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U.N. CLIMATE TALKS AND POWER POLITICS:

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE TEMPERATURE

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND 

INVESTIGATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 25, 2011

Serial No. 112–22

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

VACANT 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

FREDERICA WILSON, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

YLEEM D.S. POBLETE, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

RON PAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

KAREN BASS, California 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. Todd D. Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change, U.S. Department 

of State .................................................................................................................. 10

Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D., F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow, American Enterprise 

Institute ................................................................................................................ 26

Mr. Elliot Diringer, Vice President for International Strategies, Pew Center 

on Global Climate Change ................................................................................... 32

Daniel Twining, Ph.D., Senior Fellow for Asia, German Marshall Fund of 

the United States ................................................................................................. 44

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of California, and chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations: 

Material submitted for the record ...................................................................... 2

Prepared statement .............................................................................................. 7

Mr. Todd D. Stern: Prepared statement ................................................................ 13

Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ................................................... 29

Mr. Elliot Diringer: Prepared statement ............................................................... 35

Daniel Twining, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ......................................................... 46

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 62

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 63

(1)

U.N. CLIMATE TALKS AND POWER POLITICS: 

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE TEMPERATURE 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2011

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:10 p.m., in room 

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If you take a look at what I just did, it is 

very fascinating because it goes right to the hearing. What I did 

is I switched this button on so you could hear me, which brings to 

play energy that is created somewhere by something, which we are 

using to make this hearing more effective. And energy plays a part 

in things that we just take it for granted so often, so even as we 

are conversing there are technology machines and energy that is 

being brought to play as part of this communication. 

So with that advance statement to my statement, I will proceed. 

In December 2007, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate 

Change met in Bali, Indonesia. There, in one of the most opulent 

resort areas of the world, a playground for the rich, I might add, 

a great place for surfers from around the world to go to, but there 

in this tropical paradise came people from all over the world on 

their private airplanes and chartered airplanes and met by limousines, and they were there while they were there, a plan was 

drawn up to impose what has to be looked at in retrospect as a 

lower standard of living for a large number of people on this planet. 

The imperative was to be man-made, of course. The imperative 

behind all of this is alleged to be man-made global warming, which 

we are told poses a danger against which the whole world should 

unite. 

In the years since then, the scientific assumptions of this supposed crisis have been increasingly challenged by prominent scientists throughout the world, although, again, we hear over and 

over again that the debate is closed, and thus those scientists who 

have something to say are being for the most part ignored. 

But among them are Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia; 

Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; 

Frank Tipler, a professor of both mathematics and physics from 

Tulane University; and Roy Spencer, a climatologist and a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville. 

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All these are among the scientists, the many eminent scientists 

whose work has contradicted the U.N. orthodoxy of man-made global warming. I have a list of another 100 prominent scientists who 

agree with the five that I have just mentioned and they will now 

be placed in the record, without objection. 

Hearing no objection so ordered. 

[The information referred to follows:]


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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Significantly, in determining what the heck 

is going on here is the fact that U.N. climate talks have not become 

a forum for global cooperation, which was expected; something as 

dramatic as a threat to the whole world but yet it was not forthcoming in any of these with global cooperation. Instead, what these 

meetings have tended to be like is an arena for competing national 

interests under the slogan ‘‘common but differential responsibilities’’; and then ‘‘zero sum,’’ world was created which pitted developed and developing countries against each other, and within each 

block of nations there were separate groupings. 

Behind the debate over the supposed science of climate change, 

nations have fought for trade advantages, the transfer of technology, the flow of capital, and of course political and economic influence. Coalitions have formed that will affect the global balance 

of power and wealth far beyond the time when these conferences 

are ever remembered. 

The stake here, and the stakes here are high, is nothing less 

than how the future growth of the world economy will be divided 

up and how much future growth will be permitted in the world 

economy, who will be allowed to prosper and who will be forced to 

slow down or even decline in their standard of living. These are all 

issues that are on the table. 

The current talks aim at ‘‘a binding agreement’’ to be signed in 

December at a conference to be held in Durbin, South Africa. It is 

meant to replace the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 which will expire in 

2012. The United States did not accept the Kyoto Protocol because 

it imposed restrictions only on developed countries, while leaving 

developing countries free to follow whatever strategy for economic 

growth they desired. 

U.N. documents still call for the next agreement to follow this 

same pattern, protecting the right of some nations to rise while imposing a burden of debt on developed countries, especially the developed countries of North America, Europe, and Japan; and this 

debt burden, of course, is a penalty of modernization and being successful. I am not sure that is what we want to do to achieve 

progress among the human race is to penalize modernization and 

success. 

This is a framework for restructuring the global economy and 

shifting the balance of wealth and power. The first manifestation 

of all this talk is the establishment of a green climate fund which 

is supposed to reach $100 billion a year by the year 2020. One can 

only guess which countries will contribute to the fund and which 

countries will draw from it. With a Federal budget in massive deficit and an economy that still that has yet to pull itself out of a 

deep recession but is struggling to do so, the expectation that the 

United States will be footing a major share of the bill for such a 

U.N. fund is pure fantasy. 

So what is all this talk about and where is it heading? The purpose of this hearing is to examine the U.N. climate talks and the 

swirling maneuvers and power plays observed in the wake of these 

global gatherings, whether they are in Cancu ́n or whether they are 

in Bali or in whatever other wonderful resorts they plan to have 

these meetings at. 

6

Our national interests are at stake. How could America protect 

its national interests against demands of rivals in meetings such 

as these? What coalitions confront us and how can we thwart the 

moves, the moves that are being made, that are hostile to the interests of the American people? Why do we not claim the same right 

to growth that other nations claim and act as if they—and act as 

they do when they are protecting their rights to have a decent 

standard of living for their people and to protect the well-being of 

their people? 

With us today is our first witness, Todd Stern, the Special Envoy 

for climate change at the State Department. Mr. Stern has served 

at this post since 2009 and is the President’s chief climate negotiator, representing the United States internationally at the ministerial level in all bilateral and multilateral negotiations regarding 

climate change. Before joining the Obama administration, he was 

a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress where he focused on climate change and environmental issues. He also served 

in the White House and at the Treasury during the Clinton administration, and that was from 1997 to 1998. He acted as senior 

White House negotiator at Kyoto and Buenos Aires for U.N. climate negotiations. 

We will have a second panel today and they will be introduced 

as we move forward. And now Mr. Carnahan, the ranking member, 

may have an opening statement of his own. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rohrabacher follows:]

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Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And you know you 

opened up your remarks talking about where this energy was coming from and the Red Bull energy drink that the chairman is trying 

to get me hooked on here today. But anyway, appreciate you continuing this important debate. We don’t see eye to eye on some of 

these questions, but it is critical that we have this conversation. So 

thank you for having this hearing. 

We are just a few months away since the last round of climate 

negotiations, so this hearing is not just important but it is timely. 

Active, constructive engagements are in our country’s best interest. 

When dealing with large-scale global challenges like climate 

change, we need to be at the table, leading the discussion, working 

with other countries. We can’t make a dent without joint international action. 

Climate change is not a problem that is uniquely American; nor 

is it wrong that it affects only a few countries. It is a collective 

challenge, and it is a challenge that requires broad action. The 

U.N. provides the forum for addressing climate change. While not 

immune from problems and challenges in its own right, the U.N. 

is the largest and most comprehensive body in which to tackle 

these challenges. 

We have already seen many of the positive effects of the U.N. involvement: Countries like India and China have come to the table 

and are making real commitments and making real progress. Being 

a responsible partner at the U.N. through these negotiations is also 

in our best national interests. It provides us with increased leverage to advocate for U.S. policies. 

My State is home to some of the best biotech companies in the 

world. In order to for U.S. businesses to fairly compete in the global marketplace, we have to ensure that we get the best intellectual 

property rights protections for our companies. Mr. Stern, I know 

this is something that has been central to negotiations, and I would 

like to hear you address this issue in particular today. 

There is also a great opportunity to utilize these negotiations to 

increase exports and to support American businesses. Last week, I 

held a ‘‘Make it in America’’ event in my district. One of the components of this program is clean energy. Creating a framework and 

exporting prospects for U.S. businesses creates new markets, spurs 

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We absolutely have the intellectual capacity to outpace every 

other country in the world on manufacturing and technology. We 

should pursue all avenues to do this. By doing so we will not only 

help our economy, we will also help to build the capacity of many 

of these developing countries in order to help them mitigate the effects of climate change. 

I know that there will be a healthy debate today about the U.S. 

financial commitments. We have an obligation to ensure that any 

investment of U.S. taxpayer funds are done in a cost-effective manner and done with strict accounting and broad consensus of the 

best scientists in the world. 

Last year we held a hearing in this subcommittee on how publicprivate partnerships were helping to achieve the millennium development goals. That hearing showed how government investments 

were leveraged to meet the international challenges and they could 

be done cost effectively and could help meet U.S. interests. Government investment loans are simply not a viable option. We have to 

find ways to achieve our policy goals by spending more wisely. 

