Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[Official GPO Transcript]
[The Chairman] ... Independence and Global Warming. We welcome you all here this
morning.
We all remember the tragic consequences of Hurricane
Katrina: the breached levies, water-filled streets and families
seeking shelter in the Superdome. While many individuals
courageously responded to this disaster, government leadership
failed the people of New Orleans when they needed help the
most. Katrina foreshadows the consequences of climate change if
we do not make the necessary preparations.
Since then, scientists have shown that the warming of our
climate system from emissions of heat-trapping gases, from our
tailpipes and smokestacks, is unequivocal. We face not only an
increasing number of strong storms but also many permanent
alterations that will affect people throughout the country.
Coastal cities like Boston will be at risk of inundation from
sea-level rise, which is accelerating as our oceans warm and
our polar icecaps melt. Alaskan villages are finding the land
they call home literally melting out from underneath them as
the permafrost thaws. In the West our shrinking mountain snow
pack strains our water resource system. Throughout this country
our farms are threatened by rising temperatures, water
scarcity, and pests.
For projected 2.2 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperatures
over the next 30 years, we can expect significant declines in
the crops that make up the base of our food system. The past is
no longer a predictor of the future. We need to develop our
resilience in order to safeguard our health, our environment,
our economy and our national security. We need to develop a
comprehensive strategy to adapt, conduct world-class climate
research, and coordinate Federal, State and local action.
Now some will argue that we should not address the root of
the problem and only address its symptoms--that we should only
adapt to climate change and not address global warming
pollution. We cannot just address the symptoms. When someone
has a heart attack, the doctor prescribes medication to help
prevent another attack and puts the patient on a low-fat diet
to improve long-term health. Our country experienced a heart
attack in New Orleans, and we must now develop both the
institutional medication to manage the impacts of warming and
also shift society to a low-carbon energy regiment for a
healthy climate. Just as we cannot medicate our way out of a
heart problem, we cannot adapt our way out of global warming.
We have taken the first steps to cut carbon pollution and
build resilience to global warming impacts. Earlier this year,
the House passed the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and
Security Act, which will set us on a pollution-cutting path and
at the same time create millions of new jobs making America the
global leader of the clean-energy economy. The act will also
create a national climate service that will provide decision-
makers with the very best climate information and help Federal
agencies and States adapt to the dangerous consequences of
climate change.
In a new report that I requested, the Government Accountability Office assesses the current
steps our country is taking to address the impacts of global warming.
They find that Federal efforts thus far have been largely
ad hoc. To effectively address the impacts, we need a
strategic plan that sets out priorities, improves the information
available to decision-makers and clarifies the roles and
responsibilities of Federal, State and local governments. I look
forward to the testimony of our witnesses and hearing from
them how Congress can help build our resilience to global warming.
Now I would like to recognize the ranking member of the
committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Sensenbrenner.
[Mr. Sensenbrenner] Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Adaptation is an important but overlooked facet of the
global warming debate. That is probably why the GAO has
concluded that Federal, State and local governments need better
coordination on climate change adaptation strategies.
It is a popular misconception that there is scientific
consensus about the future impacts of global warming. And there
is little agreement in the scientific community about what the
specific effects of climate change will be. That is why a
strategy that focuses on adaptation and not taxes makes more
sense.
Congressional Democrats believe a cap-and-tax plan will
cure global warming, but there is little reason to believe that
that is true. Unless China and India make similar emission
cuts, there won't be any reduction in global temperatures.
Cap-and-tax may not have much impact on global temperatures, but it will have a big impact
on the American economy. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill
calls for an 83 percent cut from greenhouse gas emissions
by 2050. But a study by the National Association of Manufacturers
and the American Council for Capital Formation shows that,
by 2030, the economy will already feel the pressure.
Come 2030, cap-and-tax will have shaved as much as 2.4
percent or $571 billion off the U.S. gross domestic product.
That is nearly as much as the government spent on Social
Security last year. Cumulative GDP lost during the coming
decades would be enormous, with projections of more than $3
billion in lost economic output.
This isn't just a problem for business and industry because
the government will also be shortchanged. In 2030 alone,
Federal and State governments would see nearly $170 billion
less in revenue. That is money that would be more wisely spent
on adaptation. The GAO report shows that local and State
government managers are finding it hard to fit global warming
adaptation into their budgets as more pressing concerns over
jobs, infrastructure, security and other issues are taking
precedent, as they should. By enacting cap-and-tax and reducing
economic growth Congress risks cutting the revenues the State
and local governments will eventually need to fund climate
adaptation projects.
Proponents of the legislation argue that the bill will
raise new tax revenues that can be used for adaptation. I would
rather not reduce growth in the first place.
The written testimony of one of today's witnesses emphasizes the importance of resilience to
climate variability regardless of the cost. Dr. Kenneth Green,
a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, will
submit testimony that highlights many important decisions for
policymakers, such as faulty wisdom behind rapid development
in areas prone to natural disaster, the need for investment
in new climate technology, and the benefits market-pricing
could bring to adaptation preparation.
I welcome his perspectives as part of today's record and
yield back the balance of my time.
[The Chairman] The gentleman's time is expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Hall.
[Mr. Hall] Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Sensenbrenner.
And I share the ranking member's concern about development
in areas that are prone to natural disasters. I also
congratulate him on getting the word ``tax'' in a record number
of times in his opening statement.
I think it is a very important hearing and look forward to
our witnesses' testimony.
Climate change adaptation has been a serious concern of
mine for many years. My district is bisected by the Hudson
River, one of America's national treasures, which is tidal all
the way to Troy, New York, north of Albany. Along each side of
the river, nearly at the water level, runs two rail lines; on
the west side, a CSX freight line, and on the east side, the
Amtrak and metro north passenger lines. Sea-level rise will
imperil these lines, which will be incredibly expensive to move
or to replace, as will the other infrastructure that we have
counted on for years which are threatened along our coast.
Many of the riverside communities in the counties I
represent and other Hudson Valley counties have spent a fortune
on urban renewal and revitalizing their waterfronts with
boardwalks and restaurants and shops that are just barely above
the level of the Hudson as it is today, and as a tidal estuary,
obviously if the sea level rises, these beautiful new additions
to our waterfronts will be possibly under water. Not to mention
Hilton Head, Cape Hatteras, Key West and other places that some
of us like to at least think about going to.
Duchess County, my home county, has the third highest
number of new cases of Lyme Disease of any county in the
country. There has been serious speculation that the spread of
these diseases, like Lyme and West Nile Virus, are linked to
changes in temperature and the increasing range of the insects
that carry those diseases.
I will submit the rest of my statement for the record and,
Mr. Chairman, yield back the balance of my time.
[The Chairman] I thank the gentleman very much.
[The Chairman] Now we are going to turn to our first
witness, Mr. John Stephenson, who is the Director of Natural
Resources and Environmental Issues for the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. He has testified many times before
Congress, and he always produces excellent work.
So we thank you, sir. Welcome back. Whenever you are ready,
please begin.
[Mr. Stephenson] Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Sensenbrenner,
Mr. Hall.
I am pleased to be here today to discuss our report on
climate change adaptation and the role of the Federal
Government.
The world's leading scientists predict that increased
concentrations of greenhouse gases could, among other things,
threaten coastal areas with rising sea levels; alter
agriculture productivity; and increase the intensity and
frequency of tropical storms and floods. In recent years,
climate change adaptation has begun to receive more attention
because the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere are
expected to continue altering the climate system in the future,
regardless of efforts to control emissions. However,
individuals and institutions whose futures will be affected by
climate change are at present unprepared both conceptually and
practically for meeting the challenges it presents.
Our report for this committee, which is being publicly
released today, addresses three issues: One, what actions
Federal, State and local and international authorities are
currently taking to adapt to climate change; the challenges
that Federal, State and local officials face in their efforts
to adapt; and three, actions that Congress and Federal agencies
could take to help address these challenges.
In summary, we found that many Federal agencies had begun
to take action but that these actions are largely ad hoc and
fall into categories, such as information for decision-making
and Federal land and natural resource management, among others.
There is currently no coordinated or overarching national
approach to adaptation, but certain Federal entities have
started to fill this gap.
The President's Council on Environmental Quality is leading
a new initiative to coordinate the Federal response to climate
change in conjunction with the Office of Science and Technology
Policy, NOAA and other agencies. Similarly, the U.S. Global
Change Research Program, which coordinates and integrates
Federal research on climate change, has developed a series of
building blocks that outline options for future climate change
work, including science to inform adaptation.
