Larry Craig

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President I would like to engage in a colloquy with the distinguished Chairman and Ranking Member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee regarding funding for the National Rural Development Partnership (NRDP) for federal fiscal year 2004. Last year, Congress included in the Farm Bill the provisions of the National Rural Development Partnership Act, which I sponsored along with the Senior Senator from North Dakota and 43 of our colleagues. The Farm Bill's NRDP language authorizes annual appropriations of up to $10 million. This authorization was included because of a recognition that the funding arrangement for the Partnership, which has been in place since its establishment a dozen years ago, has failed to provide adequate resources for the NRDP and the state rural development councils (SRDCs). That funding arrangement has depended on voluntary contributions of discretionary funds from USDA and four other federal agencies, as well as matching funds from the states and others. The work of the NRDP and SRDCs is more important than ever. The current economic downturn has hit rural America hard. Drought and low prices have had a devastating impact on production agriculture, which continues to be the economic foundation of many rural communities. Other rural communities that depend on logging or mining have seen employment and economic activity diminish in those important industries. The nationwide decline in manufacturing has resulted in the closure of thousands of factories in rural areas, eliminating the sole or principal source of good-paying jobs in many rural communities. This situation has been aggravated by the fiscal challenges facing most State governments. As States slash budgets, the level of vital services upon which rural residents depend--from education and health care to transportation and libraries--has been greatly diminished. At this dire time in rural America, we must support organizations like the SRDCs which can help our citizens respond to the many challenges they face. This year's committee report accompanying the fiscal year 2004 Agriculture Appropriations Bill includes language encouraging the USDA to continue its support of the NRDP and SRDCs by providing stable funding, technical support, and guidance practices as they have done over past years. Similar language was included in the Senate subcommittee's report on the fiscal year 2003 Agricultural Appropriations bill. I appreciate the support the Chairman and Ranking Member have shown for the NRDP and SRDCs. Besides continuing current USDA involvement, it is important to continue and intensify its efforts to secure support for the NRDP and SRDCs from other federal agencies and with rural responsibilities as it has done successfully in the past. This is consistent with the intention of Congress in the Conference Committee Report of the 2002 Farm Bill. The committee report has spoken to the importance of the Department continuing to support the continued development and increased involvement of the NRDP and SRDCs. I would also appreciate the Committee's continued emphasis on importance of multi-agency cooperation with USDA to strengthen this vital effort to spur and strengthen our rural economies.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I would like to engage in a colloquy with the chairman and ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, and Related Agencies regarding the National Agricultural Statistics Service--NASS--and the potato size and grade survey. The NASS provides critical information to growers, processors, shippers, and all other segments of the agricultural industry. Its history of doing so reaches back to the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln and travels forward in time to the present, where those in the agricultural industry now rely heavily on information for planting and pricing decisions. Of great importance to my State and others is the information NASS provides regarding the potato size and grade survey. The intent of this survey is to provide all market participants with comprehensive potato size and grade data. These data are crucial information to both potato growers and buyers in estimating the current potato crop's quality. This unbiased information will be used by all parties when negotiating sale or purchase contracts of processing potatoes. The National Potato Council--NPC, which represents all segments of the potato industry, has identified that these data are imperative to the orderly marketing of the annual potato crop. These data also ensure no one group uses their market position to distort the true picture of annual crop quality. The size and grade data will complement the annual production data already provided by NASS and supply the necessary information for the orderly marketing of the potato crop. Given the importance of the potato industry to the United States, I wish to add language to the fiscal year 2004 Agriculture Appropriations Act that simply asks the NASS to continue its work on the potato size and grade survey within the available funds of the agency. I would ask the chairman and ranking member, given the subcommittee's continued support for NASS, whether it is also the Committee's intent to continue the vital work of this survey?

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. The point is the bill is not moving because your side is objecting to what is a normal process here in the conference.

Mr. CRAIG. I guess my point is made.

