgation of the encyclical by His Holiness, Pope 

Francis, Laudato Si’, dealing with the care of our common home, 

has occasioned a great deal of discussion, so I would like to address 

myself to that and then some applications of how that might be 

seen in the real world and for your consideration in the development of policy. 

It is important at the outset that I first affirm the goals that the 

Holy Father sets out in his encyclical, namely, ‘‘to protect our common home’’ and ‘‘to bring the whole human family together to seek 

a sustainable and integral development.’’ The Pope is right to give 

attention to these matters, obviously. He is also right when he says 

that there is a need for an honest and forthright debate on these 

matters. 

I would like to outline for you what the social teaching of the 

Catholic Church is, because as I have heard the discussion, there 

is a great deal of confusion over this. The Church’s teaching authority claims that its Magisterium might be called a privileged insight into matters of faith and morals. The Church intentionally 

limits her specific competency to these areas, faith and morals. 

This magisterial authority has always admitted to its limitations 

and to boundaries which may be obscure or at times touch up 

against certain matters outside of the Magisterium’s immediate 

mission. This, of course, makes the task of properly interpreting 

these documents much more challenging and much more exciting. 

The Church simply does not speak, nor does she claim to speak, 

with the same authority on matters of economics and science qua 

economics and science. In fact, the encyclical says, ‘‘on many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views.’’ 

A particularly fruitful part of the dialogue which Laudato Si’ 

calls for, it seems to me, lies somewhere between its major title, 

Laudato Si’, Praised be God, and its subtitle, On Care for Our 

Common Home. Here is what we know. We know that the riches 

of the earth which God created and have given to us are not simply 

placed at our disposal automatically. The reality of scarcity, which 

gives rise to the discipline of economics itself also tells us this. In 

paragraph 110 of Laudato Si’, the Holy Father makes an important 

observation on what he calls the ‘‘fragmentation of knowledge.’’ Put 

another way, no one can know everything. 

One way that environmental degradation and even poverty might 

be described would be to say that it is evidence of a failure to know 

and to coordinate the things of value. After all, people don’t generally degrade or discard what they see as having value. But they 
24 

first need to know it. This, of course, is precisely why centralizing 

knowledge and planning is inadequate, and indeed dangerous to 

yield a broad range of knowledge required to prevent the degradation of the economy, or for that matter, the environment. 

Fortunately, the discipline of economics itself can enable us to 

confront what is called the ‘‘knowledge problem.’’ The only way that 

knowledge can be obtained is through free signals called prices sent 

from across the economy by producers, consumers, buyers, and sellers. 

Though reference to environmental issues has become common in 

many religious communities, environmentalism has come to mean 

more than getting rid of air pollution or cleaning up toxic waste 

dumps. Unfortunately, for many people of faith it has become their 

religion itself. It is one thing to recognize caring for nature as part 

of God’s command, to honor what God has made; it is quite another 

to transfer that sentiment of worship to the creation itself. 

I have submitted a much fuller examination of these questions, 

and I look forward, as well, to your comments. Thank you very 

much. 

[The prepared statement of Fr. Sirico follows:] 
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Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Father Sirico. Thank you very 

much. 

General Scales, it is nice to have you back. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT SCALES, MAJOR GENERAL (RET.), 

SENIOR MILITARY ANALYST 

Mr. SCALES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very 

much for inviting me again to address this committee. 

During his graduation address to the Coast Guard Academy in 

2015, President Obama shocked the defense community by declaring his new national defense priority: ‘‘So I’m here today to say 

that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, 

an immediate risk to our national security.’’ 

The Administration’s newfound passion to connect climate 

change to war is an example of faulty theories that rely for relevance on politically correct imaginings rather than established 

historical precedent. The theories linking climate change to war 

come from a larger body of political thought that ascribes human 

conflict to what we call the ‘‘Global Trends’’ school. Advocates of 

the Global Trends theory argue that environmental scourges such 

as diminishing water supplies, urbanization, and the AIDS/HIV 

epidemic shape the course of human conflict. 

But climate change is not a global trend because 3,000 years of 

the historical record of human conflict argues conclusively against 

any causal relationship between war and temperature. Let me be 

more specific. Never in the written history of warfare, from 

Megiddo in 1,500 B.C. to the Syrian civil war today, is there any 

evidence that wars are caused by warmer air. At best, climate 

change might, over centuries, contribute minutely to the course of 

warfare. The key word is contribute. Climate change will never 

cause wars; thus, it can never be actually a threat to national security. 

It is interesting to note the hypocrisy within the scientific communities that argue for a connection between climate change and 

national security. Scientists generally agree on the long-term consequences of global warming. Radical environmentalists delight in 

excoriating the so-called ‘‘junk science’’ espoused by climate change 

deniers, but they are less than enthusiastic in questioning the junk 

social science that environmentalists and their Beltway fellow travelers use to connect climate change to war. 

Where does the Administration get their facts about climate 

change and war? Well, first they contend that a warming planet 

causes drought, which leads to mass migration away from areas of 

creeping desertification. To be sure, rising temperatures, combined 

with overgrazing in places like Central Africa, have caused displacement of peoples. 

But the misery of these peoples leads to, well, misery, not war. 

Tribes striving to exist in these often horrific environmental conditions have little energy left to declare war against a neighbor. The 

nations of Central Africa are in the grip of conflict started by Boko 

Haram in Nigeria and al Shabaab in Somalia. But these 

transnational terrorists are motivated to kill by the factors that 

have always caused nations, or entities masquerading as nations, 

to start wars, such as hatred induced by fear of alien cultures, reli-
38 

gions, ideologies, economics, as well as social and ethnic differences. 

But the myth of climate change as an inducement to war continues to curry favor among Washington elites. One source for connecting war to temperature comes from the political closeness between environmentalists and the anti-war movement. Their logic 

goes like this: Global warming is bad. Wars are bad. Therefore, 

they must be connected. Remember, prior to the 1991 Gulf War, 

environmentalists warned of a decade of global cooling that would 

come from burning Kuwaiti oil fields. More recently, environmental 

radicals argued against bombing ISIS oil trucks, fearing the environmental consequences. 

Sadly, those in the Administration who lobbied against striking 

a legitimate military target because of imagined environmental 

damage caused by these strikes may in all likelihood have sustained ISIS by refusing to interdict their richest sources of income. 

The point is that in today’s wars politically correct theories, when 

inserted into a battle plan, might well extend wars needlessly and 

get soldiers killed. 

Our men and women in uniform are smart and perceptive. They 

can spot phoniness in a heartbeat. Think of a soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq, returning from a dangerous and exhausting mission, 

being obliged to listen to a senior defense official lecture them on 

the, well, revelation that fighting climate change is their most important mission. These men and women see the realities of battle 

all around them. The military threat of rising temperatures is not 

one of them. 

Our young military leaders are already jaded and discouraged by 

an Administration that seems to be out of touch with their realworld, day-to-day life or death needs. Do we really think that they 

will become more confident about the wisdom of their leaders if 

they are obliged to turn away from ISIS and fight a war against 

rising temperatures? Somehow, I don’t think so. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Scales follows:] 
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Senator INHOFE. Thank you very much, General Scales. 

Mr. Epstein. 

STATEMENT OF ALEX EPSTEIN, PRESIDENT, 

CENTER FOR INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS 

Mr. EPSTEIN. The energy industry is the industry that powers 

every other industry. To the extent energy is cheap, plentiful, and 

reliable, human beings thrive. To the extent energy is unaffordable, 

scarce, or unreliable, human beings suffer. 

And yet in this election year the candidates—especially the Republican candidates—have barely discussed energy. Thus, I am 

grateful for the opportunity to discuss the morality of energy policy. 

When we evaluate energy policies, such as President Obama’s efforts to restrict cheap, plentiful, reliable fossil fuels and mandate 

solar and wind, it is worth asking: Has this been tried before? The 

answer is much milder versions of the President’s energy policy 

have been tried in Europe, and they have resulted in skyrocketing 

energy prices every time. 

Take Germany. Over the last decade, Germany pursued the popular ideal of running on the unreliable energy from solar and wind. 

But since unreliable energy can’t be relied upon, it has to be 

propped up by a reliable energy, mostly fossil fuels. The solar panels and wind turbines are an unnecessary and enormous cost to the 

system. The average German pays three to four times more for 

electricity than the average American. It is so bad that Germans 

have had to add a new term to the language: energy poverty. 

The United States should learn from the failed German experiment. Instead, our President is doubling down on it. And just as 

ominously, he is calling for even the poorest countries to use 

unreliables instead of reliables. This, in a world where 3 billion 

people have almost no access to energy. 

