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Good afternoon. I want to thank Center Director and former President of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo and the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization for hosting this conference and inviting me to join you.
It’s a pleasure to have this chance to speak – right here at my alma mater and in my hometown – with this distinguished group of scientists, scholars and researchers from around the world about our shared challenge – global warming.
I’d like to welcome you all with the words of my fellow Connecticut Yankee, Mark Twain, who once said: “The domain of science is a republic. And all its citizens are brothers and equals.”
Of course, the Republic of Science – like any good republic – can be a cluttered, clattering place as ideas and counter ideas are debated hotly and openly among those equals.
But in science, ideas are accepted, discarded or improved upon based upon evidence, not oratory.
This process – this scientific method – has always tended to lead us toward the truth and a better understanding of our world – our universe – and our place in it. It has also, of course, protected us from danger and enabled us to realize extraordinary progress.
The theory of global warming is one of these ideas and has been debated since it was first proposed around the beginning of the 20th Century. But after a century of debate, the evidence is in. Global warming is real. And it is significantly manmade.
That makes the topic of this conference – “Looking Beyond Kyoto” – all the more compelling because the industrialized and newly industrialized nations together face a staggering challenge: To deal with global warming we must remake global energy policy.
It’s a challenge that should excite the mind of everyone in this room and the people of all the nations you represent because it can engage the better angels of our nature with this chance to build a better, safer world.
I see within our reach a world where the clear skylines of the world’s great cities are lit with clean power as automobiles pass in the streets below leaving little or no emissions behind.
We can do it. In fact, must do it.
The phrases “global warming” and “climate change” are almost too tame for the challenge that actually confronts us.
Yes, global warming is an environmental problem. But at its core it is also an unprecedented opportunity to build a framework for mutual security among the world’s nations as well.
Left unchecked, our common energy demands already have us on a collision course for scarce energy sources that could lead to greater diplomatic and military tensions around the world – including wars – as the oil dependent nations compete for secure energy supplies from the oil exporting nations.
World oil demand is now about 83 million barrels a day – and growing – with the United States using about 20 million of those now – and growing.
Couple that competition with the predicted environmental consequences of unchecked global warming, and we could also find the world’s nations in competition for food, fresh water, medicine and other basic necessities of life on earth.
Wars have begun over such competition as well.
And nature doesn’t care about the competition among nations. When it comes to the environment – and the wise use of energy – the Earth has a way of showing us our folly not in enigmatic whispers but in hard declarations that come with punishing consequences and care nothing for international borders.
Civilizations that ignored nature’s warning in the past have vanished. And we put ourselves in peril if we ignore the signs we see today.
Recently released climate data show that 2005 is on track to be the hottest year on record, with a companion record shrinking of the Arctic sea ice and unprecedented high ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.
We just had the most active Atlantic hurricane season in more than 70 years that included the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina.
Now while you can’t single out any single event, like Hurricane Katrina, and say it’s due to global warming, the statistical evidence for the theory keeps piling up.
Today we can see the problem is no longer just a theoretical warning from scientific models but is coming as a relentless force of nature.
I commend the 140 nations – many represented here today – that ratified the Kyoto Protocol and brought it into force.
It’s time for the United States to step up and do its part.
If the leadership of the United States does not come to grips with the facts that we need a new energy policy – a policy that moves us away from oil – and a policy that reduces the carbon emissions that cause global warming – we are not only putting this nation’s security, economy and public health at risk – but the world’s as well.
Fortunately I think things are changing in the United States.
This summer’s twin calamities of Hurricane Katrina and high gasoline prices reminded Americans that global warming will have catastrophic consequences for us and that our total dependence on oil to fuel our transportation system will leave our economy forever vulnerable to markets beyond our control – and with ever higher prices guaranteed.
There are two pieces of legislation I will be pushing that will both lower carbon emissions and reduce oil dependence in the United States.
The first is the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act sponsored by Senator John McCain and me that would rollback greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. to 2000 levels by the end of this decade.
The goals of the Climate Stewardship Act are not as ambitious as those set out in the Kyoto Protocol. But it does put in place a cap and trade system, similar to Kyoto’s and to the European Union’s emissions trading system, which would help integrate U.S. efforts to curb global warming with those of the rest of the world.
And just getting a U.S. cap-and-trade system in place would at least get this nation into the fight and could be made more aggressive over time.
America's adoption of its own cap and trade program will go a long way to creating the next steps for Kyoto. With the U.S. joining the climate fight, and a robust greenhouse emissions market going forward, other high-emitting countries, not now part of Kyoto, may also join the fight to create a truly global regime for combating climate change.
As many of you may know, earlier this year we offered the Climate Stewardship Act as an amendment to national energy legislation.
Although it was defeated by a vote of 60 to 38, the Senate passed a resolution that endorsed the fundamental principals of our legislation, including mandatory cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
That was a significant first statement by the Senate about where this nation must go – a turning point I believe.
So we will try again next year. And we will keep trying until it becomes law.
Beyond the need to fight global warming, we need a new energy policy – both for U.S. national security as well as mutual global security – that will move the U.S. away from our near total dependence on oil to fuel our transportation systems.
There is only one way to do this. We need to transform the total U.S. transportation infrastructure from the refinery to the tailpipe and each step in between.
The bill I plan to soon introduce – with bipartisan support – begins with two mandates on energy and vehicles.
First, that the United States save 5 million barrels of oil a day within 10 years, and 10 million barrels a day within 20 years.
Second, that within two years, 10 percent of new cars sold in the U.S. be hybrid, hybrid electric plug-in or alternative fuel vehicles and that within seven years 50 percent of the new cars sold in the U.S. be made up of those combinations.
To reach these goals, first we need to rethink and then remake our fuel supplies. Gasoline is not the only portable source of stored energy.
Tons of agricultural waste and millions of acres of idle grassland can be used to produce between 15 to 35 billion gallons of ethanol each year, which could lead to an eight to 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as well.
But we must remake our automobile engines as well. For instance, plug-in hybrid vehicles – now nearing the threshold of commercialization – would be able to use their batteries exclusively for the first 30 miles of a trip.
Think of that for a minute. Although Americans drive about 2.2 million miles a year, the vast majority of those trips are less than 15 miles. That means a plug-in hybrid would use zero – ZERO – gallons of gas or any combustible fuel for the vast majority of its trips. And it could effectively get 500 miles per gallon on longer trips.
This is not fantasy. These vehicles could be in our garages in a few years.
Of course, electricity to charge the batteries of a plug-in hybrid does not come magically and pollution free through the wires to our homes. That power would come from coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind or other sources that make up the U.S. power grid.
But studies have shown that even when you factor in the increased demand for electricity, plug-in hybrids will still generate 35 percent less carbon emissions than a standard hybrid and 65 percent less than the average car.
Can we do it? Of course we can. And the United States – as the world’s leading energy consumer and source of carbon emissions – must play a leading role.
We cannot stand aside from the rest of the world and say: “Okay! You first!” That timidity is bad for America and bad for the world.
Frankly, we don’t have a choice. History offers us a lesson right here on the North American continent of the costs of sticking with the status quo when nature has told us to change.
The future can be as fragile as our timidity or as bold as our imagination and resolve if we work together to meet this global challenge.
And we are going to depend on you – the Republic of Science – and meetings like this to help guide our actions and also inform public opinion about the need for change.
The status quo is not our friend. Rather it must be the constant casualty of time and leadership as we move ahead – not as individual nations but as a global community solving a global challenge with the United States taking its rightful – and needed – place as a leader.
Thank you and now I’d be glad to take some questions.
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