While most government authorities have not yet begun to
adapt to climate change, there are some shining examples at the
State and local level where planning has begun in earnest. We
visited three such locales; New York City; King County,
Washington; and the State of Maryland, where government
officials are making good progress.
Our analysis of these sites suggest key factors that have
led these governments to act: First, natural disasters, such as
floods, heat waves, droughts or hurricanes, raise public
awareness of the cost of potential climate change impacts.
Second, leaders in all three sites use legislation, executive
orders, local ordinance or action plans to focus attention and
resources on climate change adaptation. Third, each of these
governments had access to relevant site-specific information
through partnerships with local universities and other entities
that provided a basis for planning efforts.
Based on our site visits and the results of the survey we
sent to over 270 Federal, State and local officials, the
challenges faced by adaptation planners fall into three
categories: First, attention and available resources are
focused on more immediate needs, making it difficult for
adaptation efforts to compete for limited funds. Second,
insufficient site-specific data, such as local projections of
expected changes, makes it hard to predict the impacts of
climate change and, thus, hard for local officials to justify
spending resources now for benefits that may be derived in the
distant future. Third, adaptation efforts are constrained by a
lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities for Federal,
State and local agencies.
Finally, our survey respondents suggested specific Federal
actions that are needed to overcome these challenges. First,
training and education efforts are needed to increase awareness
among government officials and the public about the impacts of
climate change and available adaptation strategies. Second,
assistance is needed to interpret and develop site-specific
information to help officials understand the impacts of climate
change at a scale that would enable them to develop response
plans. And third, there is a need to clarify roles and
responsibilities across Federal agencies and with State and
local governments.
Our work suggests that a more coordinated Federal response
would demonstrate a Federal commitment to adaptation. To that
end, our report recommends the development of a national
strategic plan that will guide the Nation's efforts to adapt to
a changing climate, one that defines priorities, clarifies
roles and responsibilities, facilitates the exchange of
information, identifies resource needs and builds on existing
adaptation planning efforts.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes the summary of my statement. I
will be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.
[The Chairman] Thank you, sir, very much.
At this time, I would like to ask unanimous consent to
include in the record a letter from Nancy Sutley, who is the
Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, in which she
agrees with the recommendations of the GAO report and lays out
some of the steps they have already initiated to coordinate
Federal adaptation efforts.
Without objection, it will be included in the record.
[The Chairman] Our next witness is Mr. Eric Schwaab, who is
the Deputy Secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural
Resources. He is going to help us to understand what Maryland
is doing and what their ongoing work is in dealing with these
issues.
Welcome, sir.
[Mr. Schwaab] Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee. It is a pleasure to be with you here today to share
some perspectives regarding Maryland's success in planning for
climate change, as well as our ideas with respect to how we
might improve the Federal presence and coordination of those
activities.
I would also like to mention how pleased we were to work
with the GAO in the development of their report and to be
featured as one of the local--as one of the States, the State,
working on this issue.
Maryland has in fact already recognized that the forces of
climate change, particularly with respect to rising sea levels,
have been set in motion irreversibly to a large degree; and
that, in addition to enhanced focus on mitigation, we must take
steps now to plan for implications of climate change as they
affect us socially, economically and environmentally. We must
fully integrate climate change adaptation planning into many
existing State programs and practices. The same, of course, can
be done at the Federal level.
We cannot continue to plan and implement programs as if our
environment was static from a climate perspective. From efforts
to restore Chesapeake Bay, conserve forests, enhance wildlife
habitats to local land-use decisions, every one of our actions
must be taken with our best understanding of the realities of
climate change at the forefront.
This is of particular interest to Maryland. Chesapeake Bay
is ranked the third most vulnerable region in the Nation to
impact of sea-level rise. This has already been apparent in the
loss of land along the Atlantic Coast and the Bay shoreline
over the last 100 years. And due to climate change, we expect
an acceleration of sea-level rise at least twice as fast as
that which occurred during the 20th Century, resulting in
potentially 2.7 to 3.4 feet of sea-level rise by the year 2100.
Such a rise will cause increased vulnerability to storm events;
more frequent and severe coastal flooding; inundation of low-
lying lands; submergence of tidal marshes; more shore erosion
and salt water intrusion of salt water wells.
Maryland is, of course, equally concerned with other
consequences of change in climate. The State's agriculture
industry, our forest resources, fisheries, fresh water supply
and other aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and, in addition
to that, human health will all be impacted by increasing
temperature and changes in precipitation patterns.
All of these caused Maryland to initiate action. In April
of 2007, Governor O'Malley signed an executive order
establishing the Maryland Climate Change Commission. A year
after its formation, the commission released Maryland's climate
action plan, setting forth a course of action to stem not only
the drivers of climate change but also for how to adapt to
those inevitable consequences already set in motion.
Maryland remains one of the few States that have included
an adaptation component in State-level climate change action
planning. Let me just highlight a few elements of our plan that
have already been undertaken. We have made significant progress
in acquiring new technology to look at historic shore-line
change data and utilize this change data to undertake state-of-
the-art sea-level rise mapping and research. We have developed
and enacted a Living Shore Line Protection Act and amendments
to our Chesapeake and Coastal Bay's Critical Area Act, which
will increase shore-line resiliency and limit building in the
most vulnerable areas.
Sea-level rise technical planning guidance was crafted for
three of our most vulnerable coastal counties. In April of
2009, with the help of our Coastal Zone Program, we hosted the
Coast Smart Event, an interactive event to discuss and evaluate
local planning strategies for communities to improve their
ability to adapt to sea-level rise.
Our transportation department is assessing impacts related
to highway system planning. And our wildlife division is
assessing climate change vulnerability as it relates to
specific species of concern.
We have already kicked off Phase II of development of our
strategies, which will be focused on identifying further
impacts in six issue-based areas, including water resources,
agriculture, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, forestry,
agriculture, human health and transportation and land use.
We would like to offer just a couple of perspectives with
respect to what the Federal Government we think in particular
can do. There is much more detail of this in my written
testimony.
First, the Nation needs a clear national strategy. This
strategy should provide an integrated approach to these
challenges. Many programs undertaken in partnership by the
State at the Federal level would benefit substantially by
building in climate change assessments into program
implementation.
Secondly, the key role of the States in climate change
adaptation planning must be clearly integrated into a national
program.
And finally, action at the Federal level to provide
dedicated funding for adaptation is imperative to protect
communities, natural resources, and the national interests from
the impacts of climate change.
There are additional suggestions in my testimony, Mr.
Chairman, and I appreciate, again, the opportunity to be here.
[The Chairman] Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.
Our next witness is Mr. Stephen Seidel. He is the Vice
President for Policy Analysis at the Pew Center on Global
Climate Change.
We welcome you, sir.
[Mr. Seidel] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am delighted to be here today and pleased that you have
focused this hearing on what we need to do to adapt to climate
change. Adapting to climate change is clearly necessary but
should not in any way detract from efforts to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. Such reductions are the first and best line of
defense against the risks of climate change.
Why, then, should we also be focusing on adaptation? Because the science community has made it
clear that our climate has already begun to change. We have
experienced warmer temperatures, more extreme weather events
and sea-level rise. Even with our best efforts to reduce future
emissions, substantial amounts of climate change are
unavoidable. Confronted with that reality, it no longer
makes sense to assume that future climate will be the same
as that of the past. We should be making every effort to
adapt to these unavoidable changes in climate as we redouble
our efforts to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions.
The title of a recent U.N. report aptly captures what we
need to do: Avoid the Unmanageable and Manage the Unavoidable.
My written testimony provides some concrete examples of how the
Federal Government can and must lead this effort to build
greater resiliency into our economy.
I want to focus on three ways this can be accomplished.
First, adaptation must be mainstreamed across all relevant
Federal programs. As the Nation's largest landholder, and the
Federal Government owns about 29 percent of our Nation's lands.
Many Federal assets are at risk from changes in climate. DOD
alone has thousands of facilities located in coastal areas.
Throughout our government and its programs, climate change
impacts will be pervasive.
