“On the one hand, they say it is not the job of the E.P.A., it’s Congress’s job, and then they stand in the way of Congress doing its job in the first place.”WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), co-author of the Senate’s comprehensive energy independence and climate change legislation, today spoke from the floor of the United States Senate to defeat an effort to undercut the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect America’s health and environment from pollution that speeds the climate change crisis.
The video of the Senator’s remarks is available
here.
Senator Kerry’s statement as delivered is below:Mr. President, thank you very much. I have been listening carefully to a whole bunch of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle come to the floor and talk about what this is not about. Every single one of them has laid out a rationale for doing away with something as if it was a regulation. They come to the floor -- frankly, there have been very few facts here because I keep hearing about the tailoring rule of the EPA that doesn't take effect until 2016 which lays out a whole process by which we normally do things, but we keep hearing our folks on the other side of the aisle say that this is not something that Congress intended or this is not something that we should leave to the bureaucracy.
Mr. President, neither could be further from the truth. We created the law on which this is based. The United States Congress passed the Clean Air Act, and the Supreme Court of the United States, not a bureaucracy, made a fundamental health finding decision that, in fact, global climate change is happening and that the pollutants of greenhouse gases are, in fact, included in what the -- in what the Clean Air Act envisioned.
The Supreme Court has dictated this policy, and they dictated it as a matter of health, not as a matter of some bureaucratic rule. We don't have a rule in front of us right now, Mr. President. We have a process by which the EPA is going to go through, determine what they may or may not do. Now, I heard my colleague from South Dakota come to the floor and say well, all we're trying to do is delay this so that Congress can act. This is going to be the great hypocrisy test resolution. We're going to see how many of these folks who are here on the floor saying we need to leave it to Congress, how many of them are actually going to show up and vote to do what we need to do in order to change things. How many of them are going to be on the front lines trying to, in fact, make the things happen that have to happen in order to restrain greenhouse gases. And we heard him say we're just delaying this.
No, they are not just delaying it. That's just not true, because under the administrative rule act, when you reject a resolution -- have a resolution of rejection as this is, you are specifically not allowed to come back with the rule or anything like it. Let me read specifically from there. It says a rule shall not take effect if the Congress enacts a joint resolution of disapproval. That's what this is. Two, a rule that does not take effect under paragraph 1 may not be reissued in substantially the same form, and a new rule that is substantially the same as such rule may not be issued. There it is, plain and simple, folks.
That's what's happening here. This is an effort to permanently prevent the EPA from ever taking up the question of greenhouse gases and their right to restrain them. Let me read exactly what the Supreme Court said. This is the Supreme Court. Let me put a little politics history behind this. In 1999, under the Bush Administration, the first bush administration, they didn't want to do this. For all the same reasons people don't want to do it now. And so people went to Court to get them to do what they are supposed to do in the public interest. But it was challenged. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, and here's what the Supreme Court of the United States said -- quote -- "greenhouse gases fit well within the clean air act's capacious definition of air pollutant."
So the Supreme Court of the United States, not a bureaucracy, found that the intent of Congress was properly being fulfilled in the effort to restrain greenhouse gases, and what Senator Murkowski and colleagues are trying to do here is undermine the health finding that this, in fact, -- is represented by the Supreme Court. Here it is. The Court found that climate science already indicated that rising levels of green house gases are warming and harming the Earth. And they go through that reasoning.
The Court then said, they reviewed the history of the Clean Air Act and found that in 1970 when congress added a broad definition of welfare, including effects on climate. That's a quote. That's what the finding of the Court was. The Court found -- finally the Court found the definition of air pollutant unambiguously includes greenhouse gases, and that's why we're here today. What our colleagues are trying to do is prevent this from happening. It's kind of interesting.
Look at the people who represent health in the United States. The American Academy of Pediatrics, Children's Environmental Health Network, American Nurses Association, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, national and city public health officials, National Environment Health Association, American College of Preventive Medicine, and on it goes. All of them are opposed to what Senator Murkowski is doing on the floor because it does not represent the health interests of our country.
Now, Mr. President, we've heard a lot of arguments on this thing, but let me tell you, for all the discussion and rhetoric, the choice before us is very stark and it is very simple. This is not just a simple delay. This is brought to us by some of the same people who have resisted doing anything about many of these things for ages. Why is it that the United States of America is more dependent today on foreign oil than we were before September 11? Because we haven't done anything -- nothing -- to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We have an opportunity to do it now. This is about that.
Because the same people who have resisted those changes through the years resisted CAFE standards, resisted changing where we and how we produce our oil, or run down a long list of things that have been prevented from happening, the American people today are paying $100 million a day to Ahmadinejad and Iran in order to buy oil because we haven't reduced it. Now that's what the option here, is whether we're going to get serious about those other things or not. This is a vote between whether we recognize the greatest environmental risk of our time or whether we legitimize deniers of that -- deniers of that.
