[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
U.N. CLIMATE TALKS AND POWER POLITICS:
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TEMPERATURE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 25, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-22
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
______
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ELTON GALLEGLY, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California BRAD SHERMAN, California
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
RON PAUL, Texas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
MIKE PENCE, Indiana RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
JOE WILSON, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
CONNIE MACK, Florida GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas DENNIS CARDOZA, California
TED POE, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
DAVID RIVERA, Florida FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
VACANT
Yleem D.S. Poblete, Staff Director
Richard J. Kessler, Democratic Staff Director
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Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman
MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
RON PAUL, Texas DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
TED POE, Texas KAREN BASS, California
DAVID RIVERA, Florida
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Mr. Todd D. Stern, Special Envoy for Climate Change, U.S.
Department of State............................................ 10
Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D., F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow, American
Enterprise Institute........................................... 26
Mr. Elliot Diringer, Vice President for International Strategies,
Pew Center on Global Climate Change............................ 32
Daniel Twining, Ph.D., Senior Fellow for Asia, German Marshall
Fund of the United States...................................... 44
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Dana Rohrabacher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of California, and chairman, Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations:
Material submitted for the record.............................. 2
Prepared statement............................................. 7
Mr. Todd D. Stern: Prepared statement............................ 13
Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D.: Prepared statement..................... 29
Mr. Elliot Diringer: Prepared statement.......................... 35
Daniel Twining, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................ 46
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 62
Hearing minutes.................................................. 63
U.N. CLIMATE TALKS AND POWER POLITICS: IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TEMPERATURE
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2011
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:10 p.m., in
room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana Rohrabacher
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Rohrabacher. If you take a look at what I just did, it
is very fascinating because it goes right to the hearing. What
I did is I switched this button on so you could hear me, which
brings to play energy that is created somewhere by something,
which we are using to make this hearing more effective. And
energy plays a part in things that we just take it for granted
so often, so even as we are conversing there are technology
machines and energy that is being brought to play as part of
this communication.
So with that advance statement to my statement, I will
proceed.
In December 2007, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate
Change met in Bali, Indonesia. There, in one of the most
opulent resort areas of the world, a playground for the rich, I
might add, a great place for surfers from around the world to
go to, but there in this tropical paradise came people from all
over the world on their private airplanes and chartered
airplanes and met by limousines, and they were there while they
were there, a plan was drawn up to impose what has to be looked
at in retrospect as a lower standard of living for a large
number of people on this planet.
The imperative was to be man-made, of course. The
imperative behind all of this is alleged to be man-made global
warming, which we are told poses a danger against which the
whole world should unite.
In the years since then, the scientific assumptions of this
supposed crisis have been increasingly challenged by prominent
scientists throughout the world, although, again, we hear over
and over again that the debate is closed, and thus those
scientists who have something to say are being for the most
part ignored.
But among them are Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; Patrick Michaels of the University of
Virginia; Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study at
Princeton; Frank Tipler, a professor of both mathematics and
physics from Tulane University; and Roy Spencer, a
climatologist and a principal research scientist for the
University of Alabama in Huntsville. All these are among the
scientists, the many eminent scientists whose work has
contradicted the U.N. orthodoxy of man-made global warming. I
have a list of another 100 prominent scientists who agree with
the five that I have just mentioned and they will now be placed
in the record, without objection.
Hearing no objection so ordered.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Significantly, in determining what the
heck is going on here is the fact that U.N. climate talks have
not become a forum for global cooperation, which was expected;
something as dramatic as a threat to the whole world but yet it
was not forthcoming in any of these with global cooperation.
Instead, what these meetings have tended to be like is an arena
for competing national interests under the slogan ``common but
differential responsibilities''; and then ``zero sum,'' world
was created which pitted developed and developing countries
against each other, and within each block of nations there were
separate groupings.
Behind the debate over the supposed science of climate
change, nations have fought for trade advantages, the transfer
of technology, the flow of capital, and of course political and
economic influence. Coalitions have formed that will affect the
global balance of power and wealth far beyond the time when
these conferences are ever remembered.
The stake here, and the stakes here are high, is nothing
less than how the future growth of the world economy will be
divided up and how much future growth will be permitted in the
world economy, who will be allowed to prosper and who will be
forced to slow down or even decline in their standard of
living. These are all issues that are on the table.
The current talks aim at, quote, deg. ``a binding
agreement'' to be signed in December at a conference to be held
in Durbin, South Africa. It is meant to replace the Kyoto
Protocol of 1997 which will expire in 2012. The United States
did not accept the Kyoto Protocol because it imposed
restrictions only on developed countries, while leaving
developing countries free to follow whatever strategy for
economic growth they desired.
U.N. documents still call for the next agreement to follow
this same pattern, protecting the right of some nations to rise
while imposing a burden of debt on developed countries,
especially the developed countries of North America, Europe,
and Japan; and this debt burden, of course, is a penalty of
modernization and being successful. I am not sure that is what
we want to do to achieve progress among the human race is to
penalize modernization and success.
This is a framework for restructuring the global economy
and shifting the balance of wealth and power. The first
manifestation of all this talk is the establishment of a green
climate fund which is supposed to reach $100 billion a year by
the year 2020. One can only guess which countries will
contribute to the fund and which countries will draw from it.
With a Federal budget in massive deficit and an economy that
still that has yet to pull itself out of a deep recession but
is struggling to do so, the expectation that the United States
will be footing a major share of the bill for such a U.N. fund
is pure fantasy.
So what is all this talk about and where is it heading? The
purpose of this hearing is to examine the U.N. climate talks
and the swirling maneuvers and power plays observed in the wake
of these global gatherings, whether they are in Cancun or
whether they are in Bali or in whatever other wonderful resorts
they plan to have these meetings at.
Our national interests are at stake. How could America
protect its national interests against demands of rivals in
meetings such as these? What coalitions confront us and how can
we thwart the moves, the moves that are being made, that are
hostile to the interests of the American people? Why do we not
claim the same right to growth that other nations claim and act
as if they--and act as they do when they are protecting their
rights to have a decent standard of living for their people and
to protect the well-being of their people?
With us today is our first witness, Todd Stern, the Special
Envoy for climate change at the State Department. Mr. Stern has
served at this post since 2009 and is the President's chief
climate negotiator, representing the United States
internationally at the ministerial level in all bilateral and
multilateral negotiations regarding climate change. Before
joining the Obama administration, he was a senior fellow at the
Center for American Progress where he focused on climate change
and environmental issues. He also served in the White House and
at the Treasury during the Clinton administration, and that was
from 1997 to 1998. He acted as senior White House negotiator at
Kyoto and Buenos Aires for U.N. climate negotiations.
We will have a second panel today and they will be
introduced as we move forward. And now Mr. Carnahan, the
ranking member, may have an opening statement of his own.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rohrabacher follows:]
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Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And you know you
opened up your remarks talking about where this energy was
coming from and the Red Bull energy drink that the chairman is
trying to get me hooked on here today. But anyway, appreciate
you continuing this important debate. We don't see eye to eye
on some of these questions, but it is critical that we have
this conversation. So thank you for having this hearing.
We are just a few months away since the last round of
climate negotiations, so this hearing is not just important but
it is timely. Active, constructive engagements are in our
country's best interest. When dealing with large-scale global
challenges like climate change, we need to be at the table,
leading the discussion, working with other countries. We can't
make a dent without joint international action.
Climate change is not a problem that is uniquely American;
nor is it wrong that it affects only a few countries. It is a
collective challenge, and it is a challenge that requires broad
action. The U.N. provides the forum for addressing climate
change. While not immune from problems and challenges in its
own right, the U.N. is the largest and most comprehensive body
in which to tackle these challenges.
We have already seen many of the positive effects of the
U.N. involvement: Countries like India and China have come to
the table and are making real commitments and making real
progress. Being a responsible partner at the U.N. through these
negotiations is also in our best national interests. It
provides us with increased leverage to advocate for U.S.
policies.
My State is home to some of the best biotech companies in
the world. In order to for U.S. businesses to fairly compete in
the global marketplace, we have to ensure that we get the best
intellectual property rights protections for our companies. Mr.
Stern, I know this is something that has been central to
negotiations, and I would like to hear you address this issue
in particular today.
There is also a great opportunity to utilize these
negotiations to increase exports and to support American
businesses. Last week, I held a ``Make it in America'' event in
my district. One of the components of this program is clean
energy. Creating a framework and exporting prospects for U.S.
businesses creates new markets, spurs growth, and creates jobs.
We absolutely have the intellectual capacity to outpace
every other country in the world on manufacturing and
technology. We should pursue all avenues to do this. By doing
so we will not only help our economy, we will also help to
build the capacity of many of these developing countries in
order to help them mitigate the effects of climate change.