To begin addressing the Federal role in adaptation, we
recommend that all relevant Federal agencies undertake a
strategic plan. This plan should identify an agency's programs,
regulations and facilities that are affected by climate change;
identify barriers to making these more climate resilient; and
develop a plan of action and priorities for implementation. Our
work on adaptation suggests that this strategic planning
process can most effectively be coordinated through the Council
on Environmental Quality, and we are encouraged that they have
recently taken steps down this path by creating an interagency
working group.
We would recommend agency strategies as a first step,
followed by sector plans to address critical crosscutting
issues and to assure coordination among agencies. Once an
initial round of agency and sector plans have been completed,
we would then recommend a national strategy that was informed
by these efforts and that sets priorities and goals.
As part of mainstreaming adaptation, we also recommend that
CEQ amend its existing regulations to clarify that climate
change impacts and possible adaptation measures should be
evaluated for all major Federal actions.
Our second recommendation is the creation, through
legislation, of a national climate change adaptation program.
This would be a sister program to the two existing interagency
climate change programs; the Global Change Research Program and
the Climate Change Technology Program. Both have been
established through legislation. The national climate change
adaptation program could be created as an interagency program
along the lines of GCRP, but its goal would be to facilitate
development of high-level policy direction, coordinate Federal
activities, and ensure proper integration across agencies.
Our third suggestion relates to the need for the Federal
Government to play a critical role in providing technical
support to help State and local governments and the private
sector to meet their adaptation challenges. Before any entity
can respond to climate change, they first need information on
what those changes are likely to be. We suggest the creation of
a national climate service to fill this function and recommend
that NOAA lead this effort. But we also recommend that other
Federal agencies have important roles to play as sector leads
for the purpose of effectively engaging State and local
stakeholders.
Finally, we are pleased that the House bill includes a
substantial section on adaptation. We believe that what is in
the bill can be improved though in three ways: First, by
requiring all Federal agencies to undertake comprehensive
adaptation plans rather than by limiting the scope of those
plans to natural resources and public health issues, as is
currently in the bill. It is critically important that other
agencies, like the Department of Transportation, Department of
Energy, Department of Defense, also undertake strategic plans.
Second, while the bill creates a national adaptation
program, it locates it within the Global Change Research
Program and focuses its activities on research. We believe
that, as currently drafted and passed by the House, it places
too great an emphasis on the research side and shortchanges the
critical needs to mainstream adaptation across all Federal
programs.
And finally, we believe the bill could clarify the
structure of a national climate service and make it more
focused on the needs of the users by identifying a critical
role for other agencies to play.
I would be glad to answer questions at the appropriate
time.
[The Chairman] Thank you, Mr. Seidel, very much.
And our final witness is Dr. Kenneth Green, who is Resident
Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
We welcome you, sir. Whenever you are ready, please begin.
[Mr. Green] Thank you, Chairman Markey, Mr. Sensenbrenner,
members of the committee.
Thank you for inviting me to testify today on this
important topic.
Along with these remarks, I have submitted for the record a
policy study that I recently completed, entitled ``Climate
Change: The Resilience Option.''
My testimony here today represents my personal views and
should not be construed as the official position of any other
institution or people.
Before I get into the meat of my remarks, I would like to
start with my three Bs; the background, biases and beliefs.
As to background, I am a biologist and environmental scientist by training, an economist by exposure,
and a policy analyst by vocation. I have been doing environmental
policy analysis for 15 years now in the U.S. and
Canada.
My bias is for solving environmental problems wherever
possible with more instruments that maximize freedom,
opportunity, enterprise and personal responsibility. Thus, I
strongly favor true market-based remedies for environmental
problems over command-and-control regulation. I will observe
here, with no offense intended, that cap-and-trade is not a
true market-based instrument, as the government sets a limit on
emissions rather than having the limit, quantity or price set
by voluntary consumers in a free marketplace.
Finally, my scientific beliefs are based on reading the
literature as well as the IPCC climate science reports. And
while I do believe greenhouse gases retain heat in the
atmosphere, or we would not have a habitable planet, the heat
retention ability of additional anthropogenic gases, I believe,
is modest.
I certainly do not believe in predictive modeling. And
anyone who has looked at their 401(k) lately should take
predictive models with a huge grain of salt.
That said, I do believe climate science has taught us
something very important, which is we have learned the earth
climate system is not the plastic thing we had originally
thought it was. It is prone to sharp shifts in temperature that
can last between years to decades. So we should be changing the
way we do things with regard to responding to our climate.
How best can we ensure resilience? First, I believe we
should shift our focus for mitigation of greenhouse gas
emissions. Toward that adaptation agenda, we don't at present
have the technologies needed to significantly curb greenhouse
gas emissions without causing major economic disruption and
without preventing the developing countries from developing,
lifting their billions out of poverty and squalor. Even if we
were to shut the United States and the EU off, the emissions
from China and India would undo any environmental benefit in a
matter of years. All that jacking up energy prices will do is
deprive us of economic productivity, which is the ultimate
wellspring of our resilience and well-being.
Second, I believe we should stop making things worse. That
is, we should remove the misguided incentives that have people
living in climatically fragile areas, such as the water's edge,
drought-prone locations, flood-prone locations and so on.
Currently our Federal and State governments exacerbate this
risk-taking by acting as the insurer of last resort. When
people who live at the water's edge or in a flood plain are hit
by storms and floods, governments intervene not only to rescue
them but also to allow them to build right back where they
were, so that they can be rescued again. We are doing this in
New Orleans, and we will probably do this in California,
putting people right back in the area they were burned out of
this year.
As Charles Perrow observes in his book ``Our Next
Catastrophe,'' State-mandated pools have been established to
serve as the market of last resort for those unable to get
insurance, but the premiums are low, and thus, those have the
perverse effect of subsidizing people who choose to live in
risky areas, imposing excessive costs on people living
elsewhere. Programs that subsidize climatic risk-taking should
be phased out as quickly as possible in favor of fully priced
insurance regimes.
Rebuilding after disasters in climatically fragile areas
should be discouraged. Eliminating risk subsidies would show
people some of the true cost of living in climatically risky
areas and would, over time, lead them to move to climatically
safer places where they can afford to insure their property and
safety.
Third, we must look to our infrastructure. Another
government action that leaves people to live in harm's way is
the failure to build and price infrastructure so that it is
sustainable and resilient to change. Governments build highways
but generally without pricing mechanisms, thus no revenue
stream is created to allow for the highway to be elevated or
levies built if local flooding becomes a problem. There is also
no price signal related to the users of the highway that
reflect the climatic risk that their transportation choices
face.
The same is true of freshwater infrastructure, wastewater
infrastructure, electricity and other infrastructure. Politicians enjoy cutting ribbons on new free
infrastructure. They are less prone toward having the cost
of that infrastructure show up in terms of tolls or
user fees. Establishing market pricing of infrastructure
would quickly steer people away from fragile areas, dramatically
reducing the cost of dealing with climate variability.
For example, consider our electricity supply, as long as
governments distort the prices consumers pay for energy with
subsidies, fuel mandates, renewable power mandates and the
like, electricity markets cannot effectively adapt to change in
climate conditions. If the markets were deregulated and the
full cost passed along, price signals would be created for
electricity providers to expand or reduce capacity in areas
prone to heat waves or cold snaps and would also encourage
consumers to adopt more efficient ways of using electricity.
Finally, I would suggest we trust in resilience but tie up
our camel. In the event that climate change does tend toward
higher estimates put out by the United Nations and other
groups, it is reasonable to consider insurance options that
might help deal with such changes, including government R`D
into geoengineering research and the removal of greenhouse
gases directly from the atmosphere. Climate variability poses a
risk to our population, and we should take steps to face that.
Thank you for allowing me to speak. I look forward to your
questions.
[The Chairman] If we ever need a speed reader, we are
bringing you back. You got a 7-minute statement in 5 minutes.
[Mr. Green] When you have one of those 800-page bills.
[The Chairman] 1,500 pages, Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Hall.
[Mr. Hall] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you to all of our witnesses.
I gather there is some rough consensus that there needs to
be a Federal strategy for dealing with the effects of climate
change. And several of you have talked about the need for
strategy to coordinate Federal efforts with government-wide
strategic planning or perhaps a working group akin to or under
the auspices of the Council on Environmental Quality.
In my relatively brief time here in Congress, I have seen
problems that have been studied to death or seem to have been,
shelves and shelves of reports from commissions and Blue Ribbon
Panels, studies upon studies, studies of studies, that are
gathering dust in offices around the Capitol with no
enforcement mechanisms in place. Working groups rarely have a
parent agency that is going to enforce implementation once the
consensus, assuming that consensus, is reached.
