That does not mean that the federal government should become a water regulator and create winners and losers based on water rights.

There's a well known Civil War Major, one armed veteran, Major Powell who made that very proposal. We're now trying in the West to govern ourselves based on his principles.

Doing desalination right costs a little more money than doing it wrong.

It's been a fascinating hearing. We see over and over again the nexus between water use and energy use, technology, national security.

I think we do have a dual goal, Senator, which is to promote renewable energy technologies that have emerged over the last 10 years but also to reduce carbon emissions.

We do not know currently what the best technology is. But we do know that if we don't get this one, the environmental risk is incredible.

there's no silver bullet. Maybe there's a lot of silver buckshot.

What that means is--think of this as a common goal, that all countries around the world can really align themselves with and collaborate.

I also assume that there's even more work in regards to the outreach to the private sector to the VC leaders.

we have to throw the kitchen sink at this.

Green is the new red, white and blue.

CCS will be critical to helping us continue to use our vast domestic sources of coal while also working to address rising greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the dynamics here that we should acknowledge is that there may be and this is an overused term these days, but it's effective term and there may be game changers.

There's a realization internationally how important that is.

I think we may be coming to the end of the hearing. But if I might I'd like to direct some additional questions to the panel for the record on coal to liquid technology.

Energy R&D is the future of our energy industry, but is also critical to our national security, our environment, and our economy.

I really am interested in hearing some testimony at some point on how these workouts are actually happening.

I think that one would have hoped--it obviously did not happen in this case maybe until it was too late--that the boards of directors of these companies would have exercised the fiduciary duty on behalf of everybody and said, you know…