How could this possibly be moral? The alleged justification is 

that fossil fuels cause climate change and should therefore be 

eliminated. But we need to clearly define what we mean by climate 

change, because while nearly everyone, the 97 percent, agrees that 

more CO2 in the atmosphere causes some climate change, it makes 

all the difference in the world whether that change is a mild, manageable warming or a runaway, catastrophic warming. 

Which is it? If we look at what has been scientifically demonstrated versus what has been speculated, the climate impact of 

CO2 is mild and manageable. The warming of the last 80 years has 

been barely more than the natural warming that occurred in the 

80 years before that, when there were virtually no CO2 emissions. 

From a geological perspective both CO2 levels and temperatures 

are very low. There is no perfect amount of CO2 or perfect average 

temperature, although higher CO2 levels do create more plant 

growth and higher temperatures do lower mortality rates. 

To be sure, many prominent scientists and organizations predict 

catastrophe, but this is wild speculation, and it is nothing new. Indeed, many of today’s thought leaders have been falsely predicting 

catastrophe for decades. Thirty years ago NASA climate leader 

James Hansen predicted that temperatures would rise by 2 to 4 degrees between 2000 and 2010. Instead, depending on which temperature dataset you consult, they rose only slightly or not at all. 
49 

Thirty years ago, President Obama’s top science advisor, John 

Holdren, predicted that by now we would be approaching a billion 

CO2-related deaths from famine. Instead, famine has plummeted. 

More broadly, climate-related deaths, deaths from extreme heat, 

extreme cold, storms, drought, and floods, have decreased at a rate 

of 50 percent since the 1980s and 98 percent since major CO2 emissions began 80 years ago. 

How is it possible that we are safer than ever from the climate? 

Because while fossil fuel use has only a mild warming impact, it 

has an enormous protecting impact. Nature doesn’t give us a stable, safe climate that we make dangerous; it gives us an ever 

changing dangerous climate that we need to make safe. And the 

driver behind sturdy buildings, affordable heating and air conditioning, drought relief, and everything else that keeps us safe from 

climate is cheap, plentiful, and reliable energy, overwhelmingly 

from fossil fuels. 

Thus the President’s anti-fossil fuel policies would harm billions 

of lives economically and make them more vulnerable to nature’s 

ever present climate danger. Using more fossil fuels, along with 

other cheap, plentiful, reliable sources, such as nuclear and hydro, 

also opposed by most of the environmentalist movement, is a moral 

imperative. 

Now, I realize that many of you have fought to restrict fossil fuel 

use, and it can be politically difficult to change one’s stand, but if 

you continue on your current path you will cause billions of people 

to suffer unnecessarily. I hope you reconsider your position, and no 

matter how politically difficult it is, I hope you change your stand. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Epstein follows:] 
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Senator INHOFE. Thank you very much, Mr. Epstein. 

I am going to try something different here. Judging from our experience yesterday and some of the previous committee’s hearings, 

our members seem to go over, so I am going to change our 5 minutes to 6 minutes and then really try to hold everyone to 6 minutes, if that is acceptable. 

General Scales, you have heard the quote that I gave in my opening statement in terms of the President talking about the greatest 

threat facing us is not ISIS but is global warming. One time he 

made that statement was April 18th, and it was on that same that 

ISIL executed two groups of Christians, beheading 21 and shooting 

the other 9. 

What do you believe is the greatest national threat, and how do 

we respond to these statements? 

Mr. SCALES. Thank you, Senator. I believe the greatest threat, in 

a word, is Russia. They are the largest existential threat, the most 

aggressive nation-state that we face, and we are seeing a resurgence of aggression obviously in Ukraine and Syria and elsewhere 

led by Vladimir Putin. 

But what makes this so difficult to deal with, Senator, is that the 

military today has a whole panoply of additional threats. You mentioned ISIS. How about the Chinese threat to the South China Sea? 

We haven’t begun to speak about the Iranian nuclear threat, which 

will be on us soon, and what that implies. 

So soldiers and sailors today are bombarded by a series of global 

threats and diminishing resources, and to my mind, at least, the 

additional distraction of focusing on climate change in the midst of 

all this is simply counterproductive. 

Senator INHOFE. Now, would you say that, to focus on climate 

change, does this impact our ability to execute operations with our 

allies around the globe against ISIL? 

Mr. SCALES. It is too early to say. I think, inevitably, this has 

to be true because, remember, there is only so much energy and so 

much money, and so many men and women to confront our global 

challenges today. If you have lawyers that are telling you what to 

bomb, rules of engagement that keep you from bombing, a media 

looking over your shoulder as you try to prosecute wars, young soldiers today are just overwhelmed by distractions from their mission, which is to defeat the enemy. And adding another layer to 

this, making them focus first on climate change as a threat is simply a distraction they shouldn’t be obliged to endure. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you very much. 

Father Sirico, let’s talk a little bit about the impact of all these 

accusations on the impoverished communities, the poor communities. What impact would you say that the Administration’s climate change agenda would have on these communities, the impoverished communities? 

Fr. SIRICO. Well, I think it is fair to say that when you wage 

what is in effect a war on coal or fossil fuels, what you end up 

doing is increasing the cost of those resources. When you increase 

the cost of those resources, the poor are further impoverished. 

Not only that, but it has an effect as well on the companies that 

are employing people and providing these resources. For instance, 

all the different bankruptcies or the layoffs on the part of the Pow-
56 

der River Basin, for example, laid off 243 workers at the Black 

Thunder Mine. Peabody Energy laid off 235 miners at the North 

Antelope Rochelle Mine. The Alpha Natural Resources filed for 

bankruptcy in Virginia last summer. And the list could go on. 

So I think that the rhetorical attack, the moral attack, and the 

regulatory attack, not to mention the various kinds of taxation that 

go into this, impede the ability of these businesses both to employ 

people and to provide resources at affordable prices for people, thus 

impoverishing their communities. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you. 

Mr. Epstein, a recent report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program claims that we will see a rise in extreme heat related deaths due to climate change. Yet in your testimony, on page 

2, you state that higher temperature actually lowers mortality 

rates. 

Mr. EPSTEIN. As I indicated it is very important to distinguish 

between what is demonstrated and what is speculated. So what is 

demonstrated is a steep decline in climate related deaths as we use 

more energy, including fossil fuels. 

So what is going on with those predictions is they are based on 

climate prediction models that can’t predict climate, and they are 

based on a false understanding of climate safety. Nature doesn’t 

give us a safe climate; the primary cause of climate safety is the 

state of climate protection, industrialization, and technology. So billions of people around the world who don’t have that, who are vulnerable to climate, that is what they need; they don’t need a 1 degree cooler temperature. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you. 

Back to you, General Scales. The President’s focus on climate 

change impacting our ability, now, a lot of us up here at this table 

spend time over there. We talk to people in the field; we talk to 

our commanders; we talk to the kids in the mess halls, and they 

have questions that we, quite often, are asked, and that is is his 

focus, the President, the commander-in-chief, on climate change impacting our ability to execute operations with our allies over there? 

Mr. SCALES. Yes, I understand, Mr. Chairman, and one of the interesting things is I also talk to soldiers, as you know, and there 

is a growing sense in many ways of cynicism among our young men 

and women in uniform, particularly those who are deployed. They 

have so many conflicting stressors that keep them, as they would 

say, from doing their mission. 

And when they are sitting in a mess hall in Kabul and they see 

the President saying, on television, that ISIS may not be our No. 

1 enemy, climate change may be, and they just came back from a 

patrol with their Afghan allies, these young men and women turn 

to each other and say have our leaders sort of lost touch with the 

reality all around us? And then you stack that up with all the 

other things that we have talked about recently, and I am afraid 

that level of cynicism is what interferes with our ability to defend 

our country. 

Senator INHOFE. I get that same thing. 

Senator Boxer. 

Senator BOXER. I would like to see if Sheldon Whitehouse would 

like to take my turn as first. 
57 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. With the Chairman’s permission. 

Senator INHOFE. No objection. 

Senator WHITEHOUSE. I do have to get to a budget hearing at 

10:30. 

I guess I would say that I am just a little bit sad at what this 

committee has become. EPW, Committee on Environment and Public Works, it is beginning to look increasingly like the Committee 

on Eccentricity and Public Works. 

We have a United States military that in repeated Quadrennial 

Defense Reviews, which are done by the career military, and in the 

national security strategy have singled out climate change as a 

problem for the future that will create the types of stresses that 

will draw conflict and draw our young men and women into conflict. I believe every single military official who has spoken about 

climate change, civilian or military, has agreed with that proposition. 

Admiral Locklear ran our Pacific Command for years and said 

that the effects of climate change are more likely than any of the 

other scenarios that they commonly talk about to lead to conflict 

in the Pacific. In the years that I sat on the Intelligence Committee 

and in the assessments that I have seen since, it has been a consistent theme of our national security personnel in the intelligence 

community that this is a concern that we need to address. 