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. CRAIG. Is it not true what I said on the floor, that you are objecting to appointing conferees to the Healthy Forests initiative so it can go to conference between the House and Senate? Is that not true?

Mr. CRAIG. I thank the Senator.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I will claim no more than 5 minutes of the time of the Senator from Texas.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I come to the floor this morning a bit frustrated and maybe with a good reason to be angry at some of our colleagues for what now appears to be a general intended deceit of the American people. I hope that is not the case and I certainly will take back those words if it is not. But actions are occurring behind the scenes as I speak that suggest I am not inaccurate. What am I talking about? This past week the Senate was consumed in debating a bill about healthy forests and trying to develop some degree of active management on our public forest lands to reduce the overall fuel load that was and has been feeding the fires on our forested lands. Of course, last week, while we were debating here on the floor, America's attention was riveted in California where people were dying, homes were burning, and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of acres were being consumed. Probably that was the worst wildfire this country has seen in several decades. What happened last Thursday after a very full and robust debate on a bipartisan bill that had been crafted in the Agriculture Committee and then recrafted between the Senator from California, a Democrat, the Senator from Oregon, a Democrat, myself, a Republican, and a variety of others to build a bipartisan alternative approach to this problem? We debated that bill and we passed it by a vote of 80 to 14. That would demonstrate to the American people that those who opposed us in the past somehow had gotten the message. Somehow there was an awakening here in the Senate that there was truly a need to resolve the issue of forest health. The poster I have just put up was used last week. It says: ``California Burns, Democrat Filibuster Continues.'' That filibuster was broken. There was a rousing debate and an 80-to- 14 vote. The Healthy Forests initiative passed, an initiative I had worked on for a good number of years as chairman of the Forestry Subcommittee. The President of the United States, standing in ashes in the forests of California or Oregon the summer before last, declared this country had to get busy at being better stewards of their public lands or we were going to continue to see catastrophic wildfires. All of that finally came together last week. Now, on the morning news, we see a caravan of mourning firefighters as they lay to rest one of the firefighters who was killed in those cataclysmic fires of last week in southern California. While there are those laying to rest over 20 people killed in those fires, and while the Senate last Thursday, on an 80-to-14 vote, passed out a Healthy Forests initiative, now, quietly, behind the scene, the Democrat leaders are saying: No more. We will not allow the bill to move any further. We will not allow the bill that passed by a bipartisan vote to go to conference with the House to work out our differences, to actually make it law. Do you understand what I am saying? I am saying the debate last week and the cataclysmic fires in California somehow have not changed anybody's mind; they have not changed or are not going to allow public policy to change; that behind the scenes there is now a silent, invisible filibuster on the part of Democratic leadership that will not allow this bipartisan bill to go to conference because, if it doesn't go to conference and the House and the Senate can't work out their differences, it will not become law. If it is not law, we cannot begin to deal with the 20 million acres of urban/wildland interface that are addressed within this legislation so that we will thin and clean and make them less susceptible to fire. What is the picture here? Am I getting this wrong? Is this scenario I have on this picture now replaying itself? The fires are out in California, or at least we hope they are nearly out. But they will come again. Here is the reason they will come again. Here is a map of the United States. All these red areas----

Mr. CRAIG. I ask for 1 additional minute.

Mr. CRAIG. The red on this map demonstrates not 20 million acres but 90 million acres of class 3 lands that are dead and dying and phenomenally susceptible to fire. See right down here in southern California where the fires burn, that red land that was looked at in 2000, which we said was going to burn? It burned: 3,400 homes, 20 lives, billions of dollars worth of assets. Now a silent filibuster on the part of Democratic leadership says we will not allow the bill to go forward? I hope I am wrong. I was not wrong yesterday. I understand they are still blocking a unanimous consent request to appoint conferees so the House and the Senate can work out their differences, so we can get at the business of being the good stewards of our public lands the public wants us to be and somehow, some way, treat our lands and deny wildfire to other areas of the country.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me speak very briefly to the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico. I will be very brief. It is a debatable motion.

