John Peterson

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, America needs more energy. The West needs more electricity. The East will need heating oil this winter, just like it did last year. The entire Nation needs more natural gas. We saw natural gas prices quadruple last winter. We saw seniors and low-income families struggling to heat their homes and still afford groceries. It is likely to happen again this year. We must conserve energy. Conservation efforts have already made a big difference. They are part of the reason gasoline prices have been dropping. Yes, we must rely more heavily on clean, renewable fuels. Yes, we must build our energy future around emerging technologies. Yes, we must produce more energy. We must produce more oil. We must produce more natural gas. Our cars still run on gasoline, and many of our homes are heated with natural gas and heating oil. Virtually all of the new generating plants built in the last 10 years in this country use natural gas. Next week, the House will consider a comprehensive package that does all of this. The bill implements the President's natural energy policy. It creates a blueprint for steering us safely through the energy challenges we face now and the energy challenges we will face this winter and next summer. There is only one sure way to prevent spikes in energy prices that hurt us all: ample supply.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, wholesale electric price controls do not work. What better example of this than California? Leading energy experts have been saying for months that one major reason California is in its current energy mess is because of price controls. Now we have further evidence that the price controls are not the answer. Last week the Department of Energy released a report indicating that if Governor Davis gets his way and a cost-plus-$25 price cap is implemented, Californians will be literally in the dark. The Department of Energy report concludes that Governor Davis' price caps would result in the delay or abandonment of about 1,300 megawatts of capacity scheduled to be constructed in the State. What does this mean to Californians? It means that 90,000 additional households could be affected. As Pennsylvania learned, deregulation can be implemented with success, but price caps and unnecessary government regulations result in shortages and higher prices. We in Pennsylvania know that. The Department of Energy concurs.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mineral extraction is big, it is paid for.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Only in limited areas.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this amendment. I am not going to argue that the spending is wrong, but the cuts are wrong. We heard that it was just coming from the cushion. There is no cushion in the Forest Service. There is no cushion in the Forest Service. This is an agency that has not been adequately funded for many years. Backlogs exist. Mr. Chairman, 250 million people a year visit the Forest Service lands, 250 million, almost equal to the Park Service. These people depend on facilities to be maintained, trails to be maintained, wildlife to be managed. These are the accounts that we are going to be taking this money from: recreational facilities that are badly in need of maintenance; law enforcement so that it is safe and secure for our families who are touring these facilities. This money is being taken from the wrong accounts. The Interior budget has a $12 billion backlog in maintenance on the facilities that are publicly visited in the Park Service and in the Forest Service and on BLM lands. I say to my colleagues, this is not taking from a cushion. There is no cushion. There is inadequate funding in these departments historically. The backlog is huge. We are taking money away from where hundreds of millions of Americans depend and will tour this summer and expect facilities to be in shape, expect trails to be in shape, expect wildlife to be adequately managed and expect law enforcement to be adequately funded; and we are taking the money away from the heart and soul of the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is wrong. There was a good balance in this bill, and I urge the defeat of this amendment. It is not taking from a cushion, it is being taken right out of the heart.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this amendment. A statement was made a few moments ago of the poverty in sawmill towns. That is one part of the statement from a previous speaker that I will agree with. He has been successful at helping create a lot of poverty in sawmill towns. But when we go beyond that, we own one-third of America. The backlog on the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the BLM is $12 billion to $15 billion, forgetting the Park Service, $12 billion to $15 billion. Hearings were held. There were many chances to be heard. Let us look at the program and how it has worked. Visitors to the Forest Service and BLM are up. Why are they up? When we have the funds to maintain the trails, get the old logs out of there where trees have fallen, to maintain the facilities, to maintain and open new parking areas so people can come in, that is good. I hear complaints where sometimes there are not enough parking areas, places to park and access our public land. It costs money for water and sewer and buildings and trails and roads. It costs a lot of money. Have we adequately put the money behind all of the land we purchased? No, we have not. In fact, we have taken money that should go to maintenance and we keep buying more land in all of these jurisdictions. Trails have been reopened and improved with the demonstration fee money. Facilities have been updated. Boating areas have been expanded. Roads have been improved. Parking areas have been improved, and water and sewer made available. These are the things that the people need when they are out there. Yes, the poor people of America use our parks, the working people of America use our parks. A little bit ago we had an amendment that took that money away and gave it to some of the richest in America, the arts folks. Those are the richest people in America. The working people of America use our parks, and the vast majority support this program. There will be some that will not, but the vast majority of the people support this program because it works. They see what is happening. They see better roads. They see better facilities. They see better boating areas. The proof is in the pudding.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, gas prices last year doubled. We have put a huge amount of electric generation on this year, all natural gas. Next year home heating natural gas costs could double again and our energy sensitive businesses are going to be priced right out of business. When my colleagues' seniors cannot afford to heat their homes next year, when they get the second year in a row with high natural gas prices, and look at any of the curves, the natural gas uses for electric generation exceeds any new gas coming out of the ground, My colleagues' seniors are going to be very angry with this decision.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas).