I would note that with respect to Retired General Scales’ comments, the timeframe we are dealing is not at all the timeframe of 

the history of warfare. The history of warfare goes back tens of 

thousands of years. We have had at least 800,000 years within a 

relatively safe, in our human experience, range of carbon in the atmosphere of 170 to 300 parts per million. Now we are at 400 and 

climbing. We are in unprecedented territory. 

And when you look over that 800,000-year time over the association between temperature and CO2, it is a very close association. 

And if temperature follows carbon dioxide, and there is a reasonable change that it will when it has done so for 800,000 years, then 

we are in for very substantial changes. Not just little changes, but 

big changes. Not just changes that would reflect the history of warfare, but changes that are really unprecedented. 

And I kind of doubt that actually individual soldiers are being 

asked to address climate change. That is not their job; it is our job 

in Congress to set the terms for our economy so that we don’t drive 

our soldiers into situations in which conflicts caused by climate 

change are putting them at risk. 

Similarly, from the Catholic Church we have a pope who has 

written an entire encyclical about our responsibility to our climate, 

focusing on climate change. We have the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has repeatedly and constantly and unanimously 

continued to say with a very strong voice that it is really important 

that we address climate change. Several Catholic bishops actually 

have come to Washington to meet with us and to urge this to happen. There was not very good turnout by our Republican colleagues 

for that, but they were here to speak to anyone who would come. 

So we have these very, very strong signals coming from the vast 

majority of these great institutions, our military and our Catholic 
58 

Church, and what we hear in this committee are these extremely 

eccentric voices. 

And we particularly, I think, have reason for concern about the 

presence here of the Acton Institute, which has something of an 

unfortunate record of fronting for industry groups. We are now 

dealing with climate change, but not long ago one of the health and 

safety issues that was predominant was tobacco, and people have 

used those wars, the tobacco wars. During those tobacco wars, the 

Acton Institute took money from the tobacco industry. 

And if you look through the records that the attorney generals 

required to be made public in the settlement with the tobacco industry, you find a memo from the tobacco industry authored by 

Philip Morris that actually talks about its work with the Acton Institute to fight back against tobacco regulation. There is a list of 

organizations that they work with; the lead one is the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. 

How something for the study of religion and liberty gets into tobacco policy is another question entirely, but I am quoting from the 

document. First they call the Acton Institute, and I quote Philip 

Morris, ‘‘an esoteric policy group that focuses on illuminating the 

free market perspective.’’ Second, they vouch for Acton in that 

Acton ‘‘has on several occasions written articles and op-eds opposing the use of cigarette excises as a funding mechanism for health 

care.’’ 

And here is the really interesting part. The author says ‘‘Acton 

is presently preparing, with our assistance,’’ with our assistance, 

with the assistance of the tobacco industry, ‘‘a monograph for the 

Detroit News detailing arguments against sin taxes. I will be contacting them,’’ the Acton Institute, ‘‘this week to elicit their assistance in rebutting the just released University of Michigan report 

that attacks industry projections of economic dislocation caused by 

prohibitive excise taxes.’’ 

When you are taking industry money and working with industry 

and doing what industry tells you, I have an issue with that. 

My time has expired. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you. 

Senator Rounds. 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Father Sirico, you have pointed out that the Pope’s encyclical and 

environmental stewardship reinforce the concern that society 

progress be balanced with a respect for nature and a concern about 

the most vulnerable populations. I come from a rural State where 

agriculture is the backbone of our economy. 

I would like to know your opinion of how the free market can 

help support a wide variety of industries, particularly those like ag, 

in which those who tend to their land are the best environmental 

stewards we have. How can industries like agriculture help alleviate some of the concerns regarding vulnerable populations, and 

what should we do to make certain these industries are able to not 

only survive, but to thrive in this country? 

Fr. SIRICO. Of course, the question of vulnerability has to do with 

a lack of access to resources, so the best kind of policies is to allow 

these, whether it is agricultural businesses or other businesses to 

be as productive as they can be within the rule of law, under the 
59 

rule of law, in order to provide goods and services that are accessible to vulnerable populations, at the same time increasing the 

likelihood and the opportunities that they have for employment in 

order to support their families. 

Draconian legislation, general animus toward free market activities, the hindrance of competition, the placing of one’s thumb, as 

it were, on a scale in terms of that competition by the use of various kinds of regulation all impede that knowledge flow that I 

spoke about earlier and speak about more extensively in my prepared remarks, that enables people to rise in their economic wellbeing. So I think that what the Government needs to do is ensure 

that law is fair and just and objective rather than partisan. 

Senator ROUNDS. Major General Scales, in your testimony you 

warn about the consequences of having senior defense officials lecture our soldiers on the idea that combatting climate change is 

their most important mission. How does this mindset impact the 

men and women serving in the U.S. military and how does this detract from our national security in the face of ISIS and other security threats to our Nation? 

Mr. SCALES. That is a great question, and it goes to the points 

made by Senator Whitehouse. First of all, let me say up front that 

the impression that he gives that this is a universal thought held 

within the defense community is ridiculous. I was on the Quadrennial Defense Review; I spent 6 weeks arguing with my colleagues 

about this, and in our version of the QDR we did not mention climate change. 

Mr. Breen mentioned a report by 17 generals and admirals that 

climbed on board to this mantra about climate change. Well, those 

are friends of mine, so I called them the other day, over the last 

week, and I asked them, what are you doing, what is this all 

about? He said, well, our consensus was we will sign up to the dangers of climate change or the relationship between climate change 

and national security ‘‘as long as it doesn’t cost us anything.’’ I 

mean, why not? 

And as far as Admiral Locklear is concerned, now retired commander of the Pacific Command, he made that as a sort of off-thecuff comment about climate change in the Pacific, and he never 

went back to it again. He is now retired. 

This is just part of America, Senator. I mean, it is like Y2K or 

it is like prohibition. We in our society have a tendency to jump 

on bandwagons because that is just what America does; it makes 

us to feel like part of the organization. 

But the idea that only young soldiers are concerned about losing 

faith in their leaders over their profession of climate change is not 

true. I will assure you that many senior military, both active and 

retired, are concerned about this today. 

Why? Because they fear that, to your point, that it will deflect 

us away from our primary mission, which is defend this country 

and kill the enemy; and second, it will cost us tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars. Go back to these generals and admirals 

and say, do you still ascribe with that thought if it is going to 

empty our national security budget of $200 billion? You will get a 

different answer. 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you. 
60 

Mr. Epstein, in your testimony you mention that Germans have 

added the term energy poverty to their language. Can you explain 

what this means, and is energy poverty something that threatens 

the United States? 

Mr. EPSTEIN. Sure. It varies from country to country, but basically it is the percentage of people for whom energy is almost a prohibitive percentage of their income. So with any kind of measure 

like this, where you are restricting a crucial life enhancing product, 

the more expensive you make it, the more you hurt poorer people 

in particular. 

So we see even in the wealthier countries that lots of people can’t 

afford their electricity bills or can’t afford many other things that 

stem from electricity bills. We see manufacturers that are on the 

margin that could work in this country if natural gas is cheap. 

But what happens if you ban fracking? Then those companies go 

out of business. And then, of course, internationally—and I think 

this is one of the greatest moral crimes—if you make energy more 

expensive or you prohibit or restrict people from getting energy 

from sources like coal, that is literally death. I tell a story in my 

book, the Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, about a young child who 

could have been kept alive with an incubator, but in the Gambia 

there are no incubators because of no reliable electricity. 

Senator ROUNDS. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you very much. 

Senator Boxer. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you. 

Mr. Epstein, are you a scientist? 

Mr. EPSTEIN. No, a philosopher. 

Senator BOXER. You are a philosopher? 

Mr. EPSTEIN. Yes. 

Senator BOXER. OK. Well, this is the Environment and Public 

Works Committee. I think it is interesting we have a philosopher 

here talking about an issue—— 

Mr. EPSTEIN. It is to teach you how to think more clearly. 

Senator BOXER. Well, you don’t have to teach me how to think 

more clearly. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator BOXER. You don’t have to. Try running for the Senate on 

your platform. 

Reverend Nelson, perhaps the most—well, this is the place to 

have a philosopher, not a scientist; it is perfect for this Republican—— 

Mr. EPSTEIN. You have to integrate the big picture data. 

Senator BOXER. I am not asking you anything. I am telling you 

that all you have to know is you are a philosopher, not a scientist, 

and I don’t appreciate getting lectured by a philosopher about 

science. 