So my first question is, to each of you, is, what are your
recommendations for making sure that whatever strategy is
developed at the Federal level to coordinate these resources
and efforts of the Federal Government will be effectively
implemented and enforced, and what can we in Congress do to
assist in that effort?
[Mr. Stephenson] I will start out. We think that is part of
the reason that there needs to be an overarching strategy to
decide where best to put that. We agree that it may not work
within an existing agency. Many agencies can fulfill viable
functions as part of that overarching strategy. However, we
haven't looked at the need, for example, for an independent
climate program officer or an independent agency or anything
like that. But I agree with your concern that if there isn't a
central authority to guide this and to enforce this, it may not
work.
[Mr. Seidel] If I may just add to that, and I think I have
had the misfortune of writing one or two of those reports that
sat on a shelf. What we have seen in the case studies that we
looked at was executive leadership is really critical. So when
you have Governor Schwarzenegger, when you have Mayor
Bloomberg, when you have Governor O'Malley saying through
executive order this will be done and really charging the
political leadership of those organizations to carry forward,
it has gone a long way to ensuring follow-up action. But I
wouldn't stop there. And that is in part why we also recommend
changes to regulations requiring adaptation be taken into
consideration in all major Federal actions through the NEPA EIS
process.
[Mr. Hall] I notice in Mr. Schwaab's testimony that Maryland
has already lost a number of islands in the Chesapeake that
used to be islands and now are under water. We have seen
changes in the acidification of the ocean due to absorption of
carbon dioxide and so on.
I am just curious, Dr. Green, whether you can tell me of
any market forces so far that you are aware of that have come
into play to stop those kinds of things from happening.
[Mr. Green] Well, thank you very much.
I agree the acidification of the ocean is a potentially
troubling side-effect of greenhouse gas emissions. It remains
to be seen exactly how troubling.
In the past periods, when shell animals actually ruled the
oceans, CO2 levels were considerably higher than
they are today. So the idea that we will not have shell areas
because CO2 levels increase the acidification of the
ocean has yet to be demonstrated.
Will market mechanisms fix that, the acidification question? Probably not. The localization or
the adjacency to water areas, yes. You could move people away
from areas that are very highly prone to flooding. As my hydrology
teacher used to tell us, you know why they call them flood
plains, don't you? Because they flood, and so people should
not be living in them. And to the extent that we subsidize
their living there, we should cease doing so.
[Mr. Hall] I am in agreement.
The question is how to get from here to there. For
instance, people living on the barrier islands anywhere along
the East Coast or the Gulf Coast.
But to change the subject slightly, in the Hudson River,
the salt wedge at high tide is drawn up to just south of the
Chelsea Pumping Station, which is just south of Poughkeepsie.
That is the backup water intake for New York City's drinking
water in case the reservoirs fail or are sabotaged or in case
the aqueduct fails. There is already concern that sea-level
rise is projected, even just from the greenhouse gases that
have already been emitted, may be sufficient to push that salt
wedge up high enough to require desalinization of the water
supply to New York City if they need to rely on the Chelsea
Pumping Station.
That is another question where, you know, I have yet to see
a market force or hear one described that would either prevent
that from happening by restraining the emissions that seem to
be causing it, according to many scientists, or that would
solve the problem. I think it is going to take, in my opinion,
a governmental action or actions either to mitigate or to try
to restrain the scenario. And with that question, I will yield
back.
[The Chairman] A brief answer.
[Mr. Hall] It could be a comment.
[Mr. Seidel] It may be a comment, but if I may respond. Just
classic markets work when all the cost and benefits are taken
into consideration. When there are externalities, when external
costs are not taken into consideration, markets don't work. And
that is when government needs to step in and make those markets
work more effectively. I think that is the classic case that
you are describing.
[The Chairman] Mr. Green.
[Mr. Green] Yes, in fact, I agree with my colleague here.
The right thing to do if you have an externality is to
internalize the externality. There are indeed economic
approaches that would solve the problem, such as instead of
relying only on that water as your back-up, there could be
other back-up systems established. Through the full cost
pricing of water, people could use much less water, putting
less strain on your existing water infrastructure. There are
any number of things you could do to make your water system
more resilient to change.
If I believed we could actually take control of the global
climate and push sea levels at whichever way we directed
without going economically into complete disruption, I wouldn't
have a problem with it. But I don't believe we have the
technology to take over control of the global climate, and
therefore, we have to adapt.
[The Chairman] The gentleman's time is expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.
[Mr. Sensenbrenner] Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I think we all know that the computerized projections on
what is going to happen to climate can result in widely varying
results 10, 15, 20, 50 years out if there is almost an
infinitesimal change in the data which is put into the
computer.
Now, since 2000, according to Dr. Green's paper, which I
believe to be scientifically valid, it has determined that the
rate of our planet's warming has flattened out and begun to
decline. And as a result, what has been talked about at the
time of Kyoto before this flattening out of the temperatures
and the slight declining of the temperatures will probably be
significantly different by 2020, 2030 and definitely by 2050.
When we are talking about resiliency and adaptation, if the
premises upon which decisions are to be made are off and will
result in the wide variation what the projections will be, how
do we do it? I am going to start with you, Mr. Seidel.
[Mr. Seidel] Thank you, Mr. Sensenbrenner.
Basically we are seeing this experiment unfold before our
very eyes. We have seen temperatures rise. We have seen sea-
level rise. We have seen the loss of islands in Maryland so we
are not just basing this on projections of computer models.
The second point you raise is about the recent changes, the
recent sort of flattening out of the temperature record since
the year 2000. And every analysis I have seen expects that
there will be--there is still natural variability in the
climate system, there will be years that are warmer; there will
be years that are colder. And the last couple of years have
been relatively warm compared to the record. In fact, last year
was the coldest year of this century, but the tenth warmest
year I believe in the 150-year record. This decade, which you
are referring to as climate has stabilized, will still be the
warmest decade on the 150-year record.
[Mr. Sensenbrenner] Well, using the language of the left, I
think, Mr. Seidel, that answer makes you a denier. Because if
you look at the trend, there has been an at least flattening
out of the warming trend or maybe a slight cooling trend since
the year 2000. And I guess what I am saying is that the
inconvenient truth of 2 years ago might not be either
inconvenient or truthful today because of these types of
changes.
Now, what we are talking about here is an adaptation policy
that is supposed to last for a while. And there will be certain
economic and financial commitments that will have to be made in
order to implement the adaptation policy. Given the fact that
the projections of a decade ago that the temperatures will
continue to rise and maybe even increase, how as policymakers
are we to be able to decide in a manner that we won't be
embarrassed later on by saying we were wrong in what the
prescription was to deal with this issue?
[Mr. Seidel] In terms of adaptation itself, I think it is
critical that the types of changes that we can make to our
economic systems that are dependent on climate will create
benefits. And those benefits are true whether there is rapid
climate change, as the vast majority of scientists predict, or
because of the climate variability, as my colleague here would
suggest.
[Mr. Sensenbrenner] With all due respect, what I am saying
is that you all are saying we ought to adapt, but you, Mr.
Seidel, aren't adapting to new figures.
I yield back the balance of my time.
[The Chairman] The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms.
Speier.
[Ms. Speier] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Regardless of whether we believe climate change is real or
not, it appears that the panelists agree that adaptation is a
key component. So let's start there.
Director Stephenson, in your GAO report, your third point
was that basically, of the respondents, 71 percent of them
believed it was the national role to come up with adaptation
policies. Could you explore that with us a little bit more?
What are the States looking for? What are the counties and
cities looking for? What kind of direction are they expecting
to come from the Federal Government?
[Mr. Stephenson] I think the biggest single need is probably
localized information. Everybody has read the IPCC and what
they think is going to happen in general as a result of climate
change. But there needs to be a body of research and scientists
that can help people translate those into what it means to my
local community. And irregardless if you believe whether sea
level is going to rise 2 feet or 8 feet, it is not an excuse
for not planning an adaptation policy.
For example, one of the case studies we looked at in King
County, Washington, they are looking at the effects on our
wastewater facility that is close to the Puget Sound. If they
ignored the fact that sea level may rise 2 feet and inundate
some of the pumps associated with that wastewater facility,
they would be negligent.