I will be interested in hearing from our witnesses today how the 

proposed climate fund which would reach these same goals of being 

open and transparent, cost effective, and would leverage private financing. Over the course of the past 2 years this administration 

has been an active and engaged partner in dealing with many of 

the problems of the 21st century. This type of leadership is necessary in order to overcome many of the hurdles the world faces 

today. Bringing about real solutions to climate change relies on this 

continued engagement. 

I look forward to hearing the witnesses today, and Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. 

We will proceed with Mr. Stern and we want to thank you very 

much for being with us today. You have a very weighty background 

on these issues and I brought up some controversial things to talk 

about, and I am very very pleased that you have come here to talk 

to us and we will have a very fair exchange of ideas. So you may 

proceed with your opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF MR. TODD D. STERN, SPECIAL ENVOY FOR 

CLIMATE CHANGE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Mr. STERN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you, Mr. Ranking Member, for inviting me here today, and I look 

forward to our discussion. 

At the time President Obama took office, there was a prevailing 

paradigm in the climate negotiations that came to be accepted by 

many, although not by us. That paradigm holds that there is in essence a firewall between developed and developing countries as 

they were defined in this 1992 Framework Convention on Climate 

Change with all specific obligations to address climate change assigned to developed countries. 

There are multiple problems with this paradigm. First, it is 

wrong as a matter of textural analysis. The framework convention 

did not create such a firewall. But beyond this legal point, that 

Kyoto paradigm is unworkable as a matter of substance. You cannot address the global climate challenge by focusing only on develVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:06 Jun 28, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\OI\052511\66534 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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oped countries. Developing countries already account for about 55 

percent of global emissions and will account for some 65 percent by 

2030. Instead, you need to start with all the major emitters, both 

developed and developing, accounting for some 80 percent of global 

emissions and build out from there. 

This understanding led the Obama administration to pick up on 

a 2007 initiative by President Bush, the Major Economies Meeting, 

comprising the 16 leading developed and developing countries, plus 

the EU, in order to address energy and climate change. We slightly 

changed the name to Major Economies Forum and changed the 

focus, but we retained the basic group. We have held 11 meetings 

at the ministerial level and one at the leader level and this group, 

this organization, has proved to be quite useful. 

Recognizing the flaws in the firewall, we favored a different approach from the time we came into office, in which all major economies, developed and developing, would make commitments to limit 

their emissions and base those commitments on their own national 

plans and circumstances rather than having targets that seemed to 

be imposed from outside. This approach was new. It contradicted 

the received wisdom that developed country action was mandatory, 

while action by even the largest developing countries was strictly 

voluntary. 

The Copenhagen Accord marked the first time that all major 

economies agreed to implement targets or actions to limit their 

emissions and to do so in an internationally transparent manner. 

In this sense, it represented the first break in the traditional firewall. 

The Cancu ́n meeting confirmed and substantially extended the 

Copenhagen Accord. Moreover, the Cancu ́n agreements, unlike Copenhagen, were formally adopted by the parties of the U.N. FCCC. 

Part of what made the Copenhagen and Cancu ́n deals possible, I 

must say, was a commitment to aid poor countries. And I want to 

tell you why I think such funding is in our national interest. 

Our program is built on three pillars. First, clean energy to help 

put developing countries on a low-carbon path; second, preserving 

and managing forests; and third, building resilience against extreme weather events. Each of these efforts serves important purposes beyond reducing emissions. Helping countries get on a clean 

energy path can create markets for U.S. technology. 

Tropical forests are home to some 80 percent of terrestrial species, including for example, 70 percent of plants with anti-cancer 

characteristics, and the World Bank estimates that every dollar we 

spend in disaster preparedness saves $7 in disaster response. 

Moreover, countries around the world see climate change as a core 

challenge. Whether you agree or disagree with that, it is vital to 

U.S. diplomatic leverage and to U.S. long-term interests to be seen 

as part of the solution. 

Finally, our climate funding provides real bang for the buck. The 

overall U.S. foreign operations budget is about 1 percent of the 

total U.S. Government budget, and our climate funding is only 

about 3 percent of that. 

So where we do stand now in the negotiations? The first priority 

for the work leading up to this year’s conference in Durbin, South 

Africa should be to implement the key agreements reached last 

12

year in Cancu ́n on transparency, financing, technology, and adaptation. If we do that, COP 17 in Durbin will be a solid success. 

Whether we will manage to do that is by no means clear. Many developing countries, including large ones, continue to be fixated on 

preserving that 1992 firewall, and we won’t accept that. After all, 

the world has changed. As of 2009, 4 of the top 10 and 9 of the 

top 20 emitters in the world were developing countries, from socalled non-Annex 1. China’s GDP is nearly six times larger than it 

was in 1992, and its CO2 emissions are nearly three times larger. 

Beyond the firewall question there are other difficult issues, including whether parties to Kyoto—which does not include the 

United States—will agree to a second so-called commitment period. 

And there are other perennial issues that will no doubt be raised, 

including intellectual property. 

Mr. Chairman, I told you at a hearing in November 2009, that 

we would stand strong for intellectual property rights and we have 

and we will. 

The question for the U.N. negotiations at the end of the day is 

what parties want. The U.N. FCCC has the potential to be a useful 

pragmatic body that can help address climate change, not the only 

one, but an important one. We have made some good progress in 

the past 2 years, especially in working to knock down the firewall 

I have discussed and insisting on a new level of international 

transparency. But much work remains. 

Thank you for inviting me to testify today, and I would be happy 

to take your questions. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stern follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. When is the next major session that we are 

going to be preparing for again? 

Mr. STERN. That is in Durbin, South Africa. We will start at the 

very end of November, I think the 27th or 28th, and we will run 

for 2 weeks. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. So we are coming up on that. That is 

what we are preparing for right now. 

Mr. STERN. Correct. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. And you believe that there will be 

this green climate fund being proposed there that I was referring 

to in my opening statement, the $100 billion a year to be collected 

from various countries? 

Mr. STERN. Let me, if I may, Mr. Chairman, just disentangle a 

couple of elements of the overall financing issue. There is—there 

was an agreement in Cancu ́n to establish a green fund. That is independent of the $100 billion, which I will get to in a second. So 

that is to set up green fund. There was an agreement to do that. 

Now, the work this year involves—there is actually something 

called a transitional committee that was established in order to 

work out the actual operating guidelines, how it is going to work, 

how the board is going to be chosen, what financial instruments 

will be used, and a whole array of technical issues that need to 

be—and sometimes political issues that need to be resolved. That 

committee has met once now. We were quite keen—the reason that 

there is a transitional committee, quite frankly, is that we were 

quite keen in having this thing set up in a professional way, outside of the control of the U.N. FCCC, outside of the control of climate negotiators. Even though I am one, I know that when we are 

setting up financial institutions we ought to have financial people 

engaged. 

So our lead representative from the U.S. Government is from 

Treasury. State is also involved. So that work to set up the entity 

is going on this year. There is also a commitment to a goal of mobilizing $100 billion 

from all sources. Some of that will go through——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. $100 billion annually, or $100 billion? 

Mr. STERN. $100 billion annually by 2020. Some of that will run 

through the green fund; a great deal of it won’t. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Are you suggesting that this $100 billion annual goal is different than the green fund? 

Mr. STERN. They overlap. And I would guess that there would be 

some amount, and I don’t know what the amount will be of that 

funding, assuming that the various contingencies come into play. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am not understanding. 

Mr. STERN. Some it will run through the green fund. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Two entities. One is going to be a green fund 

and then there is going to be another entity. 

Mr. STERN. No, not another entity. What I am saying, imagine 

that, first of all, the $100 billion is contingent on there being adequate mitigation and transparency from developing countries. So 

let’s assume that we have got that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. $100 billion a year. 

Mr. STERN. Yeah, that is right. And there will be a lot of that 

will come through ordinary bilateral channels. I would say the 

19

great majority, I would think, would come from the private sector. 

So using government policy measures to try to leverage private investment, for example, things like risk insurance, loan guarantees, 

those kinds of things. So there will be some combination of actual 

government funding and some significant—and, again, I would 

think the great majority, given the fiscal condition of the United 

States and Europe and other countries, the great majority of it I 

would guess will come from the private sector, with some government policies——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. That is to the $100 billion fund. 

Mr. STERN. That is right. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am not getting the structure here. 

Mr. STERN. Because it is not a fund per se. It is a total of $100 

billion of resources that will be mobilized for climate change. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Who would be overseeing? 

Mr. STERN. Nobody would be overseeing the fund. There would 

be somebody overseeing the green fund, so maybe you would have 

$10 billion or $20 billion or whatever going to the green fund. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Nobody overseeing the fund, but there will be 

people overseeing the green fund. I am sorry that I am getting a 

little confused when there are only two funds we are talking about 

here. You can’t afford to get me confused. 

Mr. STERN. I am sorry, Chairman, maybe it is a little bit con- fusing. But the $100 billion is a goal for an amount. Right now 

there is a much smaller amount. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. To go into the green fund. 

