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57–964 2010

GEOPOLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RISING OIL 

DEPENDENCE AND GLOBAL WARMING 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON 

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE 

AND GLOBAL WARMING 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 18, 2007 

Serial No. 110–1 

( 

Printed for the use of the Select Committee on 

Energy Independence and Global Warming 

globalwarming.house.gov 


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SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE 

AND GLOBAL WARMING 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Chairman 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

STEPHANIE HERSETH, 

South Dakota 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin, Ranking Member 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

DAVID MOULTON, Staff Director 

ALIYA BRODSKY, Chief Clerk 

THOMAS WEIMER, Minority Staff Director 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement .................................................... 1 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 4 

Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Wisconsin, opening statement .............................................................. 7 

Hon. Jay Inslee, a Representative in Congress from the State of Washington, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 8 

Hon. John Shadegg, a Representative in Congress from the State of Arizona, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 9 

Hon. John Larson, a Representative in Congress from the State of Connecticut, opening statement ................................................................................ 10 

Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 10 

Hon. Emanuel Cleaver II, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Missouri, prepared statement ............................................................................. 12 

Hon. John Hall, a Representative in Congress from the State of New York, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 13 

Hon. Candice Miller, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, opening statement ....................................................................................... 13 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15 

Hon. Jerry McNerney, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 18 

Hon. John Sullivan, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oklahoma, opening statement .................................................................................... 18 

Hon. Hilda Solis, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 18 

Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Tennessee, opening statement ............................................................................ 19 

WITNESSES

General Gordon R. Sullivan, USA (Ret.), Chairman, Military Advisory Board . 20 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 22 

Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations ............................... 60 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 63 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 204 

Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club ........................................................... 69 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 71 

Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, USA (Ret.) ............................................................. 81 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 83 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 205 

R. James Woolsey, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton .................................... 100 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 102 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 210 

SUBMITTED MATERIALS

Submitted by Mr. Markey, ‘‘The Power of Green’’, Thomas L. Friedman, 

New York Times, April 15, 2007 ......................................................................... 179 

Submitted by Mr. Walden, California Forests Report from Winter 2006, Volume 10 Number 1, Global Climate Change—Forestry Never Looked So 

Cool ........................................................................................................................ 136 

Landmark Vehicle and Fuel Choices Legislation: The DRIVE Act document, 

April 16, 2007 ....................................................................................................... 121 


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GEOPOLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RISING OIL 

DEPENDENCE AND GLOBAL WARMING 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2007 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

AND GLOBAL WARMING, Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:35 a.m. In Room 1100, 

Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Edward J. Markey [chairman of the committee] Presiding. 

Present: Representatives Markey, Blumenaur, Inslee, Larson, 

Herseth Sandlin, Cleaver, Hall, McNerny, Sensenbrenner, Shadegg, Walden, Sullivan, Blackburn, and Miller. 

Staff present: Ana Unruh-Cohen and Michal Freedhoff. 

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. We thank you 

all for being with us for this, the inaugural hearing of the Select 

Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Today’s 

witnesses have been invited because they have spent their lives 

thinking about what must be done to defend our planet and how 

the twin imperatives of defending our environment and defending 

our freedom have begun to merge into a single issue. 

This committee has been given an awesome charge, to press the 

institutions of democracy, to change business as usual in an overdue effort to respond to the twin challenges of our dependence on 

imported oil and the looming catastrophe of global warming. These 

problems are intertwined, and this hearing today is intended to 

highlight the fact that just as the oil security problem has a major 

global warming dimension, climate change has a major global security dimension. If we are to address either problem effectively, we 

must make sure we don’t make one problem better by making the 

other one worse. 

It seems clear that our geopolitical and national security posture 

will only grow worse if we do not act forcefully to curb our dangerous dependence on imported oil and reduce our emissions of 

global warming pollution. It is a double threat like Orthus, the 

monstrous two-headed hound of Greek mythology, with one head 

facing backwards and the other forwards. 

Our ever-rising oil dependence is directly attributable to a backwards-facing energy policy. While looking forward, we can see the 

threat of rising temperatures and the subsequent increasing risk of 

natural and humanitarian disasters. We have become all too familiar with the volatility in gasoline prices that occurs as a result of 

domestic or foreign events, be it the capture of British sailors by 

Iran or the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina. Gas prices 


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have jumped up early this year, well before the summer driving 

season, and are now over $3 a gallon for regular at many stations, 

reflecting once again the insecurity and, indeed, sheer folly of tethering our economic well-being to unstable foreign sources of oil, 

governed by regimes which are in some cases supporters of or participants in the war on terror. 

Forty-five percent of the world’s oil is located in Iraq, Iran and 

Saudi Arabia. Events in those countries have a dramatic impact on 

oil prices and our national security. In the late 1970s the oil embargo, Iranian revolution, and Iran-Iraq war sent the price of oil 

skyrocketing. And today with Osama bin Laden urging his followers to attack Saudi Arabian oil, with Iraq descending further 

into chaos and with Iran marching further down the path towards 

developing nuclear weapons, we are seeing the very same sort of 

pain at the pump because of the very same sort of global instability. 

In an article in the New York Times magazine this past weekend, Thomas Friedman stated that soaring oil prices are poisoning 

the international system by strengthening antidemocratic regimes 

around the globe. It is no coincidence that we have 130,000 young 

men and women in Iraq right now, with at least another 25,000 on 

the way. It is no coincidence that we are spending more than $100 

billion a year to keep those troops there, in addition to the nearly 

$300 billion we spend each year importing all the oil we use in the 

first place. Much of these funds end up in the pockets of Arab 

princes and potentates who then funnel the money to al Qaeda, 

Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups. 

Our energy policy has compromised our economic freedom, and 

the American people want action because they know that the price 

has become much too high. We know that we cannot simply drill 

our way to energy independence. 

The United States is home to less than 3 percent of the world’s 

oil reserves, but it is itself the world’s largest consumer and importer of oil. Last year oil imports reached 60 percent, an average 

of 12.5 million barrels per day, amounting to an annual cost of 

$291 billion to the American people. 

While moving to renewable fuels that has grown in the soil of the 

Midwest rather than removed from the sands of the Middle East 

can help, the single biggest step we can take to curb today’s oil dependence and remove OPEC’s leverage is to raise the fuel economy 

standards of our automotive fleet. 

I have introduced a bill, H.R. 1506, which would require the combined car and light truck fleet to achieve 35 miles per gallon by 

2018, which amounts to an average of 4 percent per year improvement, an increase that is mandatory over this first 10 years by ensuring that fuel economy standards keep pace with technological 

development. By 2022, it would be an increase to 40 miles per gallon. 

From the most recent scientific evidence, it is clear that we must 

act now as well on the threat of carbon emissions from cars and 

other sources which pose threats to the environment. 

At the beginning of February, the world’s top scientists, as part 

of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change, provided a scientific smoking gun that human activities 


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were unequivocally responsible for global warming. Two weeks ago, 

their second report told us what happens when the climatic bullet 

hits; the developed world will bear the brunt—the developing 

world, rather, will bear the brunt of the collateral damage from our 

historic global warming emissions, but the United States will experience its own self-inflicted wounds, including threats to our national security and military readiness. 

Today we will hear the first congressional testimony on this critical issue. Generals and admirals who have spent a lifetime on battlefields are telling us that global warming is a major strategic 

weakness. So today I am introducing the Global Climate Change 

Security Oversight Act which authorizes a national intelligence estimate to assess the security implications of global warming to the 

United States and its military. The bill, the House companion to 

the legislation already introduced by Senator Durbin and Senator 

Hagel, will provide a crucial planning and risk assessment tool as 

the Congress seeks innovative solutions to global warming. Developed to assess the most serious threats to the United States, NIEs 

are the most authoritative intelligence judgments concerning national security issues. This legislation will also fund research by 

the Defense Department into the consequences for U.S. military operations posed by global warming. 

But U.S. military leaders are not the only ones concerned about 

the security implications of global warming. Yesterday the United 

Nations Security Council held a historic debate on energy climate 

and security. Representatives of 55 countries discussed global 

warming’s implications for peace and security around the world. 

Hercules eventually vanquished the two-headed Orthus. And as we 

will hear today, we have the tools, the technology, and the knowhow to accomplish our own Herculean task of overcoming both oil 

dependence and global warming pollution. 

Let me now turn and recognize the Ranking Member of the committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Sensenbrenner. 

[The statement of Mr. Markey follows:] 

[The information follows:] 


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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And 

I want to welcome everyone to this first-ever oversight hearing of 

the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global 

Warming. Contrary to some press reports, this is not a new issue. 

As the former Chairman of the House Science Committee, I held 

numerous hearings on this topic. During that time, I heard my fair 

share of extreme predictions, dire forecasts, and gloomy outlooks. 

This committee has no legislative jurisdiction. And if we are to find 

a workable solution to climate change problems, I believe we need 

to be realistic and talk about commonsense ideas and commonsense 

solutions. Unfortunately, this debate has not been characterized by 

common sense. It has been characterized by extremism. While this 

extremism hasn’t done anything to produce effective solution, it has 

created a lot of hot air, which isn’t good for Congress’ carbon footprint. 

But extremism has produced a lot of fear. Take this story from 

Monday’s Washington Post as an example. The headline reads, 

quote, ‘‘Climate Change Scenarios Scare and Motivate Kids,’’ unquote. In this story one 9-year-old student foresees an Earth 20 

years from now that will have no oxygen. There is no credible scientific evidence to support such a cataclysmic fear, but with all the 

scary news that we all have read on this issue, how can you blame 

children for being afraid? 

I know that this is an area where the science seems to be the 

most skewed, and politicians and pundits aren’t doing very much 

to clarify it. While science has taught us many things about climate 

change and greenhouse gas, one area there is no scientific consensus, contrary to popular belief, is the effects of climate change. 

Perhaps nowhere is this divergence more evident than in some of 

the claims made by former Vice President Al Gore. In his movie he 

predicts a 20-foot rise in sea levels. But what does the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict? A 23-inch rise in 

sea levels. And data was submitted yesterday to a Science Committee hearing that I attended that showed that there has been 

less than a 3-inch rise in sea levels in the 42-year span between 

1961 and 2003. There is a world of difference between 20 feet, 23 

inches, and less than 3 inches, and no wonder why the poor child 

who was interviewed by The Washington Post is scared. In fact, 

many scientists have questioned Mr. Gore’s doomsday scenarios. 

A recent article in The New York Times chronicled several scientists’ call to cool the hype. One scientist said Mr. Gore was, 

quote, ‘‘overselling our certainty about knowing the future.’’ One 

thing that is certain is that some of the solutions proposed by extremists would have devastating effects on our economy. Europe 

has adopted these so-called solutions. The results: soaring electricity rates, factories slowing down because they are too expensive 

to power, and jobs moving to countries like China that aren’t subject to regulations. 

Will Europe’s environment benefit from the slowdown of its economy? I doubt it. The Republican members of this committee care 

about both the environment and the economy. And Republicans on 

this committee know that we can protect both in addressing this 

problem. 


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I will have many questions about why global warming has suddenly become an issue of national defense. I do agree that as a 

country we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We especially need to reduce our energy dependence on countries that do 

not share our democratic values. New technology, along with wind 

and solar power, can help us reduce that dependence. So can nuclear power. If done right, we can implement these new power 

sources and reduce our carbon output and dependence on foreign 

oil without devastating our economy, throwing people out of work, 

and outsourcing jobs to Third World countries. 

These are the types of solutions that my Republican colleagues 

and I will be seeking, and I thank the gentleman for the time. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Now under the rules, each of the members can make a 3-minute 

opening statement. I will reserve their time and add it to their 5 

minutes to question the witnesses, thereby having 8 minutes to 

question the witnesses. It is within the discretion of each member. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. 

Blumenauer. 

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate both 

the provocative statements that we have heard. My preference 

would be to get to our witnesses as soon as possible. So I will defer. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman reserves his time. The gentleman 

from Washington State, Mr. Inslee. 

Mr. INSLEE. Yeah, I would like to say a couple things. First of 

all, it may seem unusual to say that we are lucky here this morning. But I think we are lucky for two reasons. The first reason, I 

think it will become very apparent to us that we are going to have 

a way to solve both—two horses of the Apocalypse by taking the 

same actions, and we are going to be able to unite Americans 

around a solution to these two problems of energy security and 

global warming. And I think it is important to say that because 

while this has kicked up a lot of storm and controversy, ultimately 

this country is going to be united for a solution to these two problems. I consider us lucky in that regard. 

And secondly, most importantly, the reason why I consider us 

lucky, I believe it is America’s destiny to lead the world into the 

technological solutions to these twin problems. And I just want to 

share an observation about why I think global warming has been 

controversial. It has been surprising to me that people who use a 

microwave oven that depends on quantum mechanics, and a cell 

phone that depends on quantum mechanics, have refused to recognize the scientific consensus on global warming. And I think their 

reason is fear. 

My friend, Mr. Sensenbrenner, related fear of some grade-school 

children. I think there is a lot of fear in Congress. I think there 

is a lot of fear that we aren’t smart enough to develop the technologies to deal with this problem. And the anecdote to fear is confidence. 

And I just want to note a meeting we had last Friday in Seattle, 

Washington, where we brought together some companies that are 

dealing with the technologies, the American technologies to solve 

this problem. The Ramgen Company has developed a way to compress CO2 that could help us have clean coal. The Verdiem ComVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:48 Nov 22, 2010 Jkt 057964 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A964.XXX A964

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pany that has figured out a way to save 30 percent of your electricity in your computer system. The Imperial Energy Company 

that is going to build the largest biodiesel plant in the Western 

Hemisphere. The Finavera Company has figured out a way to get 

energy from wavepower. The Prometheus Energy Company has figured out a way not to vent methane but to develop electricity. The 

MagnaDrive Company that has developed electrical generating motors that can save 30 to 40 percent of the energy costs associated 

with them. 

I suggest that this problem and these two problems are the largest economic opportunity America has ever had. And America does 

well when there is economic and technological transition, and we 

are going to do well here. And I just hope that when we adopt the 

new Apollo Energy Act, which I will be introducing shortly, that we 

will get Members to support the idea of confidence and optimism. 

That is what we are going to take out of these meetings. Thank 

you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Shadegg. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. In recognition that today’s hearing is the first of this select 

committee, I want to say that I welcome this debate on climate 

change and hope that this committee, along with other committees 

in the House, will investigate the matter, weighing the science as 

well as the costs and benefits of various policy options. 

I agree that the United States should consider the risk of climate 

change as a potential national security concern. However, I also believe that extreme poverty in developing nations is also a potential 

national security concern, and limiting human freedom around the 

world is a potential national security concern, and policies that 

damage the world’s economy are potential national security concerns. Indeed there are countless potential national security concerns, many of them related to our need for energy. Worst-case scenarios should be considered and assessed, but that does not mean 

they should be the cornerstones of U.S. policy. There are many 

tools at our disposal, including adaptation that can be effective in 

addressing the potential impacts of a warming climate. 

President Klaus of the Czech Republic, in writing to the Energy 

and Commerce Committee several weeks ago, expressed his view 

that while discussing climate, we are not witnessing so much a 

clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about 

human freedom. Regarding developing nations he wrote: They will 

not be able to cope with the limits and standards imposed on the 

world by irrational environmental policies. Their products will have 

difficult access to the developed markets. And as a result, the gap 

between the developing nations and the developed world will 

widen. 