And planning is not going to be static either. You have
to--the adaptation plan is going to be a moving target as the
science gets better and better. It is just like anything else.
So I think the localized information will be the starting
point for local communities beginning to plan an adaptation
program but has to be anchored in some sort of statistics on
what will happen with the rivers and the oceans and et cetera.
[Ms. Speier] So knowing how strapped localities are right
now, are you suggesting that the Federal Government should
offer grants to localities to do this evaluation?
[Mr. Stephenson] We haven't looked at that specifically, but
that is always a good incentive. And I believe, in the current
House bill, that is proposed, to give States adaptation money.
Nobody knows how much revenue the sale of carbon is going to
produce, but that would be a good use of the money certainly.
[Ms. Speier] Does anyone else have comments on that?
In California, and particularly in my district, there are
some alarming statistics already and data that suggest San
Francisco International Airport would be flooded, many of my
communities would have tens of thousands of people that would
be no longer--would be homeless, in effect.
I, frankly, don't think insurance is the answer, Mr.
Green--Dr. Green, excuse me, because I have seen all too well
in California in terms of earthquake insurance that, at a
point, the insurers no longer have enough money to respond to
claims, and the State, in the case of North Ridge, was left
holding the bag.
So I guess my question to all of you, and Dr. Green, you
could comment as well, is--I am not a fan of more studies as my
colleague from New York has already stated. One of the things
in California they are looking at is something called coastal
armor, which I presume is levies. Why not take that kind of
attack where you don't have to study anymore, you can just--on
the coastal regions in this country--just incentivize
localities to build up these levies?
[Mr. Green] May I comment?
I also grew up in Los Angeles, by the way. I had the
privilege of being there for the Elmore quake and the
Northridge quake, so I understand the fragility of that
particular part of the world.
With regard to whether insurance works, I mean, if you
reach a point where you have people living in an area that
cannot be privately insured, that is a de facto problem by
itself. I mean, that shows you that people are not willing to
pay the full cost of living in the area, based on its fragility
or its particular tendencies toward disruption.
But I agree with you, there is no reason why, and I
mentioned this in my paper, there is no reason why you can't
install coastal armor, why you can't build sea walls as well.
My suggestion though is rather than make the mistakes of the
past by having the State governments build them, those should
be done in public-private partnerships and based on the utility
where people pay a certain share of the protective aspect of
that levy.
And again, the price signal will determine whether or not
people are really willing to live there and how they want to
protect themselves or if they need to move inland a bit. And we
are talking--let's not forget, sea level is not simply going to
go up 2 feet tomorrow. We are talking over 100 years, assuming
it continues to rise at the rate it has since the last Ice Age.
That is a lot of time for people to be able to creep back and
adapt and build. We built systems much more quickly than that.
We built the entire National Highway System in only 50 years.
So there is time to adapt, and it is worth the effort of
thinking through how to do it sustainably.
Thank you.
[Ms. Speier] I see my time has expired, Mr. Chairman.
I yield back.
[The Chairman] The gentlelady's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon, Mr.
Blumenauer.
[Mr. Blumenauer] Thank you.
I cringe a little bit thinking about armoring the sea
coast. I mean, you have a third of your--of coastal areas in
southern California already armored. And we are watching what
happens. As we deflect tidal action, we make it possible--
impossible to renourish beaches. We accelerate erosion
elsewhere. And ultimately, we are ending up--I mean, it is a
finger in the ***.
So I know that there are some communities that do this
repeatedly with artificial beach construction. But it brings me
to an area where I actually agree with Dr. Green about the
Federal Government subsidizing people living in places where
nature indicates that it is really not a good idea.
I have been extraordinarily frustrated having spent 7 years
working on flood insurance reform, watching how hard it is to
make that happen.
Our colleague, the ranking minority member, Mr.
Sensenbrenner, was concerned about our not being embarrassed in
the future. Well, putting aside for a moment the scientific
consensus about what is likely to be happening over 20 and 40
and 60 years, I think the likelihood of embarrassment is much
greater if we don't act than if we do.
But it seems to me, for reasons that the panel has been
touching on, this is something we should be doing even if we
didn't believe that climate change was upon us, that sea levels
were rising, that we were going to have more extreme weather
events.
We have already seen an increase in wildfires, in flooding,
in storm events, insurance losses. And it would seem to me that
we ought to listen to you and make our Federal policies
consistent with strengthening these partnerships. Flood
insurance reform, I think, would be one. The Coastal Barriers
Protection Act, CBPA, resources, since I have been here, people
come in and they try and nibble away at it because they want
another area to be added. And there was a mapping error; there
was new evidence. Basically, this was one of the most profound
environmental pieces of legislation of the Reagan
administration and something that we ought all to get behind
and expand rather than minimize.
I would just make an observation about market-driven solutions that Dr. Green is interested in,
which I am very interested in pursuing. But I think, at core,
our climate change legislation that a number of our colleagues
here have been working on so heavily is a market-based
solution. Cap-and- trade injects an opportunity to create a market
for carbon pollution and be able to make adjustments
in a variety of markets at home and around the world. I am
particularly interested, though, in some specific areas
where we might be able to do a better job.
Mr. Schwaab, you talked about what Maryland has done to try
and protect development in sensitive areas. I come from a State
that has a comprehensive plan that actually mandates that they
be--that we are sensitive to natural hazards. And as our
statewide land-use planning has taken effect over the course of
the last 20 years, we are actually seeing a reduction in flood
damage, for instance, at a time when we are seeing more of it
nationally. Do you have a sense of what Federal policies we
ought to be implementing that could strengthen Maryland's
ability and other States to be able to protect these vulnerable
places?
[Mr. Schwaab] Thank you.
Let me just first say, generally, I think there are two
levels of--two ways that we need to coordinate. One is better
horizontally across the agencies. An example of that that I
think has been very successful recently is in President Obama's
executive order relating to coordination amongst Federal
agencies in implementing the Chesapeake Restoration Program.
And we have seen tremendous progress in a very short time as a
result of that executive leadership and mandating horizontal
coordination across the Federal agencies.
The other way is what I would term perhaps more vertically
oriented, and that is where there would be coordination,
recognition, and implementation of adaptation perspectives in
the implementation of programs that the States enact in
partnership with the Federal Government. And that ranges from--
you know, that runs the gamut from highway planning and
resource deployment to things like wildlife habitat action
planning and forest conservation. And there are a number of
sort of vertical opportunities where coordination down from the
Federal agency with a specific implementation responsibility in
cooperation with the State can do a better job.
I think both of those generally have a lot to offer. There
are some specific recommendations that are included in my
testimony. I will give--the Coastal Zone Program has been an
incredibly important force for us in allowing us to study and
implement some of these adaptation strategies. And
reauthorization of the Coastal Zone Act with a more explicit
climate adaptation responsibility and role is something in
particular that we highlighted in our testimony.
[The Chairman] The gentleman's time is expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr.
Cleaver.
[Mr. Cleaver] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here.
Editorially, in my real life, I am a Methodist minister,
and one of the least joyful parts of what I do is sitting by
beds as people are dying. And one of the strangest things is
that, in all the years I have been doing it, 30 years, I have
never heard anyone say to me as they are moving toward sunset,
you know, I really regret having taken such good care of my
body. I have never heard anybody say, you know, I am
embarrassed because I didn't smoke and I didn't get cancer; it
is just so embarrassing, I don't know what to do. Maybe in the
future, somebody will do it, but so far, I have never heard it.
The testimony of Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Schwaab, if I
understand it correctly, both of you are I think suggesting
that we need this national strategy adaptation, whereas it
seems, Mr. Seidel, that you are saying, you are suggesting that
we ought to begin in the departments and develop the strategy.
So there is--I think there is a difference here.
I am on the housing committee. HUD, for example, is
essentially doing that. But the impact won't be as great
because there are instances where HUD, the activities of the
Department of HUD interact with the Department--you know HHS or
the Department of Justice. I am trying to reconcile the
differences. Can you help me please?
[Mr. Seidel] I think it is a question of timing and staging.
I think we all agree there needs to be a Federal-wide program
and strategy. But we thought, based on our discussions with
experts and what we have seen done in the past, that the
agencies need to take it on first. And I would say the
Department of the Interior is a great example of moving forward
and looking through each of their program areas and coming up
with what needs to be done to deal with the types of changes
that have been discussed this morning. Then that, we believe,
feeds into a national strategy. It is sort of the classic
bottom-up/top-down type of, but in the end, you sort of want to
end up in the same place.