Mr. STERN. Not to go into the green fund per se; some of it will 

go into the green fund. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Where is the $100 billion going to go? 

Mr. STERN. Some of it will go into the green fund. Some it will 

flow through U.S. bilateral channels that go to——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And who will be making the determinations 

as to where that flow is going? 

Mr. STERN. The United States will make determination with respect to United States bilateral giving. There will be the same for 

countries in Europe, the same for countries like Japan. And, by the 

way, we don’t think that it is excluded at all that some of that 

funding should come from major developing countries themselves. 

I mean Mexico was the one who originally proposed the green fund, 

and in Mexico’s original proposal it explicitly called for contributions from all countries. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is it the whole United Nations that is going 

to determine where these funds go? 

Mr. STERN. No, no. I think it will fundamentally either be bilateral and be individual countries deciding where their own funding 

is going to go, or through the green fund. But again also through—

it can be bilateral. It is U.S. Government-appropriated money. 

There can also be the——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Appropriated money. And who then will be 

responsible for the spending of the money? 

Mr. STERN. Think about what happens right now. There is appropriated money that goes right now, much smaller amount, that 

goes to various countries for—just the way I talked about in my 

testimony. So there will still be some of that, and there will be 

20

some of that in countries all over the world, and there will also be, 

as I said, I think mechanisms like the use of things like loan guarantees and risk insurance and so forth that will help trigger investments from private sources of capital. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am just trying to fix responsibility here. We 

are talking about—$100 billion in and of itself is a lot of money—

but $100 billion a year. 

Mr. STERN. I agree with that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. This is an enormous amount of money. And, 

frankly, from what you have described, I don’t know, maybe other 

people are able to catch this more than I am, but it doesn’t seem 

that you have got this plan as to who has got authority and responsibility and whether it is one fund or two funds; where the money 

goes; who is going to make the decision. It doesn’t sound like you 

have that——

Mr. STERN. We wouldn’t actually want this to be one top-down 

massive superstructure. We want there to be control through the 

United States to decide on where a lot of our funds go. So some 

of it will go to the green fund, some of it will go through channels 

that——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. How much do you predict will be the contribution of the United States? It is $100 billion annually. How 

much of this will be taken from the United States, the people of 

the United States? 

Mr. STERN. I think that is hard to say right now, Congressman. 

I mean right now, if you look at where we are right now, funding 

the appropriated funds in Fiscal Year 2010 was a little short of $1 

billion, if you look at State, Treasury, and USAID. I would think 

that would ramp up somewhat but that U.S. appropriated money 

is not going to be huge. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Could you give us a guesstimate? You are the 

main negotiator here. You are on the table telling how much we 

are willing to put in here when you are negotiating with the other 

countries. How much are you telling them we are willing to put in? 

Mr. STERN. We are not making commitments about how much 

we are willing to put in. I think that——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Is that just not known now? Or by November 

when you have this meeting with all these other countries, will you 

know then? 

Mr. STERN. I don’t anticipate that we would make any commitment to any particular amounts of money in November. I don’t anticipate that as being part of the discussion. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If we are not willing to make a commitment, 

I don’t understand how we are expecting other countries to make 

commitments. 

Let me ask you, is China going to have any of this money coming 

from this fund? I mean, will they be able to take money from the 

green fund? 

Mr. STERN. Congressman, look, I said about an hour or 2 after 

I arrived in Copenhagen in 2009, I did my first press conference. 

And I was asked about funding for China. And I said I didn’t really 

anticipate that U.S. funds, which are limited in any event, would 

be most wisely spent going to China. 

21

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I have your quote right here, and I was just 

wondering about if that is still your same position. 

Mr. STERN. Yes, it is my same position. I wasn’t popular with everybody when I said that, but that is my same position. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You weren’t popular with the Chinese, I am 

sure. 

Mr. STERN. That is what I meant. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. We will have a second round of 

questions, but I have already used an allotment of time here, so 

why don’t I let Ranking Member Mr. Carnahan have his shot? 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I wanted to 

jump in to my questions, really, talking about the U.N. specifically. 

There are some discussions in this whole conversation about the 

proper forum for some of these things to happen. Is the U.N. only 

and our most effective forum for these negotiations to take place? 

And if so, tell us why. 

Mr. STERN. It is a good question Congressman. Look, I think that 

it is not the only forum. I think that one of the reasons that we 

were quite interested in picking up on the group that President 

Bush put together and, as I say, changing it some into the Major 

Economies Forum, is because we believe it would be a very useful 

thing to have a smaller group of the major players responsible for 

about 80 percent of global emissions, who could meet together in 

a more informal and more intimate kind of discussion at a more 

senior level than typically happens in the U.N. FCCC, to be able 

to discuss these issues. And I do think that is a good idea. 

I actually, back before I was in any of these jobs, I wrote about 

the need for a smaller group back several years ago. So I think it 

is very good to do that. 

I think that the U.N. is an important body. I think that the U.N. 

FCCC has been seized with this issue for a long time, has a certain 

amount of credibility in the world in working on the issue. I think 

it can do a lot of good and we should continue to try to work 

through it. 

I also think that the thing that matters is dealing with the problem, and so we are never going to be focused first and foremost on 

what body we work with. We think it should be the U.N. It has 

got credibility and history on its side but, you know, it is going to 

depend on what develops going forward, and what matters to us is 

that we do something about this problem and make progress. So 

however—sort of whatever works is my view. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. And describe, if you would, the impact of the 

U.S. being at the table and being more actively involved in these 

negotiations. 

Mr. STERN. Well, I think that there is just no question that the 

U.S. is always a very important voice. I think that, you know, there 

are things which could have happened here on the domestic policy 

front that could have made our—could have strengthened our hand 

and given us greater leverage than we do have, but even despite 

some of those things not having happened, the United States is an 

enormously important player. And there are many important 

issues that get wrestled with, from the mitigation itself to transparency and funding and assistance and so forth, and whether we 

are dealing with other developed countries or we are dealing with 

22

major developing or Africans, Islanders, Latin Americans and so 

forth, the U.S. I think is an indispensable voice. 

And, you know, what I said in my testimony I think is maybe 

bears repeating. An enormous number of countries are extremely 

concerned about climate change, see it as a high priority. If the 

United States were not engaged, apart from climate change itself, 

which is in and of itself very important, it would hurt us. It would 

hurt us diplomatically. It would hurt us in terms of the leverage 

that we have in the world on a raft of issues. So it matters that 

we are seen to be engaged and trying to be part of the solution. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Let me thank you. I want to turn now to the economic perspective that you mentioned with regard to disaster preparedness and that statistic for every dollar spent on disaster preparedness, we save $7 in disaster relief. Is there any data or estimates on how that concept looks in terms of investments in the 

proposed green climate fund, how that would impact disaster relief 

costs on the back end in terms of climate? 

Mr. STERN. Well, I think it is much the same, much the same 

with respect to the adaptation side. So I would see the green climate fund as providing funding both for adaptation and for mitigation. I actually think if you imagine two parts of the green fund, 

one purely public money, appropriated money from governments on 

the one hand, and then money that is leveraged from the private 

sector on the other, I would assume that a lot of the straight public 

funding will end up going to adaptation, because it will be easier 

to draw private sector funding into building big energy projects, the 

mitigation side, I would think. 

So that same kind of metric that the World Bank study showed of, you know, $7 of saving for every dollar you invest on the adaptation side, I think would be the same kind of dynamic with respect 

to green fund investments and adaptation. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. All right. Just one last question. In relation to 

U.S. business exports to new international markets, what kind——

Mr. STERN. I am sorry? 

Mr. CARNAHAN. In terms of how would these agreements affect 

U.S. business exports to new international markets in areas, in 

particular with regard to clean energy technology? 

Mr. STERN. Well, I think that they could be a very good thing. 

I mean, I think that there is a huge—there is going to be a huge 

amount of funding invested in energy infrastructure in the world 

if you look out over the next 2, 3, 4 decades. I mean that is just 

a fact of life. And a great deal of that is inevitably going to be invested in the clean or green side, whether it is in all manner of renewables, energy efficiency, et cetera. 

So I think that as you increase the amount of money that can 

be provided, that can be leveraged from the private sector, that is 

going to create markets for whoever is smart enough, may I say, 

to develop their own domestic industries in this area. Three years 

ago, we had 80 percent larger—I think I have the right number—

about 80 percent larger investing in clean tech than China did, and 

it is reversed now. So we have got to provide the right incentives 

and the right stimulus to our green industries in order to—not just 

because it is good for the environment and good for climate change, 

but also because there are huge markets out there and if we don’t 

23

get in the game we are not going to participate and we are not 

going to get the economic growth and the job growth and so forth 

that will come from those markets. And there are countries, and 

China is chief among them, that are running fast on this track 

right now. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you very much. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We will have a short second round as well. 

Obviously from my opening statement and from things that we 

have been through before, I am highly skeptical of the global 

warming theory—not the global warming, the man-made global 

warming theory, because we all know that there are changes in the 

climate that happen, and it has happened for millennia, and 

whether or not mankind is involved in this is something that we 

have a disagreement on. 