Now, I want to talk to Reverend Nelson, who never claimed to 

be a scientist or came up with all these figures and facts in his own 

mind. I just want to say to you you are the most eloquent person 

I have ever heard in all my years here, and I am so grateful to you 

for bringing your eloquence to this committee. What you are trying 

to tell us in a very calm voice and not an argumentative, nasty 
61 

voice is that we have a moral obligation to the least among us. Am 

I right on that point? 

Rev. NELSON. We do, Senator. And I challenge the notion that 

somehow or another the Bible does not speak to this. I have with 

me, actually, a Green Bible, which the pages are marked and the 

passages are marked in green throughout this Bible that actually 

speak to the issues of the care of creation. 

Senator BOXER. Well, I would appreciate it if I could have some 

copies of those passages. 

Rev. NELSON. Certainly. 

Senator BOXER. Because I think it is so important to people who 

claim to be religious to turn their back on this threat. It is shocking. When we know the co-benefits of going after carbon pollution, 

we are going to save 1,500 to 3,600 lives, 1,700 heart attacks won’t 

happen, 90,000 asthma attacks in children won’t happen, and we 

will restore 300,000 missed work days and school days. 

It is a moral issue, and I just wanted to thank you because from 

the angry voices, and we have had them here, it is a beautiful 

thing, and obviously within you you have the security and the 

peace, and you have said it here, and it is very important and I 

so appreciate it. 

And I appreciate the fact that Senator Inhofe allows us to pick 

a couple of witnesses. 

Now, Major General, you disagree with the DOD, and you kind 

of made fun of them and said they are just saying it because they 

are getting on a bandwagon. So I am not asking you a question, 

but what I am hoping you would do, because you spoke for others 

and you demeaned them and said they are just saying they are 

doing it to get along, it doesn’t cost anything, give me the names 

of those people so I can contact them, because this is a very important testimony here. 

So you can’t just get up. I can tell you anything. I could tell you 

I was visited by the greatest leader in all the world and said this. 

You know, you can say anything. I want specifics; that is why you 

are here. 

Now, Mr. Epstein talked about the President mandating solar 

and wind. I would like you to send me those mandates. That would 

be important, because I don’t know of them. 

And Father, I appreciate your being here. 

Fr. SIRICO. Thank you. 

Senator BOXER. I looked up the Acton Institute because I didn’t 

know much, and I know that my colleague said you have ties to 

the tobacco industry. Is it true that you received $315,000 from 

ExxonMobil since 1998? 

Fr. SIRICO. Let me give you a broader—— 

Senator BOXER. No, I am asking. I don’t have a lot of time. Is 

it true? 

Fr. SIRICO. OK, I am going to be very brief. 

Senator BOXER. No, no, yes or no. 

Fr. SIRICO. The Acton Institute has existed for 26 years. I 

brought the numbers with me. From that time we have received 

under 5 percent of our funding from all corporations—— 

Senator BOXER. Father, that is fine. 
62 

Fr. SIRICO [continuing]. And 1 percent from Koch, .05 percent 

from Exxon—— 

Senator BOXER. Father. Father. 

Fr. SIRICO [continuing]. And the numbers you have on tobacco 

are correct. 

Senator BOXER. I am losing my time. You received $315,000 from 

ExxonMobil; you received funding from the Koch brothers—— 

Fr. SIRICO. Actually, it was $410,000. Your number is wrong. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you for correcting the record, and we will 

show it. 

Fr. SIRICO. Thank you. 

Senator BOXER. The Koch Foundation, David H. Koch, $313,000 

since 2003. 

Fr. SIRICO. No, $895,000—— 

Senator BOXER. The Claude Lambe Foundation is another part 

of the Koch Brothers, $60,000. 

Fr. SIRICO. Which was that? 

Senator BOXER. The Claude Lambe Foundation, $60,000. 

Fr. SIRICO. Yes. 

Senator BOXER. That is connected with the Koch brothers. 

Fr. SIRICO. An educational subsidy. 

Senator BOXER. And I would ask unanimous consent to place into 

the record all the other donations from those who are fighting us 

on climate change, if I might. 

Senator INHOFE. Without objection. 

Senator BOXER. Thank you. 

[The referenced information was not received at time of print.] 

Senator BOXER. Father, this was kind of interesting. The Acton 

Institute’s strong support for Catholicism and free market economics has come under strain as Pope Francis has actively criticized 

global inequality and unfettered capitalism. In May 2014 the 

Pope’s Twitter account posted a tweet, the Pope’s, saying, ‘‘Inequality is the root of all evil.’’ Joe Carter, a senior editor at Acton, 

tweeted in reply, this is to the Pope saying inequality is the root 

of all evil: ‘‘Seriously, though, what was up with that tweet by the 

Pontiff? Has he traded the writings of Peter and Paul for Economist Piketty?’’ 

So do you disagree with the Pope when he says that climate 

change is one of the biggest issues, and we have to face it? 

Fr. SIRICO. Senator, I am very grateful for your defense of the 

Pope. Perhaps not in all of his magisterial authority and the cherry 

picking of this or that—— 

Senator BOXER. I can ask you what I want. Do you disagree with 

the Pope on climate change? It is a simple yes or no. 

Fr. SIRICO. When the Pope says things that have to do with 

science, he does not speak from the magisterial authority of the 

Church. 

Senator BOXER. So you don’t agree with him. OK, fine. 

Fr. SIRICO. When he speaks on moral issues, such as abortion 

and contraception and the like, then he speaks on that—— 

Senator BOXER. So who is cherry picking? You’re saying that 

when the planet is facing all these problems, it is not a moral 

issue. I don’t agree with you. 
63 

Fr. SIRICO. I never said that. Where did I say that? Could you 

give me that quotation, Senator? 

Senator BOXER. You just said it, sir. 

Fr. SIRICO. I did not. I certainly did not. 

Senator BOXER. Sir, you receive money from the Koch brothers, 

from Exxon, you disagree with the Pope—— 

Fr. SIRICO. I never said I didn’t—— 

Senator BOXER [continuing]. And you tend to wear the cloth you 

are in front of us? 

Senator INHOFE. OK, OK. 

Senator BOXER. I think you ought to have a talk with Reverend 

Nelson. 

Fr. SIRICO. Who is, by the way, not a scientist. 

Senator INHOFE. OK, Senator Barrasso. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I think 

I ought to just not ask any questions and just let ask, anything else 

you want to say on my time, Father? 

Fr. SIRICO. What I was trying to do is put into perspective the 

notion of how an institute is funded. And by the way it is not just 

an educational institute like ours; it is political campaigns like the 

Senator’s. 

Senator BARRASSO. So when Democrats make a pilgrimage to Tom Steyer’s house in California, who promises $100 million to 

their funds, including members of this committee, that might be 

something that—— 

Fr. SIRICO. That might be something. I would have to look into 

that. I don’t know what Soros gives and things like that. The point 

is that we exist for the purpose of helping people understand the 

moral foundations of the free economy, and it is a shame that one 

has to come to the U.S. Senate to make that case and to be opposed 

on it. 

We go to donors and ask them to support that, and then because 

of political motivations this is distorted into insinuating that we 

are somehow being purchased by industry. We get less than 5 percent of our money from industry, and we are defending capitalism. 

I think we should get more money from industry because we are 

defending enterprise. So to distort it and make it sound like somehow we are going out like moral prostitutes to gain this support 

I think is disingenuous, at the least. 

Senator BARRASSO. And the Pope is infallible on matters of faith 

and religion, but not on the matters of science and philosophy. 

Fr. SIRICO. And does not claim, and does not claim to be infallible 

on science or economics. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you. 

Mr. Epstein, I would like to read to you something that came out 

from the Energy and Environment Climate Wire. It has to do with 

Wyoming. It is called Powder River Basin: Coal’s Western Stronghold Faces Precarious Future. In the article, it says, ‘‘Overall, Wyoming coal production has decreased 14 percent since 2011. The economic consequences have been extreme.’’ It goes through the fact 

that we continue to lose jobs, hundreds have been laid off again 

last week. 

It says, ‘‘Even before these recent layoffs, the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services reported that Campbell County had ex-
64 

perienced one of the largest jumps in unemployment across the 

State last year.’’ Now, these, as you know, are real people, real 

jobs, good paying jobs providing for their families. 

The jobs are being crushed because of political decisions made by 

this Administration that decided that coal was politically incorrect. 

People do not know where to go, how to get a similar job, the same 

pay, the same benefits, how to provide for their families. 

So rather than making coal cleaner or burning it cleaner, or recognizing the benefits that coal provides not only to communities 

like Gillette that depend on it, but also to low-income communities 

across the country in terms of the cost of electricity, the Administration has basically toed the line from their big green activist 

groups and the elite special interests who pay millions and millions 

of dollars to candidates who support that viewpoint, my question 

is this: Is there a moral argument to be made that communities, 

coal communities shouldn’t be crushed by their own Government to 

appease special interests? 