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, this program has benefited the people of America. Our facilities, we own a third of it, it ought to be accessible. Our facilities ought to be good. Our roads ought to be decent and safe. Our water and sewer facilities ought to be there. We ought to make it accessible and a fun experience for all of those who want to use it. Mr. Chairman, I urge the continuation. If it needs altering, we will alter it. It has been a demonstration project. It is only on selected sites. I have the Allegheny National Forest in my district, and they have some fees. I have not had complaints on those fees. People want to see those areas more accessible, brought up to date and where the experience is a good experience. We, as a Congress, have historically not been willing to invest the money in the investment we have made in owning a third of America. This helps us do that. I urge a continuation. Should we alter it down the road? Probably. But let us let this project move forward. It is the only hope of the public land having good facilities, well maintained, is having a fee schedule that helps us do that, because this Congress has been unwilling to put the dollars where their land is.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of a number of my colleagues in the House and myself, I rise today in tribute to the person and life of an eminent American scientist, Dr. Frederick Seitz, and in celebration of his ninetieth birthday. We also honor Dr. Seitz for his many contributions to science and society. Born July 4, 1911, physicist Frederick Seitz is still a leader in defending America's scientific integrity. He graduated from Stanford University and in 1934 earned his PhD at Princeton. Besides teaching and conducting research at several universities and General Electric Corporation, he served as President of the National Academy of Sciences and as President of Rockefeller University. He authored seven, including two premier textbooks. During World War II, he served as advisor for the War Department and as member of the National Defense Research Committee. He has advised NATO as well as several Federal agencies, including the departments of State and Defense, NASA, the Navy and Air Force, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Selective Service System and the Smithsonian. Additionally, Dr. Seitz has served on the Boards, often as chairman or director, of numerous corporations and universities. He holds 31 honorary doctorate degrees and 16 major international awards. Perhaps Dr. Seitz is most recognized by many today as a pioneer in solid state physics and the physics of metals--a cornerstone in the basic science leading to the modern silcon chip revolution that has touched and changed the lives of millions for the better. Mr. Speaker, the British philosopher and mathematician, Bertrant Russell wrote: ``In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.'' It is our considered opinion that Mr. Russell had in mind men like Dr. Frederick Seitz. However, Dr. Seitz is not only a man of supreme genius, but also one of superior honor and goodness. Congratulations, Dr. Seitz, on your 90th birthday, and a greatful nation and its people say, ``Thank you.''