I know that there will be a healthy debate today about the
U.S. financial commitments. We have an obligation to ensure
that any investment of U.S. taxpayer funds are done in a cost-
effective manner and done with strict accounting and broad
consensus of the best scientists in the world.
Last year we held a hearing in this subcommittee on how
public-private partnerships were helping to achieve the
millennium development goals. That hearing showed how
government investments were leveraged to meet the international
challenges and they could be done cost effectively and could
help meet U.S. interests. Government investment loans are
simply not a viable option. We have to find ways to achieve our
policy goals by spending more wisely.
I will be interested in hearing from our witnesses today
how the proposed climate fund which would reach these same
goals of being open and transparent, cost effective, and would
leverage private financing. Over the course of the past 2 years
this administration has been an active and engaged partner in
dealing with many of the problems of the 21st century. This
type of leadership is necessary in order to overcome many of
the hurdles the world faces today. Bringing about real
solutions to climate change relies on this continued
engagement.
I look forward to hearing the witnesses today, and Mr.
Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much.
We will proceed with Mr. Stern and we want to thank you
very much for being with us today. You have a very weighty
background on these issues and I brought up some controversial
things to talk about, and I am very very pleased that you have
come here to talk to us and we will have a very fair exchange
of ideas. So you may proceed with your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF MR. TODD D. STERN, SPECIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE
CHANGE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Stern. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you, Mr. Ranking Member, for inviting me here today, and I look
forward to our discussion.
At the time President Obama took office, there was a
prevailing paradigm in the climate negotiations that came to be
accepted by many, although not by us. That paradigm holds that
there is in essence a firewall between developed and developing
countries as they were defined in this 1992 Framework
Convention on Climate Change with all specific obligations to
address climate change assigned to developed countries.
There are multiple problems with this paradigm. First, it
is wrong as a matter of textural analysis. The framework
convention did not create such a firewall. But beyond this
legal point, that Kyoto paradigm is unworkable as a matter of
substance. You cannot address the global climate challenge by
focusing only on developed countries. Developing countries
already account for about 55 percent of global emissions and
will account for some 65 percent by 2030. Instead, you need to
start with all the major emitters, both developed and
developing, accounting for some 80 percent of global emissions
and build out from there.
This understanding led the Obama administration to pick up
on a 2007 initiative by President Bush, the Major Economies
Meeting, comprising the 16 leading developed and developing
countries, plus the EU, in order to address energy and climate
change. We slightly changed the name to Major Economies Forum
and changed the focus, but we retained the basic group. We have
held 11 meetings at the ministerial level and one at the leader
level and this group, this organization, has proved to be quite
useful.
Recognizing the flaws in the firewall, we favored a
different approach from the time we came into office, in which
all major economies, developed and developing, would make
commitments to limit their emissions and base those commitments
on their own national plans and circumstances rather than
having targets that seemed to be imposed from outside. This
approach was new. It contradicted the received wisdom that
developed country action was mandatory, while action by even
the largest developing countries was strictly voluntary.
The Copenhagen Accord marked the first time that all major
economies agreed to implement targets or actions to limit their
emissions and to do so in an internationally transparent
manner. In this sense, it represented the first break in the
traditional firewall.
The Cancun meeting confirmed and substantially extended the
Copenhagen Accord. Moreover, the Cancun agreements, unlike
Copenhagen, were formally adopted by the parties of the U.N.
FCCC. Part of what made the Copenhagen and Cancun deals
possible, I must say, was a commitment to aid poor countries.
And I want to tell you why I think such funding is in our
national interest.
Our program is built on three pillars. First, clean energy
to help put developing countries on a low-carbon path; second,
preserving and managing forests; and third, building resilience
against extreme weather events. Each of these efforts serves
important purposes beyond reducing emissions. Helping countries
get on a clean energy path can create markets for U.S.
technology.
Tropical forests are home to some 80 percent of terrestrial
species, including for example, 70 percent of plants with anti-
cancer characteristics, and the World Bank estimates that every
dollar we spend in disaster preparedness saves $7 in disaster
response. Moreover, countries around the world see climate
change as a core challenge. Whether you agree or disagree with
that, it is vital to U.S. diplomatic leverage and to U.S. long-
term interests to be seen as part of the solution.
Finally, our climate funding provides real bang for the
buck. The overall U.S. foreign operations budget is about 1
percent of the total U.S. Government budget, and our climate
funding is only about 3 percent of that.
So where we do stand now in the negotiations? The first
priority for the work leading up to this year's conference in
Durbin, South Africa should be to implement the key agreements
reached last year in Cancun on transparency, financing,
technology, and adaptation. If we do that, COP 17 in Durbin
will be a solid success. Whether we will manage to do that is
by no means clear. Many developing countries, including large
ones, continue to be fixated on preserving that 1992 firewall,
and we won't accept that. After all, the world has changed. As
of 2009, 4 of the top 10 and 9 of the top 20 emitters in the
world were developing countries, from so-called non-Annex 1.
China's GDP is nearly six times larger than it was in 1992, and
its CO2 emissions are nearly three times larger.
Beyond the firewall question there are other difficult
issues, including whether parties to Kyoto--which does not
include the United States--will agree to a second so-called
commitment period. And there are other perennial issues that
will no doubt be raised, including intellectual property.
Mr. Chairman, I told you at a hearing in November 2009,
that we would stand strong for intellectual property rights and
we have and we will.
The question for the U.N. negotiations at the end of the
day is what parties want. The U.N. FCCC has the potential to be
a useful pragmatic body that can help address climate change,
not the only one, but an important one. We have made some good
progress in the past 2 years, especially in working to knock
down the firewall I have discussed and insisting on a new level
of international transparency. But much work remains.
Thank you for inviting me to testify today, and I would be
happy to take your questions.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Stern follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. When is the next major session that we are
going to be preparing for again?
Mr. Stern. That is in Durbin, South Africa. We will start
at the very end of November, I think the 27th or 28th, and we
will run for 2 weeks.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So we are coming up on that. That is
what we are preparing for right now.
Mr. Stern. Correct.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. And you believe that there will
be this green climate fund being proposed there that I was
referring to in my opening statement, the $100 billion a year
to be collected from various countries?
Mr. Stern. Let me, if I may, Mr. Chairman, just disentangle
a couple of elements of the overall financing issue. There is--
there was an agreement in Cancun to establish a green fund.
That is independent of the $100 billion, which I will get to in
a second. So that is to set up green fund. There was an
agreement to do that.
Now, the work this year involves--there is actually
something called a transitional committee that was established
in order to work out the actual operating guidelines, how it is
going to work, how the board is going to be chosen, what
financial instruments will be used, and a whole array of
technical issues that need to be--and sometimes political
issues that need to be resolved. That committee has met once
now. We were quite keen--the reason that there is a
transitional committee, quite frankly, is that we were quite
keen in having this thing set up in a professional way, outside
of the control of the U.N. FCCC, outside of the control of
climate negotiators. Even though I am one, I know that when we
are setting up financial institutions we ought to have
financial people engaged.
So our lead representative from the U.S. Government is from
Treasury. State is also involved. So that work to set up the
entity is going on this year.
There is also a commitment to a goal of mobilizing $100
billion from all sources. Some of that will go through----
Mr. Rohrabacher. $100 billion annually, or $100 billion?
Mr. Stern. $100 billion annually by 2020. Some of that will
run through the green fund; a great deal of it won't.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Are you suggesting that this $100 billion
annual goal is different than the green fund?
Mr. Stern. They overlap. And I would guess that there would
be some amount, and I don't know what the amount will be of
that funding, assuming that the various contingencies come into
play.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am not understanding.
Mr. Stern. Some it will run through the green fund.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Two entities. One is going to be a green
fund and then there is going to be another entity.
Mr. Stern. No, not another entity. What I am saying,
imagine that, first of all, the $100 billion is contingent on
there being adequate mitigation and transparency from
developing countries. So let's assume that we have got that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. $100 billion a year.
Mr. Stern. Yeah, that is right. And there will be a lot of
that will come through ordinary bilateral channels. I would say
the great majority, I would think, would come from the private
sector. So using government policy measures to try to leverage
private investment, for example, things like risk insurance,
loan guarantees, those kinds of things. So there will be some
combination of actual government funding and some significant--
and, again, I would think the great majority, given the fiscal
condition of the United States and Europe and other countries,
the great majority of it I would guess will come from the
private sector, with some government policies----
Mr. Rohrabacher. That is to the $100 billion fund.
Mr. Stern. That is right.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am not getting the structure here.
Mr. Stern. Because it is not a fund per se. It is a total
of $100 billion of resources that will be mobilized for climate
change.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Who would be overseeing?
Mr. Stern. Nobody would be overseeing the fund. There would
be somebody overseeing the green fund, so maybe you would have
$10 billion or $20 billion or whatever going to the green fund.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Nobody overseeing the fund, but there will
be people overseeing the green fund. I am sorry that I am
getting a little confused when there are only two funds we are
talking about here. You can't afford to get me confused.
