FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  July 16, 2009

CONTACT:  DC Press Office, (202) 224-4159

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) today touted the economic recovery benefits of passing comprehensive cap-and-trade legislation to combat global warming.

“Tackling the global climate crisis is more than an urgent scientific imperative – it’s a tremendous economic opportunity,” said Sen. Kerry.  “Investment in clean energy will provide needed relief to American business, repower jobs in this country, and spur economic recovery.” 

Earlier today in a press conference with Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Duke Energy Chairman and CEO Jim Rogers, Kerry stated that a strong national bill to reduce carbon emissions will lay essential groundwork heading towards the global climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark this December, a message he echoed this afternoon from the Senate floor.

Sen. Kerry’s floor speech as prepared is below:

Earlier today, I brought the CEOs of three of America’s largest companies—DuPont, Siemens, and Duke Energy—to address the Democratic Policy Committee.   While some in Washington debate whether we can afford to act on climate change at a moment like this, the private sector had a message of its own:  We have to act, and we have to act now. 

America’s companies need certainty to make investments and plan for the future, and it’s up to us to provide that certainty.  Their companies are looking overseas at their global competitors and wondering: Is America going to be the right place to innovate and attract top talent in the decades ahead?  They’re wondering whether America’s government will finally step up and put in place the policies that will allow us to lead the world in these promising new sectors.  Because in a global economy, the question isn’t whether these clean jobs will be created, but where.  So, as all of us worry about new job numbers and high unemployment rates, let’s make sure the new jobs we need are created in America.

Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, told a story about traveling around China and meeting young engineers who had studied abroad in the United States.  A generation ago, they would have stayed in America.  Today there are returning to China, because that’s where they see the opportunities for growth in these industries. 

These are the stakes, folks.   This is a fundamental question about America’s economic leadership and economic future.  Vested interests and those afraid to take the plunge into a twenty-first-century energy economy are speaking ever louder and—it must be said—misleading the American people about the costs and the reasons to avoid action on this vital issue.

Recently, a number of critics have unleashed a flood of discredited economic statistics and misleading slogans to oppose climate legislation. Too few have engaged with the actual issue: the threat to our national and economic security that climate change poses.

We need to clear the air.  Voters and citizens need to hear from us.  We need to be clear about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what it will cost.  The American people deserve that discussion, and I and many of my friends on both sides of the aisle—for the bill, against the bill, on the fence—we all need to work together to make sure we have a debate worthy of this institution and commensurate with the seriousness of the problem. 

First, let’s start with why we need to act.  It was distressing to read a column in the Washington Post railing against the climate bill without any acknowledgment of why we are limiting carbon emissions, and without any regard to the serious threat that faces our country!  It's like complaining about the cost of repairing a roof without factoring in the leaks destroying your home!  

So let’s deal with the reality of climate change that confronts us.  And here is the scientific reality.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen 38% in the industrial era, from 280 to 385 parts per million.  Scientists have warned that anything above 450— a warming of 2 degrees Celsius– would result in an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change. Some scientists even set the maximum at 350, below our current level of 385—a thought that is truly terrifying. 

Let me be clear:  The threat we face is not an abstract concern for the future.  It is already upon us, and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. In four years, the Arctic is projected to experience its first ice-free summer—not in 2030—in 2013.  

We don’t take these steps lightly or haphazardly:  This is a matter of necessity and national security.   Just ask our generals.  In 2007, eleven former Admirals and high-ranking generals issued a report from the Center for Naval Analysis warning that climate change is a “threat multiplier” with “the potential to create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today.”  In 2008, a National Intelligence Assessment echoed these warnings from inside our government. General Anthony Zinni, former commander of our forces in the Middle East, was characteristically blunt in assessing the threat.   He warned that without action—and I quote—“we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."

Climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile world.  It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale.   We risk fanning the flames of failed-statism, and offering glaring opportunities to the worst actors in our international system.   In an interconnected world, that endangers all of us. 

We all know about the August 2001 memo warning President Bush that terrorists were determined to strike inside the US.  36 days later, they did.  Today scientists tell us we have a ten-year window—if even that—before catastrophic climate change becomes inevitable and irreversible.   Ladies and Gentlemen: this is our memo.  These are our warnings. The time to act on them is now. 

That is why we must act, that is why we are acting.  And frankly, most of our critics know this—which is why many have stopped arguing about the science or denying the threat.  Instead, in this moment of economic crisis, they stoke fears about the “economic threat” that climate legislation would create. 

Which is why it is so urgent that we set the record straight and respond directly to the charge—demonstrably false—that climate change will be a job destroyer or growth killer.  In fact, it is just the opposite—moving to a low carbon economy could be the spark that re-lights our economic engines and brings us back to the period of growth and economic innovation we experienced in the 1990s.  And failing to act could well be a job destroyer or growth killer as other countries leave us in the dust. 

The green measures in our economic stimulus and the Waxman-Markey bill together will be a massive job-creator.    According to the Center for American Progress and UMass Political Economy Research Center (PERI), these two bills will create $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments which will create a net increase of 1.7 million jobs. 

Building the infrastructure for a low-carbon economy will be a large component of this growth.