Mr. CRAIG. For a parliamentary inquiry only.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I will be brief. The Senator from New Mexico makes eminently good sense. There is no question that we have a funding problem. I have spoken with the Assistant Secretary and the Chief. I chair the Forestry Subcommittee and the committee on which the Senator is the ranking member. What I am suggesting we do--because the motion that has just been made in this budget point of order is an appropriate one--is to reexamine the whole funding mechanism of the Forest Service. Your figures are accurate. The kinds of programs that go unfunded now, that would help to begin to correct our forest health problem that is in part driving these fires, is a very real question. As you know, the Forest Service used to have a cash cow. We called it logging. Those revenues flowed in, and money moved around from different accounts. You could borrow, as we did during fire seasons, and they got replenished. So you raise a very important point. But it is a point that we need to totally reexamine. To actually allow the Forest Service to borrow from the Treasury without going through the appropriating process, in my opinion, doesn't really give us the kind of fiscal control and responsibility we all ought to have. Certainly as ranking member of the authorizing committee and as a member of the authorizing committee myself, you and I, on an annual basis, ought to aggressively look at this budget, knowing that we have fallen far short, and deal with it in an appropriate way. But we have not done that. You recognized, appropriately, the Senator from Montana, who chairs the Subcommittee on Interior that funds this, and others. We ought to get at it in an aggressive way. I have already tasked the Assistant Secretary and the Chief to look at a variety of mechanisms that fit the funding shortfalls that we need to create the new mechanisms necessary. But I don't believe that direct ability to borrow from the U.S. Treasury by an agency itself, without the authority of the authorizing committee and the appropriators, is an approach we ought to undertake at this time. It is, however, an issue whose time has come, and we ought to deal with it in the appropriate fashion.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, what we are about to conclude tonight is a 3- to 4-year effort on the part of many folks of good will on both sides of the aisle to bring some modicum of change. This is not a giant leap forward. This is a cautious, careful step to assure that we can begin to address our forests that are overgrown, that are diseased, that are now caught up in the scenario of wildfire, as we see it playing itself out in southern California today. Without a doubt this is a national emergency and a national crisis. We are being asked to spend upwards of $1.2 billion a year of taxpayers' money simply to put the fires out, let alone the cleanup and the restoration and the saving of watersheds and wildlife habitat. So I would hope we could continue this process and monitor it closely. My last hope is that the work tonight can go to the President's desk, can become law, and we can say we, once again, have become reasonable and responsible stewards of our forested lands. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I appreciate the passion by which the Senator from California approaches this issue. I would like to have her attention for a few moments because she is most sincere in what she says. Forest scientists--not a year ago--5 years ago, were pleading with us to create activity in our forests and in San Bernardino to stop a catastrophic fire that was going to happen someday. Yet this Senate-- and my guess is, the vote of the Senator from California--denied those kinds of actions, a more interactive approach and active thinning and cleaning. We have been talking about forest health on the floor of this Senate not for 1 year, not for 2 years, not for 3 years, but 5 years. Why?

Mr. CRAIG. No, I won't yield at this point.

Mr. CRAIG. I will not yield at this moment.

Mr. CRAIG. No, I will not yield.

Mr. CRAIG. Let me complete my thought, Senator, and then I will be happy to yield to you.