That is not the purpose of the hearing today. But because of the 

theory being accepted here—and know that if there is climate 

change going on and if mankind is going—we also know that nature causes this. And when you talk about being prepared for natural disasters as being part of the agenda, I was wondering about 

two issues that seem to elude so many people who are looking at 

the issue of global warming. That is that rainforests and the rotting wood and the insects in rainforests produce an enormous 

amount of greenhouse gases. I am not sure what proportion that 

would be to industrialization, but it is huge. Also, we also know 

that older trees are actually part of the problem as compared to 

part of the solution, where younger trees, by the theory, are sucking in this pollution and bringing out oxygen. I mean, this is the 

basis of this whole theory, plant theory. 

Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of 

rainforests in order to—for some countries, in order to eliminate 

that production of greenhouse gases which is huge? Or, would the 

people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant 

younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening? 

Mr. STERN. Well, what I can say about that, Mr. Chairman, is 

that first of all, the notion that the forests are an important part 

of this problem is absolutely right, and I have seen different numbers sort of ranging from 15 to 20 percent of the total amount of 

CO2 emitted. That mostly comes from cutting trees down. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It is rotting wood. 

Mr. STERN. Well, it may be—that may be the case. And there 

may be steps—I am not expert on that—with respect to clearing 

out such rot, but I think the fundamental objective and fundamental action that can be taken to reduce emissions from forests 

is too slow and ultimately stop deforestation in——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Even though that is contributing to the overall level of CO2? 

Mr. STERN. No, no, no. Again, I am not going to—I am not a 

technical specialist with respect to the forest CO2 issues, but the 

main point is to reduce the level of—the deforestation is the biggest 

driver of CO2 coming from forests, and it comes from fundamentally three, the three large forest bases in the world, which are the 

Amazon, the Congo Basin, and then in Indonesia. 

24

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So deforestation and not natural occurrence 

of rotting wood in rainforests and bugs that give off these greenhouse gases; it is human-kind again? 

Mr. STERN. No, no. Look, I am certain that there are natural cycles and natural development. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Which by the way, that is the question. The 

question is there are natural things; 80 percent at least, perhaps 

90 percent, of all greenhouse gases are generated by nature itself. 

There is no scientific fight on that, okay. So if 80–90 percent are 

Mother Nature’s products, and you said that we are going to have 

this fund of $100 billion, part of which will go to tackling some natural calamities which are—I mean sea raising up, et cetera, are we 

going to use that fund as well to restrain natural sources of greenhouse gases, for example older trees being planted by—being 

changed to younger trees and the clearing away of the rotting wood 

in rainforests? 

Mr. STERN. I think the best thing I could tell you is I would be 

happy to have people from my staff who are expert in that talk 

with your staff so I think that the effort will be to do things that 

can reduce emissions. I would be happy to do that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much for that. And let me 

just ask a couple of other things now. Again, we are heading toward Durbin, and we are talking about November of this year, you 

are going to start really preparing yourself and you will have a program. Will America’s program, will it include—you are talking 

about $100 billion a year. There will be a plan, you are saying, by 

November of where this $100 billion a year will appear from; is 

that correct? 

Mr. STERN. I am actually not saying that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. 

Mr. STERN. I think, the immediate focus on the financing side of 

things this year is going to be on getting the operational guidelines, 

if you will, agreed to with respect to the green fund. That may get 

done this year. It may take this year and so 1 more year, I don’t 

know. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Where did the $100 billion figure come from? 

Mr. STERN. It came from—that was done in Copenhagen. That 

was part of the Copenhagen Accord. And again it was not—it was 

in the context of adequate mitigation, you know, reducing emissions and transparency on the part of developing countries. The developed countries would agree to a goal of mobilizing that amount 

of money from public and private sources, from private markets, 

from many sources. And again, as I said, we don’t exclude the notion that part of what will be mobilized would come from wealthier 

developing countries, particularly over time, because this is a dynamic——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. When we are talking about wealthier other 

countries, these are countries that are producing more wealth per 

person than is being produced in the less developed countries. 

Talking about the control of CO2, it seems to me that the criteria 

that we have been operating on—and I say ‘‘we,’’ meaning our own 

Government as well as in conjunction with the others—is based on 

the actual amount of CO2 per person of the people who reside in 

25

the country, rather than per $1,000 of wealth that we produce; that 

the system actually comes from our system as it functions. In the case of how many—how much CO2 is produced per $1,000 

of production, we actually have a very low rate of contribution to 

the greenhouse gases as compared if you only do it per person. So 

shouldn’t we be basing our—if we are watching out for the standard of living and well-being of our own people, shouldn’t we be basing our own positions on that criteria, rather than accepting the 

idea of just per person, what their—you know, what the CO2 production is. 

Mr. STERN. Mr. Chairman, we don’t actually base our views on 

per-person or per-capita emissions. We tend to look at the emissions of the country. There are many countries that talk about per 

capita. That is a factor, but——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If you have emissions of a country and that country produces, you know, $10,000 worth of wealth per person, 

that country then—we are $20,000 of wealth per person—but the 

CO2, if you are doing it per production, that CO2 is actually less. 

I mean, it seems to me that we are basing our negotiations on 

something that negates any consideration of the standard of living 

that we have produced by the production of wealth. 

Mr. STERN. Well, I hear you, but we don’t mean to be doing that. 

I mean you are raising a metric that has to do essentially with the 

efficiency with which energy is used which is a——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Part of it. 

Mr. STERN [continuing]. Perfectly valid point and an important 

one. Look, I think, and I heard your comments in some of the statements in your opening comments with respect to standard of living. 

I would like to say one thing, which is that we do not think that 

you can approach this problem from the point of view of saying 

that you are going to clamp down on anybody’s standard of living. 

Not a developed country, not a developing country, not the United 

States, not India. It is not going to work that way. 

The way that this problem is going to be solved, if it is going to 

be solved, is to break—and it is not going to be done overnight—

but to break the iron link between the growth of an economy and 

the growth of emissions. And you do that by getting more and more 

efficient with respect to the energy you use and, over time, by having other sources of energy that are cleaner, become bigger and bigger parts of the economy, and ultimately the biggest parts. That is 

the way—we are not going to get—nobody is going to support 

clamping down on our standard of living. We don’t think that is 

going to happen, and they are not going to agree to that in the developing world either. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Constantly in this debate what we have 

heard, the rich countries, the developed countries, versus the undeveloped countries and the poor countries. And the fact is that people who are here in the United States of America, yeah, our country produces more ‘‘greenhouse gases,’’ but in terms of the standard 

of living of the people that it supports, there is no comparison. We 

actually are very efficient and very small in the amount of greenhouse gases that we produce per wealth that permits our people to 

have a higher standard of living. And it just seems to me that quite 

often—well, not quite often—I am always hearing this, the rich 

26

countries versus the poor countries, and that is not what it is all 

about. 

Mr. Carnahan, would you like to have a second round and we 

will move on to our second panel? Thank you very much. 

Mr. STERN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Mr. Chairman, I got my questions in on the first 

round and so I think I am ready to go. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I want to especially thank our witness for 

coming today. We had a very good exchange, and I am sure we will 

continue to have this open exchange. 

Mr. STERN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking 

Member. Appreciate it. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the next panel will be seated, please. 

All right. We are called to order. I will introduce all three panelists, and we will proceed with the testimony. 

First, we have Steven Hayward. He is the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior fellow at the 

Pacific Research Institute. He is author of the ‘‘Almanac of Environmental Trends,’’ and many other books and articles on environmental topics. He has also written biographies of President Jimmy 

Carter and Ronald Reagan and of Winston Churchill. 

He holds a Ph.D. in American studies from Claremont Graduate 

School. I, too, have a graduate degree in American studies. And he 

has been a visiting professor at Georgetown University and Ashland University. 

Then we have Daniel Twining, a senior fellow for Asia at the 

German Marshall Fund of the United States. He has served as a 

member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, a foreign 

policy advisor to Senator John McCain, and as a staff member of 

the U.S. Trade Representative. 

He holds a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University and has written widely for newspapers and magazines and 

for policy and academic journals. He is completing a book on American grand strategy in Asia after the Cold War. That is fascinating. 

We also have Elliot Diringer. He is vice president for international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. 

He came to the Pew Center from the White House, where he was 

Deputy Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Deputy Press Secretary as well. He had previously served as a senior policy advisor 

and as director of communications at the Council on Environmental 

Quality, where he helped develop major policy initiatives on the environment and participated in international climate change negotiations, which we are talking about today. 

So, Mr. Hayward, you may proceed, and we will go to Mr. 

Diringer and Mr. Twining. 

STATEMENT OF STEVEN F. HAYWARD, PH.D., F. K. WEYERHAEUSER FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 

Mr. HAYWARD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Carnahan. 