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think it is pretty outstanding when we have been increasing the efficiency of manufacturing and processing by more than a percent a year. The gentleman talked about 30 percent. I was reading something today that was 40 percent, I do not know what the time span was, but we have made tremendous progress in the efficient use of energy. Now, it is my belief that the reason we are in an energy crunch today is number one, we did not have an energy policy and we had very cheap oil and very cheap gas for an extended period of time that kind of shifted us in the wrong direction. But, there was a real move in this country away from coal, away from nuclear, and the Kyoto protocol concept had us trying to phase out fossil fuels with a false assumption. Now, we are all for renewables, but when we look at the charts, and I have read all the charts recently of energy usage in this country and growth, and when they are projecting into 2010 and 2020, renewables are still a very narrow line. I mean, there is not a lot of growth there whether it is solar or whether it is wind, and, of course, hydro has been stuck at the same amount. The chart showed, hydro, questionable in the ability to relicense; nuclear, questionable in the ability to relicense. Those are discussions we are going to have to have. Because the phaseout of the use of fossil fuels, the phaseout of coal, except for power generation, has put a heavy load on other energies and has us in a position where we are very dependent on oil from foreign countries that are not our friends. I have a personal fear at the moment, and I heard on this floor just a couple of nights ago why we were even thinking of building coal power plants when we can build these clean natural gas ones. I believe personally we have overloaded natural gas. I do not think we can drill wells fast enough, because what we are going to do is we are going to endanger home heating costs. We are going to have people who now mostly depend on gas for their home heating; most of our factories, our schools, our hospitals use gas. We are going to have a huge shortfall of gas in this country. Gas prices doubled last winter. I am afraid they could double again this winter. If that is the case, we are going to have people unable to pay their energy bills, seniors unable to stay warm. When we talk about a ripple effect in our economy, natural gas will make one far worse than gasoline, because when we drive, we can drive the vehicle that gets the best mileage, we can drive a little less, give up the pleasure trips. But when it comes to heating a home and running a business, there are not too many options.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I just say to the American public, to Members, and to those listening, I just believe that we need to support the President's comprehensive energy plan. There is no quick fix to our energy needs. As we talked, I think a lot of it has been brought up by the hysteria of the Kyoto Protocol and the concept that the Kyoto was something special that we had to do. If global warming was a fact of life, the Kyoto Protocol was not something that made it better. It was a bad deal for this country, and would not have changed what the situation was in the world, because it would have allowed all the countries to steal our employment, steal our factories, where they do not have strict pollution laws. In this country, where we have the strictest and the best technology, we would have lost the business, so it would not have improved the world's atmosphere, it would have destroyed the economic base. The poor people in America would have lost their jobs. That, and the energy issue as a whole is one that the American people had better be very wise about. I think the Bush-Cheney administration on the Kyoto Protocol made the right decision, and having a broad-based energy where we improve our ability to have the energy we need for this country, and allow the marketplace then to work from supply, not from shortages, is what is needed. I thank the gentleman tonight for allowing me to join in on his special hour.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I just talked to my local school district, who paid $2.80 for gas last year. They have now purchased this winter's gas for $5.40. Last year they paid as high as $12 one month because they had not purchased ahead. When people this winter start paying $10 per thousand for gas, they may think, is it smart to lock up the whole West Coast for gas drilling? Is it smart to lock up the whole East Coast for gas drilling? Is it smart to lock up all of our shoreline except Texas and Louisiana? Those are the only two places I believe they are allowing drilling to happen. Is the environment compromised there? I do not think so. We have the technology to get gas out of the ground today in a very environmental-friendly way. In a country like Norway, they drill all the way around themselves. They do not have their coastlines ruined. They have not ruined their environment. But natural gas is what they use, and I am told they have the model system of drilling offshore. We are going to have to look at all of those things. Prices will force people to take a broader look at this issue, because $10 gas will be painful when we are heating our homes.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I asked the question recently on why the question mark on relicensing hydro. Someone said, remember, these hydro plants, where water runs through a pipe coming out of a dam and turns a turbine, there is no environmental downside, these dams were built without adequate environmental impact statements, and we might want to have to tear them down. That is where we are coming from on this whole issue. That is at a time when we are looking at shortages. There are some very new interesting pebble bed nuclear plants that are built in small units that can be built right alongside of existing plants that have very little fuel waste and solve a lot of problems. They are being built all over the world. Our whole energy issue, if we want to become more self-sufficient and not dependent, the thing we must not forget, the Far East countries that are providing so much of our oil today, and that is just one of our energy sources, they could double the prices again tomorrow by just restricting how much they will give us. They set the price. They have the ability, because of the amount we are buying from them, they can set the price. If we can lower that, that is why some of us are even supporting ANWR drilling, because we need to do anything we can do to take away that control that these countries that are unfriendly to us have over us, because they could cause us to have $40 oil in the next month.