Mr. CRAIG. I have been in the San Bernardino and so have you. For 15 years that forest has gone relatively untouched. So I appreciate the Senator's passion. What we have tried to strike here is a balance. The picture I am demonstrating is not unlike the picture the Senator from California brought. Why aren't the trees burned around the homes that are gone? The reason they are not is because 60-mile-an-hour winds spread fire in many instances a mile or a half a mile beyond where the fire is burning. Embers fell on the roof of the shake roof homes in California, and the homes are gone because the trees in the immediate area stand. So when the Senator from Oregon and this Senator from Idaho and the other Senator from California were trying to strike a balance, we knew that reaching out as far as we possibly could was where we needed to go, along with recognizing that the urban interface was critical. We believe we have struck that kind of balance. We want to sustain that balance. The money goes where the people exist. Let me reference another fire that occurred in early summer. The Senator from California witnessed it, as we all did. It was called Summer Haven on the mountain above Tucson. Summer Haven had been treated. Thinning and cleaning had gone on around that little urban enclave interface. But the community no longer exists today. It burned up in a wildfire. Why? Because the fire started down the canyon in areas that had not been thinned and cleaned, and it swept up the canyon, burned out the areas that had been thinned and cleaned, and took out all the homes. The point I am making--and I will be happy to respond to a question from the Senator from California--is that we tried to strike a balance. We need to go where the people are. And California cries out for that at this moment. I hope the Senator will continue to work with us. It isn't just happening on the San Bernardino. Tens of thousands of acres are dead and dying in the Sierras. The Tahoe Basin is in trouble. The Senator from Nevada attempted to address that along with us a few years ago. We are beginning to try to get some active management there. It is a tragedy waiting to happen again. It is happening in thousands of acres of forested lands across this country. That is why we are trying to strike the balance. Not only do we have bug kill in the urban interface; we have it out there in lands that we have agreed, under a certain process and procedure, we might try to treat. That is my point. That is why I think you can be arbitrary here and have good logic for that arbitrariness. The Senator from California is arbitrary, as are we. She has a set of logic. I am trying to suggest that in a 60-mile-an-hour firestorm, fires do not listen to borders. They do not react to them. Now if the Senator from California has any questions, I would be more than happy to respond. I yield the floor.