President Klaus’ language should give us a sense of how difficult 

it will be to get these nations to join us in a quest to reduce carbon, 

and of the importance of pursuing energy alternatives that will not 

limit or damage the economies of developing nations or the world’s 

economy. These developing nations are faced with a moral question. Do they restrain the growth of their energy supply demand 


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in their economies considering that hundreds of millions of their 

citizens live in dire poverty? 

We have heard testimony in the Energy and Commerce Com- mittee that over 300 million Indians live on less than $1 per day; 

700 million live on less than $2 per day. Facing this economic reality, can we expect policymakers in India or China or other developed nations to limit their nation’s economic growth? Or must we 

help these nations grow their economies and raise standards of living through alternative energy sources and efficiency gains so that 

environmental and adaptation concerns are manageable problems 

rather than global crises? 

History has shown that countries that can afford to care about 

the environment do. Put another way, as former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi once said, the ultimate polluter is poverty. 

These are difficult questions, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for 

holding this hearing that will hopefully help us begin to resolve 

them. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. 

Larson. 

Mr. LARSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me commend 

you and also the leadership of Speaker Pelosi for having the vision 

to understand the need to get both sides of the aisle to come together and coalesce around the vitality of ideas that can deal with 

this very important issue. 

I am looking forward to the testimony of our panelists, and I 

truly believe that we are in a race between catastrophe and cooperation. And I think to the extent that this committee can come 

together and have a robust exchange of ideas and not end up being 

central casting for Inherit the Wind, part 2, I think we will be able 

to move forward in a manner in which the Nation will be well 

served. 

And I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Walden. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate 

the opportunity to hear from our witnesses today. And I spent most 

of the April break touring around my district, meeting with people 

who are developing alternative energy, a lot of which was prompted 

by passage and enactment of the 2005 Energy Policy Act for America which is spurring development of wind energy. I toured a 100- 

megawatt wind energy facility out of North Power, Oregon, out of 

Union that is set to go online. I toured a 40-million-gallon-a-year 

ethanol plant that should open this July at the Port of Morrow in 

Boardman, Oregon. I met with the pollen grain growers and talked 

about their ability to produce biodiesel fuels. 

And I am a big advocate of renewable energy, but I grow somewhat perplexed at those who say we have become so reliant on foreign oil—and I, frankly, agree with them, and that is a bad thing 

for our Nation’s security and economy at times. But then also they 

are doing everything they can to stop us from developing our own 

resources available here in the United States, whether that is oil 

or natural gas. 


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I spent a lot of time in this Congress over the last few years 

chairing the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health. I worked 

closely with my colleague from South Dakota, Representative 

Herseth, on legislation to try to clean up her forests. One forest in 

Oregon that burned in 2003, the B&B fire, in a matter of a couple 

weeks put twice as much carbon into the atmosphere in Oregon 

and other greenhouse gases as the entire State of Oregon emits in 

a year combined. In a year. 

And yet there are those who are advocating for us to do everything we can to address this issue of global warming and climate 

change, and I think there are a lot of things we can do, and I am 

actually excited about some of the opportunities. But there are also 

the very people who don’t want us to do anything to manage our 

forests. 

And yet overseas, we read in The Washington Post, the illegal 

logging that is going on is eliminating the forests in China and Indonesia and other Asian countries, so we can import that wood 

here at a time when we have forests that are overstocked, overgrown, subject to catastrophic fire and emitting enormous amounts 

of loads of carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, 

and we refuse to do anything about it. 

So I think there are opportunities here to improve management 

of our Federal forestlands, to encourage and incent development of 

renewable and low-polluting new sources of energy, to encourage 

conservation efforts and more efficiencies. 

And I look forward to our hearings and the testimony from our 

witnesses. And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentlelady from South Dakota, Ms. Herseth. 

Ms. HERSETH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will reserve my time 

so that we can get to the testimony. And as a matter of personal 

privilege, a couple colleagues and I will have to go to a short markup in the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, but we will return promptly 

to hear the testimony of our distinguished panelists today. Thank 

you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time is reserved. The gentleman 

from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I reserve my time also, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Cleaver follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Hall. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member and 

distinguished panel. I am proud to be named to this committee. I 

am eager for the committee to get to work. The subject matter for 

our first hearing could not be more appropriate. 

Our dependence on foreign oil and our changing environment 

constitute nothing less than significant threats to our national security that must be met with swift aggressive action. Reliance on 

imported fossil fuels already sends hundreds of billions of dollars 

overseas each year, damages our economy with energy prices that 

burden family budgets and creates public health risks by spewing 

pollution into the environment. Left unchecked, our growing dependence on foreign sources of energy will leave our Nation increasingly vulnerable to the whims of OPEC and the upheaval in 

the world’s most unstable regions. 

At the same time, the widespread impacts of climate change will 

enhance the threat of severe weather disasters and create global 

instability. 

Meeting our national security threats posed by the dependence 

on foreign oil and climate change will require a concerted national 

effort. For too long, too little has been done by our national leadership to mobilize the American people to meet this challenge. Finding the solutions necessary will require commitment and difficult 

choices, but I believe that just as the Nation pulled together to support the war effort through World War II, just as we rose to meet 

the challenge that President Kennedy gave us of going to the Moon 

in 10 years—which we actually accomplished in 9—we can unite 

now to do what is necessary to combat climate change and energy 

insecurity. And, at the same time, those same actions will help to 

reduce asthma and emphysema, especially among our children in 

our inner cities, and to reduce acid rain and to reduce oil spills and 

to reduce mercury contamination and to reduce our—to balance the 

trade deficit and to reduce our difficulties in securing oil in parts 

of the world where they are unstable or unfriendly regimes. 

And maybe most importantly, if and when we win this particular 

battle, we meet this particular challenge, I believe it will give us 

as a Nation a psychological boost, not just an economic boost, because I believe a lot of these jobs will be created in the new industries we are talking about here, and that is certainly my hope, but 

it will give us an emotional boost that this country sorely needs. 

So I am excited to be here and look forward to your testimony. 

And thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentlelady from Michigan, Mrs. Miller. 

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am delighted to be a member of this committee. I think both of our leaderships on both sides have done an outstanding job of picking a 

very diverse group of our colleagues here, and I look forward to 

working on an issue that has no partisan barriers, of course, and 

that is advocating for our environment and being environmentally 

sensitive. 

And as I understand the purpose of the committee, it really is 

to seek government policy solutions to the problem of global climate 

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ing be about the geopolitical implications of oil dependence and climate change, because I truly believe that energy security and energy independence equals national security. And I also sit on the 

House Armed Services Committee, so I really believe this very 

much. 

And, of course, as the President has said and as has been said 

here today, we are a Nation addicted to oil. And just like drug 

abusers, we buy the product that we are addicted to from some 

very unsavory characters from across the globe. We buy energy 

from nations like Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, who is openly hostile to America. We buy energy from some of the Middle East 

where funds are sometimes siphoned off to support those who hate 

America. And let’s face it, many of these countries would be much 

less interesting if we did not need that oil. 

There has to be a better way, and do I believe that there is. In 

fact, I represent a district in southeast Michigan which is home, as 

you might all know, to the domestic auto industry, which is under 

a microscope for environmental sensitivity. And wouldn’t it be better for America if we produced automobiles that got not only higher 

fuel economy, but ran on much different types of fuel than oilbased gasoline, fuels like ethanol or biodiesel or hydrogen? That 

day is coming and it is coming if we stand up and give our domestic auto industry a helping hand instead of hitting it with a hammer. 

Wouldn’t it be better for America if we could produce automobiles 

that we could plug in to charge in a battery in our garage and 

never have to use the gas engine on a short trip? That day is coming if we share the vision with our incredible scientists. 

In fact, Mr. Chairman, let me take this opportunity to formally 

ask the committee to consider having a field hearing in Detroit, in 

southeast Michigan, at the home of the domestic auto industry 

where we can actually see all of these exciting new technologies 

and how they are being utilized in the future. 

This technology is coming. The only question is whether or not 

America will lead the way, as we have throughout the Industrial 

Revolution. The geopolitical implications of energy independence 

are clear. In America, where we are not forced to fund our enemies 

but instead support the betterment of our own society, that should 

be the primary focus of our energy policy, one that supports American enterprise and ingenuity that drives our economy forward. 

And I think if this goal is accomplished, America and the world 

will be a much better place. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will reserve the balance of any remaining time that I may have. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Great. 

[The statement of Mrs. Miller follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. And the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 

California, Mr. McNerney. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today we have a 

rare opportunity to unite our great Nation to develop a national 

mandate to educate and mobilize our country with a great national 

purpose, much like Sputnik mobilized the prior generation. 

This committee can be the focus for that change and mobilization, and I look forward to participating in that transformation. I 

reserve the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. And the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 

Oklahoma, Mr. Sullivan. 

Mr. SULLIVAN of Oklahoma. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And 

thank you for holding this historic first hearing of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on the geopolitical implications 

of rising oil dependence and global warming. It is an honor to be 

at the epicenter of the debate on climate change. 

Protecting the environment is neither a Democrat nor a Republican issue but a bipartisan issue that all Americans should discuss 

and address. Our country has become too dependent on foreign energy resources, especially oil that is produced in a volatile part of 

the world. I believe the answer to this problem comes from increased U.S. energy independence. We can achieve this by expanding our domestic refining capacity and expanding our domestic energy production both on and offshore. 

It is also important that we look at alternative fuels as a viable 

option for Americans’ energy needs. I welcome the debate on this 

issue and commit to this process with an open mind. I believe we 

can work together to find workable solutions, commonsense regulations, and address the issue of climate change without destroying 

the American economy or losing American jobs. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back the remainder of my 

time. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentlelady from California, Ms. Solis. 

Ms. SOLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also want to commend you and Speaker Pelosi for allowing me the opportunity to 

serve on this very prestigious select committee, and knowing that 

this is our first hearing how important it is to hear from our witnesses, so I want to thank them for also being here this morning. 

Two months ago I spoke at the Helsinki Commission, on behalf 

of the United States delegation, to address energy security and climate change. Parliamentarians from across Europe agreed that we 

must address the issue of security and climate change together. 

Many oil-producing countries lack the political will or social framework for good governance in the energy sector. Producing countries 

such as Iran and Russia may use energy reserves to attain political 

objectives and increase political influence. In the United States, as 

we know, we are home to less than 3 percent of the world’s reserves and more than 60 percent of the oil consumed in the U.S. 

is imported, costing our Nation more than $290 billion annually. 

The dependency on oil makes us subject to the international 

risks associated with unpredictable and unstable nations. The report titled ‘‘National Security and the Threat of Climate Change’’ 


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underscored the connection between security, energy use and climate change, and clearly outlined the risks of inaction. It concluded that climate change is a threat multiplier for instability in 

some of the most volatile regions in the world, resulting in already 

weak and failing governments being pushed toward authoritarianism and radical ideologies. 

Globally, food security, transport industry, and human health 

will be impacted, all issues at the root of instability and conflict. 

Failure to take action may result in the United States being drawn 

more frequently into conflict situations. 

And yesterday the Secretary General of the United Nations stated and, I quote, ‘‘Compared to the cost of conflict and its consequences, the cost of prevention is far lower in financial terms, 

but, most importantly, in human lives and life quality.’’ and I agree 

with this. 

The risks associated with inaction are far too great. The impacts 

of global warming, such as heat waves, would disproportionately affect low-income and underrepresented communities here in the 

United States. And just this week Latino, religious, African American leaders highlighted the risks of inaction to the health of vulnerable communities and populations. 

Military advisors have also highlighted the risks in terms of national security. The development of domestic policies that reduce oil 

consumption and emissions are critical to increasing options for 

protecting our interests abroad and here at home. Simply put, we 

need aggressive action to curtail our thirst for energy. 

I look forward to discussing these policy issues with you, and 

thank the witnesses for being here. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The gentlelady from Tennessee, Mrs. Blackburn. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to serve on the committee and I am looking forward to 

a healthy and judicious debate over the issue of climate change. 

As we look at the causes of climate change, I think it is imperative that we look at the whole problem, but we must not base our 

decisions on half truths, inconclusive science or media hype. The 

discussion must be based on testimony on science, not on political 

party or special interest agenda items. 

And I want to welcome our guests, and we look forward to your 

testimony that you will share with us. 

We all should be aware that the U.S. currently has several existing threats to its national security, such as proliferation of weapons 

of mass destruction and transnational terrorism. A question we 

should ask is, does climate change rise to the level of this immediate danger? Another question that we should ask, we should ask 

if it would be unwise for us to devote significant time and resources 

to speculative dangers; should we instead focus on the current dangers to our national security? It is possible if these are not addressed that the global warming issue would be a moot issue. 

I do agree that competition for oil resources in the future, especially for the U.S., is going to increase and U.S. domestic policies 

need to address our current and future dependence on oil imports, 

because we are vulnerable to supply interruptions and price increases and because much of this revenue is going to countries that 


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are not friendly to the United States. We must diversify our resources of oil, and we can because we have vast reserves of oil and 

gas on land and in the sea that are currently not being tapped. 

We also have trillions of barrels of oil in shale and coal on public 

lands that can be converted to transportation fuel and serve our 

needs for a couple hundred years. And this could be accomplished 

with little disruption to our natural environment. Even if the Earth 

continues to warm and does not revert to a cooling cycle and possibly cause events that threaten national security, the predicted 

outcomes are at best tentative and the proposed solutions raise 

problems of their own. 

I look forward to discussing how we should proceed and how we 

should appropriately use our resources as we look for energy innovation and security. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Great. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

We now turn to our exceptionally influential committee which 

has been assembled here this morning. We will begin with General 

Gordon Sullivan who is a former chief of staff of the United States 

Army. He has spent his life serving his country, with four tours of 

duty in Europe, two in Vietnam, and one in Korea, and was chief 

of staff to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in the administration 

of George Herbert Walker Bush. He joins us today on the heels of 

the release of a major report entitled ‘‘National Security and the 

Threat of Climate Change’’ which he compiled for the Center of 

Naval Analysis with 11 distinguished military leaders. 

Thank you for all of your service, General Sullivan. Whenever 

you feel comfortable, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF GENERAL GORDON R. SULLIVAN, USA (RET.), 

CHAIRMAN, MILITARY ADVISORY BOARD 

General SULLIVAN. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be 

here today with you and your colleagues. As you stated, today I am 

here as the Chairman of the Military Advisory Board to the Center 

for Naval Analysis Corporation and their report on national security and the threat of climate change. 

The advisory board consisted of three- and four-star flag officers 

of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Our charge was 

to learn as much as we could in a relatively short time about the 

emerging phenomenon of global climate change, using our experience as military leaders to process our learning through a national 

security lens. In other words, we were asked what are the national 

security implications of climate change. 

When I was asked to be on the Military Advisory Board, I was 

both pleased and skeptical. Pleased because of one simple and 

straightforward fact; that is that I am almost 70 years old. I have 

served my country for over 50 years. I took my oath as a cadet at 

Norwich University in Vermont in 1955, retired in 1995, and I am 

now the president and chief operating officer of the Association of 

the United States Army. So I have been in or around the defense 

establishment since 1955. Here I am in the later stages of my life, 

and I feel sometimes as if some of the sacrifices I, my soldiers, colleagues, friends and family made for America are now being overtaken by a much more powerful and significant challenge to their 


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health and well-being and the health and well-being of my three 

grandchildren and their children and the future. 