[Mr. Stephenson] If I can comment. I think what we have seen
is there has been a lot of activity at the individual agency
level with climate change adaptation planning. In our report we
are going to appendicize a summary of all the 15 or so agencies
that have undertaken this. But what we are seeing and what we
mean by ad hoc is there is no overarching national strategy. As
part of that development of that strategy, we would see what
the government structure would look like to implement that.
Interagency task forces don't often work for the same reasons
you have mentioned. If it is not the Department of Labor's
issue, they don't worry about it. So they are of limited
effectiveness.
So we think that the part that needs to be studied in
developing an overarching strategy is, who is going to do what
assigning roles and responsibilities, certainly to get the
Federal agencies coordinated but also to look downwards at the
State and local governments as well.
[Mr. Cleaver] Mr. Schwaab.
[Mr. Schwaab] Thank you.
We also don't believe it is an either/or circumstance. And
I think Mr. Seidel is exactly right; there are some sequencing
questions at play here. We have already seen some very
important efforts come out of the Federal agencies. The Corps
of Engineers in July of this year issued a report on sea-level
change considerations for civil works projects. We have seen
similar work in the Department of the Interior with the Fish
and Wildlife Service, as was mentioned. Those things have been
very important to us as a State.
Thank you.
[Mr. Cleaver] This may be more philosophical, but in a free
society, do you think people have the right to do bad things to
themselves? Anybody.
[Mr. Green] May I? To themselves?
[Mr. Cleaver] Yes.
[Mr. Green] Generally speaking, yes. As long as they are not
exporting the cost of their action to other people, I believe
they have the right to do things that others may consider a bad
tradeoff. I have heard people express regrets for not having
traveled more as they get later in their life, or not having
experienced things such as skydiving and taking risks. So I do
believe that that is the case.
I would also just like to contribute that what hasn't been
mentioned here is the role that the military can play in
looking at adaptation responses. And I know they are very
interested in this. I have spoken at a military forum before
where they need to plan for the adaptation of their bases. They
need to plan for the adaptation of their structures, and they
need to do that in conjunction with the other agencies, as well
as the discussion of establishment of the north-south
wilderness corridors and changing the way that we establish
protective areas in the United States.
Right now we do it by drawing circles on a map and putting
someone's name on there as a park, which is not how the animals
are going to need to respond if the climate changes and they
need to move north and south. So those are the kind of changes
that agencies can look at right away, agencies of the Federal
Government can look at right away to increase our adaptivity,
both ours and the ecosystems adapting to this.
[The Chairman] The gentleman from Washington State, Mr.
Inslee.
[Mr. Inslee] I want to express a little concern about the
subject we are talking about, which is how we respond to this
problem. And I have a little bit of concern that talking about
the problem of climate change and ocean acidification in these
terms could somehow siphon off energy for trying to stop the
disease in the first place.
You see a little bit tone of that in this book Freakonomics
that came out the other day, Freakonomics 2. And the author
sort of said, well, you know, we don't have to stop
CO2 going into the atmosphere; we will just mitigate
it somehow by putting a shield of sulfur dioxide. Now, in the
book, I am told they have grievously misstated the scientists'
positions, who now are absolutely in open rebellion against the
two authors, who think they were grievously quoted wrong. But
it shows this kind of syphoning off of energy if we start
saying, we will just solve the problem by putting a big wall
around us, you know, we will just isolate ourself from this
problem, and that is how we will deal with it rather than
really putting our energies into stopping CO2
pollution.
Should that be a concern at all, and if so, how do we make
sure that while we are thinking about how to prevent or respond
to the change that is already baked into the system, doesn't
syphon off any of our energy, political or financial, to stop
CO2 pollution?
[Mr. Stephenson] From our perspective, all aspects are
important. Emission reduction is important. We can't just
expect to work our way out of this problem with just looking at
an adaptation alone or emission reduction alone. Energy
efficiency is a huge component as is renewables. The whole
arsenal of things that we need to do to address this problem
are important.
[Mr. Seidel] Congressman Inslee, my feeling is that the
people who are on the ground experiencing the climate change
that we are already having, the land managers, the coastal zone
planners, they are the group that know what is happening, know
the dangers that climate change is creating. And we need to
enlist their support in efforts to mitigate and that mitigation
is our first and best line of defense. But they can become
allies in this effort, and it is not an either/or situation.
[Mr. Green] I believe that we have in fact--this attitude
that you expressed has in fact kept adaptation off of the
agenda for about 10 years or more since Kyoto to the detriment
of these places that have experienced harms from climate
variability. Having had a heart attack, I can tell you that we
can't actually cure them. They don't know the causes of all of
them. Even if you follow their advice, you still have them and
you do treat the symptoms. And if you don't treat the symptoms,
they get progressively worse. So you can't simply say, well, we
are not going to treat your symptoms until we know every cause
of coronary artery disease; you treat the symptoms while you
look.
[Mr. Inslee] Well, we are doing that in my neck of the
woods. King County, as you may have read in the GAO reports,
have done some great work trying to respond to this problem.
But I have--in talking to Federal agencies, I have been
impressed by the lack of sort of institutional structure to
make sure we do plan for the climate change that is already
baked into the system.
I was talking to someone in the Army Corps of Engineers
whose responsibility is flood control. And I asked him, do you
have a specific change in hydrological cycles that you build in
your planning process? And the answer was uncertain at best.
What should we do to try to make sure Federal agencies make
this part of their regular planning process that hasn't been
done?
[Mr. Seidel] We certainly think that it needs to be
incorporated. And the first step is really for agencies to go
back in and analyze what programs and activities they are
responsible for where climate needs to be factored in and
hasn't been up until now.
[Mr. Inslee] So, institutionally, how do we do that? I mean,
do we have a climate change box they have got to check on every
contract, that they have looked at those numbers? I mean, how
do we institutionally do it? I am particularly thinking of the
Corps at the moment I guess.
[Mr. Seidel] I think the executive order that was recently
issued by the Secretary of the Department of the Interior
mandates this requirement throughout Interior. And I think that
is an important first step, but clearly, it needs to be
followed up on, and it needs to be done, not just in Interior
but in Department of Defense, as you suggested, and across many
other agencies where climate impacts are going to be critical
to the well being of their programs and activities.
[Mr. Inslee] Thank you.
[The Chairman] The gentleman's time has expired.
And by the way, if members want to ask additional questions, they can do so.
What I have done, and perhaps members--I wish that
Congressman Cleaver was here because he actually gave me a tour
of the *** Baseball Hall of Fame that he actually helped to
establish out in Kansas City. So what I decided to do is just
to deal with this question.
You already responded to it, Mr. Seidel.
It is the question of where are we in the history of
temperatures in terms of the planet and in terms of the United
States. So I don't know if you can see this, but I have got a--
and I probably should put this in higher--in a larger form. But
this is a picture of the world, and it is temperature
differences from the average 1880 to 2008. And you can see that
the temperature just continues to rise as industrialization
really starts to hit in 1970, 1992, 2008.
But for about a 10-year period, as you are saying, there is
a new normal. And the new normal is way up here. And you are
right, it hasn't really spiked higher than the new normal, but
it is very, very, very high. And so what I did was I asked them
to compare that to the number of 40 home-run hitters per season
in the Major League Baseball. And as you can see, it tracks
very, very closely to the temperature for the planet, except
you get, as you do with a dramatic increase in CO2
in the atmosphere, as soon as steroids starts getting injected
into the system the number of home-run hitters of 40 or more
spikes dramatically beginning in about 1996, 1997 until testing
for steroids begins about 3 years ago. And then there is a
dramatic decline in the number of 40 home-run hitters. Now we
have yet to have, as we know, an interjection of public policy
to deal with CO2 in the atmosphere. So the average
temperature kind of mirrors the height of 40 home-run hitters
did before we had a new regime put in to test for artificial
substances being put kind of an anthropogenic impact on the
number of 40 home-run hitters. But once it is taken out of the
system, it is amazing how it returned to the norm that existed
before steroids were introduced.
So I just believe that this artificial substance correlation is almost undeniable. And unless
you want to believe, which I think Major League Baseball
did, that when people started hitting 72 and 73 home runs,
that that was the new normal, and then we adjust to the new
normal in the same way that people want to adjust to the new
normal for temperatures.
