On the recordMarch 16, 2011
I notice we did not have any speakers here so I thought I would come down. We do have a bill in consideration right now, in process for a vote. It is my understanding there will be a vote on amendment No. 183 in the next perhaps hour or so, maybe in a few minutes. Let me give a little background on what happened on this, where we are today. Back in the early 1990s we had the Kyoto treaty that was up for consideration. That was during the Clinton administration. The Kyoto treaty was one we looked at and studied here in this Senate. One of the concerns about it was it was assuming we have catastrophic global warming that was due to manmade gases, anthropogenic gases-- methane. That assumption everybody thought probably was right, because everybody said it was--until such time as we thought what the cost would be if at that time we would have ratified the Kyoto treaty and lived by its emissions restrictions. The cost would be somewhere between $300 and $400 billion. That actually came from the Wharton School. We looked at that and thought we better look at that pretty closely. Over some debate we decided, if this treaty came back--which President Clinton signed but had to come to the Senate for ratification--if it came to the Senate for ratification we would not ratify any treaty that had either one of two things--No. 1, would be devastating to our economy and, No. 2, it would not treat developing countries the same as developed countries.…