Having said this, I must admit I came to the advisory board as 

a skeptic. There is lots of conflicting information on the subject of 

climate change, and like most public policy issues debated here and 

discussed in America, there are many opinions. It is what makes 

America great. It is what I served for, for over 50 years. 

After listening to the leaders of scientific business and governmental communities, both I and my colleagues came to agree; and 

we published our report with our agreement that global climate 

change is and will be a significant threat to our national security, 

and, in a larger sense, to the lives of our grandchildren and their 

children. 

The findings of the Military Advisory Board are as follows: 

Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security. Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world. Projected 

climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the 

world. And climate change, national security, and energy dependence are a related set of global challenges. 

Our recommendations are as follows: 

First, the national security consequences of climate change 

should be fully integrated into national security and national defense strategies. The United States should commit to stronger national and international roles to help stabilize climate changes at 

levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and 

stability. The United States should commit to global partnerships 

that help less developed nations build the capacity and resiliency 

to better manage climate impacts. 

The Department of Defense should enhance its operational capabilities by accelerating the adoption of improved business processes 

and innovative technologies that result in improved U.S. combat 

power through energy efficiency. 

And last, the DOD, the government, should conduct an assessment of the impact on U.S. military installations worldwide of such 

events as rising sea levels, extreme weather events and possible climate change impacts over the next 30, 40, 100 years. 

Climate change, national security, and energy dependence are 

interrelated. Simply hoping that these relationships will remain 

static is simply not acceptable. Hope is not a method. We can’t sit 

here and wait to find out. 

Speaking for the members of the Military Advisory Board, I am 

confident in stating we as individuals collectively support your legislative initiative to authorize an NIE, National Intelligence Estimate, on national security implications of climate change. 

Mr. Chairman, I request my statement and the report, which I 

have here, be entered into the official record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be entered into the official record. 

General SULLIVAN. Thank you, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you, General Sullivan. 

[The statement of General Sullivan follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Our second witness, Dr. Richard Haass, is a 

Rhodes scholar who has received the Presidential Citizens Medal 

for his contributions to implementing U.S. policy during operations 

Desert Shield and Desert Storm, served on the National Security 

Council under George Bush senior, headed the policy planning at 

the Department of State under Secretary of State Colin Powell, and 

is now head of the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book 

is entitled ‘‘The Opportunity: America’s Moment To Alter History’s 

Course,’’ which could well serve as the title for this hearing. 

Dr. Haass, welcome. 

STATEMENT OF RICHARD N. HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON 

FOREIGN RELATIONS 

Mr. HAASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And for the record, if you 

do choose to use the title of my book as the title of your hearing, 

I would pose no objection. 

Thank you very much for asking me to testify today on this critical issue. Let me just note that I will be speaking here—the views 

I will be saying here will be my personal views and not those of 

the Council on Foreign Relations, simply because the Council on 

Foreign Relations does not take institutional positions. I will just 

make a few points and I ask that my full statement be inserted in 

the record. 

America’s high dependence on imported oil adversely affects our 

national security in a number of ways. First, it distorts American 

foreign policy by increasing the importance of the greater Middle 

East considerably above what it would be either if it did not have 

much oil or if oil played a less important role than it does. 

Secondly, our dependence on imported oil increases the vulnerability of the U.S. economy to supply interruptions and price increases. 

Thirdly, our current dependence on imported oil exacerbates our 

current account deficit. 

And fourthly, as several of you have correctly pointed out, our 

importing of large amounts of oil funnels massive amounts of dollars to producers, many of whom, such as Iran and Venezuela, are 

carrying out foreign policies inimical to America’s principles and interests, and in other cases this massive flow of resources can actually undermine markets, undermine the rule of law, and undermine democracy. 

This current state of affairs is a national failure. I would go so 

far to say it is a national scandal that we find ourselves in this position more than three decades after the first oil shocks. Alas, there 

are no quick fixes nor is there any benefit to be had from further 

delay. 

Is climate change a national security matter? Here I would associate myself with the report and remarks of my good friend, Gordon 

Sullivan. Climate change is a cause of both conflict and it is a 

cause of state failure, which in turn can breed terrorism, drug trafficking, slavery and other adverse aspects of globalization. 

There is much to do. There is a large number of potential remedies. I would just say some of them include diversification of oil 

supplies, maintaining strategic petroleum reserves in this country 

and elsewhere, and instituting new sharing arrangements that 


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bring in India and China; increasing the resilience of the energy infrastructure and system; increasing the domestic production of oil; 

development of alternatives to oil, especially to reduce the use of 

it in the transportation sector in this country; the development of 

new technologies that lead to the clean burning of coal or at least 

the cleaner burning of coal, as well as technologies that would lead 

to the capture and sequestration of carbon, if possible, expanding 

the role of nuclear power, at a minimum, to replace retired nuclear 

plants down the road; and to reduce the demand, especially again 

in the transportation sector, and to increase efficiency of energy 

use more broadly; to develop an international framework for the 

world; to take the place of Kyoto essentially for the post-2012 

world; to encourage forestation and discourage deforestation; and to 

change the way the United States Government deals with these 

issues. 

Let me just use the remainder of my time to make six overarching points, and I will do it as quickly as I can. 

First, the United States needs to adopt a broader definition of 

energy security. The traditional definition, which essentially has 

emphasized reliable access to affordable supplies of oil, is simply 

too narrow and inadequate. It fails to take into account the need 

to stem the flows of resources to certain governments, it fails to 

take into account global climate change. What we need is a new 

definition for energy security. Any energy security is and will be a 

function of our ability to manage the amount of energy produced, 

consumed, and imported so that the United States, one, reduces its 

vulnerability to supply and price fluctuations; and, two, reduces the 

flows of resources overseas; and, three, reduces the adverse impact 

on the global climate. 

Secondly, we need a truly comprehensive policy. We cannot drill 

or conserve our way out of the current state of affairs. Neither nuclear power nor cellulosic nor anything else will by itself constitute 

a panacea. 

Thirdly, the United States cannot do this alone. We need an 

American policy. We must walk the walk if we are going to persuade others when we talk the talk. But the approach must be 

international. Developing and developed countries must participate. 

Fourthly, there will be no solution to the energy security and 

global climate challenges for the foreseeable future. The calls for 

energy independence are unrealistic or even unhelpful. The challenge is to manage this problem, not to eliminate it. 

Fifth, the United States Government needs to change the way it 

goes about business in this area. The National Security Council, for 

example, needs an energy security and climate change directorate. 

We should look at the role and mandate of the Department of Energy, and, more generally, we should look at ways in which we can 

better integrate the concerns before this select committee and the 

broader concerns of national security. 

Last, we also need to meet the challenge of integration beyond 

the U.S. Government. And we need to find ways to integrate not 

simply the executive branch and the congressional branch on this 

issue, but also what the Federal branch does with State and local 

authorities, with the private sector and with NGOs. 


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So let me end where I began. I applaud the creation of this select 

committee. I applaud your willingness to devote your time and energies to this, and I wish you well in your work because, to a large 

extent, the national security of this country in coming decades will 

depend on how well and how successfully we meet these related 

challenges of energy security and climate change. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Haass, very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Haass follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Our next witness, Carl Pope, is one of America’s 

most influential and effective environmental leaders. He was appointed executive director of the Sierra Club, America’s oldest and 

largest grassroots environmental organization in 1992. He is a veteran leader in the environmental movement. Mr. Pope has been 

with the Sierra Club for the past 20 years. He graduated summa 

cum laude from Harvard and spent 2 years as a volunteer in the 

Peace Corps in India. Welcome, Mr. Pope. Whenever you feel ready, 

please begin. 

STATEMENT OF CARL POPE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SIERRA 

CLUB 

Mr. POPE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of the 

committee. I am Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra 

Club, and it is an honor to appear before you today. The Sierra 

Club believes that this select committee can be the pivot which 

moves America’s national government from lagger to leader on the 

issue of climate change. 

Today we are addressing the national security implications of oil 

dependence and climate change. Lincoln said in the Civil War that 

slavery somehow caused it. I think we all know that dependence 

on oil somehow is related to our war in Iraq. 

While oil addiction is the closest nexus between national security 

and global warming, global warming itself is a bigger threat than 

oil addiction alone, because climate change can produce insecurity 

in regions of the world which have no oil. Indeed, climate change 

has historically been one of the world’s major sources of violence 

and instability. 

For 1,700 years the drying out of the Asian steppe lands sent 

Ghengis Khan, Atilla the Hun, and wave after wave of nomadic invaders to topple Rome, unseat Chinese imperial dynasties, and finally topple the Arab caliphate with the sacking of Baghdad. 

But today we have the solutions to solve both our addiction to 

oil and the threat of global warming. Indeed, replacing our reliance 

on oil and other fossil fuels will create a new energy economy, relieve us of dependence on unstable parts of the world, and reduce 

the threat of global warming pollution. 

In January the Sierra Club released a report in cooperation with 

the American Solar Energy Society in which we capped the expertise of America’s leading government scientists and researchers on 

energy who found that simply by exploiting existing energy efficiency and renewable technologies, we could reduce our emissions 

of carbon dioxide by 2 percent a year, every year between now and 

2030, and be on the pathway with new technologies emerging from 

those national laboratories to complete the task of reducing our national emissions of global warming by 60 to 80 percent by 2050. In 

the Sierra Club, we called that the 2 percent solution. 

We are asking the American people and the Congress to embrace 

that solution. It has four principle pathways and one blind alley. 

The first pathway, get more efficiency out of the cars and trucks 

that we make, whether we make them in southeast Michigan or in 

Tennessee. We can save consumers money, reduce oil dependence, 

revitalize the American auto industry by improving fuel efficiency 

by 4 percent a year as the President has called for. Taking this 


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step alone, by 2025 would save over 3 million barrels of oil, more 

than we import from the Persian Gulf. For this reason the Sierra 

Club supports the Markey-Platt CAFE legislation. 

We also urge Congress to support the development of cellulosic 

ethanol and other renewable fuels. Ethanol and renewable fuels 

and auto efficiency multiply their impact. We need to do both of 

these things. We can’t solve our transportation fuels problem with 

only one of the two solutions. 

Next, in the utility sector we need to embrace the renewable energy possibilities so many of you mentioned. The State of Minnesota, where I was this weekend, has already adopted a very ambitious renewable energy standard, one that would achieve 30 percent renewable standards by 2025 for its largest utility. Congress 

should join that by adopting a 20 percent national standard by 

2025. 

We also need to recognize that we waste an enormous amount 

of the electricity that we generate. We should adopt an national energy efficiency standard that would put the Nation’s electric sector 

on a dependable track towards greater efficiency. Utilities can and 

should become at least 10 percent more efficient by 2020. 

The blind alley which has been suggested recently by the President is the idea that we can back out oil from—gas from oil with 

gasoline made from coal. If you look at the numbers, it is overwhelmingly likely that such a strategy would actually double the 

amount of carbon dioxide put out by the average vehicle and would 

also cost the taxpayers enormous sums of money for very little return. So we urge the Congress not to follow the seemingly attractive but, if you look closely at the numbers, ultimately unworkable 

strategy of using coal liquids. 

What we should be doing instead is sequestering the carbon dioxide from electricity generated from coal and then using that electricity to plug—to plug in the hybrids that Congresswoman Miller 

suggested. That is a pathway to use coal responsibly to back out 

oil imports. 

We can do this job, the American people are ready to do this job, 

and I want to underscore what many of you said, we must do this 

job in a responsible way and in a way which not only doesn’t hurt 

the American economy. I think that is far too low a standard. I believe that this Congress has the opportunity, by designing effective 

energy policies which unleash American ingenuity and entrepreneurship, to actually create a new industrial revolution in this 

country, to add millions of new industrial jobs which we badly need 

to reduce our trade deficit, and to enable us to say to our children 

when they ask us, mommy or daddy, what did you do in the great 

warming, to respond with pride: We led. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Pope. 

[The statement of Mr. Pope follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Next we are going to hear from Vice Admiral 

Dennis McGinn who served in the United States Navy for 35 years, 

where he commanded aviation squadrons in the Coral Sea, the aircraft carrier USS Ranger in the Western Pacific and the Indian 

Ocean, and rose to become commander of the U.S. Third Fleet in 

the Pacific. 

In 2000 Admiral McGinn became the Pentagon’s first deputy 

chief of Naval Operations, Warfare Requirements and Programs. 

Upon retirement he joined Battelle as Vice President for Strategic 

Planning. Welcome, Admiral. Whenever you are ready, please 

begin. 

STATEMENT OF VICE ADMIRAL DENNIS McGINN, USN, (RET) 

Admiral MCGINN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Sensenbrenner, members of the committee. It is an honor for me to appear 

along with my fellow witnesses at this inaugural hearing of this 

very, very important panel. I believe that our dependence on oil in 

general and, in particular, imported oil from unstable areas of the 

world does in fact constitute a national security threat and one 

that is growing every day. 

Our Nation uses 25 percent of the world oil supply on an annual 

basis. We have, a best estimate, about 3 percent of the oil reserves 

in the world. If we were to make a sudden discovery of a new oil 

reserve tomorrow and doubled that reserve to 6 percent, we 

wouldn’t be much better off. 

So when we start looking for solutions that try to get us other 

sources of oil from domestic sources, we have got to recognize that 

it is only a very, very marginal improvement in the situation of our 

dependence on oil. 

If you consider that in October of this year our Nation’s population passed 300 million, the world’s population passed 6.5 billion, 

and those numbers are going up. If you multiply those numbers by 

per-capita energy consumption, particularly in emerging areas of 

the world like China and India where they have a very understandable expectation of a higher quality of life and a higher economic 

outcome, it is not a sustainable situation for us to continue to use 

oil and hydrocarbon-based energy at the rate that we have been 

during this very successful age of oil that has brought us to today. 

Additionally, in addition to our concern from a national security 

perspective on dependence on foreign oil and our nonsustainable 

consumption rate of oil based against reserves, the production of 

the byproducts of oil, greenhouse gases, does in fact constitute a 

national security threat. It is one that we are seeing today in certain manifestations and it is one that I can guarantee will get 

greater and greater with each passing year. It is only a matter of 

time. 

Taken in combination, the fact that we have a national security 

threat due to oil dependence and the fact that we have a national 

security threat that exists today and will grow inevitably in coming 

years makes this a very, very great challenge for the American people. It is a challenge that has been described as one fitting a solution like the Apollo Program or the Manhattan Project or the New 

Deal. I believe that there are aspects of all of those programs that 


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could be applied to meeting America’s energy challenge and environmental challenge. 

But I think that we need to get started now and we need to do 

that in a very, very balanced way. There is no silver bullet solution. There is not any specific form of renewable energy that is 

going to lead us out of this dependence on oil. There is no energyefficiency technology, taken in and of itself, that will suddenly reduce our greenhouse gas production nationally and globally. 

It is the right kind of technologies, the right kinds of solutions, 

taken in combination with the right kinds of national leadership 

and policy that will allow us to meet this challenge. And it isn’t a 

challenge that I view negatively; it is a challenge that I think has 

tremendous potential for great outcomes. 