Mr. CRAIG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, as many of my colleagues in the Senate know, I have been fascinated and awed by the complexity of the climate change issue for quite some time. Certainly, being born and raised in the high desert region of the State of Idaho located in the rugged and majestic Pacific Northwest, I grew up with reverence for the natural beauty of our world and a deep respect for the awesome power of nature. I have stated several times on the floor of the Senate that climate change is one of the most significant issues of our time. I have not changed my view. I come to the floor of the Senate today to both compliment my colleagues, Senators McCain and Lieberman, for their determination to legislatively address the issue of climate change and to object to the manner in which they have chosen to do so. Their proposal, S. 139, The Climate Stewardship Act, is portrayed by its proponents to be a modest legislative attempt to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It is hard for me accept the word ``modest'' as an accurate descriptive term for the legislation when I measure the bill by what it does--it regulates carbon dioxide--a gas that is not a criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act is not a poisonous gas or toxic substance, and does not represent a direct threat to public health. When I decided to enter politics, I was guided by a deep belief in personal freedom--the maximum amount possible for the citizens of our Nation that is consistent with an orderly society. By freedom I mean the opportunity to achieve one's true potential, whether as an individual, a community, or a business. Freedom spawns discovery and innovation and in turn discovery and innovation solve problems and create opportunities. Regulation is the antithesis of freedom. It certainly retards, if not completely extinguishes our natural desire to discover and be innovative, and yet, we, as a Nation, seem more and more inclined to willingly accept the form of a regulatory state. I am periodically awed by the prescience of Alexis de Tocqueville's 1839 work--``Democracy in America.'' In Part II of Chapter 6, Tocqueville voiced perhaps his greatest concern for the future conditions of American democracy. In general terms, he said that democracies have a sort of soft ``despotism'' to fear. That is, conditions of democracy include toward men's equality, and in that equality, the government takes care of all of man's necessities, needs, and desires, in order to maintain this patterned equality among men. Tocqueville's description of this ``soft despotism'' aptly describes the modern regulatory state. I note that there are 2,620 pages in the 1936 Federal Register, a year after the Federal Register Act was passed in 1935. In the Federal Register for the year 2000, there are 74,258. A quote from Chapter 6 of Tocqueville's work is quite pertinent to our discussion here. In discussing the regulatory threat, he states: That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentle . . . It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances . . . Thus it makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rare, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Tocqueville goes on to note that regulation: is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd. Now, let me be clear, regulation, indeed, has its place. But this extremely powerful Government tool should be employed only as a last resort after facts developed by a comprehensive and systematic analysis clearly indicate that it is necessary to protect the public welfare. It is with this analytical perspective that I have reviewed carefully the underlying scientific and economic support for this bill, S. 139. The bill assumes that there is currently a definitive scientific basis for imposing a regulatory structure on industry. I am unable to agree with that basic assumption. There is no definitive evidence supporting regulation. Surface temperatures have warmed. We are not sure why. Since the mid-1990s, I have paid close attention to the developing science on global warming. Indeed, I have organized and attended meetings at scientific research venues, set-up and participated in numerous conference calls with scientists from the National Academy of Sciences, and, along with the Board of the NAS convened a high level conference at the Academy's headquarters in Washington, DC to discuss the state of the science on global warming. That conference, held on June 6, 2001, was a marvelous opportunity to talk with eleven scientists that included several Nobel Laureates who just finished responding to the now well publicized ``Key Questions'' request of President Bush. We couldn't have had better timing for such a conference and the conference was set up solely to address concerns of the U.S. Senate. Yet there were only two other Senators besides myself who made the effort to attend. Senators Bingaman and Sessions joined me, former Treasury Secretary O'Neill and former Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Glenn Hubbard. I can say to all in the Chamber today that the forum was a veritable feast for the mind and wonderfully successful in explaining matters of extraordinary scientific complexity. But it had to be quite a disappointment for the Academy. Only three U.S. Senators took the time to attend. The National Academy made extraordinary efforts to get Members of the Senate to attend its intensive Climate Science Forum, including sending a letter one month in advance of the forum to each Member of the Senate, followed by a personal phone call to each Senate office. What more could the Academy have done to encourage attendance? I don't think much else could have been done. For some, it appears contentment on the science issue comes from simply learning about it from media reports contained in newspapers and popular magazines. Is that a fair knowledge base for regulation? Indeed, a little over a year before the NAS conference I organized and attended, with Senator Lincoln Chafee and former Senator Bob Smith, a meeting of over 30 scientists working