Mr. EPSTEIN. Well, I disagree with the way people talk about 

jobs. It is perfectly legitimate for an individual or a community to 

lose jobs if it is out-competed by a superior product. What is happening here, though, they are being forced out of business despite 

creating a superior product, a life enhancing product, fossil fuel energy, that in its modern incarnation even coal today is some of the 

cleanest energy people have ever had access to. In North Dakota 

you have some of the cleanest air in the country and an enormous 

amount of coal-fired power. 

I want to comment on the nature of the industry because it 

seems to be an easy way to score points to talk about somebody’s 

affiliation with the industry. Now, I do not happen to be funded by 

anybody, since I am an independent speaker and writer, but I am 

very proud that I sell books to and give speeches to fossil fuel companies. These are companies that everyday have individuals who 

are taking action to make all of us alive. 

And without being too rude about it, most of the people on this 

committee are quite into their years. Very few of you would be 

alive without cheap, plentiful, reliable energy. Everything you are 

wearing, whatever made it possible for you to get here is made possible by energy. And it is not just energy in general; you have to 

produce it cheaply, reliably, scaleably, efficiently. 

And you can talk about, oh, I think that can be done via solar. 

The way to figure that out is to compete on the free market. But 

as long as your life is being made possible by the people of the fossil fuel industry, I think you should be grateful, and I think it is 

a crime, a moral crime that you are damning anyone by association. 

And I wish Senator Whitehouse were here, because what he is 

doing to the free speech of those companies and anyone associated 

with them is unconstitutional, and I think he should apologize or 

resign. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you very much for the comments. I appreciate your being here. I appreciate your writings and appreciate 

you taking the time to be here. 
65 

Mr. EPSTEIN. Thank you. And I am serious. You violate the Constitute, you resign. I thought that was a policy in the United 

States. 

Senator BARRASSO. General Scales, the Department of Defense, 

under this Administration, has spent millions of Department of Defense funds on alternative fuels, and they have done it in the name 

of climate change. Now, this is despite millions in funding for alternative fuel research and other departments of Government. 

I think there is a thing that comes out each year called the Pig 

Book. It is about citizens against Government waste, and it talks 

about how the Navy, earlier in this Administration, spent in excess 

of $400 per gallon for about 20,000 gallons of algae-based fuel. Senator McCain frequently references this when he speaks. 

How is this improving readiness, safety of troops, sailors, airmen, by paying $400 per gallon for biofuels and other similar climate related Department of Defense—— 

Mr. SCALES. Well, thank you, Senator. First of all, let me say 

that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines understand intuitively, because they are of that generation, that they need to be 

good stewards of the environment, like all the rest of our citizens; 

and the military has an obligation not to pollute the atmosphere 

or to spill oil in motor pools. 

And I think, because the military is a disciplined organization, 

they do a remarkable job of—if you have ever been to a military 

installation like Fort Sill, you will see that they are very careful 

about protecting the environment. 

But to your point, when it gets to the point where the efficiency 

of our weapons, the ability of aircraft to fly and ships to sail are 

impeded by this obsession of going to alternative means of propulsion, or when the cost gets so high that things like readiness and 

modernization and manning levels are affected by the diversion of 

attention and funds, then it becomes a problem; and most of the 

military people I talk to about this issue tend to agree with that. 

They agree, protect the environment as a priority; but as a national 

security not so much. 

Senator BARRASSO. Well, and to your point, I would just say that 

I spent Thanksgiving with our Wyoming National Guard at 

Bagram Air Force in Northern Afghanistan, you know, north of 

Kabul, and the same things that you described that are occurring 

on the bases in the United States; our soldiers are doing the same 

job of protecting environment around the world. 

Mr. SCALES. Right. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Senator Barrasso. 

And for those who came in a little bit late, we extended our questioning time by a minute, to 6 minutes, in the hopes that everyone 

will stay within their 6 minutes. All right. 

Senator Markey. 

Senator MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. 

I have in my hand here the encyclical from Pope Francis, 

Laudato Si’, on the care of our common home. This is the Pope’s 

encyclical on the environment. He decided, in order to reinforce the 

message, to come to Capitol Hill. On Capitol Hill the Pope deliv-
66 

ered a sermon on the Hill to the members of the House and the 

Senate, and to the American people. 

As we all know, the Pope taught chemistry. The Pope taught 

chemistry. And here is what he said to us. He said, No. 1, the planet is dangerously warming, and the science is clear. No. 2, human 

beings are the most significant new contributor to the dangerous 

warming of the planet, and the science is clear. No. 3, since human 

beings are making this significant contribution to this problem, we 

have a moral responsibility to do something about it. The United 

States, as the historically largest contributor to greenhouse gases, 

red, white and blue CO2 up in the atmosphere, that we have a responsibility to be the leader to reduce the risk to this planet. 

Now, following on what Senator Whitehouse said, by the way, 

with whom I agree 100 percent, the issue then comes to why 

haven’t we dealt with this issue? What has been the problem? Well, 

the problem is that there are groups out there in the fossil fuel industry whose business model, whose profit making model aligns totally with adding more CO2 up into the atmosphere and denying 

the relationship between CO2 and the dangerous warming of the 

planet. They make money the more they contribute to the problem. 

The Koch brothers are the tip of that huge iceberg, but it is massive. 

Now, what is the evidence of that? Well, the evidence is that they 

have been the leaders in stopping the free market from working. 

They are the single greatest force fighting the free market in our 

country. Subsidies for the oil industry, 100 years old. Subsidies for 

the coal industry, 100 years old. Subsidies for the nuclear industry, 

70 years old. 

But try to get same level of subsidies for the wind and the solar 

industry, and these industries write letters to Members of Congress 

saying, please do not allow for the perversion of subsidies to infect 

the free market, even though their entire business premises are tax 

breaks from the Government. 

So they are acting at a hypocrisy level that is historic in size. 

And the Pope came here to talk about that, to talk about this 

power which these industries have. Even as recently as 2005 the 

United States was only producing 70 total megawatts new added 

to the grid from solar. Seventy total. 

And then we began to win, our side began to win; the tax breaks 

going on the books, the States having laws saying there had to be 

a portfolio, an amount of solar and wind that came to generate 

electricity. This year there is going to be 14,000 new megawatts of 

solar in 1 year. Only 70 total in 2005. For wind, 7,000 megawatts 

new. Almost nothing in 2005. 

So we have finally begun to break out. We are finally beginning 

to win. And what happens out on the free market when the same 

subsidies are given to the new technologies? Peabody Coal Company today declared bankruptcy. That is a free market, ladies and 

gentlemen. Finally, the new sources of energy can in fact compete. 

Let the free market work. 

Let the science also inform the decisions made with regard to 

what the effects are of using fossil fuels as a way of generating this 

electricity. 
67 

Same thing is true with the fuel economy standards of the vehicles which we drive. Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, they all said, 

oh, we cannot increase the efficiency of our vehicles, even though 

we know that those tailpipes are sending greenhouse gases up into 

the atmosphere. Finally, finally the Congress acted and passed the 

law that said, no, you must increase the fuel economy standards. 

Guess what happened? This year they are going to have the largest single sales of vehicles because the American people are finally 

realizing that they can have good cars with fuel efficiency and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases going up into the atmosphere. The free market, in other words, working. 

And when Waxman-Markey, this bill that the Koch brothers and others spent upwards of $300 million to defeat in the Congress, 

even in that bill Henry Waxman and I added $200 million for the 

coal industry, for the coal industry, $200 billion for carbon capture 

and sequestration. Peabody Coal said no. Peabody Coal said no. 

They said no. OK? So even as you tried to help the workers, even 

as you tried to create a bridge, they said no. 

So, ladies and gentlemen, from a national security perspective, 

this is dangerous. General Gordon Sullivan was my first witness on 

the Select Committee on Energy Conservation and Global Warming. Here is what he said. He was the Chief of Staff for the Army 

at Blackhawk Down Mogadishu. He said this in his testimony: one, 

he realized in retrospect that it was a drought that led to a famine 

that led to aid that had gone in, and now the gangs were now fighting in Somalia, and he had to order sending in Americans who got 

killed because of the impact of climate change in Somalia. This 

does have a national security impact. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Senator Markey. 

Senator Capito. 

Senator CAPITO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank the panelists for being here today. 

Obviously, I come at this from a very different perspective, living 

in and being a native West Virginian, which has a lot of fossil 

fuels, a lot of coal, a lot of families. And when I hear my colleague 

cheering that a major corporation in this country has gone bankrupt, you know what I think about? The thousands of families who 

now don’t know if they are going to be working, if they are going 

to have a paycheck. There is no off-ramp for them. Those employees have to come home today and wonder if they are going to be 

able to support their families. 

