Buenos Aires, Argentina
4th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change
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My name is Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, Chairman of the Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives, and Head of the Bipartisan Congressional Delegation to the Fourth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. I am joined today by several other Members of the Delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives, including Republican Representatives Joe Barton of Texas, Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, Joe Knollenberg of Michigan, Ken Calvert of California, and Democratic Representative Ron Klink of Pennsylvania.
We are here today to discuss our concerns that Vice President Gore may sign the Protocol negotiated last year in Kyoto without obtaining meaningful participation by developing countries and finalizing the emissions trading, joint implementation and clean development mechanisms. These items are necessary to prevent economic harm to the United States from an unfair treaty.
At this morning's briefing by the Administration's head negotiator, Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, I asked whether or not the Administration would sign the treaty this week during the negotiations in Buenos Aires. Mr. Eizenstat stated this decision was under active consideration but that such a move, if it occurs, would be "symbolic." He further said the treaty would not be submitted to the United States Senate for ratification until after meaningful participation by developing countries and acceptable trading and credit mechanisms were achieved.
Signing the Protocol does have significance. According to the Executive Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, while "signing" the Protocol does not constitute ratification or acceptance, a nation's signature does indicate that it "recognizes the authentic text, intends to complete the procedures for becoming legally bound by it and is committed not to act against the treaty's objectives before being so bound."
The Members and I assembled here today believe signng the treaty at this time is a mistake for a number of reasons.
First, the Administration has not been able to achieve meaningful participation by developing nations. Without such a commitment, the treaty remains unfair to American workers. In October, 1997 president Clinton said, "The United States will not assume binding obligations unless key developing nations meaningfully participate in this effort." Nevertheless, we find Vice President Gore may sign the Protocol without obtaining these commitments.
Second, signing the Treaty without intending to submit it to the United States Senate for ratification sends conflicting messages. In effect, the Clinton Administration is trying to have it both ways. The interpretation by other nations will be that the U.S. intends to implement the Kyoto Protocol. But by characterizing signing the Protocol as "symbolic," the Administration is attempting to tell the American people who are concerned about soaring energy prices and the loss of jobs: "Don't worry, signing this document doesn't mean anything."
Putting the signature of the United States on a treaty does mean something. And sending it to the U.S. Senate for an up or down vote should not be contingent on the results of future negotiations that may or may not achieve their goals. If the treaty is signed over our objections, it should be sent to the U.S. Senate for its advice and consent to ratification when Congress reconvenes in January.
The problem is that most observers agree that the Kyoto Protocol cannot be ratified by the Senate because the necessary two-thirds of the Senate will not vote in favor of this fatally-flawed treaty. The Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which the Senate passed last year by a vote of 95 - 0, states that "the United States should not be a signatory to" any Protocol that requires domestic greenhouse gas reductions without commitments from developing countries, or that would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States.
I have urged the White House officials to remember those minimum criteria before deciding to sign the treaty. And the White House ought to be mindful of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution provisions when they go to the negotiating table. Byrd-Hagel says quite clearly that any global warming treaty devoid of developing country participation and credible evidence that America wil maintain its economic health and vitality will be dead on arrival.
I am here also representing the ranking member of the full committee (Commerce), John Dingel. Mr. Dingel has stayed away in protest, he is so convinced that the administration is going to sign this Protocol, that he's going to stay back in Washington DC and talk to the press back there about all the many ills that signing this Protocol will bring upon our country. He, and I, and many of the members sitting up here today, believe that by signing this, and not having full participation by the developing nations, that we are, in essence, taking the first major step toward the de-industrialization of our nation.
I don't use those terms lightly. What we are risking with signing the Protocol is, number 1, having a back-door way of implementing this without going to the Senate because the Byrd- Hagel Resolution that passed 95 to 0 on July 25, 1997, they said they would not ratify this without meaningful participation by the developing nations.
Now the other question is, and I ask all of you who have been here or were in Kyoto, what is "meaningful participation." None of the members up here know what that means. We've not been told what is "meaningful participation." What does this mean for the developing countries? What does this mean for our nation as well? To borrow a phrase from my dear friend John Dingel, he said the administration has got us into a position like going into a card game when you know the game is rigged, and then, secondly, misplaying your hand. They've done both of those things. The only thing left to do is just fold everything and give all your chips away. That is what it appears to me that they are about to do if they are to sign this Protocol here today. I would urge them, if they are thinking about it, to not take that step.