Mr. Stern. I am sorry, Chairman, maybe it is a little bit
confusing. But the $100 billion is a goal for an amount. Right
now there is a much smaller amount.
Mr. Rohrabacher. To go into the green fund.
Mr. Stern. Not to go into the green fund per se; some of it
will go into the green fund.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Where is the $100 billion going to go?
Mr. Stern. Some of it will go into the green fund. Some it
will flow through U.S. bilateral channels that go to----
Mr. Rohrabacher. And who will be making the determinations
as to where that flow is going?
Mr. Stern. The United States will make determination with
respect to United States bilateral giving. There will be the
same for countries in Europe, the same for countries like
Japan. And, by the way, we don't think that it is excluded at
all that some of that funding should come from major developing
countries themselves. I mean Mexico was the one who originally
proposed the green fund, and in Mexico's original proposal it
explicitly called for contributions from all countries.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Is it the whole United Nations that is
going to determine where these funds go?
Mr. Stern. No, no. I think it will fundamentally either be
bilateral and be individual countries deciding where their own
funding is going to go, or through the green fund. But again
also through--it can be bilateral. It is U.S. Government-
appropriated money. There can also be the----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Appropriated money. And who then will be
responsible for the spending of the money?
Mr. Stern. Think about what happens right now. There is
appropriated money that goes right now, much smaller amount,
that goes to various countries for--just the way I talked about
in my testimony. So there will still be some of that, and there
will be some of that in countries all over the world, and there
will also be, as I said, I think mechanisms like the use of
things like loan guarantees and risk insurance and so forth
that will help trigger investments from private sources of
capital.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I am just trying to fix responsibility
here. We are talking about--$100 billion in and of itself is a
lot of money--but $100 billion a year.
Mr. Stern. I agree with that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. This is an enormous amount of money. And,
frankly, from what you have described, I don't know, maybe
other people are able to catch this more than I am, but it
doesn't seem that you have got this plan as to who has got
authority and responsibility and whether it is one fund or two
funds; where the money goes; who is going to make the decision.
It doesn't sound like you have that----
Mr. Stern. We wouldn't actually want this to be one top-
down massive superstructure. We want there to be control
through the United States to decide on where a lot of our funds
go. So some of it will go to the green fund, some of it will go
through channels that----
Mr. Rohrabacher. How much do you predict will be the
contribution of the United States? It is $100 billion annually.
How much of this will be taken from the United States, the
people of the United States?
Mr. Stern. I think that is hard to say right now,
Congressman. I mean right now, if you look at where we are
right now, funding the appropriated funds in Fiscal Year 2010
was a little short of $1 billion, if you look at State,
Treasury, and USAID. I would think that would ramp up somewhat
but that U.S. appropriated money is not going to be huge.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Could you give us a guesstimate? You are
the main negotiator here. You are on the table telling how much
we are willing to put in here when you are negotiating with the
other countries. How much are you telling them we are willing
to put in?
Mr. Stern. We are not making commitments about how much we
are willing to put in. I think that----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Is that just not known now? Or by November
when you have this meeting with all these other countries, will
you know then?
Mr. Stern. I don't anticipate that we would make any
commitment to any particular amounts of money in November. I
don't anticipate that as being part of the discussion.
Mr. Rohrabacher. If we are not willing to make a
commitment, I don't understand how we are expecting other
countries to make commitments.
Let me ask you, is China going to have any of this money
coming from this fund? I mean, will they be able to take money
from the green fund?
Mr. Stern. Congressman, look, I said about an hour or 2
after I arrived in Copenhagen in 2009, I did my first press
conference. And I was asked about funding for China. And I said
I didn't really anticipate that U.S. funds, which are limited
in any event, would be most wisely spent going to China.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I have your quote right here, and I was
just wondering about if that is still your same position.
Mr. Stern. Yes, it is my same position. I wasn't popular
with everybody when I said that, but that is my same position.
Mr. Rohrabacher. You weren't popular with the Chinese, I am
sure.
Mr. Stern. That is what I meant.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. We will have a second round of
questions, but I have already used an allotment of time here,
so why don't I let Ranking Member Mr. Carnahan have his shot?
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I wanted to jump
in to my questions, really, talking about the U.N.
specifically. There are some discussions in this whole
conversation about the proper forum for some of these things to
happen. Is the U.N. only and our most effective forum for these
negotiations to take place? And if so, tell us why.
Mr. Stern. It is a good question Congressman. Look, I think
that it is not the only forum. I think that one of the reasons
that we were quite interested in picking up on the group that
President Bush put together and, as I say, changing it some
into the Major Economies Forum, is because we believe it would
be a very useful thing to have a smaller group of the major
players responsible for about 80 percent of global emissions,
who could meet together in a more informal and more intimate
kind of discussion at a more senior level than typically
happens in the U.N. FCCC, to be able to discuss these issues.
And I do think that is a good idea.
I actually, back before I was in any of these jobs, I wrote
about the need for a smaller group back several years ago. So I
think it is very good to do that.
I think that the U.N. is an important body. I think that
the U.N. FCCC has been seized with this issue for a long time,
has a certain amount of credibility in the world in working on
the issue. I think it can do a lot of good and we should
continue to try to work through it.
I also think that the thing that matters is dealing with
the problem, and so we are never going to be focused first and
foremost on what body we work with. We think it should be the
U.N. It has got credibility and history on its side but, you
know, it is going to depend on what develops going forward, and
what matters to us is that we do something about this problem
and make progress. So however--sort of whatever works is my
view.
Mr. Carnahan. And describe, if you would, the impact of the
U.S. being at the table and being more actively involved in
these negotiations.
Mr. Stern. Well, I think that there is just no question
that the U.S. is always a very important voice. I think that,
you know, there are things which could have happened here on
the domestic policy front that could have made our--could have
strengthened our hand and given us greater leverage than we do
have, but even despite some of those things not having
happened, the United States is an enormously important player.
And there are many important issues that get wrestled with,
from the mitigation itself to transparency and funding and
assistance and so forth, and whether we are dealing with other
developed countries or we are dealing with major developing or
Africans, Islanders, Latin Americans and so forth, the U.S. I
think is an indispensable voice.
And, you know, what I said in my testimony I think is maybe
bears repeating. An enormous number of countries are extremely
concerned about climate change, see it as a high priority. If
the United States were not engaged, apart from climate change
itself, which is in and of itself very important, it would hurt
us. It would hurt us diplomatically. It would hurt us in terms
of the leverage that we have in the world on a raft of issues.
So it matters that we are seen to be engaged and trying to be
part of the solution.
Mr. Carnahan. Let me thank you. I want to turn now to the
economic perspective that you mentioned with regard to disaster
preparedness and that statistic for every dollar spent on
disaster preparedness, we save $7 in disaster relief. Is there
any data or estimates on how that concept looks in terms of
investments in the proposed green climate fund, how that would
impact disaster relief costs on the back end in terms of
climate?
Mr. Stern. Well, I think it is much the same, much the same
with respect to the adaptation side. So I would see the green
climate fund as providing funding both for adaptation and for
mitigation. I actually think if you imagine two parts of the
green fund, one purely public money, appropriated money from
governments on the one hand, and then money that is leveraged
from the private sector on the other, I would assume that a lot
of the straight public funding will end up going to adaptation,
because it will be easier to draw private sector funding into
building big energy projects, the mitigation side, I would
think.
So that same kind of metric that the World Bank study
showed of, you know, $7 of saving for every dollar you invest
on the adaptation side, I think would be the same kind of
dynamic with respect to green fund investments and adaptation.
Mr. Carnahan. All right. Just one last question. In
relation to U.S. business exports to new international markets,
what kind----
Mr. Stern. I am sorry?
Mr. Carnahan. In terms of how would these agreements affect
U.S. business exports to new international markets in areas, in
particular with regard to clean energy technology?
Mr. Stern. Well, I think that they could be a very good
thing. I mean, I think that there is a huge--there is going to
be a huge amount of funding invested in energy infrastructure
in the world if you look out over the next 2, 3, 4 decades. I
mean that is just a fact of life. And a great deal of that is
inevitably going to be invested in the clean or green side,
whether it is in all manner of renewables, energy efficiency,
et cetera.
So I think that as you increase the amount of money that
can be provided, that can be leveraged from the private sector,
that is going to create markets for whoever is smart enough,
may I say, to develop their own domestic industries in this
area. Three years ago, we had 80 percent larger--I think I have
the right number--about 80 percent larger investing in clean
tech than China did, and it is reversed now. So we have got to
provide the right incentives and the right stimulus to our
green industries in order to--not just because it is good for
the environment and good for climate change, but also because
there are huge markets out there and if we don't get in the
game we are not going to participate and we are not going to
get the economic growth and the job growth and so forth that
will come from those markets. And there are countries, and
China is chief among them, that are running fast on this track
right now.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you very much.
