Climate Crisis

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASTEN. Castor), my friend and the distinguished chairwoman of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her words and her leadership.

Bonamici).

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Mr. CASTEN. Kaptur), whom I am delighted was able to make time in a busy appropriation season to come down and join us today.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take some time now to rise to talk about something that I have talked about--some would say too much--on this floor. To yet, again, discuss the grave threat and the massive opportunity that is the climate crisis.

Even as we talk right now about the necessity of limiting global warming to less than 1\1/2\ degrees Celsius, let's follow the math; the planet has already warmed by 1 degree, we only have \1/2\ degree to go. The last 7 years were the hottest ever on record. Even in spite of the pandemic, global levels of carbon dioxide have hit record levels. In fact, the last time CO2 levels were as high as they are right now was 4 million years ago. Sea levels were 50 feet higher. That is the reality of what happens when heat melts ice, ice dumps water. This is the reality we have made.

If we are to be judged by our works and we do nothing more in this moment, that judgment will not be pretty. That is our challenge and it is our opportunity.

But this change in CO2 levels didn't happen over a million years, it didn't happen over a thousand years, it didn't even happen over a hundred years. Half of all the CO2 we have ever emitted as a species since that first fire that some upright hominid built in a cave a million years ago, half of all the CO2 we have ever emitted was since 1990. That is within my lifetime. It is within the lifetime of almost all of the Members of this body.

That is nearly a century after Svante Arrhenius discovered the greenhouse effect, since the science was basically settled; 100 years after the photovoltaic effect that was invented that powers solar panels today; and more than a decade after the fossil fuel companies knew about climate change and decided to promote misinformation instead of acting.

In 1989, when the U.N. formed the IPCC, when Ronald Reagan's EPA said, we need to create a global cap and trade program to reduce a global pollutant--to protect the ozone hole, chlorofluorocarbons. When that same EPA and the subsequent George Bush--both Republican Presidents, I would add--they said, let's take that same model and apply it to a domestic pollutant, acid-rain forming compounds.

We have sugar maples in New England because of their leadership. We have a shrinking ozone hole because of their leadership. When they did that at the end of the 1980s, we were on the right track 30 years ago. What do we have to do now to turn this ship around?

The heck of it is, we know what we have to do to reduce our emissions and we know how to do it, building out clean energy infrastructure, creating and building wind turbines, solar panels. Building big things is what America is good at. We do not need to be constrained by our ambition, my goodness.

When the New Deal was passed, we electrified 80 percent of rural America in just 15 years. I would like to think our capabilities are even greater now. Let's embrace that opportunity. The hard questions in this line of work are the zero sum ones.

How do you allocate wins to some parties when they imply a loss to another? That is not climate.

The hard questions in clean energy policy are not how we allocate the pains of this transition; they are how we allocate the gains of this transition. Clean energy is cheap energy. If you don't believe me, ask anyone with a solar panel on their roof how much they paid for electricity yesterday. Ask anybody with a coal plant, they know that number.

The clean energy transition means it is a win for the folks who get to go to work building more efficient buildings and wind turbines and solar panels. It is a win for every American.

I've polled this. 100 percent of Americans like to pay less for energy. They would all win. 100 percent of Americans like cleaner air. They will all win. 100 percent of Americans do not want to live on a coast that is flooding or forests that are on fire or derechos that are coming across the Midwest.

Our obligation is to seize this chance and to make sure--this is a hard problem, but it is a good problem--to make sure that those gains are equitably distributed throughout our society.

The President's infrastructure proposal is just that. It isn't just a chance for clean energy, it is a make-or-break opportunity to finally do what is scientifically necessary before it is too late.

Proposals like a clean energy standard, a build-out of electric transmission lines, requirements for purchases of clean energy will help send our emissions from the electric sector to zero and will be the bedrock of a new clean economy.

Cutting some or--let's be ambitious--all of the $650 billion a year that the IMF has said that we currently subsidize the fossil fuel industry, will finally give us efficient markets in our energy sector. $650 billion--that is about how much we spend on Medicaid--subsidizing an energy that can't compete under a free market.

So help make lives better for hundreds of millions of Americans now and in the decades to come.

Now 12 years ago, when Waxman-Markey was the debate du jour, we let an opportunity to act on the climate crisis pass us by. Since that time, we have kept emitting and temperatures have kept rising.

I told you, I have given this speech a few too many times. I don't want to be giving this speech a year from now. I don't particularly want to be giving it tomorrow. I certainly don't want to be giving it 12 years from now.