This isn’t something to cheer about. This is a human tragedy 

that I am living in my State of West Virginia. And they may get 

tired of hearing about the 10,000 jobs that we have lost in West 

Virginia, the county school systems that are now cutting 30 and 40 

and 50 teachers because of the loss of population, the pessimistic, 

downtrodden pockets of poverty that have been created in certain 

areas of our country, Wyoming being one, four States in recession 

because of the policies. 

You can say free market all you want. This is the policies that 

have been promulgated by this Administration that is maybe not 

the only cause, but one of the major causes of poverty creation in 

our own country. And I can’t even talk about it, hardly, without ex-
68 

pressing the disdain for the glee that I hear when poverty is being 

created, people are losing their jobs, families are being devastated. 

There is a better way to do this. There is a better way to do this. 

So my questions are, Mr. Epstein, you talk about the moral case 

for fossil fuels, and you talk about I think a lot of the conversation 

goes around what this does in the international community, but I 

am concentrating, obviously, on what is going on in our own country. So how do you see this impacting a low-income, particularly 

Appalachia? I am sure you have done study on that and looked at 

that area of the country. We are deeply affected by this. 

Mr. EPSTEIN. And again, the reason to have sympathy for the situation is that they are not being punished for doing something bad 

by the market. They are being punished for doing something good 

by people who believe that fossil fuels are evil. And I tried to give 

the big picture case why the exact opposite is true. 

As I mentioned at the beginning, energy is the industry that 

powers every other industry. So when the price of energy goes up, 

the price of everything else goes up. When the price of energy goes 

down, the price of everything else goes down. 

So every aspect of your life, you can’t even isolate one because 

it is the cost of your food, the cost of your clothing, the cost of your 

shelter, the success of your business, your ability to take a vacation, the cost of all the different modern miracles, the cost of your 

healthcare. They are all tied to energy. Even things like scientific 

inquiry. If we don’t have a machine-based civilization powered by 

cheap, plentiful, reliable energy, there are no universities. That is 

a modern development that came out of industrial fossil fueled civilization. 

So whenever anyone talks about something that even increases 

the price of energy a little bit, yet alone Germany three to four 

times, yet alone the Obama policies, which would do much worse, 

you have to think about that is killing people, that is making them 

suffer, that is preventing them from being able to afford medical 

care, that is making their food more expensive. Every aspect of life 

is made worse. 

But let’s look at the positive. If we can liberate energy in this 

next election, we have an unbelievable opportunity to improve 

every area of life in this country. 

Senator CAPITO. Thank you. I sat in the audience and listened 

to the Pope speak, and I was very appreciative of many of his 

words, and I thought he gave a very moving address to Congress 

and really to the Nation, and very appreciative of that. 

And certainly I was paying close attention to what he was saying 

about clean energy and climate change because that has big impacts on where I live. But what I heard him say after he talked 

about his concerns, he adds on his concern for poverty and what 

the cost of high energy and the changes that we are making drastically can do and what the cost of poverty is at the same time. So 

I was very appreciative of what he had to say, and I saw it through 

a different lens, I think, because of where I live. 

So very briefly, General, I know that the military has made a 

great emphasis with Secretary Panetta to move to green energy, 

and I think, as you know, we all know we can conserve and do better, and certainly the military is in that category. 
69 

But where I think we could make a better impact is to have 

longer timelines to develop more research, to use fossil fuels for jet 

engine. You can convert, and there is all kinds of research that 

could be occurring. Do you find that that is occurring within the 

DOD, or is it more of a drive to green energy, and that is it? 

Mr. SCALES. I do think—I know in Fort Sill and places in the 

Southwest they are using both wind energy and solar on post to reduce the cost of energy. I know that the services are experimenting 

with alternative fuels. But the bottom line is simply this: so far, 

at least, a fighter plane or a ship or a tank simply can’t be made 

efficient in close combat without the density of energy that is in liquid fossil fuels. You simply can’t do it. 

Now, I will also say that many of my colleagues are saying that 

in the long-term perhaps this will change. My concern is that if the 

commander-in-chief says to his soldiers, who obey orders, it is time 

to start thinking of other ways to propel a tank or an aircraft, it 

may cause something to happen before its time, and it may very 

well impede our ability to fight future wars. 

Senator CAPITO. Thank you very much. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you. 

Senator Gillibrand has very generously agreed to swap turns 

with Senator Sullivan. Then we will go back and take care of the 

rest. 

Thank you so much. 

Senator SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank my colleague from New York. I am going to go preside here in a minute, 

so thanks for the flop. I want to thank the Chairman and the 

Ranking Member for holding this hearing, and the witnesses. 

I think this is a really great topic, and it is also great to have 

a little bit of a heated debate here. So I appreciate you doing this. 

I know sometimes it is not easy; you have members of the committee on both sides trying to go after the incentives for you to be 

up here testifying, and I am just going to say I assume you are all 

here on good faith, on what you believe, so I really appreciate that. 

I also want to just echo what my colleague from West Virginia 

mentioned. I have the utmost respect for my friend from Massachusetts, but holy cow, if he is celebrating the bankruptcy and job loss 

of hundreds of Americans, we have something wrong going on here, 

in my view. We shouldn’t ever be doing that. 

I think she was very passionate about what she said and very 

persuasive, so I certainly hope nobody would—particularly on this 

committee—be celebrating the job losses and hard times that a lot 

of Americans—because of the policies of this Administration, certainly my State has seen that—are experiencing right now. 

I just want to touch very quickly, and Father, maybe you can 

touch on this. We talk a lot about moral imperative. I have been 

someone who thinks that one of the biggest issues that we don’t 

talk about here in this Congress, Democrats or Republicans, and it 

relates to these policies we are talking to, is that we can’t grow our 

economy. 

There is a debate on fossil fuels, Obamacare. We debate everything. There is one issue that is not debatable: the last 8 years, by 

any historical measure, have had some of the weakest economic 

growth in U.S. history. Never broken 3 percent GDP growth in the 
70 

entire Obama administration era. Last quarter I think we grew .1 

percent, and nobody even says anything. 

Is there a moral imperative to grow the economy and allow for 

free enterprise and free markets? That is what has made this country strong—strong traditional levels of American growth, 3, 4 percent GDP growth, Democrats, Republicans. We can’t even come 

close to it. 

So you know what they do in Washington now? They dumb it 

down. They don’t say, hey, we need to get back to 3 percent GDP 

growth, or 4, which will create opportunities for families, particularly those on the lower ladders of the economic ladder. We just 

dumb it down and say this is the new normal. The new normal. 

We are going to now tell Americans that we can only grow 1 percent. Don’t worry, you should be satisfied with that. 

The secretary of the Treasury never comes out and says, don’t 

worry, America, we grew it .1 percent GDP growth last quarter; I 

have a plan. No. They dumb it down and say we should just accept 

that, it is the new normal. 

Father, what do you think of that? 

I would also like Mr. Epstein to maybe weigh in on that one as 

well. 

Fr. SIRICO. Well, I have no doubt that one of the green passages 

that are underlined in Dr. Nelson’s Bible is the command of God 

to the newly created human family to multiply and have dominion 

over the world. 

But the normative way in which we rise out of poverty is through 

human action; it is through human beings using their intellect, 

using their freedom, engaging their talents and their risk to 

produce from the fruits of the earth because we do not become better off by having natural resources in nature. We become better off 

by having those resources drawn from nature and placed at human 

service. 

And the fossil fuel industry, it seems to me, has been one of 

those great resources of human betterment on this planet and the 

wealth of the United States historically, and indeed the world has 

been predicated on that. 

I find it a dangerously mistaken notion to think, and this may 

come as a shock to the committee, that the Government is the 

source of wealth in this country, or the source of jobs. And I saw 

that mistaken notion of thinking when the Senator from Massachusetts assumed that tax exemptions or credits were tax subsidies. 

If you want to resolve that whole problem and have a nice bipartisan approach, remove all of the subsidies and all of the credits 

from all of the industries and let them compete on the free market 

that Senator Markey, I think inadvertently, was endorsing. 

Senator SULLIVAN. Mr. Epstein, do you have a view on the issue 

of how we can’t grow the economy, what that does for hope, what 

that does for poverty, what that does for the outlook of the American family? 

Mr. EPSTEIN. I think one of the tensions on the committee on this 

issue is how do you weigh economic growth, and then how do you 

weigh these kinds of environmental considerations. And this is exactly the kind of consideration that is the subject of philosophy, 
71 

which Senator Boxer has said is unnecessary, although she thinks 

religion is necessary to evaluate science, which I don’t get. 