Mr. Rohrabacher. We will have a short second round as well.
Obviously from my opening statement and from things that we
have been through before, I am highly skeptical of the global
warming theory--not the global warming, the man-made global
warming theory, because we all know that there are changes in
the climate that happen, and it has happened for millennia, and
whether or not mankind is involved in this is something that we
have a disagreement on.
That is not the purpose of the hearing today. But because
of the theory being accepted here--and know that if there is
climate change going on and if mankind is going--we also know
that nature causes this. And when you talk about being prepared
for natural disasters as being part of the agenda, I was
wondering about two issues that seem to elude so many people
who are looking at the issue of global warming. That is that
rainforests and the rotting wood and the insects in rainforests
produce an enormous amount of greenhouse gases. I am not sure
what proportion that would be to industrialization, but it is
huge. Also, we also know that older trees are actually part of
the problem as compared to part of the solution, where younger
trees, by the theory, are sucking in this pollution and
bringing out oxygen. I mean, this is the basis of this whole
theory, plant theory.
Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the
clearing of rainforests in order to--for some countries, in
order to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases which is
huge? Or, would the people be supportive of cutting down older
trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent
this disaster from happening?
Mr. Stern. Well, what I can say about that, Mr. Chairman,
is that first of all, the notion that the forests are an
important part of this problem is absolutely right, and I have
seen different numbers sort of ranging from 15 to 20 percent of
the total amount of CO2 emitted. That mostly comes from cutting
trees down.
Mr. Rohrabacher. It is rotting wood.
Mr. Stern. Well, it may be--that may be the case. And there
may be steps--I am not expert on that--with respect to clearing
out such rot, but I think the fundamental objective and
fundamental action that can be taken to reduce emissions from
forests is too slow and ultimately stop deforestation in----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Even though that is contributing to the
overall level of CO2?
Mr. Stern. No, no, no. Again, I am not going to--I am not a
technical specialist with respect to the forest CO2 issues, but
the main point is to reduce the level of--the deforestation is
the biggest driver of CO2 coming from forests, and it comes
from fundamentally three, the three large forest bases in the
world, which are the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and then in
Indonesia.
Mr. Rohrabacher. So deforestation and not natural
occurrence of rotting wood in rainforests and bugs that give
off these greenhouse gases; it is human-kind again?
Mr. Stern. No, no. Look, I am certain that there are
natural cycles and natural development.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Which by the way, that is the question.
The question is there are natural things; 80 percent at least,
perhaps 90 percent, of all greenhouse gases are generated by
nature itself. There is no scientific fight on that, okay. So
if 80-90 percent are Mother Nature's products, and you said
that we are going to have this fund of $100 billion, part of
which will go to tackling some natural calamities which are--I
mean sea raising up, et cetera, are we going to use that fund
as well to restrain natural sources of greenhouse gases, for
example older trees being planted by--being changed to younger
trees and the clearing away of the rotting wood in rainforests?
Mr. Stern. I think the best thing I could tell you is I
would be happy to have people from my staff who are expert in
that talk with your staff so I think that the effort will be to
do things that can reduce emissions. I would be happy to do
that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much for that. And let me
just ask a couple of other things now. Again, we are heading
toward Durbin, and we are talking about November of this year,
you are going to start really preparing yourself and you will
have a program. Will America's program, will it include--you
are talking about $100 billion a year. There will be a plan,
you are saying, by November of where this $100 billion a year
will appear from; is that correct?
Mr. Stern. I am actually not saying that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Stern. I think, the immediate focus on the financing
side of things this year is going to be on getting the
operational guidelines, if you will, agreed to with respect to
the green fund. That may get done this year. It may take this
year and so 1 more year, I don't know.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Where did the $100 billion figure come
from?
Mr. Stern. It came from--that was done in Copenhagen. That
was part of the Copenhagen Accord. And again it was not--it was
in the context of adequate mitigation, you know, reducing
emissions and transparency on the part of developing countries.
The developed countries would agree to a goal of mobilizing
that amount of money from public and private sources, from
private markets, from many sources. And again, as I said, we
don't exclude the notion that part of what will be mobilized
would come from wealthier developing countries, particularly
over time, because this is a dynamic----
Mr. Rohrabacher. When we are talking about wealthier other
countries, these are countries that are producing more wealth
per person than is being produced in the less developed
countries. Talking about the control of CO2, it seems to me
that the criteria that we have been operating on--and I say
``we,'' meaning our own Government as well as in conjunction
with the others--is based on the actual amount of CO2 per
person of the people who reside in the country, rather than per
$1,000 of wealth that we produce; that the system actually
comes from our system as it functions.
In the case of how many--how much CO2 is produced per
$1,000 of production, we actually have a very low rate of
contribution to the greenhouse gases as compared if you only do
it per person. So shouldn't we be basing our--if we are
watching out for the standard of living and well-being of our
own people, shouldn't we be basing our own positions on that
criteria, rather than accepting the idea of just per person,
what their--you know, what the CO2 production is.
Mr. Stern. Mr. Chairman, we don't actually base our views
on per-person or per-capita emissions. We tend to look at the
emissions of the country. There are many countries that talk
about per capita. That is a factor, but----
Mr. Rohrabacher. If you have emissions of a country and
that country produces, you know, $10,000 worth of wealth per
person, that country then--we are $20,000 of wealth per
person--but the CO2, if you are doing it per production, that
CO2 is actually less. I mean, it seems to me that we are basing
our negotiations on something that negates any consideration of
the standard of living that we have produced by the production
of wealth.
Mr. Stern. Well, I hear you, but we don't mean to be doing
that. I mean you are raising a metric that has to do
essentially with the efficiency with which energy is used which
is a----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Part of it.
Mr. Stern [continuing]. Perfectly valid point and an
important one. Look, I think, and I heard your comments in some
of the statements in your opening comments with respect to
standard of living. I would like to say one thing, which is
that we do not think that you can approach this problem from
the point of view of saying that you are going to clamp down on
anybody's standard of living. Not a developed country, not a
developing country, not the United States, not India. It is not
going to work that way.
The way that this problem is going to be solved, if it is
going to be solved, is to break--and it is not going to be done
overnight--but to break the iron link between the growth of an
economy and the growth of emissions. And you do that by getting
more and more efficient with respect to the energy you use and,
over time, by having other sources of energy that are cleaner,
become bigger and bigger parts of the economy, and ultimately
the biggest parts. That is the way--we are not going to get--
nobody is going to support clamping down on our standard of
living. We don't think that is going to happen, and they are
not going to agree to that in the developing world either.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Constantly in this debate what we have
heard, the rich countries, the developed countries, versus the
undeveloped countries and the poor countries. And the fact is
that people who are here in the United States of America, yeah,
our country produces more, quote, deg. ``greenhouse
gases,'' but in terms of the standard of living of the people
that it supports, there is no comparison. We actually are very
efficient and very small in the amount of greenhouse gases that
we produce per wealth that permits our people to have a higher
standard of living. And it just seems to me that quite often--
well, not quite often--I am always hearing this, the rich
countries versus the poor countries, and that is not what it is
all about.
Mr. Carnahan, would you like to have a second round and we
will move on to our second panel? Thank you very much.
Mr. Stern. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Carnahan. Mr. Chairman, I got my questions in on the
first round and so I think I am ready to go.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I want to especially thank our witness for
coming today. We had a very good exchange, and I am sure we
will continue to have this open exchange.
Mr. Stern. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking
Member. Appreciate it.
Mr. Rohrabacher. If the next panel will be seated, please.
All right. We are called to order. I will introduce all
three panelists, and we will proceed with the testimony.
First, we have Steven Hayward. He is the F.K. Weyerhaeuser
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior fellow
at the Pacific Research Institute. He is author of the
``Almanac of Environmental Trends,'' and many other books and
articles on environmental topics. He has also written
biographies of President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and of
Winston Churchill.
He holds a Ph.D. in American studies from Claremont
Graduate School. I, too, have a graduate degree in American
studies. And he has been a visiting professor at Georgetown
University and Ashland University.
Then we have Daniel Twining, a senior fellow for Asia at
the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He has served as
a member of the State Department's policy planning staff, a
foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain, and as a staff
member of the U.S. Trade Representative.
He holds a doctorate in international relations from Oxford
University and has written widely for newspapers and magazines
and for policy and academic journals. He is completing a book
on American grand strategy in Asia after the Cold War. That is
fascinating.
We also have Elliot Diringer. He is vice president for
international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate
Change. He came to the Pew Center from the White House, where
he was Deputy Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Deputy
Press Secretary as well. He had previously served as a senior
policy advisor and as director of communications at the Council
on Environmental Quality, where he helped develop major policy
initiatives on the environment and participated in
international climate change negotiations, which we are talking
about today.
So, Mr. Hayward, you may proceed, and we will go to Mr.