I would also like say that while I am not representing Senator Byrd, I would like to draw to your attention a letter the Senator sent to the President. I understand Todd Schultz has copies of this letter also. We can make these letters available to the press also. I won't read the entire letter, but I will just tell you a couple of things he reminds the President. Signing this Protocol would be contrary to the plain language of Senate Resolution 98 that we have all referred to. Also, it would go against the consensus of the Senate. The consensus of the Senate, according to Senator Byrd, is the same, unanimously. Unless the developing nations are going to have participation in this, the United States should not move forward. Furthermore, he is convinced that signing the Kyoto Protocol would not improve your negotiating position, vis a vis the developing countries. Signing now only puts greater pressure on the administration to support a Protocol that does not meet the conditions set out in Senate Resolution 98. Signing now implies a commitment to the Protocol that undermines our future leverage with the biggest emitters in the developing world.
In essence, it's very simple. This is a very complex issue I understand, but this issue is very simple. In this giant universe if you're worried about global warming, we all have the same address - planet earth. It does not make sense for us to play by one set of rules while encouraging our dirtiest emitters in the United States to move to a country that doesn't have to play by those same rules. Instead of developing new, cleaner technology, new ways of doing things, we are, in essence, saying go ahead and take the worst technologies, the dirtiest technologies, and move to another country. Thank you for being here.
I am the Chairman of the Oversight & Investigation Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee. Congressman Klink and I have held numerous hearings on this issue during the last two Congresses. I must tell you, having been an official observer in Kyoto, and now at this conference, I do not see that much has changed. It appears to me that the Clinton administration intends to implement this treaty by osmosis, simply let it kind of filter in and everybody assumes that it is the thing to do. Well, I want to inform all our good friends and allies in Western Europe and Japan and Asia, Central and South America, that the United States democracy doesn't work that way.
The U.S. Congress, both the House and the Senate, is going to continue to monitor this. We're going to insist on, and put it in the House of Representatives regular order. To quote the Leipzig declaration that was signed by over 100 climate scientists recently, they say the Kyoto treaty is dangerously simplistic, quite ineffective, and economically destructive. That's not my words, or Congresses' words; that's over 100 climate scientists in a declaration signed Leipzig, Germany. We're here to bring a little common sense and reality to this happening. I would assume on both sides of the aisle when we get back to Washington in January, we will do the best we can to get our administration - Mr. Clinton, Mr. Gore, Ms Browner - to listen to the people of the United States of America. They do not want this treaty in its current form.
Let me be very brief. You've heard, I think, from enough folks up here to get some picture of our concern. We don't take this lightly. The Kyoto Protocol is, I believe, fatally flawed. It's too much, too soon, and there's too few developing nations that are considered in this whole scheme. I think what we have to do, because of the immature science involved here, I think we have to slow down. Let's not walk away from it, but let's slow down. Let's perfect the science. We haven't really had any kind of debate through Congress or otherwise on this whole issue of carbon dioxide and global warming.
You would think, on the basis of what you hear from the administration that it has been done, it's over, it's behind us. Not so; that hasn't happened. So, the Protocol itself is flawed. The process is flawed. The administration has backed itself into a corner. They truly have. The result is, here we are today waiting, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, for this agreement to be signed. I think that is a huge mistake. It certainly doesn't help us. It hurts us. I conclude with that.
Congressman, Is your position not in danger of being overtaken by the private sector that appears to be moving in support of the Kyoto Protocol? And what is your position on early credits for those companies that come on-board early?
The answer to your first question is no. Each of us represent approximately 560,000 people in our various constituencies, who are concerned about their energy costs and concerned about their jobs. I think the message of our last election is that the American people, when the economy is well, vote to reelect governments and when the economy is poor, they don't. The charge that Speaker Gingrich gave to this delegation, both last year and this year, is to review the actions of the COP conference and answer three questions: (1) is the treaty supported by sustainable and credible science; (2) is the treaty workable; (3) is the treaty fair to the United States?