Well, it hasn't gone any higher. That is okay. It has
leveled off, and so why don't we just live with that? Kind of
like saying to a kid, well, you have had 102 degree temperature
for the last 10 days; that is the new normal. Don't worry about
98.6, Mrs. O'Brien, you know, your boy will be okay; that is
the new normal for Joey.
Well, it is hard for parents or baseball fans or fans of
the planet to kind of get used to having dramatic changes that
are recurring that you are being told by doctors of the planet
or of individuals or of baseball that there is nothing to worry
about because that is the new normal. But then you begin to see
changes in the physiology of baseball players. And originally--
and there can be contrary theories, too. You can say, well, you
know, maybe the bats are better. Maybe the ball parks are
smaller. Maybe the baseball players are doing more
weightlifting than they used to do. And you keep trying to find
other reasons. But yet that new normal is so much higher than
Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron or Willie Mays or Ted Williams that you
kind of wonder, can they be that much better? Can it just be
kind of, you know, all these other circumstances and not the
artificial substances going in?
So it is kind of the rise of science here as used by man,
mankind, to affect important systems. So I just thought I would
throw that in and hope that maybe we could--you know, Major
League Baseball at its highest level was kind of in denial
because they really loved all the fans that were coming into
the ballpark to see these home runs, you know. It was almost
like using a baseball bat to hit a golf ball, it went so far.
But it was normal, you know, all of a sudden. And then it
stopped being normal again, and we went back down to the
average that existed in 1964 and 1953. And that is what
happened this year, you know, the home run leader only has like
39 home runs, 40 home runs. I wonder why? I wonder if the bats
aren't as good or the balls aren't tied together as tight or
the players aren't lifting weights as much. But I think most
baseball fans kind of get what went on.
And that is what the polling kind of says about
CO2. They kind of get it, you know. They know that
there is something going on that is being created by man.
So let me ask you this, Mr. Schwaab, when you were looking
at Maryland in the same way that we look at Massachusetts--and
as you know, the Supreme Court case of Massachusetts v. EPA was
based upon the impact that CO2 had upon our coastline. Why did you look at the coastline?
Do you have a feeling that that is the most serious danger
to the State of Maryland and, as a consequence, perhaps to
Massachusetts as well?
[Mr. Schwaab] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think there were probably two factors at play. One was
that heightened awareness of our threat. And I have spoken
already about some of the evidence of vulnerabilities in
Maryland, obviously, both on the Atlantic Coast as well as both
sides of the Chesapeake Bay. But in addition to that, I think
it is important to note that, while there was a heightened
sense of awareness of that vulnerability, that our positioning
to address this issue first was aided substantially by the
availability of coastal zone, Federal coastal zone management
funding. So, in fact, when Governor O'Malley tasked the climate
commission, we had 10 years worth of data that had been
gathered largely through the support of our Coastal Zone
Program and through Federal funding that came in that way.
By way of contrast, some of the other areas that we have
concern about, that I mentioned that we will be dealing with in
Phase II, impacts on rainfall patterns, agriculture, some of
the forest concerns, were not areas where we had the wealth of
data, so that we were positioned to make immediate changes. So
Phase II is now to spend the time, the energy and the money to
get the data related to some of those other issue areas so that
we can be better positioned to make some, to develop some
action plans.
[The Chairman] Thank you, Mr. Schwaab.
Mr. Stephenson, in Mr. Schwaab's written testimony, he
mentioned that three separate climate change adaptation
strategies in the Chesapeake Bay region in the last year and a
half have been put in place. From your experience with other
complex environmental issues, do you have suggestions for the
coordination efforts across Federal, State and local
governments?
[Mr. Stephenson] Well, specifically, the overarching strategy is the starting point for pulling
all that together. But what we noticed when we did our nationwide
survey is that there is a huge lack of information out there
about what is available. There is a lot of climate change
information, adaptation information, scientific information
about what could happen, but there are no information clearinghouses,
for example, where all that resides. We had trouble
finding people out in the State and local governments that
were even aware of what was possible at adaptation, how to get
started. So there is an information need out there as well.
[The Chairman] How would you address, what recommendations
would you make in terms of balancing the short term versus the
long term in dealing with climate change?
[Mr. Stephenson] Well, there just needs to be an
organizational construct. I mean, there doesn't have to be a
big bureaucracy to address Mr. Hall's concern, on the one hand.
But right now, all the agencies are sort of doing their own
thing. There is not this integration across the government;
there is not good coordination from the Federal to the State
and the local government. And that is the thinking that we
think needs to go into this overarching strategy that hasn't
happened yet.
[The Chairman] Mr. Seidel, it is clear that we need more
resources to support site-specific data so that policymakers
can plan for the impacts of global warming, and we are never
going to get perfect information. How do we optimize our
efforts, absent perfect information, which, of course,
ultimately is unachievable?
[Mr. Seidel] And in fact, decisions now are being made on
the basis of the one thing that we know is not true, and that
is that the climate will not change. So any better information
in terms of the direction the climate will change will improve
those decisions.
I want to come back to just the costs that are involved
here, because the costs of not adapting, the costs of not
making land-use decisions based on a changing climate, the
costs of not designing bridges, intake valves for wastewater
treatment plants or water-quality treatment plants, the cost of
not doing that now is going to come back and really knock our
society for a loop down the road. So that is why it is critical
that this starts sooner rather than later.
[The Chairman] Can you give me your numbers again in terms
of the 10 hottest days in history, 10 hottest years in history
for the planet?
[Mr. Seidel] I don't have those right off the top of my
head, but I will get them and put them on the record.
[The Chairman] But you said something like the last----
[Mr. Seidel] What I said was this last year was the coolest
year of this century but I believe was the 10th warmest year
among the record that dates back to the 1880s.
[The Chairman] And weren't the other nine since 1998?
[Mr. Seidel] I believe that is correct, yes.
[The Chairman] And so you heard my correlation in terms of
years in which baseball players hit more than 40 home runs and
the number of them. Do you think that there is any validity to
the comparison I am making with steroids and CO2.
[Mr. Seidel] I think it is a wonderful analogy. The one
aspect of it that I am concerned about is that when the players
stopped taking steroids, you had an immediate drop-off.
Unfortunately, one of the aspects of our climate system is that
climate will continue to warm even once--if it were possible to
reduce CO2 emissions completely. So, unfortunately, we are committed to the not only increase
we have seen but further increase, and not just for years but
for decades and even centuries.
[The Chairman] That is actually very helpful, so it makes it
even more urgent because the steroids in the planet system
don't wash out.
[Mr. Seidel] They don't wash out, exactly.
[The Chairman] In a 6-month period. It takes a lot longer to
get it out of the system and to begin to return it to some
semblance of normality.
Let me turn again and recognize the gentleman from New
York.
[Mr. Hall] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to ask one more question. First of all, talk
about the new normal, for a second, that you mentioned. Orange
County, one of the five counties I represent, has some
wonderful onion farmers who work the black dirt, as they call
it. And they have been hit with repeated storms that are three
50-year storms in the last 5 years. There have been several
days this year alone when there have been tornadoes in Orange
County, New York and other Hudson Valley counties. The Hudson
valley isn't usually thought of as tornado alley.
Last year, Cedar Rapids, Ohio--the city slogan was ``the
city that never floods''--was under 12 feet of water, I
believe. Three hundred miles of the Mississippi River were
closed to shipping because the water level, the flood level,
was higher than the locks and the mechanism had to be removed
from the locks to keep permanent damage from being done to
them. The boring beetles in the western--the Rockies and
Sierras have been moving forward and drying out the trees by
boring into them. And satellite photographs, aerial
photographs, show brown swaths of forest just waiting for a
lightning strike to set off one of these increasingly common
and disastrous wildfires.