It isn’t zero sum; if we solve our dependency problem, then we 

must lower our economic standard of living. If we suddenly reduce 

our emission of greenhouse gases, we must accept a reduction in 

our quality of life. It is in fact an opportunity, a challenge that creates enormous opportunities for our economy in producing different 

forms of energy and renewable, different technologies and different 

procedures for squeezing every bit of good economic output out of 

every unit of electric energy or liquid fuel for transportation, and 

it is a challenge that creates the opportunity for true global leadership. 

The United States has been very, very blessed by the age of oil. 

The age of oil is not sustainable. We can lead into the next age of 

clean and abundant energy which will solve enormous challenges 

not just in our own borders but throughout the world. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit my written testimony for 

the record and I look forward to your questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be included in the 

record. I thank you, Admiral, very much. 

[The statement of Admiral McGinn follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Now I turn to our final witness, James Woolsey, 

who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993 to 

1995, a Rhodes Scholar. Mr. Woolsey is currently the co-chair of 

the Committee on Present Danger and serves on the National Commission on Energy Policy. He is one of America’s most articulate 

voices regarding the toxic combination of oil and terrorism. 

Thank you for being with us. Mr. Woolsey, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF R. JAMES WOOLSEY 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be 

asked to be here today. We depend on oil for 97 percent of our 

transportation needs, Mr. Chairman, and oil contributes over 40 

percent of the global warming gas emissions that human beings 

put into the atmosphere from fossil fuels. These numbers are so 

large because the world uses approximately 1,000 barrels of oil a 

second and we use in this country approximately 250 barrels per 

second. 

The key here, I believe, is that what we need in the long term 

is a transportation fuel that is as secure as possible, as clean as 

possible in global warming as well as in other terms, and as inexpensive as possible. Today oil meets none of these three criteria. It 

is not just foreign oil, it is oil that doesn’t meet these criteria. 

Oil is a strategic commodity because we depend upon it so much 

for transportation. In a sense, salt was a strategic commodity until 

a little over a century ago because there was no other real way to 

preserve meat, a major share of people’s intake. Wars were fought, 

national strategies were developed until the late 19th century having to do with salt. Today salt is not a strategic commodity. No nation sways world events because it has salt mines. 

I think we have to strive for a similar path of decline, indeed destruction of oil as a strategic commodity; not destruction of oil 

itself, of course. Like salt, we will find lots of uses for it and will 

be using it for a long time. But it is this dependence for transportation that is the heart of our problem. 

Now national security requirements certainly, I think, dictate us 

moving away from oil for a number of the reasons that have been 

mentioned: two-thirds of the world’s proven reserves being in the 

Persian Gulf area; al Qaeda attacks in Abcaiq can risk oil cutoffs; 

the royal succession in Saudi Arabia is going to be a problem in 

a few years; Iran’s President is a part of a circle around Ayatollah 

Mesbah-Yazdi that is radical even by Iranian standards; and now 

six Sunni states have decided they need nuclear programs as well 

as Iran, since many of these states have huge reserves of oil and 

gas. One suspects that those nuclear programs, like Iran’s, may not 

be limited to electricity generation. 

We borrow over $300 billion a year, nearly a billion dollars every 

calendar day to import oil, which weakens our economy and dollar. 

And if it does that to us, think what it must do for developing 

countries where debt is the central problem for economic development. 

The oil revenues that go to Saudi Arabia and other parts of the 

gulf are used, directly and indirectly, to spread Wahhabi—the 

Wahhabi version of Islam around the world. It is essentially the 


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same ideology as that of al Qaeda. They and al Qaeda disagree only 

about who should be in charge. 

The fatwas of the Wahhabis are murderous, literally, with respect to the Shi’a, to Jews, to homosexuals and apostates, and they 

are horribly repressive with regard to everyone else including, particularly, women. 

So as we fund the dissemination of this ideology around the 

world, this is the only war the U.S. has ever fought in which we 

pay for both sides. And as Tom Friedman puts it, the price of oil 

and the path of freedom run in opposite directions. There is a good 

deal of academic learning on this, but one needs only to observe 

Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Chavez, and Mr. Putin to see the consequences of that. 

Now, oil in transportation is not going to be particularly affected 

by other steps to reduce carbon emissions by carbon cap-and-trade 

or carbon taxes. That has only a tiny effect on oil’s use, pennies’ 

worth of effect, say, on the price of gasoline. There has to be another approach. 

People can have one set of views, I think quite logically, with respect to what you do about carbon going into the atmosphere from 

coal-fired power plants, but another is possible with respect to oil’s 

use in transportation. 

I think what is interesting is that the steps we would want to 

take for moving away from oil in transportation for global warming 

reasons are essentially the same ones we want to take for purposes 

of moving away from oil dependence for strategic reasons. Indeed, 

there are a number of steps that can be implemented, and let me 

just say that renewable fuels of a number of kinds deserve support. 

Support is also deserved, I believe, for removing barriers to alternative fuels, and that has to do with making it possible for pumps 

to be put in at filling stations for flexible-fuel vehicles to be produced readily by Detroit and other automobile manufacturers, but 

especially now to move towards electricity. Plug-in hybrid gasoline 

electric vehicles are routinely now in their prototypes, dozens in 

California getting well over 100 miles of gallon of liquid fuel because one is running on off-peak overnight electricity for 20, 30, 40 

miles before one becomes a regular hybrid vehicle. 

What is often not understood is that because the automobile fleet 

in the United States has 20 times the energy that the electricity 

grid does and is utilized only 10 percent of the time, most all cars 

drive less than 4 hours a day, this creates a reserve of ability to 

fuel automobiles from off-peak overnight electricity at very low 

cost, approaching a penny a mile in many circumstances, and it 

also creates no need for new power plants. 

Pacific Northwest Laboratory has said there could be 85 percent 

of the cars on the road that can be plug-in hybrids before you need 

any new power plants, so we are not talking about building new 

coal-fired power plants. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I will stop. I see I have run over. 

Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Woolsey, very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Woolsey follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. That completes the time for statements by our 

panel. 

Now we will turn to the question and answer period. The Chair 

recognizes himself for 5 minutes. 

Yesterday at the United Nations Security Council, the British 

Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said, I quote her, ‘‘Climate 

change is an issue which threatens the peace and the security of 

the whole planet.’’ 

Would one of you take that and comment upon it? General Sullivan. 

General SULLIVAN. Mr. Chairman, I think what she is suggesting 

is essentially what our conclusions were; that is, that in regions of 

the world like Africa, many parts in Africa, climate change, 

drought; drought causes famine, causes governments to fail because they can’t provide services for their populace, which creates 

the environment for nonstate actors to appear. It is a petri dish for 

terror and instability and obviously creates migration irrespective 

of borders. Nomadic people move to get water and food and so forth 

and so on, and they also move from south to north, from North Africa to Europe. 

And I think what she is getting at is what we talk about in our 

report. By the way, in this report we are not just talking about oil, 

petroleum, hydrocarbons, we are talking about drought, natural resources, all natural resources. So I see a direct link, as do my colleagues. Certainly her comment is well taken with regard to our report. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do any other of the panelists want to comment 

on that? Mr. Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, I would only add that much of the 

disagreement about the extent of climate change has to do with 

what scientists call positive feedback effects. It is sort of an unfortunate term because there is nothing positive about these effects. 

They are not modelable so they don’t show up in most of the 

model calculations. If the models show the possibility over the next 

several decades of inches of sea level rise and a degree or so of centigrade of global warming, a lot of people look at what the models 

say and say well, that looks like it might be something we can 

manage. Even that will have some important effects. 

But these feedback effects that are not in the models such as, 

let’s say, after 2 degrees increase the tundras start melting, the 

tundra has huge amounts of methane. It is 20 times worse as a 

global warming gas than carbon dioxide. 

So the release of methane in turn creates the release of more 

methane. Those effects are what lead to some of these predictions 

of meters of sea level rise and a number of degrees of increase. It 

is a matter of some uncertainty but there are data that suggest 

some of these things are at risk. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask one final question before my time expires. In 1977 the United States imported 47 percent of its oil, but 

we passed a law here and President Ford signed it in 1975, that 

actually reduced our dependence back down to 27 percent fuel 

economy standards for vehicles by 1986. We have had no new laws 

since then. We have the SUV exception. We are now up to 60 perVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:48 Nov 22, 2010 Jkt 057964 PO 00000 Frm 00129 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A964.XXX A964

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cent dependence upon imported oil. It goes up year after year, adding 65, 70, 75 percent. 

Could one of you speak to the national security implications of 

that ever-increasing percentage of oil which is imported? 

Mr. POPE. Let me respond by saying that actually you speak to 

the national security opportunity of getting back on the pathway 

we undertook in the 1970s. If we can improve the efficiency of the 

average vehicle by 4 percent a year, which in engineering terms is 

well within everybody’s capacity, and if we simultaneously work seriously at enabling a substantial part of the petroleum fraction to 

be replaced by cellulosic ethanol, we will be in a situation in which, 

as Mr. Woolsey said, oil may still be an interesting commodity but 

it will not drive the world and we will have the freedom and flexibility to decide in our own national interest how deeply engaged we 

wish to be in places like the Persian Gulf, Venezuela and Nigeria. 

Right now we have no freedom of action. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. My time has expired. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Sensenbrenner. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think all of us 

in this room agree that oil dependency is bad and it has a lot of 

negative impact on our economy, on our national security and the 

like. So I guess the question is how to reduce the dependency on 

oil. 

I also think it is almost a given that the sign of a healthy economy is electricity consumption, which is one of the reasons why the 

Chinese are opening up a new coal-fired power plant about once a 

week, because their economy is expanding so rapidly. 

Now, to get us away from oil and to provide the electricity that 

we need both to run our economy as well as to transfer our transportation fuel mix, as Mr. Woolsey has eloquently explained—I 

guess I would like to ask all five panelists to give just a yes or no 

answer, since my time is limited—what about the rapid expansion 

of nuclear power plants in this country, because nuclear power 

plants do generate electricity and they emit no greenhouse gases. 

Good idea or bad one? I would like each of the five panelists to say 

yes or no. 

General SULLIVAN. As long as everybody understands that that 

is not in the report and you have asked me a personal question, 

I will give you a personal answer, Congressman. Yes. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Haass. 

Mr. HAASS. You are not going to like my answer, Congressman. 

It is not whether it is a good idea or bad idea, it is whether it is 

a feasible idea. And I think there are fundamental questions about 

the feasibility. Give me 30 seconds here. 

We have 103 nuclear plants in the United States that are operational. Even with service—— 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. My time is running out, sir. 

Mr. HAASS. I will do it quickly. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. It is my time, not yours. Yes or no? 

Mr. HAASS. Not every question has a yes or no answer, sir. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. You pass. 

Mr. POPE. With today’s technology, no. We ought to see if we can 

find the technology that enables nuclear power to be both safe and 

competitive. Today it is neither. 


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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Admiral McGinn. 

Admiral MCGINN. Yes, provided we can do it with adequate levels of security and in an economic way. Every dollar that we 

spend—— 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you. 

Mr. Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Nuclear power doesn’t replace oil because only 2 

percent of our electricity comes from oil. Nuclear power is clean, 

which is good, but I would prefer an emphasis on renewables, 

frankly. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Second question is since the U.S. has got 

about a 200-year reserve of coal, how about clean coal as an electrical generating source? Yes or no, good idea? 

General Sullivan. 

General SULLIVAN. I pass. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Haass. 

Mr. HAASS. Not until we can make it clean and not until we can 

capture it. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you. 

Mr. Pope. 

Mr. POPE. Coal should be mined responsibly, burned cleanly, and 

its carbon stored safely. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Do I take that as a qualified yes? 

Mr. POPE. Qualified yes. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. 

Mr. McGinn. 

Admiral MCGINN. Clean coal for electrical production, yes. Coal 

for liquid, no. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Mr. Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I agree with my friend, Denny McGinn, and coal— 

the question is can you sequester the carbon affordably. You can 

capture it now with IGCC. If you can sequester it affordably, it is 

a reasonable path and the experiments are still being worked on. 

Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Now I will make an observation in the 

time that I have left. This shows how difficult it is for policymakers 

to figure out a way to wean us from our dependency on oil in a way 

that does not wreck our economy. I think that this is really at the 

heart of the debate, because if we reduce the total supply of energy, 

the same thing is going to happen in the United States that has 

happened in Europe; jobs get outsourced to Third World countries 

where electric generating is cheaper. And if electricity is not affordable, then factories end up being closed for certain parts of the day, 

as was reported in one of the major newspapers that happened as 

a result of the cap-and-trade policy as it applied to The Netherlands. 

Thank you very much. I think you have kind of helped us to 

show at least how difficult this issue is. Nobody wants to wreck the 

economy. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Admiral MCGINN. I would like to make the observation that the 

debate has to take place in increments greater than 5 minutes, because we were all constrained in our answers by the rules of the 

committee. 


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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Yes. I think that we are going to be doing 

a lot of debating on that, and I had 5 minutes. But both of those 

issues had to be on the table. I thank the Chair. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Blumenauer, is recognized. 

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Which is why I saved my 3 minutes in terms 

of having the context. 

I would make an observation, with all due respect to our Ranking Member, that we are not going to advance the debate with yes 

or no answers. I think you have identified that in the course of 

your testimony here today. It is not yes or no. That is the mindset 

that has backed us into the situation that we are in today. 

I would further comment that the notion that electric consumption is a sign of a healthy economy, I think, is highly questionable. 

As we look at some of the other countries around the world that 

by any measure are strong economically and rival the United 

States, they do so with a fraction of our energy consumption on a 

per-capita basis or industrially. 

So the notion that we have to burn a lot of electricity to show 

that we are prosperous is, I think, sadly misguided and not supported by the facts. 

I had an opportunity Friday to spend a few minutes with Douglas Durst who prides himself, I think, as being the largest developer of green buildings in the country. I had made a reference that 

Portland had the largest green certified platinum lead building; 

and I said, not for long because he is opening the Bank of America 

Building on 42nd Avenue. 

Those green buildings are not being constructed by Mr. Durst, or 

in my community where Congresswoman Solis was kind enough to 

spend a day for me, a week ago today, where we have more green 

certified lead buildings than anyplace in the country. They are not 

being built because they are losers economically. They repay the 2 

or 3 percent premium in a short period of time and the developers 

who are now going up and down the west coast and other places 

will tell you that they command a premium in rent because smart 

business people don’t waste energy, and we are starting to do the 

same thing with water. 

So I am hopeful in the course of this discussion we can adjust 

our thinking. I thought, Mr. Woolsey, your point about this being 

the only war where we are financing both sides, and the testimony 

here gave, I think, great weight to the notion that this is an economic—this is a national security issue. It is also an opportunity 

for economic security. 

Even if the science was not compelling, which the consensus, I 

think, is these are risks that we should not be taking and, again, 

Congresswoman Solis and I had a conversation, maybe not as exciting as you had in Seattle, but business is rushing forward to take 

advantage of this. 

I am concerned about two things that weren’t mentioned in the 

course of your testimony. One, we are talking about higher fuel efficiency. But there was—the same way that we need to talk about 

conservation of energy for electricity or for oil, we have not had a 

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it is a more efficient use, where people don’t have to burn a gallon 

of gas to buy a gallon of milk. 

I am wondering if any of our witnesses would talk for a moment 

about more efficient transportation systems that aren’t single-occupant vehicles spread all over the countryside. Does that enter into 

the thinking? 