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, we helped fund research that they felt very close to working using ultrasound, one type of ultrasound to clean out the old well bore, the other kind to go out and loosen the oil from the rock crevices and let it flow into the well. They have successfully increased production with ultrasound. Now it is a matter of the next study is going to put it out into the field in a number of wells, and if that works, we will be able to get more oil. But those are the sorts of things we need to do. I was at Penn State recently. They have a project there that has been completed in the laboratory, and now it is moving into the refinery where they are going to take western Pennsylvania coal and make jet fuel and have a carbon product that will be used by Pennsylvania's famous carbon industry. So they will take coal and turn it into two carbon items. One is jet fuel and the other one a carbon product that will be used in manufacturing, and they also have a fluidized bed boiler that can be implemented and could be used by hospitals, could be used by schools, could be used by factories, that can burn any fuel. Because the fluidized bed process is what we are using in this country to burn our high sulfur waste coal, in Pennsylvania we are using it, because they use a crushed limestone slurry that takes the sulfur and unites with it instead of sending it up to stack into the air and helps it burn it cleanly, and they are claiming that if it can burn coal and wood waste, it could burn coal and animal waste, it could burn coal and animal fat, it could burn natural gas, it could burn number 10 oil or fuel oil. This kind of burner would then give a manufacturing plant or a university the ability to buy the cheapest energy that year. When we get that kind of competition going out there we will not be stuck, because this winter we are going to have businesses and people owning homes stuck on high-priced natural gas because this country moved strictly to making all the new power plants gas without adequate inventory to back it up, in my view.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think the head of our energy policy, as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have shared with us, is we have to conserve, we have to use energy efficiently and be more cautious that we are not wasting energy. I think we still have lots of progress we can make there. And we must continue to do that. But that is down to every American citizen who can contribute there. It does not need to be some new law, it does not need to be some strict regulation, but I think leadership from the White House is going to help Americans be much more conscious. Of course, prices makes us much more conscious. As prices go up, we are going to turn lights out when we are not using them. We are not going to turn our thermostats to be quite as high. We will not drive quite as fast and waste fuel. We might take a little shorter trip. We may look at the next car we buy to be more fuel efficient. Those are all things we can do individually, but they should be personal choices. They should be incentives, not strict government rules and not a heavy hand from government. The American people all need to realize that we are all in this together. However, on top of that, we cannot conserve our way out of this crisis. We have been phasing out production, and $10 oil certainly killed production in this country and $1 gas stopped all drilling. There are a lot of people thinking there are just thousands of wells out there capped, ready to let gas out. That is not true today. The pipeline system is inadequate to get the gas from one part of the country to the other. The grid that moves electricity is inadequate to get where there is excess electricity to parts of the country where there is a shortage. We need an investment in our total system. But when we have all energies in a greater amount available in inventory, that is what stabilizes prices.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think we will find where we see those bright colors where the prices have been in the last year or two where we had spikes in the central part of the country; the year before in California; two years ago was up the East Coast where truck fuel prices were exorbitantly high. But where these special fuels are, our national system of pipelines does not work, because we have a different type of fuel than most of the country is using, and if one of our refineries goes down, then there is just not enough to go around, and so the price is going to go up for that marketplace. So this has really complicated the gasoline and truck fuel delivery system.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I welcome scientific facts, not computer models, but the real facts. That is what we need to deal with. I think it is very important that we do get this language taken out. We have had enough promotion and sales pitch on global warming and the Kyoto protocol in the last 8 years. It is time to get back to sound science.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Another factor, around 1440, there was 7 degrees of warming temperature. The negative impact was the agricultural belt in this country expanded immensely. They were growing grapes further north than ever grown before. The food basket grew. There was no measured real evil force from the temperature rising 7 degrees, which has not happened in recent centuries.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. One of the things that I have found distressing, the scientists that have had the courage to speak out on this issue have often been called to task by the college presidents by saying we want you to tone down your discussion of this issue. We are going to lose research dollars. Mr. Speaker, that is not what science is about. Science should be seeking the truth and the facts. When you have a university president telling real scientists that they should not be talking about their findings in a real scientific way, you are cooking the books. In my view, a lot of that happened in the last few years. There was a huge influence from the White House and the Vice President's office, and there was intimidation at the university level that if you wanted grants and further studies, you better give them the message that they want. When you buy scientific information and you tell them what you want to be in the answer, you are not getting anything for your money because all you are getting is somebody to state what you want stated. Mr. Speaker, real science is about searching for the scientific facts. I think a lot of that was veered from in the last recent years.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. The Kyoto treaty, that chart says it all about this country. If the Kyoto protocol was implemented, would it reduce global warming if it were a proven fact? The answer is ``no'' because it would only restrict emissions in our country. It has minimal impact in Europe and all of the developing countries that are stealing our manufacturing, like Mexico and China, who would not be living up to any agreement. They would be doing nothing. So we would be pushing manufacturing out of a country that has the best pollution control equipment in the world, taking that manufacturing to parts of the world that have little or no control over emissions, and would actually be adding to air pollution in the world. The Kyoto treaty was not written by a friend of the United States. It is probably one of the worst documents signed and brought back to this country because it would destroy our economic base. If global warming was a fact of life, it would do little or nothing.