I will begin with my contentious conclusion, which is that the 

international diplomacy of climate change is the most implausible 

and unpromising initiative since the disarmament talks of the 

1930s, and for many of the same reasons, that the Kyoto Protocol 

27

and its progeny are the climate diplomacy equivalent of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 which promised to end the war, and that 

future historians are going to look back at this entire period of 

what I call first-generation climate diplomacy as the climate equivalent of wage and price controls to fight inflation in the ’70s, a once 

popular idea that was completely discarded and no one proposes to 

bring back. I think the Kyoto approach will not be proposed to be 

brought back for a very long time either. 

I think the whole U.N. process is on life support, and I think it 

is worth reviewing briefly the reasons why we got to this pass before we can understand that there is a better way forward. 

When the issue of climate change first came to the fore in the 

late 1980s, the diplomatic community approached it in a seemingly 

sensible way. They asked what diplomatic frameworks have 

worked for similar kinds of problems in the past. In other words, 

what do we have on the shelf? 

There are basically three models for problems of a global reach 

that have shown varying degrees of success. The first would be the 

arms control and anti-proliferation regimes. The second would be 

the long-running and painstaking trade liberalization process that 

had been going on for the whole war since the end of World War 

II. And third and perhaps most applicable was the Montreal Protocol of 1987 that facilitated the organized phaseout of 

chlorofluorocarbons. 

It is those last two in particular that former Vice President Gore 

used to like to cite as reasons for his enthusiasm and support for 

the Kyoto process. On the surface, the logic seems straightforward 

and plausible. If we can reach a binding and enforceable agreement 

to phase out chlorofluorocarbons, why not a similarly structured 

agreement to phase out hydrocarbons? 

But once you poke beneath the surface, a number of fundamental 

asymmetries between the precedents and the problems of climate 

change become apparent but whose implications I think were resisted from the very beginning for the understandable reasons of 

diplomatic and institutional inertia. I will confine myself to just a 

couple of the many that come into play. 

First, the problem of climate change is orders of magnitude more 

difficult than the problem of ozone depletion. It is not necessary at 

all to be a skeptic about climate science to suggest that the same 

kind of policy dynamic that worked for the ozone layer would not 

work for a warming planet. The case of chlorofluorocarbons was 

pretty straightforward. The science was fairly simple. The time 

frame was short. Most importantly, there were scalable substitutes 

for chlorofluorocarbons available at a reasonable cost. 

By contrast, the climate science is more complex, and even if all 

the complexities wash out, the focus on near-term reductions in 

greenhouse gas emissions, unlike the near-term reductions of the 

Montreal Protocol, fall short for a blindingly simple reason. There 

are simply no economically scale able substitutes to fossil fuels 

available on the global level and in the relatively short timeframe 

contemplated by climate orthodoxy. 

The second asymmetry concerns the divide between wealthy nations and developing nations. I was pleased that Mr. Stern’s comments actually track very closely with my own perception of the 

28

matter, which is that old dichotomy which really was an artifact 

of the post-war years was coming to be obsolete at the very time 

we started in the Kyoto process. 

And I was also pleased that Mr. Stern talked about how the 

Obama administration had decided to pick up with the Bush administration initiative, which Bush had called the Asia-Pacific 

Partnership. It is worth pointing out that when the Bush administration lost the Asia-Pacific Partnership 5 or 6 years ago, many 

people in the U.N. climate process and in the climate advocacy 

community were very critical of the Bush administration for doing 

that because they said what Bush is trying to do is go around the 

U.N. process. And now you just heard the Obama administration’s 

climate representative say we have embraced that approach, which 

I think is much more promising. 

I will come back to that for a moment at the end. 

But now the issue that was discussed in the previous panel with 

Mr. Stern was what we have got left right now, which is climate 

assistance. On the merits, it seems to me this policy is incommensurate with the nature and scale of the problem. If you took seriously the scale of what you are trying to do to match the demands 

of climate orthodoxy, you would need trillions of dollars in climate 

assistance, not hundreds of billions of dollars. 

Secondly—this is the life support aspect of it—I think that a lot 

of developing nations are happy to go along with this whole charade if they think we are going to send the cash. 

Now, one of the problems here with having the U.N. do it is that 

it revives again the problem of climate change, which is that it has 

become something of an all-purpose issue that advocates for all 

kinds of causes can grab onto. And so back in the ’70s, the U.N. 

was very enthusiastic about what they called the ‘‘New International Economic Order,’’ or as Chancellor Willy Brandt described 

it then, we need to have ‘‘a large-scale transfer of resources to developing countries.’’ Well, President Reagan pulled the plug on that 

very forcefully in the early ’80s at a U.N. summit, coincidentally, 

in Cancu ́n. 

But now the idea is back, and you hear a lot of climate people 

saying, like one U.N. official, Ottmar Edenhoffer of West Germany,

‘‘One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s 

wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. 

This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.’’

That is the kind of loose talk and unseriousness that brings discredit to the entire cause of U.N. international climate diplomacy, 

but it is very popular with a lot of the U.N.’s constituency, and I 

think that is unfortunate for the whole process. 

I will just say—and I will close here since I am over time already—I am an enthusiast that the major economies formed with 

the Obama administration is actually doing more seriously I think 

than the Bush administration did. In that regard, I think you will 

see an interesting continuity between the last administration and 

this one. 

Thank you. 

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[The prepared statement of Mr. Hayward follows:]


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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Diringer. 

STATEMENT OF MR. ELLIOT DIRINGER, VICE PRESIDENT FOR 

INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIES, PEW CENTER ON GLOBAL 

CLIMATE CHANGE 

Mr. DIRINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Carnahan, for the 

opportunity to appear before you today. 

In summarizing my prepared statement, I will focus on the status of the U.N. climate talks, the efforts being taken by other countries to address climate change, and the reasons we believe stronger U.S. action is very much in our national interest. 

An effective global response to climate change is possible only if 

countries can find ways to align their respective national interests 

with our common interest in a stable climate. President Bush—the 

first President 

Bush—and the Senate were right in helping to establish the U.N. 

Framework Convention as a forum for multilateral action. After 

years of stalemate, we are encouraged by the movement over the 


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past 2 years toward a more realistic and more balanced global approach, and this is thanks in no small measure to the efforts of 

U.S. negotiators. 

For the first time, all of the world’s major economies have made 

explicit pledges to limit or reduce their emissions; and parties have 

agreed to strengthen transparency so we can better assess whether 

the countries are keeping their promises. It is vital that the United 

States remain fully engaged in the U.N. climate talks. Our nearterm aim should be to put in place the transparency, finance, and 

other mechanisms agreed to in Cancu ́n. Our longer-term objective 

should be fair, effective, and binding commitments among all of the 

world’s major economies. 

While international agreements are critical, a more important 

measure of efforts to date are the steps countries are undertaking 

domestically. A growing number are implementing policies contributing in one way or another to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Many see this challenge as an important opportunity as well. A 

number of our major trading partners are moving aggressively to 

grow their clean energy technology industries, creating jobs and 

high-value exports. 

Europe, which continues to lead the world in green energy investments, is succeeding in reducing its emissions while growing 

its economy. From 2004, the year before the EU instituted its emissions trading system, through 2008, the year before the global financial crisis, emissions were down 4.1 percent in the EU, while 

GDP grew 9.8 percent. 

China also is investing heavily and employing strong policies to 

build its clean energy industry, which is already the world’s leading producer of wind turbines and solar panels. China’s new 5-year 

plan includes energy efficiency, emissions intensity, and renewable 

energy targets. It also includes policies to promote innovation in 

strategic and emerging technologies, including nuclear, solar, wind, 

biomass, and hybrid and electric vehicles. To be certain, China continues to build coal-fired power plants and its emissions continue 

to rise. But it is moving forward with domestic policies in line with 

its international pledge, and many of these policies will help China 

retain a competitive edge in the rapidly expanding clean energy 

market. 

Mr. Chairman, while other countries are stepping up their efforts, the U.S. has barely begun. This inaction exposes our Nation 

to real and rising risks. We are already witnessing the impacts of 

climate change here in the United States. The widespread flooding 

now inflicting communities along the Mississippi River shows how 

painfully vulnerable we are to the rising risks associated with climate change. 

Looking beyond our borders, our military warns that the added 

stresses of climate change in unstable regions could mean further 

demands on our strained military resources. 

Our inaction also risks our economic well-being. The United 

States remains the world’s leading manufacturer, but in the growing clean energy sector we risk falling further behind our competitors. 

The recent experience of the U.S. auto industry illustrates how 

the right policies can help improve efficiency and reduce emissions 

34

while creating jobs and profits. Spurred by fuel economy standards 

enacted under President Bush, car makers are now offering more 

fuel-efficient cars. With gas prices rising, consumers are buying 

them. 

In reporting strong sales and profits last quarter, all three U.S. 

auto makers cited higher sales of fuel-efficient models. Last year, 

only one conventional car sold in America got 40 miles to the gallon. Today, there are nine. Three of them—the Cruise, Elantra, and 

Focus—were among the top 10 sellers last month. All three are 

made in the U.S. 