Admiral MCGINN. Yes, sir, it does. It goes beyond mass transportation systems. They are certainly a part of getting a more efficient 

economy and a more efficient quality of life. I think it goes even 

more, fundamentally, than that to community and regional: by 

using rail-enhanced development, for example, as I know Portland 

is a great example for the Nation in that regard, by reducing the 

distances between where people live and where people work by creating wonderful downtown neighborhoods, or by moving appropriate businesses to where people live. 

But the development path and development plans that the country embarks on in the future can have a tremendously beneficial 

effect on our energy consumption and our energy efficiency. 

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Chairman, I am going to lobby you to perhaps, as we do some field hearings around the country, to be able 

to look at what we have been doing in Portland to give people 

choices, not force them on bicycles or on streetcars or trolleys or 

buses or car pools, but give people choices, and not make illegal by 

antiquated zoning—which makes it illegal in too much of America 

for somebody who works in a drugstore to live in an apartment 

above it. I think it is worth consideration. 

The second question that I would put to the panel speaks to government leading by example. We are spending huge sums of money 

as the largest consumer of energy in the world. The United States 

Government is contributing to this, and not so much about rules 

and regulations and what-not for the rest of America, but the ability of the United States Government to say we are not going to 

lease or build anything that isn’t lead certified by 2012; that we are 

not going to purchase any vehicles that do not meet our standards, 

and particularly for the Department of Defense, which is the—I 

know there is some great research that has been done. 

At our first organizational meeting I think I mentioned the fact, 

if I understand it correctly, an aircraft carrier gets 17 feet to the 

gallon. 

Admiral MCGINN. Those were the old fossil fuels. 

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Okay. Maybe Mr. Woolsey, Mr. Pope, if you 

have some thoughts about how the Federal Government might be 

able to jump-start this and be able to get some advantage out of 

the process. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, I just chaired the Policy Panel for 

a Defense Science Board look at energy and defense, and there are 

a number of things that have come out of that and that can be 

done. One of the most important is to make it possible for military 

facilities in the U.S.—and also I think other places like hospitals 

and police stations—to be able to use locally generated electricity 

to replace what would come from the grid in case there is an attack 

on the grid or the grid just goes down by a tree branch falling, the 

way it did 3 years ago for New York, New England, and eastern 

Canada. 


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Most military facilities would be capable, not all, of slimming 

down their requirements by exactly the type of building efficiency 

steps you are talking about, fixing on which of those requirements 

are absolutely essential to carrying on the base’s activities and 

then by using locally generated wind, solar, geothermal, others, to 

be able to operate for months rather than just days to hours, which 

is what one has with diesel generators. 

This is something that is of real interest in the Defense Department right now. 

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Pope, any comment on either of those? 

Mr. POPE. The key function the Federal Government plays in setting an example is to create a market. If people know, if entrepreneurs know there is a Federal market for a certain kind of highefficiency glass, they can build those factories earlier than they 

can—they can demonstrate that they are cost competitive and then 

private builders can take advantage of them. 

The Federal Government should be the market creator for innovative new technologies of all kinds, inside and outside the Defense 

Department. 

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Shadegg. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank all of 

you for your testimony. It has been very enlightening. 

Mr. Haass, let me begin with you. You made the point about our 

definition of energy security. I completely agree with that and the 

point about comprehensive approach. Obviously we have lots of alternatives, and looking at any one is ill advised. 

In your testimony you talked about diversification of oil supplies, 

increasing domestic production, clean-burning coal, expansion of 

the role of nuclear. You did mention that in your testimony, though 

I am a little bit in doubt now where you are on that issue. 

I guess I would like you to talk to me about what you believe are 

the right ways to look for diversified supplies here in the United 

States, and tell me what ones you are referring to and would support. 

Mr. HAASS. Domestically in terms of, I think, coastal areas off 

limits, should not be off limits. I think there is some potential 

there, given new modern drilling technology. I think we should explore that. 

I think there are two areas that should come through loud and 

clear. One has been alluded to several times, which is doing something about replacing oil in the transportation sector. There are 

things that can and should be done in the near term. 

But the big long-term question on climate change is coal. A lot 

of this debate comes down to coal. That is where we have got to 

think about not—in terms of Congress and the Federal Government only licensing clean coal facilities now, and we have got to 

think about putting out enough money so we can figure out how 

to capture—more important, store, sequester the carbon. 

Right now this is a big idea. It has not been proven on anything 

like a commercial scale. That to me has got to be one of the priorities for the U.S. Government, is to seed an awful lot of experimenVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:48 Nov 22, 2010 Jkt 057964 PO 00000 Frm 00134 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A964.XXX A964

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tation and exploration so we find out the best way to do it as fast 

as we can learn it. 

Mr. SHADEGG. One of the concerns I have, I heard a general opposition to coal gassification in this panel—that may not be a fair 

characterization—and yet I met over the break with a number of 

such people who believe, in the process of coal gassification, we can 

remove a lot of the carbon dioxide better than alternative uses of 

that coal. 

Admiral MCGINN. I am very familiar with a project that is sponsored by the Department of Energy called Future Gen. Future Gen 

will produce a coal-fired near zero emission power plant in 2012. 

The four sites that are potentially going to be the site for the first 

plants are two in Texas and two in Illinois, are chosen for two factors: their ability to access coal for fuel as well as the geological 

formations that lend themselves to carbon sequestration. 

There are seven regional projects sponsored by the Department 

of Energy in which carbon dioxide is actually being sequestered in 

deep wells, one of which is called Mountaineer, and it is being 

sponsored by American Electric Power as one of the utility companies. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Time restrains you and me. One of my concerns 

about CO2 sequestration is it seems to me to be a difficult, inefficient process to lock it up permanently as opposed to using it in 

some other way. Would all of you agree that other alternative uses 

we ought to pursue include expanded use of hydroelectric power? 

Mr. Sullivan. If we can. 

General SULLIVAN. Sure. If hydroelectric power is available, I 

suppose it would be great. I am not sure the water is going to be 

available. 

Mr. SHADEGG. We have higher technology to use the in-stream 

flow. 

Mr. Haass. 

Mr. HAASS. Congressman, I support all of the renewables. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Pope. 

Mr. POPE. In-stream flow and other low technologies, I mean lowimpact technologies, are very desirable. How scalable they are, I 

don’t know. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. McGinn. 

Admiral MCGINN. Yes. In an environmentally responsible way, 

yes. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Most of the big rivers that can be dammed have 

been dammed and one doesn’t want to have any further impact on 

the environment by going that route. But a lot of the existing generators from dams are very inefficient, and one can get quite a few 

gigawatts of power out of modernizing the generation from existing 

hydroelectric plants. 

Mr. SHADEGG. That takes me directly to an issue. In the Commerce Committee we have heard testimony on both the limitations 

on new energy imposed by our current new source review policies 

and by our transmission line setting policies. One of the witnesses 

testified that there is lots of wind power potentially in west Texas, 

but nobody there to consume it, and they can’t the lines to get it 

out of that region. 


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A number of executives of electric companies came in and testified that they could put in much more efficient turbines in dams 

or other plants, including coal and other fossil-fueled power plants, 

but new source review is causing them to find that economically 

unviable at this point in time. 

Would you all agree we ought to examine those policies? Mr. 

Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I would say absolutely. We have gone beyond 

NIMBY for many transmission lines, to BANANA, Build Absolutely 

Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. We have a lot of stranded energy out there, particularly on the Great Plains, huge amounts of 

wind. There may be other innovative ways to get the electricity out 

from that sort of power generation. 

But today it takes about 2 years to permit and construct a wind 

farm and it takes 7 to 12 years to permit and construct transmission lines, if you can make it happen. 

Mr. SHADEGG. My time has expired. Is there anybody that would 

disagree we should not, in looking at global warming, look at those 

policies? 

Mr. POPE. You should look at modernizing the grid. You have a 

grid that is outdated and cannot handle and distribute efficiently 

the electricity available to it because of the, frankly, poorly designed incentive structures the way the industry is deregulated. 

You need a modern grid as well as more grid. 

General SULLIVAN. Thirty percent of the power at Schofield Barracks for Army housing will come from photovoltaic cells, and the 

Army community will receive money back from the power department for that. It will go into the grid. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Inslee. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. Mr. McGinn, I was heartened by your 

comment about the need of something like a new Apollo Project. I 

just want to let you know that I am introducing a bill called the 

New Apollo Energy Project that I think will fit the bill of really inspiring the country as Kennedy did. 

I think we really are in a situation like we were in 1961, where 

we had this enormous technology potential ready to get tapped as 

long as we spark it and I hope we are going to spark it in the next 

couple years in Congress. My bill will do a whole host of things, 

a cap-and-trade system to drive investment into these new clean 

energy systems and so when you have photovoltaics on your roof, 

you get paid for it, your utility; green buildings standard so that 

we build buildings that are like the ones that Mr. Blumenauer 

talked about; a clean fuel standard so that when we adopt alternative fuels they really are from a global standpoint, that we are 

not going to another dirty fuel. 

Last but not least, significant increase in R&D. I was stunned; 

we have cut our R&D budget in energy by 60 percent since 1979. 

At a time where R&D in defense has gone up 10 or 15 times, we 

have actually cut it by two-thirds. That is pathetic. We have got 

to increase it. So I was encouraged by your comment. 

I want to ask you about the electrification, Mr. McGinn, and 

coals to liquid. I am really encouraged by the electricification of our 

vehicles. I drove a plug-in hybrid, I think it was the first one up 


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on the Hill, with 150 miles a gallon. It will be available commercially, goes 40 miles on plug-in, then runs on gasoline or flex fuel 

after that. 

You made a comment about coal to liquid, Mr. McGinn. I want 

to ask you about it. I am very high on alternative fuels. Electrification, cellulosic, ethanol, biodiesel, all seem to have significant savings in global warming gases of one dimension or another. Even 

using the grid today has about a 30 percent increase if you do a 

plug-in hybrid because of the efficiency. 

Coal to liquid, I just saw an EPA report, coal to liquid would 

have 118 percent increase, increase in carbon dioxide per gallon 

compared to gasoline today; and if you do sequestration, if you do 

sequestration during the process you still have a 3 percent increase 

in CO2 according to the EPA. 

Now that is a great concern to me to think we are going to start 

a whole new industry and end up going backwards on a global 

warming perspective. I noticed you mentioned when you were 

asked about this you said no. Is that the reason for your thoughts 

or are there others? 

Admiral MCGINN. I think you have got it right, Congressman. It 

is a big assumption that we can produce liquid fuel from coal in 

a zero-emission environment. There is a lot of work that is ongoing 

to produce electricity from coal in a clean, near zero-emission type 

of plant. Even assuming we can do it, it is the actual chemistry of 

the liquid produced that has a high carbon content and therefore 

will negate a lot of the advantages that you would have. In fact, 

if you compare it to such alternative fuels as cellulosic ethanol, it 

isn’t even in the same ball game. 

The other point you make is a very, very good one. As we make 

decisions about going in one technological direction or policy direction or another, there are opportunity costs. If we spend billions to 

produce coal-to-liquid plants, that is billions that could be used to 

increase our efficiency of our transportation sector, our electrical 

utility industry, that would extract much more gross domestic 

product for every unit of electricity than whatever you were going 

to get out of that coal-to-liquid investment. 

Mr. INSLEE. To my friends from coal regions I am going to suggest we need to make our investment the smart place, which is in 

clean coal technology to generate electricity. If we do that, we have 

the capacity of reducing CO2 and, importantly, selling this technology to China. This Ramgen that has developed compression, 

they want to sell this to China. We all know we have to get China 

on board. This is an economic opportunity if we play our cards 

right. But if we do it wrong, we are going to end up going backwards both economically on CO2. 

So for those who have resisted dealing with global warming because they are afraid of China or because they are afraid of our 

ability to use coal, I would suggest we need to find a bipartisan 

way to move forward on clean coal research to electricity rather 

than coal to liquids. Anybody else want to comment? 

Admiral MCGINN. I agree with that. Just one caveat is we need 

to make sure we understand what the full environmental impacts 

of coal extraction or coal mining are. 


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Mr. INSLEE. As Mr. Pope said, mined responsibly, burned cleanly, 

and forgot the third one. 

Mr. POPE. Carbon sequestered safely. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Walden. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to 

thank the witnesses for your testimony today. It has been both enlightening and helpful in our efforts. 

I want to touch on a couple of things. One of the things I learned 

during the break regarding ethanol and biodiesel is the other side 

of the story, which is what to do with the wet distiller’s grain or 

dry distiller’s grain after you produce the ethanol. At a PowerPoint 

presentation at Pendleton Grain Growers a scientist there was 

talking to me about biodiesel. And pointed out that for a 100-million-gallon-a-year biodiesel plant you would need 900,000 tons of 

feedstock, using canola grown on a million acres, that would 

produce 540,000 tons of meal, for which it would take 570,000 cows 

to consume, and you would have 10, I believe million, 10 million 

gallons of glycerine as a byprod. That is just for a 100 million plant 

for biodiesel. 

This was one of the issues I know we looked at ethanol, was the 

wet distiller’s grain, 4 to 7 days before it starts fermenting again. 

And there is this whole downside. I was down in Klamath Falls 

and a rancher said, let me tell you what ethanol has meant to me: 

$100,000 higher cost to finish my beef because of the price of corn. 

So I am intrigued by especially the military folks and all talking 

about the displacement that may occur in some of these nations as 

drought sets in. We see the same sort of potential, I think, as the 

price of food goes up. Wheat is now chasing corn up over $4 a bushel and even higher in some areas. I am just concerned about both 

what it takes to get the feedstock to grow our way into alternatives, as much as I support them, and then what you do with the 

byproduct. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. This is why it is important to move away from 

food-based feedstocks and toward cellulosic biomass. I serve on the 

National Energy Policy Commission and we did some pretty careful 

studies and calculations on this. If you move to something like 

switchgrass, the prairie grass that was out there when the buffalo 

were there, you can grow enough of that over the course of evolution—we looked at the next 20 years, and reasonable increases 

in yield, reasonable improvements in automobile mileage—you can 

grow enough switchgrass on 7 percent of U.S. farmland, which is 

what is called the conversation reserve program, the soil bank. It 

is over half now planted in switchgrass. If you grew that just in 

switchgrass, that 30 million acres, turned that into cellulosic ethanol, you would be able to replace about half of the country’s gasoline. Now, that assumes some modest growth in mileage along the 

lines of what the Chairman and others of you have suggested for 

automobile vehicles and assumes a modest increase in yield. 

Mr. WALDEN. Let me talk too about—I obviously represent 10 national forests. Enormous amount of woody biomass. People are 

going to get sick of me talking about forests. You can use woody 

biomass as an ingredient. We have catastrophic fires. 


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Mr. Chairman, I would like to put in this record—and I will get 

you a copy of this for that purpose—a publication from California 

Forests. I hope our committee members—I will make it available 

to them individually. A lot of activity going on in the State of California on forest management practices as a way to use forests as 

a carbon sink. I don’t know, Mr. Haass, Mr. Woolsey. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection we will include that in the 

record. If you have copies we will distribute it. 