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right. In debates I have had with people who believe opposite of I, I say give me data. Give me facts and true measurements, and they cannot. They keep using these models. We have cycles of weather, but if my memory was correct, there was not much talking about global warming when we had the coldest temperature months in a hundred years this past winter. Temperature hours, we had a cold year overall. But you do not hear people talking about that. A year or so ago when we had unusually warm summers brought on by El Nino and other air currents, everything was global warming. I think it is very important that we also mention about the sinks that were earlier discussed. A lot of our scientists are amazed when our air currents hit the ocean after crossing the eastern part of the country because from Michigan to Pennsylvania we have tremendous forests that are great sinks that suck up the carbon dioxide, and when the air currents reach the ocean, they have a lot less carbon dioxide than when they left because of the combination of farm country and our forests. This country may not be a contributor because of our sinks, as indicated on the charts that here.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman from Michigan and am delighted to join him here this evening. This has been an interesting issue, because during the last administration, and my friend from Michigan will agree with this, each and every department of government almost had a budget to promote global warming in the Kyoto Treaty. It was very cleverly done. Billions of dollars were spent selling the concept of global warming; that it was a fact, when, in reality, it has been based on computer models. It has not been sound science. But just to back up for a few years, in 1977, when we were at the height of some cold weather, there is an article here in Newsweek, about seven or eight pages long, called ``The Deep Freeze.'' They talk in here about the beginning of the Ice Age. Because we had a couple of real cold winters in a row, they were talking and they were predicting here that by the year 2000 how the colder climate was going to be moving further south and limiting agricultural ability in this country. The same people are now the ones that are screaming global warming and the oceans will rise as the ice melts and all will be catastrophe. It is interesting in the last couple of years, and we know most Americans get their news from television, but according to a recent media study, the major networks are biased in their coverage on this subject. And if we think about it, they really are. The study of Media Research Center's Free Market Project states for the three big networks' nightly newscasts, not a single comment from a global warming skeptic for 3 months. That is beyond bias, because this issue has been getting a lot of ink. The numbers clearly show that, with the exception of Fox News Channel, the nightly newscasts have become advocates for the environmental extremist cause. Our findings come as scientists with impeccable credentials, and no particular political axe to grind, such as Dr. Sally Baliunas of Harvard, Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, or Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, concur that the science of global warming is very much unsettled, flawed, and, in many cases, exaggerated. During this same time, I am pleased that two people from my district have written me in the month of May. A gentleman here who says, ``I am not sure whether or not you have taken a position on this matter, but my letter is to ask you to give support to the administration's decision to withdraw U.S. support from the Kyoto Protocol to help protect the country's citizens, including those who are retired and on fixed incomes. We already have an energy mess that is crippling the economy in California. Enacting the Kyoto Protocol would have put the whole country in danger of a California-style crisis.'' He goes on and discusses that there is not agreement in this country. And that is true. Another gentleman I know quite well, Mr. Sam Smith, the Whip of the House in Pennsylvania government, wrote me another letter: ``The Kyoto Treaty would devastate mining communities unnecessarily because it really attacks the use of coal.'' I am here to say that if we are going to deal with the energy crisis in this country, and we own 40 percent of the world's coal and 2 percent of the world's oil, clean coal technology needs to be a very strong part of our future energy policy. It says here, ``Mr. Bush got a lot of flack recently for opting to pull out of the Kyoto Treaty, but it was the correct decision and he did it for some very good reasons. Tens of thousands of those good reasons work in American coal fields and in our factories every day. The harsh realities of the treaty drawn up by international bureaucrats in Japan in 1987 would have its most devastating impact on small towns in States like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.'' And it goes on here to talk about many of the things that have already been spoken about, that countries like China and our competitors, who have already stolen a lot of our light manufacturing, would force us to give them our heavy manufacturing, because that would be the only place in the world you could do it. Let me come back to another issue that has been talked about a lot, the scare tactics of the ice melting and the oceans rising. Here is what it says. ``As many know, the United Nation's Panel on Climate Change publishes a report on global climate change every 5 years. Chapter 11 of the most recent report addresses sea level rise, a favorite scare scenario of the media and radical climate warmers. Professor Morner is president of the International Commission representing the scientific community of sea level researchers. These are the best scientists in the world on this subject. This is what he had to say about Chapter 11 and the dire predictions made about catastrophic sea level rise: ``The IPCC Chapter 11 is a very inferior product, written by 33 persons in no way being specialists on the task. The real sea level specialists would never give these statements, figures, and interpretations.'' He says, ``I have finished a seven-page review report. It is most shocking reading. Lots of modeler wishes but very little hard facts based on real observational data by true sea level specialists. I allow myself a few quotations from the report. It seems that the authors involved in this chapter were chosen not because of their knowledge on this subject, but rather because they would say the climate model that had been predicted. This chapter has a low and unacceptable standard. It should be completely rewritten by a totally new group of authors chosen among the group of true sea level specialists. My concluding position is to dismiss the entire group of persons responsible for this chapter, form a new group based on real sea level specialists, let this group work independently of a climate modeler.'' So much of this global warming concept has been computer models, and we know what they can do with computer models.