Already, large wind companies such as Gamesa have redeveloped abandoned steel mills in Pennsylvania to manufacture turbines, towers and blades for US wind farms.  This is heavy industry, and the manufacturing needs to happen near the wind farms—so all of these will be American jobs. 

The solar industry can also create jobs. Trade groups project employment to grow to 440,000 in 2016, broadly distributed across all states.

Energy efficiency jobs, similarly will be located all around the country. As the McKinsey study has demonstrated, 30% of carbon emission reductions can easily be captured through increased energy efficiency measures.  These measures will require retro-fitting residential housing and commercial and government buildings throughout the nation, by definition local jobs for local workers in rural, urban and suburban communities in every state of the nation. 

One of the most galling and most false claims I have heard is that poor Americans will bear the brunt of these changes—that is categorically and provably false.   The Center for American Progress has estimated that these retro-fits and weatherization measures alone would bring back 800,000 jobs into the economy including employment for installers, roofers, electricians and carpenters and other skilled and semi-skilled construction workers.  And these are good, high-paying jobs, too!  Construction jobs pay median hourly wage of $18.24, seventeen percent above the national median wage, which is $15.57. 

And these retrofits themselves will require new products. President Obama in fact referred to this last week when he announced that the White House would move to high energy efficiency light bulbs made by American companies like Cree Industries in North Carolina.

Folks, the economic gain from a low-carbon economy is not just a few windmills.   Embracing a low carbon economy will boost jobs, in the most affected sectors in every state in the nation.

You also hear the mistaken claim that climate legislation will severely damage our overall economic growth.  Again, that’s false.   Numerous academic and government studies (both those that have modeled the recent House Bill and more general models) come to the same conclusion:  our growth rate with a climate policy will be virtually identical to our growth rate without a climate policy.   And frankly, they include little or no estimate of the cost of catastrophic climate change.

Most recently, the EPA’s most analysis concluded that our average GDP growth from 2010 to 2030 under Waxman-Markey would only be between 0.02% to 0.04% lower—that’s two to four one hundreths of one percent!  

What does this mean?  The impact of climate change policy is  a rounding error, whereas the spark it will provide to our economy will create millions of jobs.   We have a chance here to reinvigorate a sector of our economy that has been ailing in recent years and lead the world in creating the jobs of the future.  And, just as importantly, we risk facing catastrophe if we don’t.

All of us care a great deal about the well-being of working Americans.  All of us are eager to protect the security of this country.   It’s time we take a hard look at the realities of this challenge and find a solution.  It is easy to throw stones—but there is a lot of hard work to do crafting an American and a world response to the threat we face. 

This needs to be a discussion. We need to hear from serious people about how best to craft legislation that addresses this issue, and I am eager to work with them. I appreciate the concerns that several of my colleagues have raised about the creation of markets and the potential for market manipulation. Your worry is understandable: The economic crisis we are experiencing today had its roots in markets that were ineffective, poorly regulated, and not transparent.

We have strengthened the legislation to address these issues. Carbon trading will take place on listed and regulated exchanges. Price transparency will be required, thanks to recent legislation from Senators Snowe and Feinstein.

Well-designed markets have proven extraordinarily successful in solving environmental problems. When I was Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, I chaired the Governor's Task Force on acid rain with John Sununu and Dick Celeste and we put together the first emissions trading mechanism in the country.  So when I came to the Senate, I helped to do the same on the federal level when we passed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.  I'll never forget the complaints. Industry estimated costs of $8 billion and claimed we wouldn’t be able to compete in the world." The environmental community came in worried that a market solution would never work.  But to the credit of George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Reilly and John Sununu, we did it.  Guess what?  It cost about $2 billion and took about two years. If it worked then, it can work again.

So I believe these fears are vastly overstated.  What none of us can afford is for public officials to demagogue this issue into stalemate. What we need most is action. If we fail to act, we will have failed the American people.  The greatest danger we face is not from a possible one fiftieth of one percent decline in GDP. It is that we won’t act fast enough or decisively enough or boldly enough—and as a result, we will all share the crisis and we will all share the regret. 

This moment requires us to use the narrow window we have to forestall a crisis while we still can. We need to consider a simple comparison.  What if I, and my colleagues who are crafting this legislation, thousands of scientists and security experts and leaders around the world are wrong? What’s the worst that would happen if we do the things we’re proposing? Well, if we respond thoughtfully, change our energy habits, provide new technologies and solve the problem on a global basis, the worst that would happen is we are all healthier because of cleaner air; we will have transformed our economies and created millions of clean energy, high value added, sustainable jobs; and we will have hugely enhanced our security by becoming less fossil fuel and foreign-oil dependent.  That’s the worst that will happen if we’re wrong. 

But what if the deniers and delayers are wrong?  What are the consequences then?  Plain and simple: sheer catastrophe.  Folks, is there even a choice here? 

I believe there isn’t.  When you look past the trumped-up fears and second-rate statistics turned partisan talking points, the science is clear, the economics is clear, and the actions we need to lead the world in taking are clear, too.   I am confident that the more people understand the real implications of our choices—the upside of action, and the immense cost of doing nothing—they will embrace the path ahead.  So let’s have the honest discussion the American people deserve, and let’s put America to work, marshalling the best of our markets and our minds to lead the world in solving this problem.