[The information follows:] 


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Mr. HAASS. Congressman, I think you are onto a big topic. One 

of the cheapest, potentially, and certainly most available aspects or 

dimensions of a climate control policy has got to be to encourage 

forestation I—— 

Mr. WALDEN. And proper management. 

Mr. HAASS. Discourage deforestation. We should be looking at 

our aid policy, what sort of practices in places like Brazil, Indonesia, and the rest that we encourage. It is also going to have a 

big impact on whatever takes the place of Kyoto. One of the 

failings of the existing global approach is it couldn’t figure out how 

to factor in essentially benefits or premiums for sinks. We need to 

think when we come up with a post-2012 global framework how is 

it we essentially incentivize and reward those. 

Mr. WALDEN. Let me interrupt because I will run out of time 

here. I wish we had hours to do this. I would be happy to meet 

with any of you individually. I also think we ought to go to a labeling system so consumers know when they buy a product what kind 

of carbon tradeoffs. Because I think American consumers, like most 

of us if not all of us on this panel, want to do the right thing. 

Mr. HAASS. Home Depot would agree. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, the point you made about the right 

kind of management of the forest being compatible with the production of fuel is exactly right. It is in the forest so you don’t get 

bonfires and forest fires. Then that cellulosic biomass can either be 

used to produce ethanol, produce methanol if you gasify it, and 

used to produce renewable diesel in thermal processes. There are 

lots of ways to get at it. I think it is a very positive direction. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chair 

recognizes the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Larson. 

Mr. LARSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, before 

you start the clock on me, just a procedural question. 

The CHAIRMAN. Hold on that clock. 

Mr. LARSON. Given the time limitations that we have, would it 

be possible, especially for a number of the panelists who would like 

to respond further to an issue, that once posed a question that 

would require, as I am sure some of my questions will, further expansion, that they be able to submit to the committee further explanation on what their answer might be. 

I am not specifically referring to Mr. Haass, but I know he wanted an opportunity to be able to elaborate on what oftentimes in 

terms of yes and no questions become very problematic. You ought 

to have that opportunity for the committee, and I would like to be 

the beneficiary of that. 

The CHAIRMAN. I think, without objection, we will allow each of 

the witnesses to elaborate on any one of these points that they 

would like to, and put it in the record without objection. 

I now will recognize the gentleman from Connecticut for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LARSON. With that I have four specific questions that I 

would like to ask. One of them deals with the Kyoto Accords. The 

other deals with the establishment of financial platforms. The third 

deals with hydrogen fuel technology and its relationship to nuclear. 

And the last deals with a carbon tax. 


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Let me start with, first and foremost, with Kyoto. In the opinion 

of the panelists, if you were advising the Bush administration, 

should we have pulled out of the Kyoto Accords? I realize it is 

longer than a yes or no answer. If you could give me a yes or no 

answer. 

General SULLIVAN. It was not a part of our group, although what 

I certainly feel and I think what we feel as a group is we need to 

be participating in follow-on to Kyoto, any international organization that is addressing these issues. 

Mr. LARSON. Mr. Haass. 

Mr. HAASS. Kyoto itself, I would argue, is deeply flawed, but the 

United States ought to be a full participant in its follow-on. 

Mr. LARSON. So you would have advised to follow up and stay 

with it. 

Mr. HAASS. Pardon me? 

Mr. LARSON. You would have advised the administration to stay 

with it. 

Mr. HAASS. To continue talking about the issues but not to accept the specifics of the Kyoto framework. 

Mr. POPE. We went it alone on Kyoto, we were left alone in Iraq. 

Admiral MCGINN. I think beyond Kyoto is where we need to go. 

There are some downsides to Kyoto that would limit its positive effect, but I think we definitely need to be leading in these issues 

and international forums and treaties. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. The cap-and-trade system has worked well for sulfur dioxide in the United States. The international market makes 

it a lot more complex, but either a carbon tax or carbon cap on 

trade along the lines of Kyoto, modernized and updated, is going 

to be essential to getting at coal’s contribution to global balance 

warming initiatives. 

Mr. LARSON. Are the Kyoto Accords and pulling away from the 

nuclear testimony ban treaties and the whole notion of a policy of 

unilateralism a wise position for the country to continue to follow, 

especially as relates to national security? Start with you Mr. Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Well, it is an intricate question, Congressman. Let 

me say that moving to nuclear power as an alternative to coal 

internationally creates huge problems, because the international 

arms control regime for all of this doesn’t work. It doesn’t bar countries from getting into the fuel cycle. And as a result, we could handle substituting for coal with nuclear power in the United States 

if we could ever figure out where to store waste, politically. But 

from the point of the view of the world moving toward nuclear 

power, we would have to have a completely different kind of international treaty regime than we have now in order to keep that 

from adding to proliferation. 

Mr. LARSON. Admiral. 

Admiral MCGINN. I agree with Mr. Woolsey. 

Mr. POPE. So do I. 

Mr. LARSON. Mr. Haass. 

Mr. HAASS. Global problems require global solutions. Climate 

change is one of the quintessential global problems. We are going 

to have to be involved in it, in part if we want others like China 

and India to be full participants as well. 


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Mr. LARSON. General. 

General SULLIVAN. Mr. Congressman, I served during the Cold 

War. The bulk of my time in the Army was during the Cold War. 

This Congress spent billions, trillions, on the Cold War. We were 

able to succeed, however you define success. That was a conflict 

which we managed. 

In my view we are involved in an issue here, you are discussing 

here where we could have a climate change or any number of 

things happen, and I think we need to have an effort which is 

equally as global and serious here in the United States. I believe 

that the security of the United States is at risk on some of these 

issues. 

Mr. LARSON. Because my time is about to run out, two-part question with regard to both financial platforms—several of which have 

been discussed—in terms of the standards that are going to be 

needed, and where is the funding going to come from, and what 

kind of incentives either through the tax base that would inspire 

entrepreneurialism, as Mr. Inslee talked about, or in the article 

that the Chairman started at the very start of this, referring to 

Thomas Friedman, after he went through a very lengthy article 

concludes by saying this, essentially; that if we are not willing to 

focus on some kind of carbon-related tax that directly provides the 

fencing-off of dollars that will go to directly assist the goals that 

many of you have outlined from a national security perspective, et 

cetera, we will not be able to move forward. It is just all folly and 

discussion. 

Your comments. 

Mr. HAASS. There is going to have to be—if there is going to be 

a global approach here—either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system or some hybrid involving the two, and the good news is there 

is 4 years or so to work that out on a multilateral basis. But first 

we, ourselves, the United States, I think also have to figure out 

what we are prepared to support. 

Mr. POPE. You can do this either by taxing carbon or by selling 

the permits in a cap-and-auction system. Either one generates 

enormous revenues by getting people to stop doing bad things, and 

enables you to lift taxes which are discouraging people from doing 

good things like employing people. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. A carbon cap-and-trade is essential, or a carbon 

tax or some combination, but it will not solve the oil problem. Oil 

is over 40 percent of the world’s emissions of carbon, and you do 

not affect oil substantially at all, and especially because we only 

make 2 percent of our electricity from oil today. So oil is a separate 

issue. One has to deal with it separately. Carbon cap-and-trade 

won’t solve it. 

Admiral MCGINN. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade is very much 

needed. Take a look at the Chicago carbon exchange for the marketplace dynamics. The marketplace and industry are looking to 

the United States Government for some leadership in this regard. 

They want to get out of the uncertainty and get on with deploying 

the right kind of technology and process. 

The CHAIRMAN. General Sullivan, do you want to have the last 

word on that? 


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The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentlelady from Michigan, Mrs. Miller. 

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just think 

this has been a fascinating discussion and a very, very interesting 

and challenging issue. And I am really very hopeful of the work 

that can come out of this committee with the kinds of questions 

that have been asked. And, again, in full disclosure here, I do live 

in southeast Michigan, and I represent the domestic auto industry 

in a very big way. It is literally our lifeblood there in Michigan, and 

we do feel sometimes as though we are under attack. And I guess 

what I want to say here is that we want to be partners, not adversaries, in getting to where we all want to be. 

And I would mention here, as has been mentioned by many of 

the witnesses, about 90 percent of all of the transportation modes 

are because of our reliance on oil, whether that is cars or vehicles 

or rail or aviation. And if you look around the globe and think 

about how some of the other nations are dealing with the challenge 

of climate change or their energy needs—I mean you have in 

Brazil, which is always highly touted about them using such a high 

percentage of ethanol—and then you can go over to Europe and it 

is interesting to note at this time, they still have voluntary mandates—they have no mandates, it is voluntary on their vehicles 

there. And even though they have small vehicles, in a lot of ways 

there are incentives, of course, because of their very high tax on 

gasoline, et cetera. Drive by any of those beautiful buildings and 

they are all various shades of gray because of all the emissions that 

have happened in Europe. And, in fact, what they are doing in Europe is really focusing on aviation as a huge part of climate change, 

although that is only about 3 percent, they will tell you, of what 

is happening in regards to pollution. 

They are now talking about emissions trading and everything 

else for aviation for all of the links, and I am not quite sure how 

all of that is going to work. But I would say this: There has been 

a lot of talk about utilizing new technologies, et cetera, how the 

government could help with hydroelectric, how the government 

could help with coal, better clean-burning coal, et cetera. And I am 

just wondering whether or not, when you look at an industry like 

the domestic auto industry that spends probably more on R&D 

than any other industry in the nation, and yet we are under the 

microscope again to continue to do a number of things, do any of 

you have any comment, or do you think that the Federal Government has any role to play in assisting the domestic auto industry 

with R&D for various types of very creative kinds of things that 

they are coming out with now? You can think about the Chevy 

Volt, the plug-in Chevy Volt that was just showcased at the North 

American International Auto Show, or the Ford edge, or some of 

these different kinds of—— 

In other words I would say this: When you look at, for instance, 

lithium ion batteries, and we see that the Japanese are about to 

have a corner on that market, and why is that? They are being assisted by their government. Is there any role for the Federal Government to assist the domestic auto industry, which by any definition is absolutely struggling now? 


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Again, we want to be proactive about it. I think we are. And I 

guess I would also like to comment, again, Mr. Chairman, as we 

are thinking about field hearings, that I would like us to consider 

coming to Detroit. 

Mr. POPE. Let me respond to that by saying that I believe that 

if we want to enable the American auto industry to be a viable vibrant partner in the future, we need Federal assistance, and we 

need a national compact between the Federal Government and the 

auto industry. We don’t just need help with R&D. The auto industry actually needs help to accelerate the turnover of old infrastructure. 

The American auto industry faces much higher interest rates 

than its foreign competitors. The American auto industry has very 

serious legacy costs, which Germany and Japan do not have. And 

we need to cut a bargain in which the auto industry commits to 

help the Nation solve its global warming and oil dependence problems and the Nation commits to help the auto industry modernize 

and become competitive if we are serious about having an American auto industry, and I think we have an obligation to do so. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Congresswoman, I think this is a very important 

subject, and I believe that there is definitely a Federal role, but the 

Federal Government has not done this well in the past. One thing 

it has done, for example, for the last number of years, is encourage, 

with a great deal of resources, hydrogen fuel cells for family automobiles. This is, as far as I am concerned, one of the most expensive, most wasteful, and least desirable innovations in transportation in a long time. Not only to make this work does one have 

to bring the cost of fuel cells down by a factor of 40 to 50, and one 

would have to figure out a way to have a nationwide distribution 

system that one former Republican Secretary of Energy told me 

would be at least a trillion dollars’ worth of family fueling stations, 

but one has to get away from the problem that by changing from 

natural gas to hydrogen, one loses about a third of the value of the 

energy, and by changing from electricity to hydrogen back to electricity again, one loses about three-fourths of the energy. One can 

put the electricity in the car in the first place as a plug-in hybrid, 

as you said, or one can put the natural gas in the bus in the first 

place. 

So for the Federal Government to get into something and say 

this is the solution, this is the single solution, its history has not 

been good. I think it would have to be something like Sima Tech, 

which changed very much for the better our ability to produce and 

manufacture computer chips in this country for things like battery 

technology. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. The 

gentlelady from South Dakota, Ms. Herseth. 

Ms. HERSETH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I appreciate the written testimony you have submitted. As 

I have reviewed that, some of you have talked a bit about corn-derived ethanol. Mr. Woolsey, you mentioned some of the limitations 

of corn-derived ethanol. 

I represent the State of South Dakota, a leader in that area. We 

wouldn’t be where we are today with the advantage of a potential 

for cellulosic ethanol without the advancements, before a market 


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was truly created in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for renewable 

fuel standards, and what we are able to accomplish and the types 

of companies that have evolved as entrepreneurs and innovators to 

advance cellulosic ethanol production. 

I think when we talk about the geopolitical implications of warming and climate change in each of the areas where all of you have 

worked and the life experiences you bring to the table today, I 

would imagine that there probably wouldn’t be a lot of disagreement about the relative stability and economic prosperity of a country based on the state of its agriculture sector. 

We see how Saddam Hussein has devastated over time Iraq’s irrigation system, other areas of its agriculture. We know what 

President Karzai is dealing with in trying to move farmers in 

southern Afghanistan to plant something other than poppy. 

So when we look at our objectives of energy independence and 

addressing carbon emissions, I think agriculture, not just American 

agriculture but agriculture across the board globally, really presents us with part of a significant solution. And I am just wondering if any of you could comment on whether it is renewable 

fuels, whether it is wind energy. 

South Dakota has a wealth of wind energy but the problem is 

transmission. Where you see our policy—our domestic policy and 

facilitating the growth of renewables for our domestic energy 

needs, but also the sharing agreements, perhaps with India and 

China and with others, so that we don’t stifle the economic growth 

that some of those countries have faced at the same time they are 

grappling with significant problems in rural parts of their countries 

because of the migration to cities. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I think the renewable technologies you are talking 

about, particularly wind and, increasingly, solar, with Thin Film 

Solar and Nanosolar the costs are going to come down, and that is 

a way for China and everybody to grow without negatively impacting the environment. 

And from the point of view of rural prosperity in the United 

States, if we replaced only one-quarter of our oil imports with domestically generated energy—so that is, let’s say, about 80 million 

barrels—if we replaced that, we would create something like 

800,000 jobs, most of them in rural America, and the $80 billion 

that was net farm income last year would effectively be doubled. 

And that is just replacing a quarter of our oil imports with domestically generated energy. This could mean very substantial prosperity for rural America. 

Mr. POPE. Let me speak to India, because India is still a nation, 

the majority of whose population is still rural. It makes absolutely 

no economic sense to electrify India by stringing wires between villages from central station power plants. It is nuts. India could electrify much more efficiently and much more cleanly if it had available to it the whole array of biomass, solar, and wind technologies 

suitable for small-scale village deployment. If the United States 

would lead the way in developing those technologies, we could have 

a phenomenal new industry, and we could be the world leader in 

that industry. 

Admiral MCGINN. I would like to add, the American farmer has 

a key role to play in meeting this energy challenge. We need to be 


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careful, though, in trying to solve one problem—energy dependence, 

for example, oil dependence—that we are not creating another by 

introducing inefficiencies of using food crops to produce fuel. We 

need to keep our American agricultural economy very much informed by the technology that is coming out in terms of crop yield 

as well as the kinds of crops that lend themselves more easily to 

the process of creating a bio-based fuel. 

Ms. HERSETH. General Sullivan. 

