Note: People have asked me what the point is of going into the dialogue of the Congressional hearings on global warming which we have been covering. The debate that is taking place in the Congress is truly an historical debate: it is a rare debate indeed when it can truly be said that the future of the entire planet turns on the outcome of that debate. Since World War II, only debates over issues involving nuclear weapons and nuclear war have risen to this level.
And the debate over climate change is one that hinges on an understanding of the application of the methods of science to a very complex set of data, from the melting of the Greenland icecap to the intensity of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. For more than a decade, powerful special interests have spent millions of dollars to obscure the facts about global warming with corporate-funded “think tanks” that issued reports filled with half-truths. The mass media played an unfortunate role in this process, presenting “both sides” of the issue in the name of some fictional “balance,” when the scientific consensus was increasingly solid on the side that human activity was causing global warming.
But as Senator Boxer observed on Wednesday, “elections have consequences,” and one of those consequences is that members of both parties are being forced to discuss their ideas about global warming in the public area of Congressional hearings. In selecting direct quotations, my goal is to provide illustrations of the underlying nature of the debate, especially of the Republicans’ continued refusal to accept even the existence of global warming as a phenomenon, much less the role of human activity in generating the greenhouse gases that are forcing that warming. I want readers to have a gut-level appreciation of the nature of this resistance, so that they might have a better sense of the uninformed, fact-resistant mindset which our Representatives and Senators will have to overcome if the Congress is going to pass meaningful legislation.
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Morning in the House
Al Gore’s appearance before committees in the House and the Senate on Wednesday was a strictly schizophrenic affair: some moments were an unmitigated love fest, as members welcomed back one of their own, Gore having served on both the House and the Senate committees holding the hearings. But alternating with these heapings of praise were the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune frantically flung by the Republican minority in a desperate effort to tear down Gore personally and discredit his policy message.
The fun commenced in the morning in the House, where the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality (EAQ) held an unprecedented (so the members said) joint hearing with the Committee on Science and Technology. The two committees share jurisdiction over climate change issues.
Taking no chances, the Democrats put House Energy and Commerce chairman John Dingell (D-MI) in the chair’s seat for the hearing, and a good thing it was. Before Dingell had finished declaring the hearing open, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) raised the first in a series of time-wasting points-of-order that did little more than express Republican pique at having to attend the hearing.
Dingell, who has been in the House for more than 51 years, was both patient and formally polite as Barton wasted time. Gore, Barton complained, had violated a committee rule that testimony from witnesses be available at 48 hours before a hearing. Dingell noted it was the prerogative of the chair to make exceptions to this rule, which he had done. Barton returned to the point, and finally Dingell politely read him the relevant section of the committee’s rules, which stated in perfectly plain English that the chair did have the right to waive this rule.
Rep. Hall (R-TX) used his opening statement to decry what he called “an all out assault on all forms of fossil fuels and all forms of nuclear energy.” He claimed that despite the appearance of “expert after expert…not one of them will discuss the cost” of dealing with global warming….I’ve used the word cost 8 times already, and I’ve never heard the word used by the Kyoto-ites [sic].”
At this point, Gore and his entourage finally entered the hearing room, and Gore strode past the witness table to do a round of hand-shaking with members leaning down from the dais. In welcoming Gore, Rep. Gordon, who was elected to Gore’s house seat when Gore won his first Senate race in 1984, said: “Welcome back, welcome home.” Gore then thanked Chairman Dingell, and noted that Dingell’s father and Gore’s father served in Congress together, at a time when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 300 ppm, a level which had not been exceeded for more than a million years. But today, CO2 had reached 383 ppm, and that rise was what brought him to Capitol Hill.
Gore struck an optimistic note:
There is a sense of hope in this country that this U.S. Congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis… America is the natural leader of the world.
He then ran through a metaphor based on the current movie 300:
One of the popular movies out there is 300 ….There are times, rare though they be, when a relatively small group is called upon to make decisions and show courage because the results of what they do will shape the prospects…for all future generations. This Congress is now the 535th. Congressman Dingell, you are perhaps the youngest member of the Greatest Generation, having fought in WWII as a very young man. …You were part of a relatively small group that saved the world.
Gore said that new evidence in the last few months suggested that global warming might be proceeding much faster than previously thought. He mentioned the rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap, which might disappear entirely in as little as 34 years. Seismographers were reporting the whole planet was shaking because of a series of earthquakes in Greenland measuring 4.6 to 5.1 on the Richter scale. The thawing of the tundra was proceeding faster than expected, with the threat of the release of billions of tons of frozen methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more powerful than CO2.