We have a chance now to act while our planet can still afford it, and we can embrace that because our wallets are going to love it.

Before I took this job, when I was running a clean energy company, I had a board member who gave me a piece of advice that has always stuck with me, he said: In the end, the only thing that really matters in this life is whether your grandchildren can say they were proud of you. Let's be clear. Our grandchildren are not going to be proud of us. They are not going to pat us on the back for doing only what was politically possible. They don't care.

What matters is, did we do what was scientifically necessary? And I have a lot of colleagues on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of this building, who will say, You are naive, Casten, what is necessary is so far in excess of what is politically possible, we just can't do that.

If that is your approach to this moment, the only thing I know for certain is you are not cut out for leadership. Our moment, our challenge in this moment, is to make what is necessary possible, it is all that matters. Because while the best chance for climate action was 30 years ago, our last chance is now.

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Mr. CASTEN. Stansbury), whose reputation has preceded her during her short tenure.

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Mr. CASTEN. Castor), who is the chair of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I am reminded as I listen to the gentlewoman speak--I know our whip always likes to quote George Santayana who said that those who don't study their history are doomed to repeat it.

We are at the cusp--it has probably already started--of the third great energy transition we have had as a species. The first one was when we transitioned from depending on muscle power to mechanical power. The second was when we transitioned from mechanical power to electric power, and this transition from dirty energy to clean energy. Every one of those transitions has been a massive boon in labor productivity. It takes a lot fewer people to run a steam shovel than it does John Henrys to dig a hole in the ground, and it takes a lot fewer people when you can electrify the country to build all the industries that we have grown accustomed to than it does when you have to live within a pulley's length of the waterwheel.

With those opportunities have come all that we think of as great and truly American. We have freed up people's time to invest in whole new ideas and take away the drudgery of work. But the history we have to acknowledge is that every one of those transitions has also been extremely disruptive for the people involved.

I like to tell folks back home that only a Luddite would say we never should have invented the steam shovel. But you have to be deeply evil not to empathize with John Henry.

As we go through this transition that we are in right now, we are going to create a tremendous amount of wealth because we are going to grow labor productivity again. We are going to have the opportunity, as many people already do, to generate electricity without depending on coal mines and coal railroad lines and natural gas pipelines, and, Mr. Speaker, you are going to be able to do this on your roof from the sun or from the wind or from more efficient geothermal. That is going to free up a whole lot of time to do a lot of innovative things. But it is going to be disruptive for a lot of communities.

There is no doubt that there is a rising tide of wealth that is already upon us. There is also no doubt that not all rising tides lift all boats. Tsunamis tend to swamp them out sometimes, and in the tsunami of wealth creation that is coming down, let's make sure that we look out for the least among us.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I think there is a refreshing change coming in our energy structure primarily because all of those old power plants--that some of the utilities in Florida that we are fighting because they still have all that capital they wanted to amortize--those plants are getting old, and they are making the decisions that intelligent businesses always make: I am going to invest in the stuff that is clean and that generates a high return.

Florida Power & Light Company is a utility that, frankly, has been one of the leaders in deploying wind energy. It took them a little while to do it in their own district, but they certainly did it all over the country, because they knew that was a good place to put their investors' money to work. And we have seen that leadership, I think, throughout the business sector in this country. There is a reason why we are creating so many more solar jobs, and so many more wind jobs. Jobs in the energy efficiency sector I think is the largest supplier of new labor.

But I don't think that absolves us as regulators.

I am remembering when you and I formed what I think we thought was going to be a vary small delegation to Madrid a little over a year ago; and we had our pins that said ``We're Still In,'' because we knew, of course, that the prior administration had pulled out of the Paris accord. And I still have a picture that I carry around and show to people of the two empty seats in front of the United States delegation sign when every other country in the world was there.

But I remember there was a--and I wish I could remember the name-- European parliamentarian that came up to me and said: You know, we know from experience that when the United States doesn't lead, bad things happen.

And I said that we thought we were alone out there. But you remember when we got there, there were a lot of businesses that were there and there were lot of cities that were there. We spent a long time at a lot of university booths. And we were still in because we were still in, not just because it was a slogan on a pin; because all those companies that made zero carbon commitments and are committing to it because their shareholders are demanding it.

One-third of all of the assets under management in global equity markets right now are in ESG funds. People care. They don't--whether they care for moral reasons, whether they care because they are greedy, it doesn't matter. They care.

We have had over 1,200 State and local officials call on Congress to pass the American Jobs Plan because they care. Environmental and labor organizations across the country have pushed for us to act now because they care.