If we want our clean energy firms to invest in jobs at home and 

compete effectively overseas, we must ensure strong, sustained demand for their goods here in the United States. Mr. Chairman, the 

longer we wait to act, the harder it will be to avert the worst consequences of warming, the higher the cost of coping with those that 

cannot be avoided, the more we undermine our security and the 

further we fall behind other countries in the clean energy race. We 

must strengthen our efforts here at home and we must continue 

working with other nations toward strong and lasting global agreements. 

I again thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today 

and will be pleased to answer your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Diringer follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. And Dr. Twining. 

STATEMENT OF DANIEL TWINING, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW FOR 

ASIA, GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED STATES 

Mr. TWINING. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Carnahan, 

for having me here today. The views that follow are mine and not 

those of the German Marshall Fund. 

U.S. climate diplomacy should ideally be a bridge rather than a 

wedge between America and key partners. Arguably, poor American diplomacy combined with the flaws of U.N.-led climate negotiations have had the effect of isolating the U.S. from friends and 

allies, rather than enabling it to build like-minded coalitions on environmental issues of shared concern. 

A more effective approach would integrate U.S. interests in mitigating climate change with broader strategic concerns. It would 

work to produce positive sum outcomes to climate negotiations facilitated by joint development and employment of key environmental technologies, rather than succumbing to a zero sum logic 

pitting the developed world against the developing world in multinational arenas. 

An instructive example of an unfortunate outcome for broader 

U.S. interest was the Copenhagen Conference. Its end game produced a crisis in transatlantic relations. Faced with the collapse of 

the talks, President Obama ended up forging the agreement in 

backroom talks with the leaders of Brazil, South Africa, India, and 

China—the BASIC countries. 

European leaders were shocked that, after decades in which Europe was the global pacesetter in managing climate change, the decisive agreement on a post-Kyoto framework was struck without 

Europe in the room. European leaders were relegated to being 

briefed by President Obama after his conclave with the leaders of 

the BASIC group. Many European officials openly pondered a future in which the U.S. and China managed a G2 consortium to 

handle global issues or one in which Washington conclaved with 

other rising powers, even as it decoupled from its traditional allies 

to set the global governance agenda. In this way, Copenhagen 

weakened transatlantic comity even as it produced an outcome unlikely to substantially mitigate climate change. 

The developed versus developing world dynamic of multilateral 

climate negotiations with universal membership also compromises 

U.S. interests with key emerging powers. Among the most damaging spillover is the G–77 dynamic. That is shorthand for the 

broader set of discussions that have been going on on climate. It 

enabled South Africa and other nonaligned ringleaders to exercise 

power without responsibility, organizing opposition to the developed States by mobilizing a large coalition of developing nations to 

oppose U.S. and European climate goals. 

G–77 dynamics create opportunities for our competitors to make 

mischief. In Copenhagen, China took an early strategic decision to 

conclave with the G–77 grouping. China’s stand served multiple objectives that earned Beijing considerable goodwill among developing nations, tweaked the U.S., and created cleavages between 

Washington and other important powers, obscured China’s status 

as the world’s leading polluter and second-largest economy by posiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:06 Jun 28, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\OI\052511\66534 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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tioning it as a developing economy alongside Sudan and other poor 

states, gave China critical leverage in the Copenhagen end game. 

A third negative dynamic around these universal climate negotiations under the U.N. framework is the unnatural wedge it introduces into U.S.-India relations. In the run-up to Copenhagen, India 

had a revealing internal debate over how to balance its growing 

role as a partner of the West and an international stakeholder with 

its older identity as a non-aligned developing power. 

In my view, U.S. diplomacy could have been more effective in developing a program of activities to generate green technologies and 

alternative energy investments in a way that kept India on side 

during the Copenhagen negotiations. Looking back, India should 

have been the centerpiece of the strategy to disaggregate the developing world in a way that split the G–77 and decoupled key rising 

democracies that have serious equities in collaborating with us 

from less constructive players. Instead, by virtue of India’s own 

shortsighted calculations and the shortcomings of U.S. and U.N. diplomacy, India was pushed into making common cause with its 

leading strategic competitor, China, against arguably its most important international ally and friend, the United States. 

A few thoughts on looking ahead. Both U.S. diplomacy and the 

cause of managing climate change would benefit from a different 

approach to tackling global warming, one that was not U.N.-led 

with universal membership in which small countries can play the 

role of spoilers and global consensus is achieved with really lowest 

common denominator outcomes that don’t please anyone. Climate 

negotiations instead could take the form of smaller groupings led 

by the great powers in closed-door negotiations that can encourage 

even countries like China to be more constructive than to grandstand. 

Joint development and application of key energy and environmental technologies with friendly emerging economies could replace the setting of vague environmental targets without action 

plans to meet them. Our diplomacy could also expand climate mitigation partnerships as part of broader bilateral agendas with key 

emergency powers, rather than attempting to bring them on side 

in the more difficult global multilateral context. 

Finally, prioritizing climate concerns at the expense of broader 

strategic ties arguably puts the cart before the horse. In the case 

of countries like India, maybe Brazil, our interests in the wider climate agenda might be better served by building comprehensive 

partnerships over time that develop the mutual trust necessary to 

manage the climate issue. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Twining follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I think you hit on an alternative right 

there at the last part of your statement. We will discuss that. 

I will proceed with my questions. 

First of all—I guess it gets to the point you just made—is the 

United Nations the vehicle to uplift the actual production of wealth 

in these societies, the developing societies, in a way that would be 

more environmentally friendly? Is the United Nations the way to 

do this or is it a better approach to be working bilaterally with 

countries that are committed to human progress when progress has 

to be based on more efficient use of energy? 

We will just go down the line there. 

Dr. Hayward. 

Mr. HAYWARD. I think the analogy in my mind is one actually 

I made brief reference to, which is trade liberalization, which we 

did not run through the United Nations. We set up a whole separate global institution, ultimately culminating in the World Trade 

Organization. But we set up the whole track largely outside the 

U.N. to pursue that one particular goal. We have done similar 

things with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. 

I think that the U.N., for some of the reasons I briefly alluded 

to and others that we can go on about at great length, is not necessarily the best forum for an issue that has so many economic implications, especially when you have so many of these cross-cutting 

ideological differences between different kinds of countries and different——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It might be harder to reach a consensus upon 

people so diverse as everybody in the United Nations or even the 

major players of the United Nations as compared to a bilateral 

agreement between the countries like the United States and others 

who have advanced technology versus those who do not. 

Mr. HAYWARD. I don’t want to monopolize the panel. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Go right ahead. 

Mr. DIRINGER. I have a suggestion, Mr. Chairman. It is not an 

either/or proposition. This is something we need to be addressing 

on multiple fronts. 

I think there is certainly a role for the Framework Convention. 

Certainly this should be a central issue in our relations with other 

major economies. We have heard reference already to the major 

economies forum. 

Mr. Stern gave some credit to the Bush administration. I would 

like to note that the Bush administration actually gave some credit 

to the Pew Center for having recommended as far back as 2005 the 

establishment of a major economies dialogue as a forum for political discussion among the major economies, which then has helped 

to translate into progress in the U.N. I think, in fact, the discussions were held——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I think the Bush administration was criticized for that. 

Mr. DIRINGER. They were indeed, although they were very explicit at the time that this was not meant as an alternative to the 

U.N. but rather meant as a complement to the U.N. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But we really knew it was not a complement. 

We know knew it was an alternative. So we deserved that criticism. 

51

Mr. DIRINGER. What we have seen in fact is that there was consensus reached within the major economies forum that then did 

translate into the Copenhagen Accord and has now translated into 

the Cancu ́n Agreements. So they do play a complementary role. 

And I think that we should pursue all of those forums. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would suggest that when we have success 

it is not judged by other international agreements but instead by 

actual changes on the ground to somewhere on the planet. 

For example, I am sure that the amount of CO2 that was emitted 

just going to these global resorts for their opulent meetings, there 

hasn’t been enough change generated from the agreements that 

they have reached to even make up for the contribution they made 

to global warming and greenhouse gases on the way to the meetings, not to mention the greenhouse gases in producing the energy 

needed to get to the meetings, the energy needed to build the airplanes and the limousines that had to be transferred over to these 

various places around the world. 

Mr. HAYWARD. I think it is very limiting and maybe a mistake 

to try and reduce the problem to just the process and what form 

we are going to use. I think ultimately you need to ask the question—And that is what went wrong with arms control I think for 

many years. I think what you need to do is also ask what is the 

policy orientation of whatever process or forum going to be. 

The reason I think the major economies forum is more promising 

is not simply that it represents the countries that account for 80 

percent of emissions but if they can adopt a process that doesn’t 

focus in on Kyoto-style caps, which are going to be problematic for 

everyone, but a look at the idea of how do we accelerate 

decarbonization of energy. I think the Obama administration is 

thinking—they may not put it that way—but I think they are 

thinking that way. I think Mr. Stern suggested that is the track 

they might be thinking on. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Twining. 

Mr. TWINING. Sir, just going back to your original question, you 

are a long-standing U.N. watcher. And if there is a part of the U.N. 

that works, it is probably the Security Council—small group, serious equities on the table among the great powers, closed-door discussions. 