at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, MA, to discuss the state of science on climate change. Again, I could tweak the interest of only a handful of Members to join me at that excellent scientific conference held exclusively for members of the United States Senate. This issue is too economically and environmentally important for Congress to continue to have only casual interest in its scientific complexity. Sure, there have been several congressional hearings during the last year debating different views of the science. But how much do we really learn in a couple of hours under restrictive time limits for questions, particularly when we invite mostly ``advocates'' of a particular position, instead of objective scientists? Not much. Surely, not as much as we learned at reputable scientific forums. So, today, the Senate is asked to pass legislation that will regulate carbon dioxide, an emission that has no health impacts--we humans exhale it with every breath--and heretofore has never been listed as an ``air pollutant.'' Stated simply, the scientific case for regulation is unpersuasive. Those Senators who assert that the science is settled are, in my opinion, simply wrong. The 2001 NAS Report on the ``Analysis of Some Key Questions,'' often quoted to establish the basis for regulatory action, contains a sentence that is often half-quoted, and I will read it here in its entirety: The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. This is the third sentence in the summary at the very beginning of the report. Even a cursory reading of the report indicates that the uncertainties are real and they are significant. Indeed, the report uses the words ``uncertain'' and ``uncertainty'' 43 times in its 28 pages. Some press accounts have said that this report acknowledged a dire, near term threat to the environment from climate change. This is not true. One of the conclusions of the Report was that: [a] causal linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the 20th Century cannot be unequivocally established. Natural variations in climate that occur over decades and even centuries have been identified by the NAS as also playing a role in climate change, and so it is not correct to say that this problem results only from human activities, or that reduction of emissions of heat-trapping gases will entirely solve it. Mr. President, 2 years before the NAS prepared its 2001 ``Analysis of Some Key Questions'' it issued one of this country's most comprehensive reports on climate change science entitled: ``Research Pathways for the Next Decade.'' The Pathways report is short on creative literature and long on technical issue framing--not particularly suitable for catchy media headlines, which may explain why many newspapers showed little interest in its existence or import. But its critical and thorough scientific analysis of the current state of our climate change knowledge is what makes the Pathways report so important to policy makers. Now, if you are like me and you find out that America's National Research Council has just published the most comprehensive report in history on the state of Climate Science, you don't want to read all 550 pages! You want to cut to the chase and read the report's bottom line conclusion. And the last thing you want is a report that provides more questions than answers. But the Pathways Report authors are brutally honest. To best explain the current state of climate science they had no choice but to lay out a whole series of potentially show-stopping questions. Let me stop for a moment and reflect on my trip to Woods Hole, MA, that I mentioned earlier. I spent a day at the Oceanographic Institute exploring these questions with over 30 scientists. It was a real eye- opening experience. Dr. Berrien Moore, who coordinated the publication of the Pathways Report, helped lead a discussion on where science and public policy intersect. Two themes came through clearly in those discussions: No. 1, there are significant gaps in scientific understanding of the way oceans and the atmosphere interact to affect climate; and No. 2, scientists need more data, especially from the oceans to better understand and predict possible changes. It was humbling to get a glimpse of how much we don't know. You need to know what is in the ``Pathways Report'' in order to fully understand the Research Council's ``Analysis of Some Key Questions''-- if read objectively, I think you will find that both Reports are consistent--both highlight the uncertainty of our current understanding of climate science. Another important point to highlight is that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change does not define what is meant by ``dangerous interference with the climate system'' nor does it specify a ``dangerous'' level of greenhouse gas concentrations. To my knowledge, no Federal or federally supported scientific entity has firmly established what is a ``dangerous'' level of greenhouse gas. We simply don't know! Recently, James Schlesinger, a former Secretary of Energy under President Jimmy Carter stated in the Washington Post: We cannot tell how much of the recent warming trend can be attributed to the greenhouse effect and how much to other factors. In climate change, we have only a limited grasp of the overall forces at work. Uncertainties have continued to abound--and must be reduced. Any approach to policy formation under conditions of such uncertainty should be taken only on an exploratory and sequential basis. A premature commitment to a fixed policy can only proceed with fear and trembling. The President understands that reality. The administration's Scientific Strategic Plan for climate change research is a valuable effort to develop a framework for acquiring and applying knowledge of the Earth's global environment through research and observations. It is a long overdue decision and should be welcomed by all. The President's approach is most prudent. At this time, it is my preferred option over regulation. Despite claims to the contrary, no government administration has aggressively pursued a voluntary action program. The President's plan is well conceived and deserves a