General SULLIVAN. I concur. This is all interrelated. And indeed 

some of our exports are feeding people who are living in countries 

without a robust agricultural society, and they need foodstuffs, and 

many of those foodstuffs come from the United States. So, you 

know, it is all interrelated. It is a very complex equation, and before we rush off, I think, on some of these issues, we need to be 

careful. 

Ms. HERSETH. And I don’t disagree with the caution there. Although the alternative argument that I will put out is, one of the 

concerns that some developing countries have had with the state 

of their agriculture is that the United States and other countries, 

because of our technology and our high yields and our production, 

have actually been dumping commodities on the export market at 

a loss. It is not good for our farmers. It is not good for farmers in 

developing countries. 

So it is actually the more we use some of those crops for valueadded fuel production, as well as environmentally friendly livestock 

production with anaerobic digesters that are a fully integrated system, that this actually could help as it relates to the global agricultural environment and give some producers in developing countries 

an opportunity to get a fair price for their commodity, if we are not 

dumping some of our surplus out onto the export market. 

Another question if I might, and I thank you for those responses. 

But I do want to move just quickly, before my time is up, to the 

issue of capturing—carbon capturing sequestration. 

Earlier today I was meeting with the CEO of the Southern Company and talking about nuclear energy and what happened in 

France and Japan of using the reprocess of spent fuel and reprocessing that spent fuel, whereas we made a decision back in the 

1970s to store it rather than to reprocess it. So when carbon—when 

CO2 is captured in electricity generation, for example, what can be 

done with it besides just pumping it back into the ground, sequestering it? Are there other potential industrial uses of CO2? And is 

there any way to further process CO2 so that it is no longer posing 

an environmental threat? 

In other words, is there potential in technology beyond sequestration that we should be more fully evaluating based on what may 

be happening elsewhere? 

Mr. WOOLSEY. There are, Congresswoman. One of the more interesting sets of developments has to do with algae that eat CO2

and can be used to produce lipids to be turned into something very 

much like biodiesel. There is some work on that going on up at 

MIT, I think, now. Most people believe the volumes of CO2 that 

would be produced if you continue to use carbon—use coal for electricity production, though, is going to require a relatively cheaper 

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line aquifers a mile or two down in the earth. At those depths, the 

CO2 becomes liquid and can dissolve into saltwater. It is not entirely clear that that is foolproof from the point of view of ever getting out. But to a number of scientists I have talked to, it looks 

good. The question really is the expense. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Sullivan. 

Mr. SULLIVAN of Oklahoma. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I again 

appreciate the panelists coming today, and I just have a different 

question for each of you. And I will start with General Sullivan. I 

like your name too. 

General Sullivan, in order to make the U.S. less vulnerable to climate change, should Federal and State governments encourage 

building new refineries in different geographical locations? You 

know, I think Katrina kind of underscored the fact that we may 

need to do this with a lot of the refining capacity down there. 

General SULLIVAN. Well that is not an area that our study group 

looked at. I would, just for what it is worth, it seems to me that 

our refinery base is way outdated and we are in danger of real 

problems. But that is a subject that I am not prepared to address. 

Based on our report—that is just an observation on my part—technology is way outdated, and, frankly, we are very vulnerable. 

Mr. SULLIVAN of Oklahoma. I agree. We haven’t built one or expanded one in many, many decades. 

Mr. Haass, I have a question for you. In your testimony you say 

that another way to increase diversification of supply is to increase 

domestic production. Do you support opening the Arctic National 

Wildlife Reserve, ANWR, for domestic production of oil? And also 

what about the Outer Continental Shelf? 

Mr. HAASS. Congressman, I would support opening up coastal 

areas. I would be comfortable in opening up ANWR. I think new 

drilling technology is far more efficient. It is also far more reliable. 

The only caveat I would say is many of the proponents—I am not 

suggesting this in your case—but many of the proponents who are 

doing just this exaggerate the consequences for U.S. energy security. It will not have a transformational or fundamental effect on 

our overall energy security picture. I think it is important that we 

do it both substantively and symbolically but we shouldn’t exaggerate the likely results. 

Mr. SULLIVAN of Oklahoma. Okay. And Mr. Pope, the U.S. will 

be using coal for its electric generation for the foreseeable future. 

Thus, to decrease CO2 emissions, the U.S. must develop carbon sequester technology. However, this technology is not available today 

on the commercial side. Therefore, what technology, if any, would 

we replace the coal-generated electricity currently produced? 

Mr. POPE. Well, I don’t think we are in a situation at the moment where we can or should shut down our existing coal-fired capacity. We need to replace it over time, and gradually. It would be 

economically quite silly to try to shut it all down. We don’t favor 

that. In the short term we believe there are enormous opportunities to make our own electricity use more efficient, to develop renewables, and to do the research in carbon sequestration to determine whether or not it pencils out. 


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I think it will work out. I don’t know whether it will pencil out. 

But our studies show that we could meet all of our projected electricity needs between now and 2030—without using any new coalfired capacity, without in fact using any new gas-fired or nuclear 

capacity, although we are likely to have more of those—just by deploying existing efficiency and renewables within today’s price 

range. So we believe the numbers are there to solve the problem 

between now and 2030, which we also believe will give us time to 

develop the new technology we will then need. 

Mr. SULLIVAN of Oklahoma. Thank you. 

And Vice Admiral, you know the Navy has had great success 

with nuclear power as a fuel source. You did comment on it a little 

while ago, about you thought it was good, safe, and some other 

issues that you discussed. How do you see that playing out? What 

is it going to take for us to embrace that more? And do you think 

we can do it, have the facilities that—and environmentally safe and 

also safe for citizens in this country? 

Admiral MCGINN. I think the challenge of increasing or revitalizing our nuclear power industry lies along the security concern, 

the waste concern, what do we do with the waste? We have wet 

waste building up with our existing legacy plants now, yet we can’t 

seem to come to a national consensus on how to treat that for the 

long term. There is the money part of it. How much does it cost, 

real costs to design, build, deploy and produce nuclear-powered energy versus other sources that may be more economically viable? 

And I think that that is a key question that has to be answered 

before we go full bore ahead. 

Mr. SULLIVAN of Oklahoma. Thank you. 

And Mr. Woolsey, global warming is a global problem that requires global solutions. How do you suggest that we go about getting China and India to actively participate in reducing carbon 

emissions? 

Mr. WOOLSEY. This is the—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Please answer the question. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. This is an issue in which we have everything to 

gain, I think, by close cooperation with both India and China. We 

still are the seat of much of the innovation in these areas such as 

solar and wind and geothermal. And I think that—and biomass 

transportation fuels. 

We have to understand that China and India want to economically, and they need to. From the point of view of their own internal stability, it is in our interest for China to be economically prosperous and stable. But we really need to work with them and develop the technology and share it with them and market it, that 

will help them do that without putting a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. 

And there is a certain urgency here because they are putting out 

now, I think the last time I saw, a couple coal-fired plants a week. 

So we really need to put on the fast track our work on these renewables and renewable fuels, and help them move away from oil and 

help them move away from the dirtier forms of coal. 

Mr. SULLIVAN of Oklahoma. Thank you, sir. I thank the gentleman. 


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The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me first of all speak with you, General Sullivan. You mentioned at the beginning of your comments that you went into this 

process as somewhat of a skeptic. And my interest was piqued because I am wondering if there was some kind of defining moment, 

some defining piece of information you received that caused you to 

want to pursue the report that is now being discussed, hopefully 

all over the country. And I have a follow-up from that. 

General SULLIVAN. That is a terrific question because I don’t 

think I am unique in this group, in that none of us—there are a 

couple who are probably more technically qualified than the rest of 

us, but most of us are essentially soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, without any particular technical skills in many of the areas 

you are talking about here. 

I happen to have grown up in the Northeast, and I was in 

Vermont where in January it normally requires about four layers 

of clothes and a stocking cap. And believe it or not, the sap had 

not stopped running, which was not good for the maple syrup industry. And then I discovered as a result of this study that in addition to that, many kinds of fish that I had fished for off of Cape 

Cod in Massachusetts I no longer could buy in restaurants around 

the United States, and one reason admittedly was overfishing. 

Another reason is plankton reduction, which may sound like a 

silly thing for an Army guy to be talking about, but it is a fact. And 

the maple tree is in fact dying out in New England. And a lot of 

those things came right home to me. And I think once I started getting interested in this, why is all of this happening, it became apparent that, number one—first of all I am not a scientist, as I said, 

and I didn’t become one—but I looked at what I saw, and I saw 

the trends. And I said, you know, in my former life, I never had 

100 percent certainty, and if I stuck around waiting for people to 

give me 100 percent certainty, I would get killed waiting for it. So 

if you want to know what my epiphany was, there it was. And it 

became very local, and I didn’t like what I saw. And I don’t like 

what I am seeing and I think it has huge implications for us, all 

of us. 

Mr. CLEAVER. You ought to write an op-ed piece just describing 

what you just said. I think it would be very helpful because I have 

heard all kinds of reasons of why this issue has surfaced. I heard 

someone on a TV talk show say that this was a conspiracy of liberals to get money to college professors. And I mean—and that is, 

I thought, one of the more intelligent analyses. 

But as a military—some of you, those of you who are military, 

let’s assume that for the most part this is just hype and that there 

is only a 6 percent chance that the scientists are correct. How 

many people in the military do you think would give their soldiers 

a gun and tell them that there is one bullet, so you only have a 

6 percent chance of blowing your brains out if you pull the trigger? 

How many volunteers do you think you would get for that? Thank 

you. 

The point I am trying to make is that even if there is a low percentage that this is some hype, isn’t it worth the effort not to take 


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that 6 percent chance on doing enormous damage to this world that 

we have inherited? 

General SULLIVAN. Mr. Congressman, you know, what we were 

really looking at, and it has been stated here, is threat multipliers. 

It is a threat multiplier. And Somalia is probably the case in point. 

I was the Chief of Staff of the Army during the Somalia episode 

where we lost 19 men, they all happened to be men. But that is 

hard. The Somalia issue is related to the issue that we are talking 

about here. It was drought. It was drought that caused the original 

problem. Drought and a lack of food. The instability that was created by drought caused the warlords to try to control the food that 

was coming in from nongovernmental agencies, to include the 

United States and the U.N., and conflict erupted and people started dying because the warlords were controlling the food and they 

were giving it to their tribes. Migration, where we see Somalis 

moving into Kenya and Ethiopia, they couldn’t control that migration. One thing led to another. The same thing is what is driving 

Darfur, and there has to be some recognition that these issues are, 

at the heart, environmentally related. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, your percentage mention of 6 percent makes a very solid point, which is that we insure against a 

lot of things in this life that we don’t think there is an extremely 

high probability that are going to occur, like lightning striking our 

homes. And the scientific consensus on global warming seems to 

me to be quite substantial now with some effect. There is some 

question to the degree, but the consequences are so awful if we 

don’t—if we don’t do something, that I very much agree with your 

analogy. And as a matter of fact, Thomas Shelling, Nobel Prize 

winner in economics, a few months ago had an op-ed in The Wall 

Street Journal making exactly that point. This is like insurance. 

So I think that is really a very key insight into all this. And the 

key thing for the insurance is that although we have to pay a premium with respect to coal and carbon, that might, you know, reduce our own consumption or reduce GDP, that happens all the 

time when we buy insurance for the family. But with respect to oil, 

essentially there is no premium because the steps we want to make 

by moving toward renewables and moving toward electricity use 

are the same steps you would want to take if you were taking this 

from the point of view of purely national security or any of a number of other—rural prosperity, any of a number of other desirable 

objectives. 

So with respect to oil, people don’t even have to believe in global 

warming if they don’t want to. I think they are going to be driven 

to doing the same things for a whole host of other reasons. 

With respect to coal, they really do need to face that they are 

going to have to pay some kind of a premium, but I think it is certainly a justifiable premium, given how disastrous the situation 

could be. 

Mr. POPE. I think, Congressman, we have moved past the insurance era. A decade ago we were buying insurance. We are now in 

a situation where the wastebasket is on fire and we are sitting 

around the dining room saying, well, should we do anything about 

it? Well, maybe it will put itself out. Well, maybe it will, but maybe 

it won’t. Maybe we ought to get a fire extinguisher. 


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Mr. HAASS. If I could take 30 seconds. It is not something that— 

in many cases we don’t have to worry about cost, because we can 

do a lot of what needs doing without incurring an economic cost. 

Indeed, one of the few areas we made progress in over the last 10 

years has been measures of energy intensity. 

Essentially in the American economy what sort of GDP output 

are we getting for a unit of energy input? We are making progress. 

So actually, it was an area where I take exception to what Mr. Sensenbrenner said before. It is no longer a measure of a successful 

economy where electricity consumption or production is going up. 

What we have now shown, increasingly, is that we can detach economic performance and economic success from greater energy use. 

That is the great success here, which is why over time I don’t think 

you need to sell this again as a cost worth paying. If we get it 

right, we can actually do this in ways that make financial sense. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady from Tennessee, Mrs. Blackburn. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Mr. Haass, I am going to come to you. I could tell you were 

wanting to add a little bit more as my good colleague was asking 

about floods and droughts and crop failures. And the IPCC report 

that is out reported that many of these disasters already occur 

from time to time, whether or not global warming plays a role. 

So let’s talk about this. And shouldn’t the disasters, such as 

floods and droughts and crop failures and diseases be faced directly, regardless of global warming? 

And then the other part of this question in this report, many of 

our leading economists and scientists have stated that these countries need to prioritize funding to deal with some of these disasters 

in health, water, education, hunger, and prioritize that first before 

dealing with climate change or global warming. Do you want to go 

ahead and respond? 

Mr. HAASS. I am a great believer that developing countries, like 

anyone else, need to prioritize. But some of those choices, it would 

seem to me, would be false. If we want countries—say in Africa— 

would face a large part of the developmental challenge. Intelligent 

land use, intelligent water use are part and parcel of a fundamentally successful development strategy. They don’t have the luxury 

of wasting units of energy. They need high energy efficiency, particularly countries which aren’t blessed, like to some extent may be 

cursed, but don’t have large amounts of domestic energy. If they 

have to import it, it will simply exacerbate the problems they face. 

So rather than seeing these necessarily as tradeoffs, Congresswoman, I would suggest in many situations what you are essentially arguing for is a comprehensive developmental strategy that 

then involves energy efficiency, intelligent land use, intelligent 

water use and so forth. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. One of the things that I think has not been 

lost on any of us this morning is that you all seem to be in agreement that there is no silver bullet in addressing the situation; that 

whatever we do, it is going to be a mix. Part of you like nuclear, 

part of you don’t. 


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TVA is in my district. Of course they are looking at moving up 

to 40 percent of their power generation to nuclear. Some of you like 

the coal to liquid, some of you don’t. And some of you think that 

that is going to be an option, some of you don’t. And I think that 

it points out why we do need to do some things that are going to 

be comprehensive in nature, that are going to take some time and 

are going to require some innovation. 

And before I turn my time back, I think, Mr. Pope, I will come 

to you on this. Let’s talk a little bit about ethanol. And you may 

have addressed this while I was out of the room for a meeting. Ethanol does in fact emit more VOCs than gasoline? 

Mr. POPE. Yes, it does. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. It does. And don’t the VOCs increase smog and 

affect human and animal health more than the gasoline emissions? 