I would argue that the problem with the global U.N. framework 

on climate process is that it resembles the U.N. General Assembly, 

not the Security Council, which as you know is kind of a free-forall. It brings out some of the worst tendencies, even among really 

many countries that are friends and allies of the U.S., smaller developing states that rely on us but that see the opportunity to kind 

of seize the podium and make rhetorical points grandstanding on 

key issues. 

So part of my reaction to your question is to assume that the 

idea is you would like climate negotiations to look more like the Security Council than more like the UNGA. 

The other point, just very quickly, is in terms of the lateral relationships. I have worked a lot on the U.S.-India relationship over 

the last few years, and a key pillar of our relationship there is the 

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nology sharing with India after years of sanctioning it around nuclear issues, which are now off the table. 

I think the U.S. Government, U.S. businesses would be much 

more comfortable collaborating with a set of Indian scientists and 

researchers on green energy technologies versus a group in China 

perhaps with connections to the PLA or other government body. So 

as we think about some of the innovation and technology solutions 

looking kind of far ahead, there will be gradations between countries and our comfort level in working with them. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would suggest that things get better when 

there is a profit for people to do things more efficiently and you sell 

this to someone. Selling them something specific because you are 

going to make a profit in doing it is much more efficient at actual 

change than making mandates, especially the bigger the government gets, the more inefficient it becomes enforcing mandates. If 

it does get efficient at enforcing mandates, then you have got a 

problem with freedom in the world. 

I have problems with trusting the Security Council, considering 

the fact that the world’s worst human rights abuser, China, has a 

veto power. And the General Assembly is filled with countries that 

are governed by lunatics and gangsters who have the same vote as 

the United States. So we have got some very serious problems if 

we go about that route. 

Mr. Carnahan, you may proceed with your questions. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the 

panel. 

I wanted to direct my first question to Mr. Diringer and Dr. 

Twining. I would like you to really expand a little bit about—you 

both have kind of made reference to this—but how Europe has 

really taken the lead in many ways in terms of really getting green 

technology out there, reducing emissions but also growing their 

economy. We have heard that that is one of the fastest-growing 

parts of their economy. Talk about what we can learn from that in 

terms of how we can step up to the plate in really a larger way. 

Why don’t we start with Mr. Diringer. 

Mr. DIRINGER. I think the most important lesson from the European experience is the value of policy in driving innovation and deployment in the clean energy field and consequently leading to the 

growth of domestic jobs and the growth of exports. 

Among the policies in place in the European Union is a renewable energy target. They aim to increase renewable energy in their 

primary energy mix to 20 percent by 2020. 

There are also policies in place at the member state level. Germany has increased its renewable jobs from 160,000 in 2004 to 

370,000 in 2010. The German Government believes that strong job 

growth within that sector was part of the reason they were able to 

recover so quickly from the recent recession. 

So I think the real takeaway is that we need to give our domestic 

industries the incentive to produce by creating markets at home, 

the incentives to innovate and produce. Europe is doing that, and 

at the moment is the world’s leader in terms of clean energy investments. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Dr. Twining. 

53

Mr. TWINING. Mr. Carnahan, I agree on the point about creating 

market incentives for companies to invest in a different kind of energy future going forward. 

Your very interesting question about Europe and kind of its leadership on this issue gets into a very interesting kind of theological 

debate about the role of Europe in the post-Cold War word. Without getting deeply into that, I think European leaders on this issue 

and others thought really since the Wall came down that Europe 

could actually offer a model for the world, not just on climate but 

all sorts of things, a kind of demilitarized soft power, kind of 

thought leader model, setting an example that other countries 

could follow. 

And that explains why, after really getting climate change on the 

agenda, it is kind of a leading global issue. Many European leaders 

were shell-shocked, particularly after Copenhagen. And I say that 

because I was in Europe just after it all ended. And there was the 

sense that this was a European issue that they had owned. They 

had put in place a carbon market in Europe—or were putting one 

in place. They had set these tangible 20–20–20 goals about the mix 

of renewables in their own domestic economies. And what happened was the key agreement, as I mentioned in my testimony, 

was made without them in the room. 

So I think a question going forward for us is: Is Europe a model 

on these issues? Can it be? Or do we look to a future in which it 

really is about kind of great powers competing around resource and 

economy issues in a more traditional sense. And I don’t think we 

know the answer yet. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. I didn’t mean to leave you out, Dr. Hayward. 

Mr. HAYWARD. Well, a couple of things. I am not hugely impressed with the European experience as a model for the rest of the 

world for the simple reason the European economies are mature, 

wealthy economies. They have stable or even falling populations, 

unlike countries like India and China, where you still have hundreds of millions of people with no electricity at all. 

The big problem is that climate orthodoxy says they have to go 

about 10 times further than they have gone so far, and what they 

have done so far is fairly expensive. It is essential whole foods energy, which rich countries can afford but poor countries can’t. 

For example, in the case of China, their pledge to try and increase their emissions intensity faster than they have been means 

their greenhouse gas emissions will grow—instead of 40 percent 

over the next 30 years, they will grow by 35 percent. Well, that is 

good, but that means that the increase in emissions goes like this, 

something like this, when climate orthodoxy says during that time 

period they need to go like that. And that is why these climate negotiations aren’t getting very far, is that gap in reality means we 

are trying to comfort ourselves with some pledges and aspirations 

and notions, but the math isn’t adding up very well. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. I will reverse this on my second round of questions here, but I will start with Dr. Hayward. 

You have obviously raised a lot of questions about the scientific 

evidence about climate change. You question the cost. Nevertheless, a report released last week by the National Research Council 

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entific research institution, was unambiguous in assessing the seriousness of the threat posed by climate change. 

The report requested by Congress concluded,

‘‘Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused primarily by 

the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, imposes significant risk for a range of human and natural systems.’’

I would like to get your comment on that recent report, and we 

will go to the other witnesses after that. 

Mr. HAYWARD. I haven’t read beyond a couple of pages of the executive summary. I see no reason to dispute it at all. The question 

in my mind is it does not prescribe what policy you have to fix that. 

My comments, most of my work is detailed on the energy side of 

the question, which is, all right, let’s accept the most extreme scenario—and, by the way, then the energy problem becomes even 

harder and makes some of the way we talk about these negotiations even more unreal, from my point of view. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Mr. Diringer. 

Mr. DIRINGER. The report you cited is just the latest affirmation 

from the Academy of Sciences of the consensus that climate change 

is real, human activity is largely the reason why, and that it will 

intensify unless we take some action. 

I think whether or not one believes that the buildup of CO2 in 

the atmosphere is in fact driving warming and climate change, I 

think it is important to recognize the co-benefits of addressing the 

issue. If we act to reduce CO2 emissions, we help to address local 

air pollution problems, we help to address ocean acidification, we 

help to improve our efficiency, we will reduce our reliance on imported oil. So there is a whole range of co-benefits to the kind of 

action we are talking about. 

On the question of costs, we have seen historically in the United 

States that the benefits of our environmental actions have greatly 

exceeded the costs. A report by OMB in 2003 under the previous 

administration concluded that the major rules enacted under the 

Clean Air Act between 1992 and 2002 produced annual benefits of 

$145 billion to $218 billion, six to eight times greater than the annual costs. So you get a whole range of co-benefits, and these benefits far outweigh the costs. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you. 

Dr. Twining. 

Mr. TWINING. Just a quick point. It is a very good question. 

Sometimes it helps, at least to me, to kind of focus in on tangible 

impacts of climate change. I do some work with our National Intelligence Council, and they have done a series of forecasts around 

how some of the climate predictions impact key powers in the 

international system. 

Just to sketch out in a sentence: South Asia gets hit very badly 

in some of these projections. Bangladesh is under water. You have 

150 million from that side trying to get into India, almost 200 million. You have calamitous impacts in India. 

Again, for all of us who have great hope for U.S.-India relations 

in terms of managing and Asian balance and supporting our values 

55

in the world, India gets hit really harder than any other great 

power under some of these projections. 

So I think there is an interesting conversation to be had about 

the national security implications of some of these forecasts that 

we should all really be thinking about. 

Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you all. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. Again, I want to thank everyone on 

the panel for coming today and participating in this interesting discussion. 

Let me note that I think that China, to the degree that it has 

been engaged in what we would call positive behavior in better 

uses or better technologies in terms of producing energy, has been 

doing so not because they want to save the planet from climate 

change but instead because they have a real human rights problem 

with human health that their people—massive numbers of people—

are being damaged, their bodies are being damaged by pollution in 

the air. 

And let me note that CO2 is not, no matter what the EPA says, 

a pollutant that affects human health. They in fact, in order to declare it a pollutant, had to claim, well, the climate will change and 

then that will cause human health to be affected. Thus, it is a pollutant. 

That convoluted reasoning is—it may justify a power grab to 

someone who wants to give them the power, but it certainly doesn’t 

justify—it is not common sense. CO2 is plant food. We pump CO2 

into the greenhouses throughout California to produce better 

plants. 