But what philosophy teaches us is how to look at the big picture, 

and with these issues the crucial concept, which is in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, is individual rights. We 

want the policies that protect the rights of individual to pursue 

their own flourishing without interference by others. So if you do 

it right, what you do is you set scientific, not speculative, but scientific thresholds for things like CO2, where there is no relevant 

threshold right now for different kinds of air pollution, for other 

things. 

So what you do is you liberate individuals to be as productive as 

possible while protecting each other’s rights, and that is absolutely 

possible. And if that were done we would have a thriving economy 

because fracking really slipped by Obama. He didn’t really know 

about it. If he had known about it, he would have probably tried 

to get it banned. 

So our prosperity right now depends on the ignorance of our politicians, which is pretty scary. But imagine if we had been free to 

frack, if we are free to produce energy, we are free in every other 

sector of the economy while having rational rights protecting environmental laws, we will grow 5 or 10 percent. 

Senator SULLIVAN. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank again my colleague from New York. 

Senator INHOFE. Yes. Thank you, Senator Sullivan. Go preside. 

Senator Gillibrand, again, thank you very much for accommodating his schedule. 

Senator GILLIBRAND. Thank you. This is quite a hearing. 

I have a copy of Pope Francis’ beautiful encyclical on climate 

change. Pope Francis reminds us the impacts of climate change are 

often most acutely felt by those who are most vulnerable and who 

do not have the resources to adapt. 

So, Reverend Nelson, can you talk a little bit about the effects 

that environmental degradation and resource scarcity has on communities like the one you serve in Memphis? Why do so many religious leaders believe that we have a moral imperative to address 

climate change? 

And just in response to the last area of debate, on page 9 it says, 

‘‘My predecessor, Benedict, likewise proposed eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and correcting models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring 

respect for the environment.’’ So just as a commentary on the last 

discussion. 

Reverend Nelson, I would like your thoughts. 

Rev. NELSON. Thank you. One of the great challenges in low-income communities is that many of them have had to bear the brunt 

of toxic waste, have had to deal with a number of issues regarding 

being located next to power plants that set off great emissions in 

the life of a community. 

We have seen children who have developed all types of illnesses. 

And one of the greatest pieces in the community that I was in was 

the issue of asthma, which causes children to miss many days of 

school. That is never recorded in any kind of educational record; it 
72 

is basically at the end of their tenure in school, they miss too many 

days or they haven’t been able to catch up with their work. So lowincome children end up being further and further behind in the 

educational process due to a lot of these kinds of toxic problems 

that they are having with the environment. 

And we are able to attribute—I think there is documentation 

across the board that has attributed that in most of these communities where there are heavy carbon emissions this is symptomatic 

of it, children not being able to make it to school and to be able 

to respond. 

Senator GILLIBRAND. Yes, Reverend. I have the same problem in 

many places in my State. In the Bronx we have one of the highest 

asthma rates, and it is because of the density of transportation networks that don’t rely on mass transit, as well as a lot of historic 

environmental degradation along with a lot of poor air quality. 

We also see it not just in our cities and our country, but we also 

see it around the world. I would like to submit for the record a 

New York Times article specifically about Africa. And this is about 

what is happening in Zambia because most of their electricity is 

generated from a dam, from the Kariba, and it says, ‘‘But today, 

as a severe drought magnified by climate change has cut water levels to record low, the Kariba is generating so little juice that blackouts have crippled the nation’s already hurting businesses. After a 

decade of being heralded as the vanguard of African growth, Zambia, in a quick, mortifying let down, is now struggling to pay its 

own civil servants and has reached out to the International Monetary Fund for help.’’ So this is a world problem. 

And I would like to submit that for the record, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator INHOFE. Without objection. 

Senator GILLIBRAND. Thank you. 

[The referenced article was not received at time of print.] 

Senator GILLIBRAND. Mr. Breen, I would like to talk a little bit 

about the Quadrennial Defense Review. It classified global climate 

change as a threat multiplier. Could you please discuss the impacts 

of resource competition, particularly those in the developing world, 

on political instability? Also talk about the impact of our own national security. 

And I know, because I serve on the Armed Services Committee, 

we have hardened a lot of our bases so that we are energy independent, so we don’t have to rely on Middle Eastern oil. We don’t 

even have to rely on fossil fuels. So we have Fort Drum, for example, that is entirely able to be off the grid at any moment and be 

entirely self-sustaining. 

So I see this military as understanding where the threats actually lie and responding to them through energy independence, 

through renewables. And if you talk to anybody on the battlefield, 

if they don’t have equipment that can recharge remotely, and not 

have to have large trucks of gasoline and oil delivering to bases, 

it is such a risk for them that they are dependent on these supply 

chains. So if they can have portable supplies, portable batteries, 

portable solar energy, it is so much more effective for our military 

and our fighting forces worldwide. 

So could you please comment on those thoughts? 

Mr. BREEN. Sure. Thank you, Senator. 
73 

The military is without a doubt doing a lot of things to make 

itself more agile and more lethal on the battlefield with respect to 

energy. There is nothing abstract about this; I lived this firsthand 

as a 23-year-old lieutenant in Iraq fighting every night to get the 

fuel convoy into my perimeter I needed to run an inefficient gas 

generator. Today my colleagues have solar panels and tactical solar 

systems that run the same. They don’t have to take the same kind 

of risks; they have taken action to reduce their logistical tail. 

The fuel purchase, the fuel tests that the Senator alluded to earlier, that is intended to make sure that the Navy’s fighter aircraft 

have combat capability with a broader range of fuel, so if something happens to the traditional petroleum fuel supply, they can 

operate on other fuels. That is about combat impact; that is about 

strategic flexibility. 

But to your point about the Quadrennial Defense Review, I really 

do want to make this point. It is not just official policy of the Department of Defense that national security is a risk; it is not just 

the consensus of these 16 retired admirals and generals and many 

others who have no skin in the game, commandants in the Marine 

Corps, chiefs of staff of the Army who sign their names to this. I 

represent an organization with over 1,500 people who served on the 

front lines, soldiers and civilians. 

What we have seen with our own eyes tells us these dynamics 

are real. When I was serving in Afghanistan the going rate to fire 

107-millimeter Chinese rocket at me and my paratroopers was $10. 

The people taking that money were farmers whose crops wouldn’t 

grow. Now, the guy giving them the money, that was the guy who 

we were in the country to capture or kill. He is not doing it because 

he is poor; he is a sworn enemy of the United States. But why are 

we making his job easier by failing to address the underlying conditions that allow him to recruit? And making my job harder by giving me more people to fight? 

If you have walked those hills and lived those dynamics, there 

is nothing abstract or theoretical about the impact of flooding and 

drought and famine. Of course, people who can’t feed their kids are 

going to turn to violence. And when they get organized in groups 

and start killing each other, that is called war. 

Senator GILLIBRAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just want to say one thing. I am disturbed by a lot of the testimony I have heard today. If we are talking about religious values 

and Judeo-Christian values, we are talking about the Golden Rule, 

which is love one another as you would love to be loved; treat one 

another as you would like to be treated; love one another with all 

our hearts and souls. Individualism, as you talk about, has nothing 

to do with that basic Judeo-Christian value. That is why we care 

about what policies we pass as a Nation and how they affect one 

another. We cannot live isolated lives and not care about effects. 

So when someone is talking about moving this country toward a 

renewable future, where we aren’t polluting our neighbors’ territories, our neighbors’ States, anything burned in the Midwest, it 

dumps all the toxins on New York State. There are communities 

that have cancer in the numbers for children and women because 

of toxins, because of what we do somewhere else in the country. 
74 

So please, as we debate these issues, and we are going to talk 

about values, let’s talk about our founding principles of this country. We have always believed that our democracy is strongest when 

we care about the least among us. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Senator Gillibrand. 

Senator Booker. 

Senator BOOKER. Mr. Chairman, I am very grateful for this hearing. I was a Mayor for 8 years of an inner city, and I had no time 

for philosophy besides reading, and I had the practicality of having 

to balance budgets and deliver services. I often talked to my Republican friends, who I worked in partnership with during my 

time, and said there was no government leader that cut government more than I did. I cut 25 percent of my work force while I 

was there; no government in New Jersey. The State, 21 counties, 

565 municipalities. I partnered with big banks like Goldman Sachs, 

and unions to bring about Newark, New Jersey’s biggest economic 

development boom in 60 years, bringing in billions and billions of 

dollars in development, new hotels, jobs, and the like. 

I am a pragmatist, a fierce pragmatist. And what is outrageous 

to me is people who want to preach the free market. But what they 

are really defending is a perversion of the free market like at colossal costs. We know there are things called negative externalities 

when it comes to business, and the challenge we have right now 

is we are allowing businesses and corporations to pass on costs to 

society. This Government spends billions and billions of dollars, 

this committee, brownfields clean up, Superfund clean up. Billions 

of dollars. I applied for these grants from Government to clean up 

the costs of businesses who did not assume their costs. 