It's a choice between protecting the health of our families, the air we breathe or continue a pattern of pollution that threatens our families and communities. That is what the EPA was set up to protect, and it has protected that through the years. This is a question of whether or not we're going to get serious about policies that will put America on a real path to energy independence or increase our nation's oil dependence by another 450 million barrels. The stakes for our country are enormous. And if you have any doubt about this, every day on television everybody is seeing what is happening in the Gulf. The result of – in the gulf, the result of one single accident.
In April of 2007, the Supreme Court, for the first time, issued a ruling on the issue of climate change, and some people don't like it. The Roberts Court was asked to consider the Bush Administration's refusal to issue greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks. And the case hinged on just two things: does the clean air act authorize regulation of greenhouse gases? And if so, should the EPA set emission standards for motor vehicles? The decision by the majority was consistent on two fronts. In light of that, the Justices directed the EPA to fulfill its obligation under the clean air act to determine, and I emphasize, based on scientific evidence whether greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks pose a hazard to human health.
So, Mr. President, on May 19, the National Research Council, which is our nation's leading scientific body, declared in its most comprehensive study to date that the evidence of climate change is overwhelming. They -- that's their word. They urged early, aggressive and concerted actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The resolution we're debating today would achieve the opposite goal. We're being asked to squander billions of barrels of oil savings and shirk the responsibility of the environmental challenge of our time. Some may say, no, we're trying to restrict the bureaucrats from doing this. But everybody understands what this battle is really all about. By invalidating the fundamental scientific finding that greenhouse gases in fact pose a threat to human health and welfare, this resolution would remove the legal basis, the legal foundation for the agreement that was reached last year to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. According to the Union of Scientists, this agreement is on track to save American consumers a total of $34 billion and to create 263,000 American jobs in 2020. The agreement also takes a huge step forward towards energy independence by reducing our oil consumption by 1.8 billion barrels. If you remove the E.P.A.'s authority to jointly implement those regulations with the department of transportation, then you lose the foundation for proceeding forward with that benefit.
Now, that's just the minimum amount by which this resolution would increase our oil dependence. In light of President Obama's recent announcement that the administration plans to extend the vehicle standards beyond 2016, the prohibition on the E.P.A. action would eliminate significant additional opportunities in the future to reduce our nation's oil consumption, increase our energy security, and draw a bright line between ourselves and those nations that want to do us harm. So, why are we being asked to affirmatively reject a scientific fact -- finding that has been based on overwhelming evidence? And why would we be asked to reject potentially billions of barrels of oil savings?
We're told Congress needs more time to develop energy and climate legislation, and the federal government has to be stopped from making progress in the interim. Well, Mr. President, I’ve been meeting with my colleagues now for over a year at least, over the 20 years that I've been working on this issue. The distinguished chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee similarly and others here have been at this for a long time. I'm struck by the irony that many of the proponents of this argument are the very same people who had every opportunity of avoiding engaging in serious legislative effort to try to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions or deal with climate change. On the one hand, they say it is not the job of the E.P.A., it’s Congress’s job, and then they stand in the way of Congress doing its job in the first place. They stand in the way at a time when we built an unprecedented coalition of industry, of faith-based community, national security community, businesses small and large, environmentalists, all of whom believe we can increase energy independence and reduce pollution all at the same time. Let me just share with colleagues what Ron Brownstein, one of the keenest observers of Washington summed it up, writing the following. He said “it's reasonable to argue that Congress, not E.P.A., should decide how to regulate carbon. But most of those Senators who endorsed Murkowski's resolution opposed the most plausible legislative vehicle for legislating carbon limits.”
I want to make sure we understand something as we do this. A lot of people have come here to the floor to eviscerate the E.P.A. and create a caricature of that agency. When that agency, frankly, is taking a thoughtful, measured, step-wise approach to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The administrator Jackson said she is committed to addressing the largest sources first, new power plants or factories emitting more than 100,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions and then going to those over 75,000 tons. None of that will even go into effect until a year from now through the normal administrative public process that we've set up for our agencies to represent us.
It's astonishing to me that this has become a partisan issue. In 1970, 20 million Americans came out of their homes to march in our streets because they saw the Cuyahoga River in Ohio light on fire, and they wanted to stop the pollution. And so we passed the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, marine mammal protection, coastal zone management. And the history of the implementation of those acts has been to clean up rivers and clean up lakes and see fish swim again where they didn't and be caught again by kids who go fishing with their parents and so forth. We brought that back, Mr. President. And now we're trying to undermine the ability to continue that job, to make the health and welfare of our citizens better, and to lead the world with respect to these technologies. The United States isn't leading in one of these technologies today, and it's time for us to understand we need to get our act together.
On edit: Kerry was seriously pissed.
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