I think the scientific jury is out. There are credible scientists on both sides of this question and I don't think there is a clear scientific answer, despite the fact that there are zealots on each side saying there is, quoting the scientists who happen to agree with their position. To the second and third questions, the answer is clearly no. I do not think the treaty is workable because there have been no agreements relative to emissions trading, on implementation of credits that have been negotiated. The devil is in the mass of details. Any treaty that exempts 134 of the 180 nations in the world from any reductions of the growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions, will merely result in changing the address of pollution and the changing of jobs and wealth and income to places where the cost of manufacturing is lower because of lower energy costs or labor costs and lower costs for compliance with environmental regulations. That's what we are looking at. Many of the large American multi-national companies are looking not only at their U.S. operations, but at their foreign operations as well. Our job, as members of Congress elected by the people, is to look out for our people.
I might add to that, we're not anti-environment, and if businesses want to retrofit their plants, or they want to create new plants and use the best available technology, we're all for that. What we're against, is almost unilaterally requiring the United States of America to make significant reductions in the greenhouse gasses while the developing nations can do so on a voluntary basis if they wish, and some of our more developed allies, because of changes in their economies, in terms of real restructuring, have to do almost nothing.
Good point. We're in favor of voluntary compliance. We don't want them to have to do it with a gun to their head. I live in an area of western Pennsylvania around Pittsburg. There are 13 counties in southwest Pennsylvania that lost 155,000 manufacturing jobs, mainly because they were investing in scrubbers and pollution control devices instead of modernizing their manufacturing processes. We have seen too many times, when we force upon industries a set of behaviors, the minimum wage, labor protections, environmental rules, they will not stay there and be good citizens, they will move off shore, go somewhere else where they can pay a heck of a lot less, where the environmental laws, if there are any, are not enforced. And they leave us high and dry. We don't want to put our industries in a position to have to make that choice.
I have two questions, one for Congressman Sensenbrenner, and one for the panel. My daughter is going to school in Mexico where the streets are not paved, they have no running water - what kind of participation would you expect from them? Congressman Sensenbrenner, you were recently reelected by 91% in an election with only token opposition. Companies that oppose the Kyoto Protocol contributed $30,000 to your campaign. Are you going to meet with any of those companies while you are here?
I'm willing to meet with anybody. I think that if you have the time to talk to my constituents, you find that I meet with anybody back home. I've had over 350 open town meetings where anybody can come on in and ask any questions they want, make whatever statements they want to make and we don't ask what people's political affiliations are. And we don't have cash registers for campaign contributions. I think that's the way most members of Congress happen to operate. I think you have raised a red herring.
Your first question about Mexico, I think you bring up a very good point. It's one that I've tried to make as we've gone through different issues with the EPA back in Washington DC. Nothing, in my estimation, causes more degradation to the environment than poverty. Now, how do you get out of poverty? You create wealth. You create jobs. You create industry. Why do we have tens of thousands of people dying from hurricane Mitch in Central America, while it hit the southern tip of Florida and we had almost no loss of life there? Because people were living in hovels. They don't have storm water drainage. They don't have the kind of infrastructure and flood control that can be put together by a developed nation. So, just taking a look at one issue by itself., that's this rigged game that we're in. We're not looking at the tremendous amount of life that can be lost around this world based on poverty and lack of infrastructure. The reason we have so much wealth and infrastructure in the United States is because we built our nation up on rather inexpensive carbon-based fuel. Now, if we have to get away from that, we have to figure out how we are going to do it. Nuclear energy is a fine possibility. We have problems to solve in the storage of our nuclear waste. And the cleaning up of our nuclear waste. These are all problems that we can't just keep going to all these exotic locations like Kyoto one year, Rio de Janeiro the year before, here we are in Buenos Aires, where we're going next year, and holding again - I hate to keep using it - but we're holding a gun to the head of our industries and to the developed nations, and we're not focusing on what we need to do to help these developing nations to develop. And that is clearly a large part of the problem. I thank you for bringing that up.
Let me... first I think we should commend your daughter, and you for encouraging your daughter to go to Mexico to try to help the citizens there who don't have some of the benefits we have in the United States. Having said that, I think we give our forefathers credit for developing a market-based system in the United States that's based on pluralistic democracy that uses market forces to create economic opportunity. As Congressman Klink just pointed out, not only the United States, but Western Europe and Japan have utilized their resources to devote to economic opportunity. It strikes me that some of the so-called developing nations, China, Mexico, India, had civilizations before there were any civilizations in the United States, other than nomadic wandering tribes. Yet, they are still developing. We need to encourage them to continue to develop democratic models and also to use energy efficiency to create economic opportunity. Saddling the United States, which is 30% of the world's economy with a treaty that is a negative to our economy does not help the people in Mexico that your daughter is trying to help.