I have one of the most polluted rivers in America in the Passaic 

River that we just approved billions of dollars to clean up the negative externalities of corporations that have, in a sense, going to philosophy, are poisoning the commons. The get all you can, pursue 

what you want philosophy is clearly destroying the commons in our 

country. 

And this, Pastor, which you so eloquently write about in your 

testimony, is the agony that I see every single day, that in a global, 

knowledge-based economy, the most valuable natural resource any 

country has is not gas or oil or coal, it is the genius of our children. 

We are squandering that natural resource in ways that are greater 

than the oil spill in the Gulf Coast or any spill off the coast of California. 

The No. 1 reason my kids miss school, the No. 1 reason my children in Newark, Camden, Passaic, Patterson miss school is because 

of the environmental toxins that cause them illnesses and ailments 

which our corporations outsourcing onto them, ranging from asthma to lead paint poisoning. I now have a city where nature has 

been so corrupted where I live, and I tell you right now, 100 Senators, I don’t know anyone that goes back to their home in a census 

track that is in poverty. 

So my community can’t dig in their soil because it is poisoned 

with lead. We have to use planters above because of negative 

externalities from corporations. We can’t fish in our water. All the 

clams, all the fish taken away. Can’t breathe the air because of toxins in the air are causing epidemic asthma rates. 
75 

What happens to a people that have been divorced from nature 

because of these negative externalities? The costs are clear. We can 

measure this data in terms of what it means to have lost productivity of children. Millions and millions of lost school days and work 

days because of these environmental toxins. So I believe in the free 

market, but what we have right now is a perversion of that market. And what you are doing, what we can’t measure is the lost genius of our children. 

Now, I know Memphis. My brother lives in Memphis. Ain’t that 

much different than Newark. And what is tragic to me is that the 

children of your city and my city, there is just as much genius 

there as in our wealthiest communities. That lost potential, that 

lost productivity, that lost artistry because of this philosophy that 

is a perversion of the free market. 

It is insulting to me that we are letting these costs consistently 

be passed on. We are not a Nation of individual rugged individualism. Rugged individualism didn’t get us to the Moon, it didn’t 

map the human genome. It is our genius cooperation and partnership one to another. I know in our Declaration of Independence we 

recognize this interdependency, this need for each other when we 

talk about pledging to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our 

sacred honor. Sacred honor. 

So, Pastor, in the 10 seconds I have left, God bless you for advocating true free market capitalism because the value of the children in your city, the environmental impact, what is it doing to the 

most precious resource God has ever created? Not coal in the 

ground, not gas released by fracking. The most valuable natural resource, what has it done? 

Rev. NELSON. It is damaging whole communities of people. And 

I believe that as we read our holy books, the reality is that community is the beginning of formation and how we are formed not only 

in the home, but how we are formed in the extended community 

itself. And when we find individuals who are dying of cancer too 

early, when we are looking at matriarchs and patriarchs of families 

who are struggling with what it means to work and come home and 

develop all kinds of sicknesses and illnesses, it deals with not only 

the psyche of parents of children and how they raise them, but it 

also deals with the fabric of whole families. 

We are struggling with what that means. It is not just the issue 

of the physical illnesses but also what it does to a person mentally, 

who cannot work, who cannot provide for their families, who are 

finding themselves struggling with energy and having sustaining 

energy in their own lives to be able to go to work every day and 

come home. 

This has a devastating effect upon whole populations of people, 

but more importantly it has a devastating effect upon families. And 

when we talk about building family life and the life of the United 

States of America, one of the realities is when parents come home 

sick, when they come home struggling, when they can’t work, and 

then when their children can’t go to school, and they are poor and 

don’t have the levels of assistance to either take care of those family members or those children, it puts a whole cycle of people in 

poverty and they remain there. 

Senator BOOKER. Thank you, sir. 
76 

Senator INHOFE. I thank the panel. 

Against my better judgment, my Ranking Member has asked for 

3 minutes to close, and I will grant that as the Chairman of this 

committee, but it will be only 3 minutes, and I will be following 

with 3 minutes. Then we will be adjourning. 

Senator Boxer. 

Senator BOXER. Thanks. 

I will never forget this hearing. First, we have a philosopher who 

wants Senator Whitehouse to resign, Senator Whitehouse who is 

working every day to stop carbon pollution and save lives. We have 

a philosopher telling us that Senator Whitehouse should resign. 

Then we have Father Sirico, who is proud to ask for more money 

from polluting corporations right here at the Environment Committee. He asked for more money from polluting corporations. Then 

we have a retired general who turns on the DOD. We have a Republican Senator who compares taking political money from polluters to taking political money from environmental advocates. 

And we have another Republican Senator, this is unbelievable, 

blaming President Obama for slow economic growth, when the average yearly job growth under President Obama is 1.3 million, OK, 

average yearly growth of jobs, compared to 160,000 year under 

George W. Bush, who actually didn’t create one new private sector 

job. 

Now, look, to many people’s delight and some people’s sadness, 

I won’t be here that much longer, but I have to tell you this hearing—I thank my Chairman for it because we have a job to do. This 

is the Environment Committee. We need to get back to what our 

mission is. I was here when Republicans and Democrats worked together. I mean, Senator Booker is trying so hard to do it today, and 

he is making progress and all of us are. 

But that was the norm. The days of John Warner, the days of 

John Chaffee, the days when we could look across the aisle and realize maybe we didn’t have every Democrat, but we sure picked up 

a few Republicans, it is gone. It is gone. The very people who testified and said climate change is real, we have to do something about 

it, when I took the gavel, which was so lovely, in 2008, those people 

have all changed; they are gone. They either quit or they are not 

around. Why? The insidious role of dirty money in politics, sometimes it is secret, sometimes it is not so secret. 

Father, I respect you. You are right there. Give me more corporate money. Oh, yes, I take money from the Koch brothers, just 

a little. Oh, I take money from Exxon, but it is just a little. How 

can you not have a compass inside that tells you it is not right, 

that there is a conflict there, when you testify on the environment 

in front of the Environment Committee and don’t realize that you 

have a conflict? 

So let’s get back, Mr. Chairman, to the days when we had cooperation on this. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you, Senator Boxer. 

Now I want to take my 3 minutes. 

First of all, if you are talking about why is it you never hear from this side about Tom Steyer, who said he is going to put $100 

million to try to resurrect the issue of global warming? Why is it 

we keep hearing the same thing from the individuals over here 
77 

that the science is settled, the science is settled, when in fact it is 

not settled? 

Why is it we hear from people over here that when you have an 

increase in the emissions it produces warmer weather, when in 

fact, starting in 1895, that was the first time that they came along 

and declared and used the word another ice age is coming? Then 

that changed in 1918, then in 1945. It happens that we went into 

a cooling period in 1995. Now, 1995 was the year of the greatest 

increase in the release, this was right after the war, of greenhouse 

gases, and it precipitated not a warm period, but a cold period. 

Last, I would say I was kind of going for memory, so I haven’t 

looked it up, but I do know, and it seems to be truer today when 

I read I think it is Romans 1:25, when they said we will come to 

the point when we will be worshiping not the creator, but the creation. I think we have come to that point. 

Now, I have a minute and a half left over, and I think perhaps, 

Father, you were attacked a little bit more than the rest. You take 

about 45 seconds. 

Then the same with you, Mr. Epstein. And if there is anything 

left over, General, you got it. 

Fr. SIRICO. Thank you, Senator. I am from Brooklyn, so I can 

take an attack. I can also give one, too. And let me just point out 

how, again, I want to be polite, the word is disingenuous to have 

people quote to me parts of a papal encyclical or a papal elocution 

like the sermon that was delivered here and only choose the parts 

that are not magisterial parts, certainly things that he said as a 

man who is reflecting on these things, but not those very parts that 

are key to his pontificate, namely the things having to do not just 

with life vis-a`-vis the environment, but life in the womb, which you 

have opposed. And the disingenuity of all of this is of great concern 

to me. 

The question that Senator Booker raises about externalities is an 

exactly precise and good question and is better resolved by a clearer definition of the right of private property; not by obscuring the 

right of private property or controlling it or taxing it but precisely 

to define it more clearly so that people are responsible for those 

externalities and the vulnerable don’t suffer from it. 

I respect the time. 

Senator INHOFE. Thank you. 

The time has expired. We are adjourned, and I thank very much 

our witnesses for coming and exposing themselves to this type of 

treatment. 

[Whereupon, at 11:30 a.m. the committee was adjourned.] 

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