David Thomas: “I join my colleagues for just a few moments with respect to the question that we are addressing this morning, that…”

“I join my colleagues for just a few moments with respect to the question that we are addressing this morning, that question of global warming, but more particularly the specifics with respect to it. I am sure you already heard, but let me say again, there was a measure adopted by this Senate 95-0 that expressed two main points: One, the United States should not be signatory to any treaty that would ``result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.'' And, No. 2, that mandates developing countries to have specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the same compliance period. So we have been working at this for some time. We have had several hearings in our Committee on the Environment and Public Works and also in Energy. We have had representatives of the administration there. This goes clear back to Rio, I think, in 1992. It goes back more specifically now to Geneva about a year ago, in which promises were apparently made at that meeting with respect to what the United States would do. We called the Assistant Secretary to our committee to talk about that. He indicated, no, that wasn't true, there were no commitments made. In fact, I think there were.”