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania

Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the problem facing this country, an energy shortage, may be the most serious problem we have faced in years. The California brownouts are only a symptom of a huge energy shortage that is prevalent in this country. Ten dollar oil and a dollar per gallon gas lulled this country into a comfort zone that all is well with energy availability. The Clinton-Gore administration, unfortunately, had no energy policy. The Clinton-Gore administration sold that conservation, and conservation is appropriate, and renewables would gradually replace fossil fuels. Yet, they supported new difficult regulations that made it almost impossible to realize this hydro, the most prevalent of renewables. The Clinton-Gore administration sold that conservation renewables would gradually replace fossil fuels. Yet their regulations and policies did not support the relicensing of hydro, the most prevalent renewable source. They certainly did not propose the renewal or to make it easy to renew the operating license of existing safe nuclear plants. In fact, in reality, the Clinton-Gore administration started phasing out fossil fuel production before there was a replacement available. So today we have a shortage of almost all kinds of energy. When one looks at how we make electricity today, 52 percent of our electricity comes from coal; 20 percent comes from nuclear, but most of those plants need to be relicensed and many felt it would be unable to relicense them in the last administration; 7 percent comes from hydro, and many feel it is going to be very difficult under the last administration's rules and regulations to relicense hydro, the most available renewable energy we have and the cleanest. Natural gas currently powers 16 percent of electric generation; oil, 3 percent; other renewables, 2 percent. Now, we need to continue on the other renewables. We need to continue with solar and wind and geothermal. But if we double it, it will only produce 4 percent of our electricity. If we triple it, it will only produce 6 percent of our electricity. In the next 20 years America's demand for oil will increase by 33 percent according to the Energy Information Institute. We are increasingly dependent, as we have already heard, on foreign governments for our oil. Back in 1973, when we were in crisis, we imported just 36 percent of our oil from overseas. Today we are somewhere between 58 and 60 percent. The number of U.S. refineries has been cut in half since 1980. A few have expanded, but no new ones have been built. Then we come to natural gas. Consumer prices for natural gas have spiked this year. Home heating costs have doubled. I know industries who use a lot of gas who had their rates double, triple, and quadruple. America's demand for natural gas is expected to rise even more dramatically than oil. According to the Department of Energy, by the year 2020 we will consume 62 percent more natural gas than we do today. In fact, one of my fears, one of my personal fears that I have been observing for the last couple of years is the amount of gas we have allocated to generation, because it is the quickest to build and it is the cleanest fuel we can burn to make electricity. The amount we have allocated to generation is greater than the amount that is being predicted to come into the system. What happens when we use more than we have? The prices are going to escalate. It is the one fuel that worries me because it is what most American seniors use to heat their homes. It is what most American businesses have as the fuel that runs their business. Our hospitals and our schools and our universities, most of them use natural gas. If natural gas prices spike excessively again this year, we will have a huge heavy load placed on business, we will harm the economy, and we will force seniors to not be able to live in their homes. Right now an estimated 40 percent of potential gas supplies in the United States are on Federal lands that are either closed to exploration or limited by severe restrictions. When we look at the map, the whole California coastline is closed, the whole eastern coastline of this country is closed, all of the area around Florida is closed; and yet other countries drill all around their shorelines and use natural gas as their heat. I guess Norway is one of the best at it. Even if we find supplies of gas, moving it to market will require an additional 38,000 miles of pipeline and 255,000 miles of transmission line at huge costs. Electricity, hydroelectric power generation, as I said earlier, is expected to fall sharply because of relicensing. Coal has historically been America's one source for affordable electricity. It currently powers half of America's electricity generators. Our Nation has enough coal to keep those plants running for 250 years. In fact, we have 40 percent of the world's coal, and we have 2 percent of the world's oil. It seems to me that coal