Diringer and Mr. Twining.
STATEMENT OF STEVEN F. HAYWARD, PH.D., F. K. WEYERHAEUSER
FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Mr. Hayward. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Carnahan.
I will begin with my contentious conclusion, which is that
the international diplomacy of climate change is the most
implausible and unpromising initiative since the disarmament
talks of the 1930s, and for many of the same reasons, that the
Kyoto Protocol and its progeny are the climate diplomacy
equivalent of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 which promised to
end the war, and that future historians are going to look back
at this entire period of what I call first-generation climate
diplomacy as the climate equivalent of wage and price controls
to fight inflation in the '70s, a once popular idea that was
completely discarded and no one proposes to bring back. I think
the Kyoto approach will not be proposed to be brought back for
a very long time either.
I think the whole U.N. process is on life support, and I
think it is worth reviewing briefly the reasons why we got to
this pass before we can understand that there is a better way
forward.
When the issue of climate change first came to the fore in
the late 1980s, the diplomatic community approached it in a
seemingly sensible way. They asked what diplomatic frameworks
have worked for similar kinds of problems in the past. In other
words, what do we have on the shelf?
There are basically three models for problems of a global
reach that have shown varying degrees of success. The first
would be the arms control and anti-proliferation regimes. The
second would be the long-running and painstaking trade
liberalization process that had been going on for the whole war
since the end of World War II. And third and perhaps most
applicable was the Montreal Protocol of 1987 that facilitated
the organized phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons.
It is those last two in particular that former Vice
President Gore used to like to cite as reasons for his
enthusiasm and support for the Kyoto process. On the surface,
the logic seems straightforward and plausible. If we can reach
a binding and enforceable agreement to phase out
chlorofluorocarbons, why not a similarly structured agreement
to phase out hydrocarbons?
But once you poke beneath the surface, a number of
fundamental asymmetries between the precedents and the problems
of climate change become apparent but whose implications I
think were resisted from the very beginning for the
understandable reasons of diplomatic and institutional inertia.
I will confine myself to just a couple of the many that come
into play.
First, the problem of climate change is orders of magnitude
more difficult than the problem of ozone depletion. It is not
necessary at all to be a skeptic about climate science to
suggest that the same kind of policy dynamic that worked for
the ozone layer would not work for a warming planet. The case
of chlorofluorocarbons was pretty straightforward. The science
was fairly simple. The time frame was short. Most importantly,
there were scalable substitutes for chlorofluorocarbons
available at a reasonable cost.
By contrast, the climate science is more complex, and even
if all the complexities wash out, the focus on near-term
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, unlike the near-term
reductions of the Montreal Protocol, fall short for a
blindingly simple reason. There are simply no economically
scale able substitutes to fossil fuels available on the global
level and in the relatively short timeframe contemplated by
climate orthodoxy.
The second asymmetry concerns the divide between wealthy
nations and developing nations. I was pleased that Mr. Stern's
comments actually track very closely with my own perception of
the matter, which is that old dichotomy which really was an
artifact of the post-war years was coming to be obsolete at the
very time we started in the Kyoto process.
And I was also pleased that Mr. Stern talked about how the
Obama administration had decided to pick up with the Bush
administration initiative, which Bush had called the Asia-
Pacific Partnership. It is worth pointing out that when the
Bush administration lost the Asia-Pacific Partnership 5 or 6
years ago, many people in the U.N. climate process and in the
climate advocacy community were very critical of the Bush
administration for doing that because they said what Bush is
trying to do is go around the U.N. process. And now you just
heard the Obama administration's climate representative say we
have embraced that approach, which I think is much more
promising.
I will come back to that for a moment at the end.
But now the issue that was discussed in the previous panel
with Mr. Stern was what we have got left right now, which is
climate assistance. On the merits, it seems to me this policy
is incommensurate with the nature and scale of the problem. If
you took seriously the scale of what you are trying to do to
match the demands of climate orthodoxy, you would need
trillions of dollars in climate assistance, not hundreds of
billions of dollars.
Secondly--this is the life support aspect of it--I think
that a lot of developing nations are happy to go along with
this whole charade if they think we are going to send the cash.
Now, one of the problems here with having the U.N. do it is
that it revives again the problem of climate change, which is
that it has become something of an all-purpose issue that
advocates for all kinds of causes can grab onto. And so back in
the '70s, the U.N. was very enthusiastic about what they called
the ``New International Economic Order,'' or as Chancellor
Willy Brandt described it then, we need to have ``a large-scale
transfer of resources to developing countries.'' Well,
President Reagan pulled the plug on that very forcefully in the
early '80s at a U.N. summit, coincidentally, in Cancun.
But now the idea is back, and you hear a lot of climate
people saying, like one U.N. official, Ottmar Edenhoffer of
West Germany,
``One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto
the world's wealth by climate policy. One has to free
oneself from the illusion that international climate
policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing
to do with environmental policy anymore.''
That is the kind of loose talk and unseriousness that
brings discredit to the entire cause of U.N. international
climate diplomacy, but it is very popular with a lot of the
U.N.'s constituency, and I think that is unfortunate for the
whole process.
I will just say--and I will close here since I am over time
already--I am an enthusiast that the major economies formed
with the Obama administration is actually doing more seriously
I think than the Bush administration did. In that regard, I
think you will see an interesting continuity between the last
administration and this one.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hayward follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Diringer.
STATEMENT OF MR. ELLIOT DIRINGER, VICE PRESIDENT FOR
INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIES, PEW CENTER ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. Diringer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Carnahan, for
the opportunity to appear before you today.
In summarizing my prepared statement, I will focus on the
status of the U.N. climate talks, the efforts being taken by
other countries to address climate change, and the reasons we
believe stronger U.S. action is very much in our national
interest.
An effective global response to climate change is possible
only if countries can find ways to align their respective
national interests with our common interest in a stable
climate. President Bush--the first President
Bush--and the Senate were right in helping to establish the
U.N. Framework Convention as a forum for multilateral action.
After years of stalemate, we are encouraged by the movement
over the past 2 years toward a more realistic and more balanced
global approach, and this is thanks in no small measure to the
efforts of U.S. negotiators.
For the first time, all of the world's major economies have
made explicit pledges to limit or reduce their emissions; and
parties have agreed to strengthen transparency so we can better
assess whether the countries are keeping their promises. It is
vital that the United States remain fully engaged in the U.N.
climate talks. Our near-term aim should be to put in place the
transparency, finance, and other mechanisms agreed to in
Cancun. Our longer-term objective should be fair, effective,
and binding commitments among all of the world's major
economies.
While international agreements are critical, a more
important measure of efforts to date are the steps countries
are undertaking domestically. A growing number are implementing
policies contributing in one way or another to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. Many see this challenge as an
important opportunity as well. A number of our major trading
partners are moving aggressively to grow their clean energy
technology industries, creating jobs and high-value exports.
Europe, which continues to lead the world in green energy
investments, is succeeding in reducing its emissions while
growing its economy. From 2004, the year before the EU
instituted its emissions trading system, through 2008, the year
before the global financial crisis, emissions were down 4.1
percent in the EU, while GDP grew 9.8 percent.
China also is investing heavily and employing strong
policies to build its clean energy industry, which is already
the world's leading producer of wind turbines and solar panels.
China's new 5-year plan includes energy efficiency, emissions
intensity, and renewable energy targets. It also includes
policies to promote innovation in strategic and emerging
technologies, including nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, and
hybrid and electric vehicles. To be certain, China continues to
build coal-fired power plants and its emissions continue to
rise. But it is moving forward with domestic policies in line
with its international pledge, and many of these policies will
help China retain a competitive edge in the rapidly expanding
clean energy market.
Mr. Chairman, while other countries are stepping up their
efforts, the U.S. has barely begun. This inaction exposes our
Nation to real and rising risks. We are already witnessing the
impacts of climate change here in the United States. The
widespread flooding now inflicting communities along the
Mississippi River shows how painfully vulnerable we are to the
rising risks associated with climate change.
Looking beyond our borders, our military warns that the
added stresses of climate change in unstable regions could mean
further demands on our strained military resources.
Our inaction also risks our economic well-being. The United
States remains the world's leading manufacturer, but in the
growing clean energy sector we risk falling further behind our
competitors.
The recent experience of the U.S. auto industry illustrates
how the right policies can help improve efficiency and reduce
emissions while creating jobs and profits. Spurred by fuel
economy standards enacted under President Bush, car makers are
now offering more fuel-efficient cars. With gas prices rising,
consumers are buying them.
In reporting strong sales and profits last quarter, all
three U.S. auto makers cited higher sales of fuel-efficient
models. Last year, only one conventional car sold in America
got 40 miles to the gallon. Today, there are nine. Three of
them--the Cruise, Elantra, and Focus--were among the top 10
sellers last month. All three are made in the U.S.