So the question is, as far as this new normal is concerned,
A, how hard are we as a country or as a society among other
societies in the world willing to work to keep it from getting
worse, to keep from the worst-case scenario? And B, how bad is
that, and how hard should we be working to prepare for middle
case or worst case? I don't think we can, that we can achieve
the best-case scenario based on what I have seen so far. I
spent a bunch of time last year at NOAA in Boulder and at the
NREL and NCAR laboratories out there. And the predictions of
NOAA, of the scientists, these aren't political people, they
are scientists out there, show the growing latitudes for grain
and other crops moving north. And I said, well, are we in
danger of becoming a net importer of food rather than a net
exporter of food? And they said, yes, that is possible. And the
problem is that the alluvial plain in Canada doesn't allow for
soil depth to, if it gets--you know, if you push the growing
latitude for corn and soy and other grains, wheat and so on,
far enough north, you run out of top soil to do it on. So more
than or as much as coastal preservation or any of the other
infrastructure and so on adaptations that we might look at, I
am curious, maybe starting with Mr. Stephenson, what you
foresee in terms of what we need to do to preserve our
agricultural productivity and the land and climate necessary to
have it.
[Mr. Stephenson] Well, let me just say, we are not a
scientific organization, but the IPCC certainly is a symbol of
the world's leading scientist in this area. And you are right,
I think sea-level rise is the most talked about and the
probably best understood of climate change impacts. But I don't
think we fully understand the effect on storms, the effect on
migration strategies, droughts. And as all that is crystalized,
I think we will come up with different kinds of adaptation
strategies for those. But I certainly don't have a silver
bullet or a solution as to what we might do about that.
[Mr. Hall] Mr. Seidel, do you have a comment?
[Mr. Seidel] In terms of the range of impacts that we face,
sea-level rise does get a lot of the attention, but it just
really depends on where you are. Someone mentioned earlier
melting of the permafrost in Alaska is critically important and
something that is already being experienced. Droughts
throughout the Southwest, I think, are critically important and
certainly are what these projections would forecast. So it is
really a wide range of issues.
It is possible, though, to begin to plan for these now.
Making more efficient use of water makes sense. It made sense
yesterday. It makes sense tomorrow. It is going to make even
more sense in the future. And we really can't waste any time in
getting better programs in place to begin doing those things.
[Mr. Hall] Dr. Green, you looked like you wanted to comment.
[Mr. Green] Two things. One I wanted to talk about is the
science element. We talked about a new normal. There is no such
thing as a climate normal. We have got a climate that is
billions of years old. It goes up, and it goes down in
temperatures. Climate is, in fact, an average of 30 years of
weather. Each individual dot, we would call a climate block.
When you talk about climate, you are talking about 30 years of
average weather.
So 10 years, the fact that it has leveled off I don't
construe to mean things are changing direction. However, the
models at a certain point don't allow for that to continue, and
so it does cast doubt on the forecasting ability.
But with regard to your specific question, again, water
subsidies and farm subsidies, obstacles to the deployment and
development of genetically modified crops, these are all things
that the Federal Government can affect that can make our
agricultural base more resilient to climate variability,
whether it is natural or anthropogenic. Thank you.
[Mr. Hall] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The Chairman] Thank you so much.
The importance of this hearing cannot be overstated, and we
thank you so much for being here. There is an old saying:
Sometimes you can be right but too soon. A lot of people just
don't want to deal with the facts yet. And it can happen in a
lot of things, including if a player on your team happens to
jump from a 20 home run average to 50 all of a sudden, you
don't want to ask too many questions. So it is kind of the same
thing is true here.
We have this conference that is going to occur in Copenhagen in December. The world has basically
accepted the science. The National Academy of Sciences
of every country in the world has signed off on the science. The
world is waiting for the United States to be the leader and
not the lagger. The consequences are obviously greater in the
short run for developing countries around the world in terms
of the impact of global warming. But inevitably, inextricably,
it will hit us as well.
And the Chesapeake Bay is a good example of warning to us
that we are not immune. And adaptation will be very costly and,
in some instances, very difficult to implement, but
nonetheless, we have to start thinking about it. Otherwise, we
will just be engaging in the kind of denial that ultimately
turns the problem into something much worse. A stitch in time
saves nine, so I think it is important for us to have this
hearing because the GAO report, and we thank you so much, Mr.
Stephenson, for it, will be a working document for the Select
Committee on Global Warming as we make our recommendations to
the Speaker and to the administration and to the American
people.
And all of the rest of your testimony is very helpful to
us, including yours, Mr. Green.
So why don't we give everybody a 1-minute summary,
opportunity to make a 1-minute summary to us of what it is that
you want us to keep in our minds six weeks out from Copenhagen
as the world gathers and what the implications are of the GAO
report and the testimony that we heard today? So we will give
each one of you 1 minute to make your summary.
We will begin with you, Mr. Green, which under the Green
formula actually turns out to be 2 minutes worth of written
testimony delivered in 1 minute.
[Mr. Green] Thank you. I will try not to rush through this.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think the key point I would raise for this is that, first
of all, the technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in
the near term are very, very expensive and very limited.
Unilateral action by the United States would lead to serious
economic disruption.
Nonetheless, the fact that we know the climate is a
variable system leads us--should lead us to take actions to
make ourselves more resilient to the face of change, whether
that change is natural or anthropogenic.
Therefore, I would suggest then refocusing our attention on
finding ways to make ourselves more resilient at the Federal
and State level. And I think a great deal of that involves
removing incentives we have currently in place that lead people
to live in harm's way in climatically fragile areas, in areas
prone to drought, flood, fire, sea-level rise and salt-water
intrusion. And if we address those things first, we would find
the cost of adapting down the road to be considerably less than
if we don't adapt--than if we don't address those things right
up front.
Thank you.
[The Chairman] Thank you, Dr. Green.
Mr. Seidel.
[Mr. Seidel] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I do hope you are
going to enter your graphs into the official record.
[The Chairman] It will be entered. It has to be perfected.
This won't come out of your time. I am still working on
completing the analogy. And I like the fact that I came up with
a temperature for children analogy as well in terms of what is
normal that the family has to adjust to. It is just too
difficult for a doctor to figure out what is causing it, so we
will just accept a new normal. So I am working on all of these
analogies to deal with the preposterousness of saying that 10
of the warmest years in history have occurred since 1998, but
that is the new normal, and so just get used to it, and it
won't go any higher than that ever again in the future. It just
doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.
So your 1 minute begins now.
[Mr. Seidel] Thank you.
I think it is critical to look at adaptation policy as good
economic policy and that these are costs that society is going
to incur down the road. We heard about the San Francisco
airport, the railroad lines in your district.
I mean, if we don't begin adjusting our thinking, adjusting
the way we plan, taking the types of actions that Maryland has
begun to take, the economic costs are going to be so severe
down the road that we will rue the day that we did not start
adapting sooner.
Thank you, sir.
[The Chairman] Thank you, sir.
Mr. Schwaab.
[Mr. Schwaab] Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just first emphasize some discussion about the
concept of adaptation versus mitigation. While we are focused
here today on adaptation, the concept of mitigation has also
been prominent in Maryland. I wanted to emphasize that as sort
of a two-pronged approach.
The second thing that I wanted to emphasize is, again, the
need for national coordination. And very specifically, that
includes both Federal coordination among the agencies as well
as leadership at the Federal level, but coordination between
the Federal agencies and the State and local governments. So
when we speak of national coordination, we speak implicitly
about inclusion of the States and the local governments
prominently in that discussion.
We think it is absolutely imperative that government lead
by example. We are doing that in Maryland. We see some of the
Federal agencies doing that already, and we just need to build
on that and get more strategic from a broader perspective.
[The Chairman] Thank you, Mr. Schwaab.
And Mr. Stephenson.
[Mr. Stephenson] Mr. Chairman, I think that our biggest
contribution in our report is the survey that we did of State
and local officials. Those are the folks that are out there on
the front lines of trying to do adaptation planning. And so I
would just reiterate what they pointed out to us, that the need
for training and education to increase awareness, they need
more site-specific information. They need to know where to go
to get that information, and they believe in clarifying roles
and responsibilities.
We think that strategic planning is needed to better
integrate the Federal response to adaptation, and that is why
we are recommending this need for a national framework or
strategy in order to do that. We think CEQ and OSTP, who are
leading those efforts right now, are off to a good start, and
we will be watching anxiously to see how they proceed towards
the development of that national strategy.
Thanks.
[The Chairman] Thank you, sir.
And what we would like, if it would be possible, is for our
staff to work with you in terms of what a national framework
should look like so that we can receive your expert advice on
what makes the most sense for doing that. And we would
appreciate that continued cooperation with us moving forward.
[Mr. Stephenson] I would be happy to do that.
[The Chairman] Thank you. And we thank each of our witnesses
for your testimony today. And with that, unless there are any
questions, this hearing is adjourned.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:12 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]