I am reading in the Tampa Bay Times. Recently, Dr. Rich Templin says: ``Everyone who stands for fair, union jobs and climate action can come together. In this plan, pro-workers and pro-environment voices can sing in unison.''

We know that is true.

Now, the challenge--you started by asking about the energy sector. If we are really honest, what we all know in this line of work that we are in is that losers always cry louder than winners cheer.

People who have got a loss of investment in this space know exactly what they have to lose. Future generations aren't here yet.

Our job here today is to look around the room and see who is not in the room and make sure we advocate for them. The rest of them are doing a pretty good job on their own, I think.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, when we deregulated our power industry in 1992, with the energy policy act, that was never presented as being an environmental bill, as far as I can remember. It was designed to encourage people to build cheaper power.

And what did they build?

The nuclear industry went from running 60 percent of the time to running 90 percent of the time. We started building a whole lot of wind and solar. We basically stopped building inefficient gas plants, and the only new gas plants were combined cycle plants that are almost twice as efficient.

Since that bill was passed, the CO2 emissions in our power sector have fallen from 1,300 pounds a megawatt hour to 900, and the price of power has fallen by 6 percent.

Now, there are those who say that is because of the fracking revolution. And there are people who say a lot of things, I guess. It happened because economics drives clean energy.

You know what people didn't build since 1992?

Coal. It is a really lousy investment.

In just those 10 years, after 1992, we built 200,000 megawatts of new gas turbine capacity. Twenty percent of the entire U.S. power grid, which was twice as efficient as what it displaced, was built in response to economic signals and drove down the CO2 emissions of the grid. That is a start.

For us to do what we have to do from this point going forward, we have to electrify everything. We have to figure out how to electrify our transportation fleet; electrify the way our factories make goods and services, how our homes keep us warm.

In order to do that, we need to build at least 1,000 gigawatts; 1,000 megawatts; 1,000 kilowatts--whatever unit you would like--of new generation. That is about as much as generation as we already have in this country.

We are then going to need to build the wires to connect that up to all the new loads. And I think as we heard at a climate hearing, they said that is going to take at least $350 billion of investment. And those investments are going to make money because people are now connecting up a cheaper energy source that is giving people what they really want, which isn't electricity.

What people really want is a hot shower and a cold beer, and it is going to give them that cheaper.

It is going to help us build out electric vehicle charging stations. We are talking about massive amounts of public--and private-sector investments that are not only going to put people to work; is not only going to give us a more sustainable economy; it is going to leave more money in people's wallets.

The single best thing we can do to disadvantaged communities is cut their energy bill. That is what we are going to do. All we need is the ambition. And I am so glad that we are in this moment and with this President and this Congress that is rising to that challenge.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to close, as I often do, by observing that there are really only three things we have to do as a country.

The first thing we have to do is cut the energy--double the efficiency with which we convert energy into economic activity. If we were to cut our energy use per dollar of GDP in half, we would almost be at the level that Switzerland has already achieved. I think we are better than Switzerland, personally, but let's at least aspire to be as good as Switzerland; double our efficiency.

The second thing we have to do is do the research and development to figure out how to decarbonize industries like steel- and cement-making because we don't know how to make silicone; we don't know how to make steel; we don't know how to make cement; we don't know how to make fertilizer without fossil fuels today. That is an R&D challenge we have to figure out.

Then we have to get to zero CO2 emissions; not by 2050, not by 2030, by 1990. We have to get back to 350 parts per million in the atmosphere because that is the point that we can say to our children: We are leaving you a better planet than the one we inherited, where wildfires are not the norm, where droughts are not the norm.

And is it going to be easy?

No. But we know how to do it.

The first thing we ought to do is take our hand off the emergency brake. Stop subsidizing yesterday's technology. Embrace markets. Embrace innovation. Embrace all that makes us American. Stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry by $650 billion a year.

Unleash the power of our innovators. Unleash the power of our entrepreneurs. Unleash the power and the innovation of all our great universities and national labs who will figure out how to do these hard things.

And then, yes, even after we do all that, make significant Federal investments in the things that the private sector is not very good at, like transmission, like coast-to-coast broadband, like EV stations. We have done it before. That is how we built the railroads. It is how we electrified the country.

It is not going to be easy, but it will be necessary. It will be inspiring, and it will be a story that we will tell our grandchildren about because we will be able to tell them that we were there, in this moment; we saw what was necessary, and we made it possible. I think that is something worth doing.

It is our opportunity. It is our moment.

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