should not be in a phase-out mode, as it has been with the past administration. We must use clean coal technologies to ensure this country's future for energy in the future. Coal generators have already been required to make broad reductions in emissions. The Bush administration supports these efforts and will back it up with greater incentives for investments in clean coal technology. President Bush made the right decision not to impose new Federal mandates on the emissions of carbon dioxide. That is the same gas we breathe out when we breathe. There are those who have criticized him for that. If he had allowed those regulations to come into place, coal use in this country would have come to a screeching stop because there is no replacement for it. If America is to continue to have reliable electricity over the next 20 years, coal must play a continued role. If coal does not play a major role, from my point of view, this country will have very high energy prices and this country will face an economic recession. Nuclear power and hydroelectric face uncertain futures due to past policies. Hopefully, they will not under this new administration. I am encouraged by the recommendation of the energy plan to increase our domestic energy supply by utilizing our public lands in a reasonable manner. Our Nation's public lands could and should play a role in sustainable energy policy. Thanks to so many new incredible developments in energy research, exploration and technology over the last 20 years, we can confidently explore for oil and gas and coal on our public lands in an environmentally-sound manner without leaving anything other than a small footprint. The Federal Government owns one-third of this country; yet there are those who are opposed to use of public lands for energy production. One-third of America is owned by the Federal Government, and when we add State and local governments, somewhere between 45 and 50 percent of this country is owned by government. If all that land is going to be locked up to resource use, this country does not have an economic future. Yes, ANWR is one of the areas where there is lots of discussion. The Energy Department says the coastal plain of ANWR is the largest unexplored potentially productive onshore basin for oil and gas in the United States. ANWR could contain enough oil to offset all Iraq imports for the next 46 years. Oil production in Alaska's Arctic occurs under the world's best environmental standards. Many of the countries we rely on for oil have little or no environmental regulations. Oil development is strongly supported by the Eskimo people who actually live on the north slope of Alaska and by 75 percent of all Alaskans. Exploration would be done using 21st century technology, supercomputers, ice roads that melt in the spring, and directional drilling. Only 3 square miles of the coastal plain of the 30,600 square miles of ANWR would be affected. Only 3 square miles. That would leave 30,597 square miles untouched. I certainly think for the future of this country, having a strong energy source, and none of these are a silver bullet, none of these solve the problem; but we need them all. It is the equivalent of building an airport one-fifth the size of Dulles in the State of South Carolina. The caribou herd in and near the Prudhoe Bay oil field is five times larger than when development began. All other wildlife species are healthy, no endangered species. Contrary to the myth the environmental extremists created, there is no north slope oil being exported. None has been since May 2000. When it was exported, no more than 5 percent was sold abroad. This is less than exported by the West Coast of the United States. We barely think about the plight of the American farmer, but agriculture is paying huge costs because of energy. The cost of fertilizer has risen. In fact, some fertilizer plants have actually gone out of business. Some fertilizer plants sold their gas this year because they could make more money in selling the gas than producing the fertilizer. We have not built a refinery in this country since 1976. In fact, 36 U.S. refineries have closed since 1992. We have not built a nuclear reactor in 20 years. California has not built a power plant of any sort in 10 years. According to Edison Electric Institute, our investment in our electricity infrastructure has dropped 15 percent since 1990; yet use of that system has jumped 400 percent in just the last 4 years. Most of the new plants built in this country are being fueled by natural gas, but we need to have the natural gas to run them. The future of America depends on an energy policy. I have strong faith in the Bush administration and their proposal to take us where we need to be. There should be debate. Conservation should lead the road. We all need to get into the conservation business. We must use our energy wisely, but we must have a strong source of energy so that we have choices and people have options. Mr. Speaker, I yield back my time.