To what extent is this treaty a partisan issue in the U.S. Congress? What would you require to approve this treaty?
First, this is not a partisan issue. The delegation that was sent down is a bi-partisan delegation. There are members of the delegation who are in favor of the treaty. So there is a wide gamut of opinion. The senior democrat in the House of Representatives, John Dingel, of Michigan is a member of the delegation, and he decided not to come. He is opposed to the treaty. The senior democrat in the U. S Senate, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, is opposed to the treaty. In the letter he sent yesterday to the president asking him not to sign the treaty, that was referred to by Mr. Klink and others. So this is not a partisan issue whatsoever.
The answer to the second part of your question: the Constitution of the United States does not give Congress the power to negotiate with foreign countries. That's something that is reserved exclusively to the Executive Branch. But we are here in Buenos Aires doing as we did in Kyoto, observing the actions of the Executive Branch, reporting to the public and to our colleagues, to you and to our constituencies, what our conclusions are. I think that there is almost unanimous bi-partisan agreement, that as this treaty sits now, it is dead on arrival. It will not be ratified by the United States Senate. The question is what can be done to attempt to either salvage the process or to declare that the process is fatally flawed and start over in addressing this issue. My personal view, I don't know if it is shared by my colleagues or not, is that the process is fatally flawed. The reason the process is fatally flawed, is that the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, requires a three-quarters vote to amend the terms of the Protocol such as providing a voluntary mechanism to adhere to the Protocol. However the Protocol cannot be amended until it comes into force. And practically speaking, it cannot come into force absent the ratification of the United States Senate. So, the administration has backed itself into a corner. I don't see how it can get out of the corner because the Byrd-Hagel resolution requires meaningful participation of developing countries. The President has said he won't send the Protocol to the Senate for ratification without such participation. There's no way to amend the Protocol to provide for voluntary participation prior to Senate ratification.
I want to comment on the bi-partisan question. I am not the Whip organization of the House. The Whip is the person who counts the votes. But I don't believe here would be a majority of democrats that would be in favor of this. I know in the Senate there wouldn't be. So it's not just a question of getting the two-thirds. On the Republican side, you probably have about a fourth of the Republicans in the House who would vote for it and about three-fourths who would vote against it.
Let me address this from the agriculture perspective; I sit on the House Agriculture Committee. I would say, probably nine-tenths of the Agriculture Committee on both sides would oppose the treaty because basically it would decimate, for us, our agriculture as we know it today. We're already in a very bad crisis with low commodity prices, with droughts, and flooding, and farmers need a lot of help and the administration is not helping particularly. So, virtually every member of the Agriculture Committee would be opposed to it.
There is an impasse on the question of fairness. Americans consider it unfair to experience job loss as a result of the treaty. Would you consider it fair for some of the developing couuntries to have to share responsibility for a problem caused by the United States?
Pollution knows no borders. We have seen instances, for example, where China has bought steel mills that were closed down due to violations of existing environmental regulations, moving them bit by bit to China and reassembling them there and having them manufacture steel and pollute the environment with a different address. There is no customs official there to stamp pollution when it goes across the border. That's why we feel that any resolution to this problem must be global in scope. If more than three-quarters of the nations of the world are exempt, the amount of reduction of greenhouse gas would have a minimal effect. My science committee had six hearings both before and after Kyoto. The best testimony we have received indicated that if the Kyoto Protocol were implemented as written, the reductions of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere would be less than 1% at the end of the first accounting period, 2012. The concern that we have is the major disruption of our economy, the massive increase in energy prices for consumers and industry, and the export of jobs from the United States and the countries of Japan, Canada, and Australia to countries that do not have to meet these requirements and thus the cost of manufacturing is lower. That would be a lower standard of living. The responsibility that we have to our constituents, I think, is to ensure that any treaty that is ratified and legally binding upon the United States does not have that consequence.
Delegates are negotiating here to make the Protocol meaningful. Do you think these discussions are meaningless?
No, I don't think the discussions are meaningless, but the problem is that what happened in Kyoto has put those who want to see the United States ratify the Kyoto Protocol into the procedural bind that I described earlier. The problem has been caused by people who have not listened to the concerns we have been expressing for the better part of the last two years; led by Vice President Gore, who seems to have a plug in his ear about these concerns. And he had better get it out of his ear if he wants to have anything happen.