If we want our clean energy firms to invest in jobs at home
and compete effectively overseas, we must ensure strong,
sustained demand for their goods here in the United States. Mr.
Chairman, the longer we wait to act, the harder it will be to
avert the worst consequences of warming, the higher the cost of
coping with those that cannot be avoided, the more we undermine
our security and the further we fall behind other countries in
the clean energy race. We must strengthen our efforts here at
home and we must continue working with other nations toward
strong and lasting global agreements.
I again thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today and will be pleased to answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Diringer follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. And Dr. Twining.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL TWINING, PH.D., SENIOR FELLOW FOR ASIA,
GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED STATES
Mr. Twining. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Carnahan,
for having me here today. The views that follow are mine and
not those of the German Marshall Fund.
U.S. climate diplomacy should ideally be a bridge rather
than a wedge between America and key partners. Arguably, poor
American diplomacy combined with the flaws of U.N.-led climate
negotiations have had the effect of isolating the U.S. from
friends and allies, rather than enabling it to build like-
minded coalitions on environmental issues of shared concern.
A more effective approach would integrate U.S. interests in
mitigating climate change with broader strategic concerns. It
would work to produce positive sum outcomes to climate
negotiations facilitated by joint development and employment of
key environmental technologies, rather than succumbing to a
zero sum logic pitting the developed world against the
developing world in multinational arenas.
An instructive example of an unfortunate outcome for
broader U.S. interest was the Copenhagen Conference. Its end
game produced a crisis in transatlantic relations. Faced with
the collapse of the talks, President Obama ended up forging the
agreement in backroom talks with the leaders of Brazil, South
Africa, India, and China--the BASIC countries.
European leaders were shocked that, after decades in which
Europe was the global pacesetter in managing climate change,
the decisive agreement on a post-Kyoto framework was struck
without Europe in the room. European leaders were relegated to
being briefed by President Obama after his conclave with the
leaders of the BASIC group. Many European officials openly
pondered a future in which the U.S. and China managed a G2
consortium to handle global issues or one in which Washington
conclaved with other rising powers, even as it decoupled from
its traditional allies to set the global governance agenda. In
this way, Copenhagen weakened transatlantic comity even as it
produced an outcome unlikely to substantially mitigate climate
change.
The developed versus developing world dynamic of
multilateral climate negotiations with universal membership
also compromises U.S. interests with key emerging powers. Among
the most damaging spillover is the G-77 dynamic. That is
shorthand for the broader set of discussions that have been
going on on climate. It enabled South Africa and other
nonaligned ringleaders to exercise power without
responsibility, organizing opposition to the developed States
by mobilizing a large coalition of developing nations to oppose
U.S. and European climate goals.
G-77 dynamics create opportunities for our competitors to
make mischief. In Copenhagen, China took an early strategic
decision to conclave with the G-77 grouping. China's stand
served multiple objectives that earned Beijing considerable
goodwill among developing nations, tweaked the U.S., and
created cleavages between Washington and other important
powers, obscured China's status as the world's leading polluter
and second-largest economy by positioning it as a developing
economy alongside Sudan and other poor states, gave China
critical leverage in the Copenhagen end game.
A third negative dynamic around these universal climate
negotiations under the U.N. framework is the unnatural wedge it
introduces into U.S.-India relations. In the run-up to
Copenhagen, India had a revealing internal debate over how to
balance its growing role as a partner of the West and an
international stakeholder with its older identity as a non-
aligned developing power.
In my view, U.S. diplomacy could have been more effective
in developing a program of activities to generate green
technologies and alternative energy investments in a way that
kept India on side during the Copenhagen negotiations. Looking
back, India should have been the centerpiece of the strategy to
disaggregate the developing world in a way that split the G-77
and decoupled key rising democracies that have serious equities
in collaborating with us from less constructive players.
Instead, by virtue of India's own shortsighted calculations and
the shortcomings of U.S. and U.N. diplomacy, India was pushed
into making common cause with its leading strategic competitor,
China, against arguably its most important international ally
and friend, the United States.
A few thoughts on looking ahead. Both U.S. diplomacy and
the cause of managing climate change would benefit from a
different approach to tackling global warming, one that was not
U.N.-led with universal membership in which small countries can
play the role of spoilers and global consensus is achieved with
really lowest common denominator outcomes that don't please
anyone. Climate negotiations instead could take the form of
smaller groupings led by the great powers in closed-door
negotiations that can encourage even countries like China to be
more constructive than to grandstand.
Joint development and application of key energy and
environmental technologies with friendly emerging economies
could replace the setting of vague environmental targets
without action plans to meet them. Our diplomacy could also
expand climate mitigation partnerships as part of broader
bilateral agendas with key emergency powers, rather than
attempting to bring them on side in the more difficult global
multilateral context.
Finally, prioritizing climate concerns at the expense of
broader strategic ties arguably puts the cart before the horse.
In the case of countries like India, maybe Brazil, our
interests in the wider climate agenda might be better served by
building comprehensive partnerships over time that develop the
mutual trust necessary to manage the climate issue.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Twining follows:]
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Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, I think you hit on an alternative
right there at the last part of your statement. We will discuss
that.
I will proceed with my questions.
First of all--I guess it gets to the point you just made--
is the United Nations the vehicle to uplift the actual
production of wealth in these societies, the developing
societies, in a way that would be more environmentally
friendly? Is the United Nations the way to do this or is it a
better approach to be working bilaterally with countries that
are committed to human progress when progress has to be based
on more efficient use of energy?
We will just go down the line there.
Dr. Hayward.
Mr. Hayward. I think the analogy in my mind is one actually
I made brief reference to, which is trade liberalization, which
we did not run through the United Nations. We set up a whole
separate global institution, ultimately culminating in the
World Trade Organization. But we set up the whole track largely
outside the U.N. to pursue that one particular goal. We have
done similar things with the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund.
I think that the U.N., for some of the reasons I briefly
alluded to and others that we can go on about at great length,
is not necessarily the best forum for an issue that has so many
economic implications, especially when you have so many of
these cross-cutting ideological differences between different
kinds of countries and different----
Mr. Rohrabacher. It might be harder to reach a consensus
upon people so diverse as everybody in the United Nations or
even the major players of the United Nations as compared to a
bilateral agreement between the countries like the United
States and others who have advanced technology versus those who
do not.
Mr. Hayward. I don't want to monopolize the panel.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Go right ahead.
Mr. Diringer. I have a suggestion, Mr. Chairman. It is not
an either/or proposition. This is something we need to be
addressing on multiple fronts.
I think there is certainly a role for the Framework
Convention. Certainly this should be a central issue in our
relations with other major economies. We have heard reference
already to the major economies forum.
Mr. Stern gave some credit to the Bush administration. I
would like to note that the Bush administration actually gave
some credit to the Pew Center for having recommended as far
back as 2005 the establishment of a major economies dialogue as
a forum for political discussion among the major economies,
which then has helped to translate into progress in the U.N. I
think, in fact, the discussions were held----
Mr. Rohrabacher. I think the Bush administration was
criticized for that.
Mr. Diringer. They were indeed, although they were very
explicit at the time that this was not meant as an alternative
to the U.N. but rather meant as a complement to the U.N.
Mr. Rohrabacher. But we really knew it was not a
complement. We know knew it was an alternative. So we deserved
that criticism.
Mr. Diringer. What we have seen in fact is that there was
consensus reached within the major economies forum that then
did translate into the Copenhagen Accord and has now translated
into the Cancun Agreements. So they do play a complementary
role. And I think that we should pursue all of those forums.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would suggest that when we have success
it is not judged by other international agreements but instead
by actual changes on the ground to somewhere on the planet.
For example, I am sure that the amount of CO2 that was
emitted just going to these global resorts for their opulent
meetings, there hasn't been enough change generated from the
agreements that they have reached to even make up for the
contribution they made to global warming and greenhouse gases
on the way to the meetings, not to mention the greenhouse gases
in producing the energy needed to get to the meetings, the
energy needed to build the airplanes and the limousines that
had to be transferred over to these various places around the
world.
Mr. Hayward. I think it is very limiting and maybe a
mistake to try and reduce the problem to just the process and
what form we are going to use. I think ultimately you need to
ask the question--And that is what went wrong with arms control
I think for many years. I think what you need to do is also ask
what is the policy orientation of whatever process or forum
going to be.
The reason I think the major economies forum is more
promising is not simply that it represents the countries that
account for 80 percent of emissions but if they can adopt a
process that doesn't focus in on Kyoto-style caps, which are
going to be problematic for everyone, but a look at the idea of
how do we accelerate decarbonization of energy. I think the
Obama administration is thinking--they may not put it that
way--but I think they are thinking that way. I think Mr. Stern
suggested that is the track they might be thinking on.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Twining.
