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Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON. I am here to object. I will keep it short.

I was down here a couple weeks ago when the Senator from Rhode Island had a similar type of what he called a simple-truth resolution, but it is not that simple.

The purpose of his putting forth this resolution is he wants to do something about it. I am not a climate change denier. I am just not a climate change alarmist. I am not subscribing to Chicken Little scare tactics here.

The problem with trying to do something about climate change is there is nothing we can really do to impact it. We have spent, according to testimony in the Budget Committee when the Senator from Rhode Island was chair, $5 to $6 trillion globally. I saw a recent speech given by Secretary of Energy Wright saying that we had spent about $10 trillion trying to hold back the tides, trying to address this climate change emergency--which, by the way, two Nobel laureate physicists, Dr. Ivar Giaever and Dr. John Clauser, signed on to a ``World Climate Declaration: There is no Climate Emergency.'' There isn't.

What we have done, though, is we have taken a $6 to $10 trillion cost--the largest malinvestment in human history--and we obviously haven't even dented climate change because we still have the Chicken Littles here claiming a climate change emergency.

So, again, this isn't a simple truth. The simple truth is, yes, climate has always changed. It always will. And I would argue the simple truth is there is not much we can do about it. There is no consensus in terms of the extent that man may impact the climate. We certainly can impact the environment, and we all are--from my standpoint, we are all environmentalists. We want a clean environment. But just think what we could have done with that $6 to $10 trillion rather than spending it--wasting it--trying to hold back the tide.

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