Volume 147, No. 34 covering the 1st Session of the 107th Congress (2001 - 2002) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“NEW ADMINISTRATION IS NOT SERIOUS ABOUT ADDRESSING GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGES” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H911-H912 on March 14, 2001.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NEW ADMINISTRATION IS NOT SERIOUS ABOUT ADDRESSING GLOBAL CLIMATE
CHANGES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gilchrest). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I, as a Democrat, have an admission to make. I have come before the House to admit that I was fooled into believing that the new administration was actually serious about doing something about global climate change. I was fooled into having hopes that this administration would abide by its promises to show some leadership to do something about carbon dioxide, which is polluting our atmosphere and warming our planet.
I had those hopes until yesterday. I want to tell my colleagues why I had those hopes. The new director of the Environmental Protection Agency, former Governor Christie Todd Whitman, said last week that she wanted to work to do something to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from our polluting plants. A few weeks ago, the Secretary of the Treasury said that he believed that this was a serious problem, that it needed to be addressed, and the government could no longer afford to ignore it.
The President of the United States last September told the American people and promised the American people that, if elected President of the United States, he would work to curtail carbon dioxide emissions from our power generating plants in this country. A promise, a pledge, a commitment that yesterday was sadly broken when he bowed down to the oil and gas industry and said he was not going to lift a finger to reduce these CO2 emissions, to reduce the pollution that is coming out of our plants.
I was fooled, and I am greatly disappointed. But I have not given up, and the reason I have not given up is because I believe that there are good Members on both sides of the aisle in this Chamber who are willing to show some leadership in moving forward on climate change issues.
I am just alerting Members of the House to this fact that I do not think we can look to leadership from the White House on this after yesterday's stunning reneging on a promise to the American people, and that we need to show some leadership.
I am telling the House this because, if we are going to have action by the Federal Government of doing something about the climate change problem in this country, we in the House are going to need to get out in front of this issue.
I know there are Members on both sides of the aisle who are willing to do this. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), who is in the chair today, has shown a recognition and some leadership in this regard.
To do this, I am urging my fellow Members to do a few things: first, to join our Global Climate Change Caucus, a bipartisan group of Members who are committed to finding common sense and workable means of reducing climate change emissions.
Second, I would ask our Members during this tax cut debate that is going on that, no matter what happens in the tax cut, we devote a portion of it to creating incentives for efficient clean energy sources of new technology, wind, solar, fuel cell technology; to bring those technologies to market-based prices; and to use this tax cut debate in a meaningful way on an environmental basis.
I ask Members to join the bipartisan group that is working to try to fashion some package of tax cuts that can help these new technologies become a market base so that we can put them in our homes and our houses.
I ask Members to cosponsor a bill I have called the Home Energy Generation Act that will allow one when one puts a solar panel on one's home to sell one's excess power back to one's utility and have one's meter run backwards so one gets a credit.
There are a lot of things we can do, but I am urging Members of the House to come to the forefront and be leaders because there is going to be a vacuum, unfortunately, out of the White House.
Let me tell my colleagues another thing very disturbing that happened yesterday. The President of the United States, when he decided to ignore the explicit promise to the American people on this CO2 emission issue, said the reason he did so was because he was concerned about prices of electricity going up.
Well, frankly, that is a surprise to us because, for the last 2 months, we have been asking the President of the United States to do something about electrical prices in the West, and he has refused to do anything about it.
We have asked him to adopt a short-term wholesale price cap, to have a circuit breaker to reduce these extraordinary price increases that we are having on the western United States right now. He has refused to even consider it.
We let the greatest transfer of wealth from the western United States to generators of electricity since Bonnie and Clyde roamed the prairies because of these huge run-ups in prices, unprecedented, unjustified, and unreasonable. By the way, this is not just me talking. Our own FERC, the Federal Energy Regulation Commission, under the Bush administration made a finding that these prices were unreasonable, unconscionable. I think unconscionable is my language, but at least they said unreasonable.
Despite that finding, the administration has refused to lift a finger to limit these extraordinary increases in electrical rates. We believe we are going to ask the administration, we have been asking for 2 months to do that.
Let me tell my colleagues why that is so dangerous, Mr. Speaker. I am going to read from the Wall Street Journal article in yesterday's paper, which I will now summarize. We have the possibility of losing 43,000 jobs, this the State of Washington alone, if the administration does not work with this Congress in a bipartisan fashion to adopt wholesale price caps. I hope all my Members will join me in this effort.
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