I am very concerned about—for the same reason the Chinese are 

concerned—about pollution, and it does not—Mr. Diringer, it does 

not cross all the time. Sometimes it runs parallel. Other times it 

doesn’t. Sometimes you have people who are so adamant about 

global warming that they are taking us away from things that 

might be effective for health. 

Let me go back to the fact that we are talking about climate 

change over and over again here today, and the fact that we are 

talking climate change indicates that the predictions have been 

wrong. We have been following this for 20 years. Ten years ago, no 

one used the word climate change. The word global warming was 

what it was described over and over and over again. And the reason we now hear climate change is because it is not. The 10 major 

scientists that—the major scientists that I put into the record in 

the beginning of the hearing, plus the hundred other major scientists, just do not go along with that finding. 

So I would just suggest that, for example, in my own case in 

California, because those people who are dominating certain parts 

of the scientific community, we are talking about how global warming was still a factor, and they predicted a dry and a warm winter 

for the United States, especially California, and it has been one of 

the wettest, coldest winters that we have had in my adult life. 

If you look back at the predictions by those claiming to understand how CO2 affects the climate, they were saying that the Midwest would not be flooding but would be parched. 

So that is why I am somewhat of a skeptic on human activity 

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trol human activity, rather than suggesting that we have had climate changes throughout the history of the world. And we know 

that those other changes were not caused by human beings. However, to grant the other side of the argument their due, we should 

also be concerned about human adaptation even if it is natural to 

climate change, which may or may not be the case. 

So I would focus and say, yes, let’s take a look at human adaptation and how that is going to—if indeed we are going to have seas 

rising throughout the Pacific or see Bangladesh going underwater, 

is that actually going to happen? Are we really going to have a 

warm, dry winter? We have got to make sure we know what we 

are talking about and not just accepting somebody who is without 

challenging their dire predictions. 

Again, it used to be global warming. Now it is global climate 

change, for obvious reasons. 

Let’s get back to, first of all, the United Nations and the economy 

of this of what we are talking about here. Mr. Diringer, you did 

mention Europe as a success. My reading shows me that Spain has 

actually been hurt dramatically. I think I read that in The Economist. Is The Economist wrong about that, that Spain has not benefited by their focus on solar power and in fact it has contributed 

to their national economic upheaval? 

Mr. DIRINGER. Certainly, Spain is experiencing some dire economic difficulties. I can’t speak to whether or not their efforts to 

expand their renewable energy industry have contributed to that. 

I am not familiar. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. There have been several reports. 

What about you, Dr. Hayward? 

Mr. HAYWARD. I don’t like to get into the contentious methodological arguments about how many jobs, because you can always 

argue about those until the cows come home. 

I think what you do see, though, clearly is—I will give you Germany as an example. Germany is trying to promote solar power 

with their feed-in tariff idea. So if you put solar panels on your 

buildings, they will pay 45 cents a kilowatt hour. Pretty nice. The 

average price of electricity here in this country is 10 to 12 to 14 

cents. 

So, yeah, if you subsidize something, you will get a lot more of 

it. But you cannot scale that up to 10, 15, 20 percent of your electricity, given the fiscal realities of modern economies. That is the 

limiting factor. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Plus, you are taking wealth from somewhere 

else in your society. 

Mr. HAYWARD. Well, you know our mutual hero liked to say, 

pretty soon you run out of other people’s money. They are running 

out of other people’s money in Europe now. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Finally, let’s just get back to the United Nations. 

Do you trust the United Nations? You were making some comparisons there to the United Nations. Can the United Nations be 

trusted with $100 billion a year to oversee that properly? Are you 

confident that the U.N. will oversee it and that that would be the 

best use put for $100 billion of wealth to be directed by the United 

Nations in the name of this problem, solving this problem? 

57

Mr. TWINING. No, sir. I just want to qualify my comment on the 

Security Council, which is that I didn’t mean to suggest that it 

works brilliantly. It was just to compare its relative merits to other 

U.N. bodies. 

My sense on this, just is very quickly, is that you probably want 

a climate process that looks more like a multinational corporation 

or a market that somehow looks like a big market. And whether 

you talk about that in terms of government subsidies or a carbon 

tax or more positive forms, you probably want this to look less like 

a bureaucracy and more like something you would see in the private sector in which peoples and countries actually have some ownership and some stakes in innovating and conserving resources. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would suggest that I see that happening in 

the world economy already. I would suggest that all over the world 

we see great examples of people pushing forward. 

For example, even though I reject this whole theory of man-made 

global warming, I am certainly someone who is pushing here in 

Congress the development of these new modular nuclear reactors 

and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors that eat the waste from 

other reactors so it doesn’t have that problem. This would certainly 

not have any greenhouse gases as a result. But it seems to me that 

that is a marketplace decision which motivates me and other people in that arena, rather than thinking about this as a bureaucratic 

approach to we are going to mandate things and plan out this 

change in energy for mankind that will save the planet from climate change, which will elevate the human condition. 

Mr. Diringer. 

Mr. DIRINGER. Well, to your question would I trust the U.N., no, 

but let me clarify. There has been no agreement to establish a single fund to be managed by the U.N. or anybody else to mobilize 

this $100 billion. This figure of $100 billion is an aspirational collective goal that countries have set for themselves. And the aim is 

to mobilize these funds—a combination of public funds, private 

funds, bilateral, multilateral. They will be flowing through multiple 

channels. 

Countries will probably be reporting on the funds that they have 

expended, whether through bilateral or multilateral channels, 

whether it is through public or private channels; and there will be 

some tallying at some point to see how well we are doing toward 

meeting that goal. But there is not going to be any single mechanism that would ever attempt to try to deliver funds on that scale. 

And I am quite certain that if there were to be such a mechanism 

contemplated, the United States would certainly oppose it. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, this is a good point, because I would 

suggest if what you are describing is what evolves and emerges, 

that we already have that. For example, when I just gave the example of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor or the new modular 

nuclear reactors, which are incredibly safe and cost-effective, et 

cetera, still taking care of the problem of leftover waste, which 

these new reactors do, I would say if we move forward with that 

strategy in building these reactors here in the United States, it will 

be a $100 billion project. Just that in and of itself will be a project 

in which hundreds of billions dollars are being spent building these 

58

new reactors that can be placed all over the United States and all 

over the world. 

If that counts toward what we are talking about, because that is 

just a number of which all of us contribute to, well, then no one 

has much to worry about. I think that is already in the process. 

But I will have to tell you, when you get all these bureaucrats 

from all over the world flying in on their jets and being met at the 

airport by their limousines and being shepherded off to these glamorous resorts and talking as if they are the elite and they are going 

to make the decisions, it worries me a bit that maybe what they 

really have in mind is something that they would control and start 

directing personally. And that is one of the reasons we are having 

this hearing today. 

Mr. Hayward. 

Mr. HAYWARD. Well, I can thrash the U.N. with the best of them, 

but I think you need to ask the question: What do they do well and 

what do they do badly and can we derive a lesson from that? 

What they do well I think is refugee assistance, food assistance, 

some of their education programs, some not. They have a very 

mixed record on peacekeeping and conflict resolution. And if the 

U.N. had lived up to its original aspirations in 1945, I think we 

wouldn’t have needed NATO, for example. 

Now, the one precise precedent I think for the green fund that 

is being talked about would be the U.N. population fund. I believe 

that is what it called. From about 1970 to the mid-’90s population 

growth from the population bomb coming out of the enthusiasm of 

that time, that was thought to be the preeminent global threat that 

the world community had to deal with. I will just state my opinion—I have read a lot of literature on this—is that the U.N. population fund record is not an encouraging precedent for a green 

fund. If the United States is going to participate I think probably 

close to what Elliot is suggesting, we will probably want to do it 

ourselves through USAID, and that is another can of worms. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Carnahan has told me that he doesn’t 

have any follow-up questions. But out of courtesy, because I have 

been kibitzing with Mr. Diringer on global warming, I am going to 

give you the last say in the hearing today. 

Mr. DIRINGER. Well, I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman. 

I think there is one point that we haven’t yet raised in all our 

discussion about what are the best or most appropriate forums for 

international discussion or negotiations, and that is the question of 

political will. The best forum will accomplish nothing if countries 

do not come to it with sufficient political will. 

In looking back over the past two decades of negotiation within 

the U.N. Framework Convention, I don’t think we have yet actually 

given it an honest chance, because countries have not yet come to 

that process prepared to take the actions at home that would enable them to actually reach strong agreements. This is a long-term 

process, and I think we need to view the climate framework as an 

evolutionary framework, one that hopefully will grow in strength 

over time as our political understanding and political consensus 

grows and solidifies within our domestic context. 

So my hope is that here in the United States we can continue 

to reach a stronger understanding of the causes and consequences 

59

of climate change, work our way toward meaningful policies to address our emissions, and thereby put ourselves in the position to 

help lead to stronger global agreements. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I want to thank all of our witnesses. Thank 

you very much. I think we have had a very fine exchange of ideas. 

This hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:01 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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