chance. The simply truth is that any cap-and-trade scheme is a hidden tax on consumption. Like a tax, it would raise the cost of production. Moreover, a cap-and-trade on CO2 emissions will be a regressive tax which will hurt those on low or fixed income--that is the poor and elderly--disproportionately. I will submit for the record a letter sent to me as Chairman of the Aging Committee from ``The 60 Plus Association'' with membership of 4.5 million senior citizens including 10,000 in Idaho, asking me to oppose S. 139. A quote from a June, 2001 CBO study entitled ``An Evaluation of Cap- and-Trade Programs for Reducing U.S. Carbon Emissions'' is revealing on this subject: This analysis does not address the issue of taxing carbon emissions. However, the economic impacts of cap-and-trade programs would be similar to those of a carbon tax: both would raise the cost of using carbon-based fuels, lead to higher energy prices, and impose costs on users and some suppliers of energy. Another instructive quote from that study states: The higher prices for energy and energy-intensive products that would result from a cap-and-trade program would reduce the real income that people received from working and investing, thus tending to discourage them from productive activity. That would compound the fact that existing taxes on capital and labor already discourage economic activity. The only way to reduce CO2 emissions from powerplants is to reduce the amount of coal, oil or natural gas consumed at the power plant. Placing a cap on CO2 emissions from powerplants means those plants simply will not be able to generate any significant amounts of new electricity. There are no control technologies like selective catalytic reduction or scrubbers for CO2. Capping CO2 emissions from power plants will make the current crisis in electricity markets permanent. It will force shuttering of most of U.S. coal fired steam electric generation prematurely and will essentially mandate reliance on new natural gas fired power plants without any assurance that adequate gas supplies will be available. Further, a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that reductions of SO2, NOX, and CO2 at levels consistent with the current proposal drives up electricity costs substantially. The report shows that electricity prices would rise by 21 percent by 2005 and 55 percent by 2010. The report goes on to attribute most of the rise in prices to controlling CO2 emissions. The report, Mr. President, also was prepared when natural gas prices were a third of what they are today which means that future electricity prices likely would be much higher because the report assumes that most new generating capacity would be gas fired. The last point that must be addressed is the assertion that the United States is somehow out of step with the rest of the world on this issue. Climate change is as much an economic issue as it is an environmental issue. We must ensure that our global competitiveness is not compromised. Let's not allow our nation to be duped into assisting our competitors in the global market to achieve competitive advantage under the subterfuge of environmental policy. When viewed in comparative perspective, the process by which environmental policy is developed and implemented has been far more ``conflictual and adversarial'' in the United States than in Europe or Japan. In the U.S., while fines for violations have grown larger, numerous violations of environmental laws have been reclassified as ``felonies'' and many now carry prison sentences. Contrast this with Europe and Japan. Japan implements its policies without resorting to legal coercion or overt enforcement. Japanese MUST negotiate and compromise to ensure compliance. Europe emphasizes mutual problem-solving rather than arm's length enforcement and punishment. Our legal system allows Third Party lawsuits. Europe and Asian countries do not. In a 2003 study on the direct costs of the U.S. Tort system, it was estimated that costs equal 2.2 percent of our nations GDP. Europe and Asian countries give no standing to Third Parties in environmental compliance and enforcement cases. Perhaps, if we were a less litigious nation, we could accomplish more in environmental compliance, and be less fearful of international environmental treaties becoming law. However, for better or worse, when our nation commits to a particular environmental policy, we enforce that commitment with the heavy hammer of civil penalties and criminal prosecution. Europe, Japan, and other nations do not. Our global competitiveness and economic security is ``in the balance.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from a large senior citizen organization expressing their fear about high costs of energy based on S. 139 be printed in the Record.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I have come to the floor on more than one occasion over the last 5 years to discuss and debate the issue of climate change. Many of us engaged in this issue believe it to be a serious and important issue. That I cannot deny. The Senator from Florida talked about it being of critical character. I do not dispute that. The question is, Can we do anything about it and are we the cause of it? And I am speaking ``we'' as mankind. That is the essence of the debate today. Also, S. 139, the Climate Stewardship Act, would portray, in part, that we are the cause and, therefore, let us make some moderate adjustment changes in our regulatory structure in this country to begin to mitigate greenhouse gases. Let me suggest that the word ``modest'' has been used, but I would guess if you read the legislation, and then you downstreamed it through the regulatory process, it might be anything less than modest. Here is what is most important about regulating carbon dioxide. It is a gas. It is not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It is not a poisonous gas or a toxic substance. It does not represent a direct threat to public health. That is what scientists tell us. Yet somehow we are going to be able to regulate and shape it in a way that controls what we believe to be the cause of producing