Mr. Twining. Sir, just going back to your original
question, you are a long-standing U.N. watcher. And if there is
a part of the U.N. that works, it is probably the Security
Council--small group, serious equities on the table among the
great powers, closed-door discussions.
I would argue that the problem with the global U.N.
framework on climate process is that it resembles the U.N.
General Assembly, not the Security Council, which as you know
is kind of a free-for-all. It brings out some of the worst
tendencies, even among really many countries that are friends
and allies of the U.S., smaller developing states that rely on
us but that see the opportunity to kind of seize the podium and
make rhetorical points grandstanding on key issues.
So part of my reaction to your question is to assume that
the idea is you would like climate negotiations to look more
like the Security Council than more like the UNGA.
The other point, just very quickly, is in terms of the
lateral relationships. I have worked a lot on the U.S.-India
relationship over the last few years, and a key pillar of our
relationship there is the sense of kind of joint development of
technologies, a degree of technology sharing with India after
years of sanctioning it around nuclear issues, which are now
off the table.
I think the U.S. Government, U.S. businesses would be much
more comfortable collaborating with a set of Indian scientists
and researchers on green energy technologies versus a group in
China perhaps with connections to the PLA or other government
body. So as we think about some of the innovation and
technology solutions looking kind of far ahead, there will be
gradations between countries and our comfort level in working
with them.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would suggest that things get better
when there is a profit for people to do things more efficiently
and you sell this to someone. Selling them something specific
because you are going to make a profit in doing it is much more
efficient at actual change than making mandates, especially the
bigger the government gets, the more inefficient it becomes
enforcing mandates. If it does get efficient at enforcing
mandates, then you have got a problem with freedom in the
world.
I have problems with trusting the Security Council,
considering the fact that the world's worst human rights
abuser, China, has a veto power. And the General Assembly is
filled with countries that are governed by lunatics and
gangsters who have the same vote as the United States. So we
have got some very serious problems if we go about that route.
Mr. Carnahan, you may proceed with your questions.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the
panel.
I wanted to direct my first question to Mr. Diringer and
Dr. Twining. I would like you to really expand a little bit
about--you both have kind of made reference to this--but how
Europe has really taken the lead in many ways in terms of
really getting green technology out there, reducing emissions
but also growing their economy. We have heard that that is one
of the fastest-growing parts of their economy. Talk about what
we can learn from that in terms of how we can step up to the
plate in really a larger way.
Why don't we start with Mr. Diringer.
Mr. Diringer. I think the most important lesson from the
European experience is the value of policy in driving
innovation and deployment in the clean energy field and
consequently leading to the growth of domestic jobs and the
growth of exports.
Among the policies in place in the European Union is a
renewable energy target. They aim to increase renewable energy
in their primary energy mix to 20 percent by 2020.
There are also policies in place at the member state level.
Germany has increased its renewable jobs from 160,000 in 2004
to 370,000 in 2010. The German Government believes that strong
job growth within that sector was part of the reason they were
able to recover so quickly from the recent recession.
So I think the real takeaway is that we need to give our
domestic industries the incentive to produce by creating
markets at home, the incentives to innovate and produce. Europe
is doing that, and at the moment is the world's leader in terms
of clean energy investments.
Mr. Carnahan. Dr. Twining.
Mr. Twining. Mr. Carnahan, I agree on the point about
creating market incentives for companies to invest in a
different kind of energy future going forward.
Your very interesting question about Europe and kind of its
leadership on this issue gets into a very interesting kind of
theological debate about the role of Europe in the post-Cold
War word. Without getting deeply into that, I think European
leaders on this issue and others thought really since the Wall
came down that Europe could actually offer a model for the
world, not just on climate but all sorts of things, a kind of
demilitarized soft power, kind of thought leader model, setting
an example that other countries could follow.
And that explains why, after really getting climate change
on the agenda, it is kind of a leading global issue. Many
European leaders were shell-shocked, particularly after
Copenhagen. And I say that because I was in Europe just after
it all ended. And there was the sense that this was a European
issue that they had owned. They had put in place a carbon
market in Europe--or were putting one in place. They had set
these tangible 20-20-20 goals about the mix of renewables in
their own domestic economies. And what happened was the key
agreement, as I mentioned in my testimony, was made without
them in the room.
So I think a question going forward for us is: Is Europe a
model on these issues? Can it be? Or do we look to a future in
which it really is about kind of great powers competing around
resource and economy issues in a more traditional sense. And I
don't think we know the answer yet.
Mr. Carnahan. I didn't mean to leave you out, Dr. Hayward.
Mr. Hayward. Well, a couple of things. I am not hugely
impressed with the European experience as a model for the rest
of the world for the simple reason the European economies are
mature, wealthy economies. They have stable or even falling
populations, unlike countries like India and China, where you
still have hundreds of millions of people with no electricity
at all.
The big problem is that climate orthodoxy says they have to
go about 10 times further than they have gone so far, and what
they have done so far is fairly expensive. It is essential
whole foods energy, which rich countries can afford but poor
countries can't.
For example, in the case of China, their pledge to try and
increase their emissions intensity faster than they have been
means their greenhouse gas emissions will grow--instead of 40
percent over the next 30 years, they will grow by 35 percent.
Well, that is good, but that means that the increase in
emissions goes like this, something like this, when climate
orthodoxy says during that time period they need to go like
that. And that is why these climate negotiations aren't getting
very far, is that gap in reality means we are trying to comfort
ourselves with some pledges and aspirations and notions, but
the math isn't adding up very well.
Mr. Carnahan. I will reverse this on my second round of
questions here, but I will start with Dr. Hayward.
You have obviously raised a lot of questions about the
scientific evidence about climate change. You question the
cost. Nevertheless, a report released last week by the National
Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the
Nation's preeminent scientific research institution, was
unambiguous in assessing the seriousness of the threat posed by
climate change.
The report requested by Congress concluded,
``Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused
primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases from
human activities, imposes significant risk for a range
of human and natural systems.''
I would like to get your comment on that recent report, and
we will go to the other witnesses after that.
Mr. Hayward. I haven't read beyond a couple of pages of the
executive summary. I see no reason to dispute it at all. The
question in my mind is it does not prescribe what policy you
have to fix that.
My comments, most of my work is detailed on the energy side
of the question, which is, all right, let's accept the most
extreme scenario--and, by the way, then the energy problem
becomes even harder and makes some of the way we talk about
these negotiations even more unreal, from my point of view.
Mr. Carnahan. Mr. Diringer.
Mr. Diringer. The report you cited is just the latest
affirmation from the Academy of Sciences of the consensus that
climate change is real, human activity is largely the reason
why, and that it will intensify unless we take some action.
I think whether or not one believes that the buildup of CO2
in the atmosphere is in fact driving warming and climate
change, I think it is important to recognize the co-benefits of
addressing the issue. If we act to reduce CO2 emissions, we
help to address local air pollution problems, we help to
address ocean acidification, we help to improve our efficiency,
we will reduce our reliance on imported oil. So there is a
whole range of co-benefits to the kind of action we are talking
about.
On the question of costs, we have seen historically in the
United States that the benefits of our environmental actions
have greatly exceeded the costs. A report by OMB in 2003 under
the previous administration concluded that the major rules
enacted under the Clean Air Act between 1992 and 2002 produced
annual benefits of $145 billion to $218 billion, six to eight
times greater than the annual costs. So you get a whole range
of co-benefits, and these benefits far outweigh the costs.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you.
Dr. Twining.
Mr. Twining. Just a quick point. It is a very good
question. Sometimes it helps, at least to me, to kind of focus
in on tangible impacts of climate change. I do some work with
our National Intelligence Council, and they have done a series
of forecasts around how some of the climate predictions impact
key powers in the international system.
Just to sketch out in a sentence: South Asia gets hit very
badly in some of these projections. Bangladesh is under water.
You have 150 million from that side trying to get into India,
almost 200 million. You have calamitous impacts in India.
Again, for all of us who have great hope for U.S.-India
relations in terms of managing and Asian balance and supporting
our values in the world, India gets hit really harder than any
other great power under some of these projections.
So I think there is an interesting conversation to be had
about the national security implications of some of these
forecasts that we should all really be thinking about.
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you all.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Again, I want to thank everyone
on the panel for coming today and participating in this
interesting discussion.
Let me note that I think that China, to the degree that it
has been engaged in what we would call positive behavior in
better uses or better technologies in terms of producing
energy, has been doing so not because they want to save the
planet from climate change but instead because they have a real
human rights problem with human health that their people--
massive numbers of people--are being damaged, their bodies are
being damaged by pollution in the air.
And let me note that CO2 is not, no matter what the EPA
says, a pollutant that affects human health. They in fact, in
order to declare it a pollutant, had to claim, well, the
climate will change and then that will cause human health to be
affected. Thus, it is a pollutant.
That convoluted reasoning is--it may justify a power grab
to someone who wants to give them the power, but it certainly
doesn't justify--it is not common sense. CO2 is plant food. We
pump CO2 into the greenhouses throughout California to produce
better plants.