Mr. POPE. Well, there are some issues with ethanol in terms of 

air quality. They can be managed with vehicle design. We are going 

to need to redesign a system. If we are going to move, as I believe 

we should and I believe we probably will, to a system in which we 

have a mixture of petroleum-based fuels and alcohol-based fuels, 

we are going to have to redesign system components and pollution 

to deal with that. I believe it is manageable. But I don’t believe 

ethanol is the silver bullet either. What she said is very important. 

We are going to need to do a number of things and I think ethanol 

will be one of them. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Congresswoman, those emissions vary with the 

mixture between ethanol and gasoline. One of the reasons many 

environmental groups have come to support E85, 85 percent ethanol, but have not been particularly enthusiastic about lower levels 

of the mixture, is when you get up to that substantial share, ethanol does not, the mixture, E85 does not emit worse than gasoline. 

And in any case, one is replacing oil with ethanol if one manages 

the emissions properly. And that in turn means that you are not 

putting other things into the atmosphere, such as the so-called aromatics, benzene, toluene, xylene, which are extremely carcinogenic 

and which are present in our gasoline today. 

So it does have to be managed. One can’t just randomly mix 

wherever one wants. But there is a way to go at this and move toward not only ethanol, butanol, renewable diesel and others of 

these renewable fuels without having these negative environmental 

impacts. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you. I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. The gentleman from New York, Mr. Hall. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all on our illustrious panel. I am sorry I missed 

so much of your spoken testimony, but I did read it last night, and 

it is very informative. 

Just quickly, I want to just comment on the remarks that were 

made by Mr. Woolsey and Admiral McGinn, among others, about 

the challenges of using nuclear power. I have in my district a plant 

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ties for 40 minutes, and which was also noted by Mohammed Atta 

on documents that were found after 9/11 as one of the targets that 

he had speculated about flying a plane into. 

Against that backdrop and knowing with the 103 nuclear sites 

currently, commercial nuclear sites operating in this country where 

we have vast quantities of high-level waste being stored de facto, 

where citizens never originally intended to be a nuclear waste site 

in their towns, and knowing that every city and State in between 

there and Yucca Mountain has threatened legal action to try to 

stop transit by rail or highway to get there, if we increase the transit of either spent fuel or enriched fuel to and from hundreds or 

thousands of new nuclear plants around the world, not just in this 

country but around the world, in reference to that safety regime, 

that security regime that I believe the admiral referred to, aren’t 

we virtually guaranteeing that sooner or later there will be a diversion and at least a dirty bomb as a result? 

Admiral MCGINN. It is possible. However, I think that nuclear— 

the generation nuclear plant in your district is very much an older 

one. The experience of the Navy with naval reactors has been very, 

very positive. The evolution of nuclear science and nuclear power 

plant design has proceeded at a much lower level than it was back 

in the 1960s and 1970s, but progressed nevertheless. 

So I believe that from an operational safety standpoint, we can 

put out nuclear power plants that are at least 10 times safer, perhaps even 100 times safer than the current generation. 

That said, there are the security concerns about transporter fuel, 

conversion of fuel, the waste disposal of fuel, and attendant to all 

of those security concerns and the design and construction concerns 

is what does it cost. What is the ultimate cost for a kilowatt hour 

of nuclear power compared to other forms? The key point, though, 

is—and one of the reasons I am not ready to reject nuclear power 

at all—is that right now 20 percent of our electricity is from nuclear power plants, 2 percent is from renewable fuels. To try to displace that is a very, very daunting challenge. 

Mr. HALL. I understand, General. 

Admiral MCGINN. We need to have a fair hearing. 

Mr. HALL. Excuse me. I have limited time. I appreciate your comments and I am just throwing some ideas out here. We haven’t 

talked about low-head hydroelectric at all. The Idaho National Laboratory, part of our own Energy Department, says that in my State 

of New York alone there are 4,000-plus low-head hydro sites, dams 

and waterfalls where, every day, tons of water are going over, 

being wasted. And that by putting turbines where the water is falling and wiring them into the grid, we could harvest greater than 

1,200 megawatts of power, which happens to be 60 percent of the 

Indian Point Nuclear Point’s peak output. 

So I am just curious about your comments about low-head hydro 

tidal power, wavepower or hydrogen as a storage mechanism for 

off-peak time when the capacity needs to be stored somewhere. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Congressman, I think the most promising sets of 

developments are the lowering costs going to first thin film and 

then nanosolar and the lowering costs from distributed—that is, 

small-scale wind generators which can operate at, say, three or 

four miles an hour instead of the eight or nine miles an hour that 


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you need for the large turbines, which is why they are up in mountain passes and out in the ocean. I know of only one tidal system. 

It is functioning on a commercial basis in France. It seems to work 

reasonably well, but I think the tidal situation has to be pretty 

much ideal. And some of the ocean current ideas are really very intriguing and there is some good research going on on them. 

Hydrogen is not a bad way to store energy if you can’t do anything else, and it does have—let’s say you generate from a wind 

farm in the Great Plains and you can’t get the electricity out because there aren’t transmission lines, turning that into hydrogen 

for, let’s say, the chemical industry or something like that might 

have real utility. Trying to use that hydrogen to power family automobiles, as I said earlier, I think is one of the craziest ideas this 

country has ever gotten off onto. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The 

gentlelady from California, Ms. Solis. 

Ms. SOLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate the testimony that we heard from all of you, from the witnesses this morning. And I am intrigued about the discussion regarding reliability 

with renewable energy. And in particular, in the State I represent, 

California, I just learned of a project that is underway right now 

that is looking at wind power being provided up in the Tehachapi. 

And maybe, Mr. Pope, you know something about this. But what 

is occurring is that they are going to be working with the PUC and 

Southern Cal Edison and some other folks, and it is actually going 

back to similar lines that have been put in place since the 1920s, 

so they are not actually going outside of what has already been established during the past few decades. 

And the reliability there that they are proposing is that they are 

going to be able to provide about 60 percent more of our electricity 

once this project is completed. And it is based primarily on wind 

energy and reliability. And for us in California, I think it means 

a great deal because we have had such tremendous problems in the 

past with shortages, brownouts, blackouts, and the whole problems 

with the grid, and then trying to find reliability. And our population continues to grow. 

So, Carl Pope, I would ask you if you know anything about that 

or if you want to comment. 

Mr. POPE. Well, one of the interesting things is that if you diversify, as California has worked on doing, your electricity sources, 

you are actually building yourself in a lot of security against disruptions. So these new retrofitted wind systems are very important. 

An opportunity we are not taking advantage of, we have a great 

deal of natural gas capacity in California that needs to be repowered. It is wasting half of the gas which it burns every day, and 

at today’s gas prices that doesn’t make sense. 

Another opportunity we have in California that deals with some 

of the storage issues with renewable is if we can make central station solar thermal cost competitive, it is relatively easy to store the 

heat. It is easier to store heat than it is to store electricity. So even 

though the sun doesn’t shine at night, a central station thermal 

solar electric plant—and we have a lot of sunshine and a lot of 

desert in California where we could do this—those plants can genVerDate Mar 15 2010 23:48 Nov 22, 2010 Jkt 057964 PO 00000 Frm 00178 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A964.XXX A964

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erate electricity at night. So we have a lot of opportunities if we 

consciously diversify. 

Ms. SOLIS. My next question really is for any of the panelists. We 

talk about security, energy security in other countries, particularly 

underdeveloped countries. What can we do as a Nation to help provide for leadership, and perhaps that partnership that you touch 

on here, and I am thinking particularly in places like the Middle 

East. 

I recently visited Iraq and saw a project that is underway there, 

a wastewater, waste management system that is being put in place 

right now. And I think, wow, what a great overture to folks there 

to let them know that we are sharing our technology. And I just 

want to get some comments from you on that. General Sullivan? 

General SULLIVAN. I think Nunn-Lugar, I think there are some 

efforts going on, in fact I know there are with the former Soviet 

Union, to get some control of their spent nuclear fuel and weapons. 

I think that is productive, reasonably productive. That is in the security arena. Other than that, I am not qualified. 

Mr. HAASS. I would say, funnily enough, for the oil producing 

countries, many of them, they need help dealing with their windfall. There has been a lot of writing about the oil curse, and for a 

lot of these countries, it overwhelms their capacity to have the normal evolution of a country, to develop normal markets, the rule of 

law, democracy. 

Demanding that countries such as Nigeria and others put in 

place real accounting, transparency, essentially not allowing the oil 

windfall to become a major source of corruption which actually undermines their governance is something that not simply the U.S. 

Government but oil companies and NGOs can help with. That is a 

way that we can essentially help the so-called wealthy countries 

deal with their own energy security situation. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. There is a historical identification in a number of 

these countries in the developing world with local self-sufficiency. 

That is what that spinning wheel is doing in the middle of the Indian flag. It was Gandhi’s way of saying the villages ought to spin 

their own cotton and be self-sufficient. 

And when you look at what is potentially available, I think, from 

solar wind and biomass for villages in India or, for that matter, settlements in the Iraqi desert, to be able to produce enough energy 

locally to, say, pump water or clean water up, and with battery developments to have some kind of capability to use even in areas of 

the world that don’t have oil or ready access to it, to use electricity 

for powering vehicles, for plows and the like. These developments 

are coming, and they are coming in part because battery technology 

has moved so quickly. 

And finally, Congresswoman, in California one thing to remember is although you all had some very serious problems out there 

with respect to your electricity, California as a whole over the last 

20 years has held its efficiency with respect to electricity such that 

the average Californian pays about the same amount as I do in 

Maryland for his electricity, but he pays at rates that are about 

double because he is using about half as much. And California has 

been the leader in the country with its PUC and the rest, and 


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steering us in a direction the rest of the country ought to follow 

with respect to that. 

Ms. SOLIS. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. Can I ask 

you—I am going to ask each one of you in reverse order to give us 

a one-minute summation of what it is you want us to remain the 

big point as we are moving forward on the select committee. 

And I would like while we are thinking about that, just General 

Sullivan, could you just talk about Diego Garcia briefly? It is in 

your report, and what is happening to that atoll out in the Indian 

Ocean? 

General SULLIVAN. You want me to do it right now? 

The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Could you do that? 

General SULLIVAN. Diego Garcia, as you know, is an atoll in the 

Indian Ocean. It is a strategic base that the United States has used 

for a number of years. Because it is an atoll, it is almost at sea 

level. Any rise in the sea level could obviously cause dislocation 

and dislocation would, in fact, require alternative basing somewhere. 

The CHAIRMAN. It has a security implication for the United 

States? 

General SULLIVAN. Yes. Yes it does. Prepositioned ships are kept 

there and other equipment. 

The CHAIRMAN. And your conclusion is that it is at risk now? 

General SULLIVAN. Well, my conclusion is if the oceans were in 

fact to rise, if what people are suggesting, if they were to—if oceans 

were to rise even inches, it would have an effect on Diego Garcia. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you. So let’s begin the summations 

with you, Mr. Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think with respect to 

policy and Congress’ role of legislation, two things are important. 

One is the CAFE standards, as you have proposed, in order to keep 

progress steady with respect to reducing oil use. And the other is 

removing barriers so that alternative fuels can be used—flexible 

fuel vehicles, pumps and any regulatory barriers that might be in 

the way of plug-in hybrids, and particularly the vehicle to grid that 

is plugging the hybrid back in after it is fully charged so it can supply some of the power to the grid. There is so much energy in vehicles that this really creates remarkable financial and other opportunities. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Woolsey. 

Admiral McGinn. 

Admiral MCGINN. Mr. Chairman, thank you. This is an American challenge. It is one that Americans together will meet. It 

doesn’t have partisan labels on it. The solutions are available 

today. They need to be guided by leadership and good policy which 

enables us to advance our energy efficiency and to increase our 

choices of clean renewable fuels in order to create opportunity for 

our economy, create opportunity and raise our level of national security and also to be a leader in the global sense in meeting this 

energy challenge. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Rear Admiral. Mr. Pope. 

Mr. POPE. In order to solve this problem, the twin problems of 

oil addiction and global warming, all we need to do is reduce our 


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emissions of carbon dioxide by 2 percent a year and improve the 

reliance of our transportation fleet on oil at a rate of 4 percent a 

year. Those are rates of innovation lower than we accept in any 

other part of the American economy, lower than those we experience in any other part of the American economy. 

So the big question this committee has to answer is, why aren’t 

we doing it already? And I am going to offer an answer which may 

not be welcome. I believe that the largest single barrier to innovation and progress, to kicking our oil addiction and stopping global 

warming, is that the United States Congress has structured the 

American energy sector in such a way that those who benefit from 

innovation are frustrated by those who benefit from stagnation. I 

think you need to fix the way in which Congress thinks about energy. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Pope. Dr. Haass. 

Mr. HAASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The short answer to your 

question is to continue doing what you are doing today. The more 

these issues gain salience and the more people see energy security 

and climate change as integrated in parts of a larger whole, I think 

you are beginning to win the debate. And encouraging that policymaking and the organization of policymaking come to reflect that 

will also help. 

Three specific points. One is coal. Real estate is about location, 

location, location. An awful lot of this issue of climate change is 

about coal, coal, and coal. And to the extent we can create an environment in which clean coal production, as well as thinking 

through and ultimately realizing technologies for storage of the carbon that is produced from coal plants happens, that will go a long 

way towards the problem. 

Secondly, to focus on the transportation sector and the sort of 

legislation you are introducing is good because it provides the predictability that Detroit and others need to know and innovators 

need to know so they can essentially—they are therefore aware 

what world they are operating in. 

Lastly, we can’t do it on our own. There will be no solution to 

the climate change problem without full participation by India and 

China above all. 

Which brings me back to the importance of coming up with 

guidelines for a post-Kyoto, post-2012 world. Let’s put aside the debate over Kyoto; love it, hate it. We need to get serious about what 

will be the principles that will inform U.S. policy and begin the 

conversation earlier rather than later with China, India, with 

Japan, with Europe, with Brazil, because the 4 or 5 years between 

now and 2012 will barely be enough to have that debate settled. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor. General Sullivan. 

General SULLIVAN. Mr. Chairman, I believe that climate change, 

environmental health, energy dependence and national security are 

all interrelated. I think you are on the right track with this panel, 

addressing these issues. I applaud your endeavors to sponsor an 

NIE, National Intelligence Estimate, to look at these issues in 

depth, broadly, and to come up with a way forward. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, we thank you. We thank this extraordinary 

panel for its testimony today, not just for your testimony but also 


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for the judgment which you have brought to these issues here 

today. 

I think that two things are quite clear. One, it is the size of the 

problem, and it is no longer acceptable for us to act incrementally. 

We now must find a way for the United States Congress and for 

the United States to be bold to deal with this issue. The time has 

now passed for incremental solutions, and while boldness has always been something that is synonymous with unpassable in terms 

of legislation in Washington, I think that quickly that time is passing on this issue. And secondly, that the solutions are there, and 

our panel has pointed to so many of them from fuel economy standards for vehicles to cellulosic energies, renewable sources for the 

generation of electricity, looking at the sequestration of carbon in 

the use of coal and so many others, the gentleman from Oregon 

pointing to the standards that we should have for buildings across 

our country. The list goes on and on but the solutions are available. 

This is the kickoff to the 2-year Select Committee on Energy 

Independence and Global Warming. I can’t think of a greater panel 

to have begun this discussion. We thank you very much. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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