greenhouse gas. I suggest that probably the most invasive process we are going through right here with this legislation is the regulatory process that will ultimately come. The Senator from Arizona and I, more often than not, are critics of big government and the regulatory process. What De Tocqueville said a good number of years ago--in fact, well over a century ago--was about the great democracy of America and the despotism of fear that is produced in the regulatory process that limits freedom. He talks about the regulatory process as being soft despotism. I note that in 1936, there were about 2,600 pages of the Federal Register. In the year 2000, there were 74,258 pages of the Federal Register. We have become a phenomenally regulated and controlled economy and country. In so doing, de Tocqueville would note very clearly, as we all understand and as the Senator from Arizona understands as well as anyone, we begin to shape our freedoms, control our freedoms in a very interesting way. That is what this bill is all about, a massive new regulatory process to reshape certain utilizations of energy in a way that will have a significant impact on our economy. And we would be led to believe that somehow it is going to improve the environment in which we live. That is the issue at hand. That is the one that we now need to discuss. That is, does scientific evidence support what S. 139 is all about. I have spent a good deal of time on the science. You have to. That is probably the greatest frustration that all of us have, is trying to comprehend this massive body of science that is assembling out there and what it means and is it valid and, from it, should we begin to reshape our economy; if it is invalid or inaccurate, what would be the impact of the reshaping that S. 139 might accomplish. Organized meetings have been held all over. I organized one with the assistance of the National Academy of Sciences in June 2001. It was a high-level conference meeting here in our Nation's Capital. Every Senator was invited to come. Three showed up. Only three showed up to listen. Senator Bingaman and Senator Sessions attended, along with Secretary O'Neill, to listen to the President and the President's Council of Economic Advisers, to listen to some of our noted scientists from all over the world. No one else came. O'Neill at that time was serving as Secretary of the Treasury and was a somewhat outspoken advocate of changing our economy for the sake of climate change. He went away from that meeting not confused but recognizing that there was a broad field of science out there that he had not yet explored and that scientists had not, in fact, come together in a way to understand. We worked with a variety of scientists from the National Academy of Scientists. In 2000, I went up to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Senator Chafee and Senator Bob Smith went along at that time. We listened to the best scientists out there, scientists who have studied this for decades. They cannot in any absolute way suggest that greenhouse gases are the creator of a heating trend or a warming trend that does exist and most agree does exist. The Senator from Arizona, the authors of S. 139, would suggest that this is the definitive document, the ``Analysis of Some Key Questions,'' of climate change science by the National Research Council. This is a total of 27, 28 pages. I am not saying this document is wrong, but I am saying, to understand this document, you better read this document: ``Pathways Study,'' 550 pages. Now, it is not a hot topic, and it will put you to sleep. It is all science. From this document, they concluded this document. And what does this document conclude? That the science today is not yet assembled that can in any definitive way argue that greenhouse gases and man's presence in the production of those greenhouse gases is creating the heating trend in our global environment at this time. There are not many sound bites here. The press did ignore this. Those who want the politics of this issue largely ignored this document. But they must go hand in glove. I am not a critic of this document at all. I have not read all of them, not all 550 pages. But I have thumbed through a lot of it. I have read a good deal of it. Anyone who wants to be the advocate of climate change darn well better read the bible on it first before they conclude that all of the world's scientists have come together with a single statement to suggest that the global warming we are experiencing can be in any way clearly the product of the production of greenhouse gas around this globe and as a part of it. Because we have not totally understood it yet, there is no question that we ought to try to understand it before we begin to craft a massive body of regulation to reshape the economy, all in the name of climate change. That is what the President understood. That is why the President denounced Kyoto. The administration's strategic scientific plan for climate change research is a valuable effort to build the body of science that can truly allow those of us as policymakers a foundation from which to make the right choices. If we fail to make the right choices, if we head this massive regulatory effort in the wrong direction without question--and many have spoken to it over the last few hours--we could badly damage, if not curtail, much of the growth in our economy. I think the effort that is underway ought to be the preferred option over regulation. Voluntary action based on clear evidence is a much preferred way to go. Let me talk for a moment about economic impact because that ultimately is the issue. S. 139 wants to change our country, wants to change the utilization of carbon and the emission of gases. You do it through a regulatory process. Between 1990 and the year 2000, industrial GDP increased 35 percent.

Mr. CRAIG. The reality is, our industrial growth is climbing. Its emissions have rapidly dropped. The emission today of greenhouse-like gases, as we would argue, do not come from our industrial base. Yet this is where we send our regulatory effort. I oppose the legislation. I hope the Senate will vote against it.