Gore then laid out ten policy recommendations, many of which, he allowed, would normally be considered to be outside the bounds of the politically possible:
- An immediate freeze on CO2 emissions in the U.S., followed by a program of sharp reductions.
- Tax pollution, especially CO2, and make revenue neutral reductions in taxes on employment and production.
- Earmark some of the pollution taxes to help lower-income groups make the transition.
- Get a strong global treaty by 2010. Start by bringing the U.S. into de facto compliance with the Kyoto Treaty, recognizing the shortcomings of Kyoto.
- Enact a moratorium on any new coal fired power plant that is not compatible with carbon sequestration, plus an all out push for developing sequestration
- Develop Electronet, a smart grid for allowing homeowners and small energy producers to sell electricity into the grid without any artificial caps at fair market rates. (Following the committees’ earlier work on the precursors of the Internet, ARPANET AND DFARPANET.)
- Raise CAFÉ standards as part of a comprehensive package covering cars, utilities, and buildings.
- Use regulatory power to ban incandescent light bulbs
- Create ConnieMae, a carbon-neutral mortgage association that would provide home buyers with a separate mortgage covering the costs of maximizing the energy efficiency of their homes.
- Require corporations to disclose carbon emissions as a material risk.
Gore concluded his statement on an upbeat note:
I cannot possibly overstate the strength of the hope and good feeling that people all over this country have about this Congress and the new approach that they feel is being taken here. I’m going to be out there stirring up as much support as I possibly can.
Gore then responded to a series of questions from members about taxes, cap-and-trade and carbon sequestration. The first half of Gore’s day before Congress came to a polite close.
Next stop: the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, where the most outspoken opponent of global warming, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) was waiting. Inhofe was the author of the immortal claim that claims about the threat of global warming was “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Afternoon in the Senate
It didn’t take long for the fireworks to start at the afternoon session of the Senate Environment and Public Works hearing. After warmly welcoming Gore, Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) waived her opening statement in the interest of giving other members more time, and turned to Inhofe, the ranking minority member and former chair of the committee.
Inhofe was loaded for bear. He was so full of contempt for Gore that he could barely get his questions out. Here’s a sample from his opening statement:
We know your perspective, you know our perspective. My perspective has been that some of the statements that you have been made, Nature, Geophysical Letters, Science, are radically at odds with your claims…..This is a good one [referring to Gore’s discussion of sea level rise] East Antarctic might melt, could raise sea level by 20 feet, we’re all gonna die…the New York Times last week [said] you’re so extreme in some of your expressions that you’re losing your own supporters.
Inhofe then launched into a discussion of the cost of dealing with global warming, framing his remarks with a pot shot at what he called the Clinton-Gore tax increase of $33 billion in 1993. Inhofe claimed the estimated cost of slowing global warming would be $300 billion, ten times the cost of the 1993 tax increase. And the cost would fall disproportionately on the “poor, the elderly, people who spend five times more on energy…if the poor have to pay for it, and the science isn’t there, this is something we can’t do to America, and we’re not going to do it.”
Gore basically repeated his opening remarks from the morning session in the House, describing the evidence that global warming was happening and that human activity was forcing that warming as being “unequivocal.” He again emphasized the “challenge to our moral imagination,” and insisted that the issue was not a partisan one.
Gore initially sounded tired, without the energy he had had in the morning. But he found his voice again after mentioning a recent meeting in Britain with the leaders of the parties, all of which accept global warming as real, and are competing with each other to come up with solutions. Here in the U.S., Gore said:
We’ve got too much partisanship….but a time will come, I promise you, a time will come when a future generation will look back on 2007…and they will ask one of 2 questions: either they will ask what in God’s name were they doing, didn’t they see the evidence, didn’t they hear the warnings, didn’t they see the mountain glaciers, the north polar ice cap melting, gone in 34 years, the seismographers telling them the earth is shaking because of Greenland, didn’t they see the evidence of nature on the run? Manatees live in South Florida, one of them just showed up in Memphis. Another one showed up off Cape Cod. Nature is on the run. There are big fires all over the west, and a brand new study definitely links it to global warming. Earlier spring melt, the soil dries out, and the vegetation dries out and they call that kindling, and all over the west the fires are raging out of control…..I want to talk to you about ideas that could help in your deliberations.
Gore finished with his list of 10 policy recommendations, and then Senator Inhofe got to pounce. After asking Gore whether he thought that “home energy use is a key component of overall energy use,” Inhofe then waved at a sign board bearing what he called an energy pledge, and asked Gore “to agree to consume no more energy in your household than the average American uses.” Inhofe’s tactic was designed to play on recent reports that because of the size of their homes, the Gores must be contributing more than their share of global warming gases.