I am very concerned about--for the same reason the Chinese
are concerned--about pollution, and it does not--Mr. Diringer,
it does not cross all the time. Sometimes it runs parallel.
Other times it doesn't. Sometimes you have people who are so
adamant about global warming that they are taking us away from
things that might be effective for health.
Let me go back to the fact that we are talking about
climate change over and over again here today, and the fact
that we are talking climate change indicates that the
predictions have been wrong. We have been following this for 20
years. Ten years ago, no one used the word climate change. The
word global warming was what it was described over and over and
over again. And the reason we now hear climate change is
because it is not. The 10 major scientists that--the major
scientists that I put into the record in the beginning of the
hearing, plus the hundred other major scientists, just do not
go along with that finding.
So I would just suggest that, for example, in my own case
in California, because those people who are dominating certain
parts of the scientific community, we are talking about how
global warming was still a factor, and they predicted a dry and
a warm winter for the United States, especially California, and
it has been one of the wettest, coldest winters that we have
had in my adult life.
If you look back at the predictions by those claiming to
understand how CO2 affects the climate, they were saying that
the Midwest would not be flooding but would be parched.
So that is why I am somewhat of a skeptic on human activity
causing something. Because then that gives us the excuse to
control human activity, rather than suggesting that we have had
climate changes throughout the history of the world. And we
know that those other changes were not caused by human beings.
However, to grant the other side of the argument their due, we
should also be concerned about human adaptation even if it is
natural to climate change, which may or may not be the case.
So I would focus and say, yes, let's take a look at human
adaptation and how that is going to--if indeed we are going to
have seas rising throughout the Pacific or see Bangladesh going
underwater, is that actually going to happen? Are we really
going to have a warm, dry winter? We have got to make sure we
know what we are talking about and not just accepting somebody
who is without challenging their dire predictions.
Again, it used to be global warming. Now it is global
climate change, for obvious reasons.
Let's get back to, first of all, the United Nations and the
economy of this of what we are talking about here. Mr.
Diringer, you did mention Europe as a success. My reading shows
me that Spain has actually been hurt dramatically. I think I
read that in The Economist. Is The Economist wrong about that,
that Spain has not benefited by their focus on solar power and
in fact it has contributed to their national economic upheaval?
Mr. Diringer. Certainly, Spain is experiencing some dire
economic difficulties. I can't speak to whether or not their
efforts to expand their renewable energy industry have
contributed to that. I am not familiar.
Mr. Rohrabacher. There have been several reports.
What about you, Dr. Hayward?
Mr. Hayward. I don't like to get into the contentious
methodological arguments about how many jobs, because you can
always argue about those until the cows come home.
I think what you do see, though, clearly is--I will give
you Germany as an example. Germany is trying to promote solar
power with their feed-in tariff idea. So if you put solar
panels on your buildings, they will pay 45 cents a kilowatt
hour. Pretty nice. The average price of electricity here in
this country is 10 to 12 to 14 cents.
So, yeah, if you subsidize something, you will get a lot
more of it. But you cannot scale that up to 10, 15, 20 percent
of your electricity, given the fiscal realities of modern
economies. That is the limiting factor.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Plus, you are taking wealth from somewhere
else in your society.
Mr. Hayward. Well, you know our mutual hero liked to say,
pretty soon you run out of other people's money. They are
running out of other people's money in Europe now.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Finally, let's just get back to the United
Nations.
Do you trust the United Nations? You were making some
comparisons there to the United Nations. Can the United Nations
be trusted with $100 billion a year to oversee that properly?
Are you confident that the U.N. will oversee it and that that
would be the best use put for $100 billion of wealth to be
directed by the United Nations in the name of this problem,
solving this problem?
Mr. Twining. No, sir. I just want to qualify my comment on
the Security Council, which is that I didn't mean to suggest
that it works brilliantly. It was just to compare its relative
merits to other U.N. bodies.
My sense on this, just is very quickly, is that you
probably want a climate process that looks more like a
multinational corporation or a market that somehow looks like a
big market. And whether you talk about that in terms of
government subsidies or a carbon tax or more positive forms,
you probably want this to look less like a bureaucracy and more
like something you would see in the private sector in which
peoples and countries actually have some ownership and some
stakes in innovating and conserving resources.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I would suggest that I see that happening
in the world economy already. I would suggest that all over the
world we see great examples of people pushing forward.
For example, even though I reject this whole theory of man-
made global warming, I am certainly someone who is pushing here
in Congress the development of these new modular nuclear
reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors that eat the
waste from other reactors so it doesn't have that problem. This
would certainly not have any greenhouse gases as a result. But
it seems to me that that is a marketplace decision which
motivates me and other people in that arena, rather than
thinking about this as a bureaucratic approach to we are going
to mandate things and plan out this change in energy for
mankind that will save the planet from climate change, which
will elevate the human condition.
Mr. Diringer.
Mr. Diringer. Well, to your question would I trust the
U.N., no, but let me clarify. There has been no agreement to
establish a single fund to be managed by the U.N. or anybody
else to mobilize this $100 billion. This figure of $100 billion
is an aspirational collective goal that countries have set for
themselves. And the aim is to mobilize these funds--a
combination of public funds, private funds, bilateral,
multilateral. They will be flowing through multiple channels.
Countries will probably be reporting on the funds that they
have expended, whether through bilateral or multilateral
channels, whether it is through public or private channels; and
there will be some tallying at some point to see how well we
are doing toward meeting that goal. But there is not going to
be any single mechanism that would ever attempt to try to
deliver funds on that scale. And I am quite certain that if
there were to be such a mechanism contemplated, the United
States would certainly oppose it.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, this is a good point, because I
would suggest if what you are describing is what evolves and
emerges, that we already have that. For example, when I just
gave the example of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor or
the new modular nuclear reactors, which are incredibly safe and
cost-effective, et cetera, still taking care of the problem of
leftover waste, which these new reactors do, I would say if we
move forward with that strategy in building these reactors here
in the United States, it will be a $100 billion project. Just
that in and of itself will be a project in which hundreds of
billions dollars are being spent building these new reactors
that can be placed all over the United States and all over the
world.
If that counts toward what we are talking about, because
that is just a number of which all of us contribute to, well,
then no one has much to worry about. I think that is already in
the process.
But I will have to tell you, when you get all these
bureaucrats from all over the world flying in on their jets and
being met at the airport by their limousines and being
shepherded off to these glamorous resorts and talking as if
they are the elite and they are going to make the decisions, it
worries me a bit that maybe what they really have in mind is
something that they would control and start directing
personally. And that is one of the reasons we are having this
hearing today.
Mr. Hayward.
Mr. Hayward. Well, I can thrash the U.N. with the best of
them, but I think you need to ask the question: What do they do
well and what do they do badly and can we derive a lesson from
that?
What they do well I think is refugee assistance, food
assistance, some of their education programs, some not. They
have a very mixed record on peacekeeping and conflict
resolution. And if the U.N. had lived up to its original
aspirations in 1945, I think we wouldn't have needed NATO, for
example.
Now, the one precise precedent I think for the green fund
that is being talked about would be the U.N. population fund. I
believe that is what it called. From about 1970 to the mid-'90s
population growth from the population bomb coming out of the
enthusiasm of that time, that was thought to be the preeminent
global threat that the world community had to deal with. I will
just state my opinion--I have read a lot of literature on
this--is that the U.N. population fund record is not an
encouraging precedent for a green fund. If the United States is
going to participate I think probably close to what Elliot is
suggesting, we will probably want to do it ourselves through
USAID, and that is another can of worms.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Mr. Carnahan has told me that he doesn't
have any follow-up questions. But out of courtesy, because I
have been kibitzing with Mr. Diringer on global warming, I am
going to give you the last say in the hearing today.
Mr. Diringer. Well, I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.
I think there is one point that we haven't yet raised in
all our discussion about what are the best or most appropriate
forums for international discussion or negotiations, and that
is the question of political will. The best forum will
accomplish nothing if countries do not come to it with
sufficient political will.
In looking back over the past two decades of negotiation
within the U.N. Framework Convention, I don't think we have yet
actually given it an honest chance, because countries have not
yet come to that process prepared to take the actions at home
that would enable them to actually reach strong agreements.
This is a long-term process, and I think we need to view the
climate framework as an evolutionary framework, one that
hopefully will grow in strength over time as our political
understanding and political consensus grows and solidifies
within our domestic context.
So my hope is that here in the United States we can
continue to reach a stronger understanding of the causes and
consequences of climate change, work our way toward meaningful
policies to address our emissions, and thereby put ourselves in
the position to help lead to stronger global agreements.
Mr. Rohrabacher. I want to thank all of our witnesses.
Thank you very much. I think we have had a very fine exchange
of ideas.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:01 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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