Gore tried to reply, but after saying “I don’t want to be rude,” Inhofe persisted in talking over Gore, preventing Gore from responding. Finally Senator Boxer took matters in hand, in a set piece that many will remember for a long time.
Turning to Inhofe, Boxer said, as if to an unruly 3-year old throwing a temper tantrum in a sandbox, “I want to talk to you a minute.” The room got very quiet. Boxer asked Inhofe if he would agree to let the vice president answer his questions. Inhofe began to talk back to her in disagreement, when Boxer held up the gavel, not to pound it, but to display it. Staring Inhofe down, Boxer said:
”You’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this [looking at the gavel] but you don’t do this any more. Elections have consequences.
Whereupon the audience broke out in cheers and laughter.
Inhofe backed down slightly, but bulled ahead, this time with a placard which he said contained the names of 300 scientists who didn’t agree with Gore. After running through a series of anecdotal stories about various questions about global warming, Inhofe asked Gore: “Are they [the scientists Inhofe referred to] all wrong, and you’re right?”
Gore immediately rejected Inhofe’s effort to make Gore the poster boy for global warming, mentioning a study at the University of California of hundreds of papers on global warming, not one of which disagreed with the consensus reached by the IPCC.
In a last gasp smear attempt, Inhofe said:
”I think it’s more a money response than anything else, the George Soroses, the Michael Moores, the Richard Bransons…
Senator Kit Bond (R-MI) said that changes in sunspot activity were “one theory” that could explain global warming, instead of human activities. Gore was ready for this one, saying that in the last 30 years, there had been “no appreciable increase in solar radiation output,” and yet 10 of the hottest years on record had occurred since 1990. And he noted that both the National Academy of Sciences and the IPCC had considered the sunspot theory, and found that the evidence that human activity was the principal cause of global warming to be “unequivocal.”
Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ) mentioned reports that the Bush administration had systematically repressed and distorted evidence about global warming. Gore strongly condemned such tactics:
It’s morally wrong for individuals with a political brief and no scientific training to be put in a position where they censor science simply because it is politically inconvenient. I remember a time when that would have caused bipartisan outrage. But standing up for the scientific method, for truth, for open science, that shouldn’t be a partisan issue. [emphasis added]
Senator Isaacson (R-GA) asked whether nuclear power shouldn’t be a bigger part of the solution to global warming, and asked Gore what he thought. Gore said he had once been a strong supporter of nuclear power, but had become more skeptical, primarily because of cost: “These things [nuclear plants] are expensive, take a long time to build, and at present come in only one size, extra large.” Gore also mentioned the unsolved problem of nuclear waste disposal, and the linkage of nuclear power programs to nuclear weapons proliferation.
Gore went on to urge support for a tax on carbon dioxide, to be offset with reduction of payroll taxes. He opposed the building of any more pulverized coal plants because the amount of nitrogen in the exhaust gases meant such plants could never be retrofitted for carbon capture.
When Senator Alexander (R-TN) said nuclear power should be a “big part” of stopping global warming, Gore said that he favored widely distributed small scale generation in a smart grid (his Electronet). He called big centralized power plants “the old way of thinking.”
Senator Clinton (D-NY) asked Gore whether he preferred carbon taxes or a cap-and-trade system. Gore said that there was no reason to treat these two approaches as either-or. We could do both, and he was in favor of doing both.
Senator Clinton was very taken with Gore’s proposal for a new mortgage lending entity, ConnieMae, which could allow home buyers to pay for the highest levels of energy efficiency, with this separate mortgage to be paid back from the next few years’ worth of energy savings.
Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) was the first to mention public transit as part of the policy mix. He urged Gore to include a slide on public transit in his PowerPoint global warming show. Gore said that light rail was in the movie, and “the redesign of communities also.” This brief exchange was the only mention during the afternoon of the possibility of reducing the impact of global warming through policies that would allow people to be less dependent on cars.
At the end of the hearing, Senator Boxer congratulated Gore on his performance: “As a one woman reviewer, you did good, Mr. Vice President.”
Gore quipped back, “You don’t give out any kind of statue do you?” drawing another laugh from the audience.
Boxer didn’t have a golden statue, but she did have a personally inscribed, first bound copy of an open mike hearing her committee held earlier this year, in which more than 30 Senators showed up to state their views on global warming. In her final remarks, Boxer promised Gore: “We will get a bill out of here.”
Al Gore and eternal fame