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CLIMATE IS MORE LIVABLE THAN EVER
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, while climate catastrophists claim that our climate is less livable than ever because of fossil fuels, it is actually more livable than ever, thanks to our fossil fuel powered climate protection systems.
When you hear the scary claims about a climate crisis, keep in mind that climate catastrophists, or alarmists as they are now known, have been claiming climate crisis for about 40 years.
If America tries to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use through a Green New Deal or Biden climate plan, we will not prevent a crisis. We will cause a crisis by making energy completely unreliable and unaffordable for American industry and American consumers, especially the middle-
income and lower income folks.
Now, what isn't pointed out very often in all this talk about carbon dioxide being a pollutant is that carbon dioxide is 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. Most people think it is some big number like 20, 30, 40, 50 percent of our atmosphere. Nitrogen, number one, is 78 percent; oxygen, number two, 21 percent. CO2 is not even in third place. Argon is, 0.93 of 1 percent.
Some of these pie charts you would look at on the internet would have carbon dioxide mixed in with other trace gases--other, okay?
So, we are at 0.04 percent. It is an extremely small amount of our atmosphere. Now, you would think, again, with the alarmism going on, that it is a high percentage that is poisoning all of us. Carbon is a building block of most of what we have on this planet, carbon life forms, right?
We are chasing down this path, I think, because of an agenda that is a lot different than the climate itself, especially when you see the folks that are pushing it the hardest still flying to all their Paris rallies and this and that in private jets, not living their lives any different, other than what normal people do.
Coming back to the fossil fuel portion of it, it would be worth it, so the alarmists say, to lower CO2 levels and avoid a crisis. But the U.S. causes less than one-sixth of all global emissions, and that number is even going lower.
President Trump pulled us out of the Paris accord, yet the United States is still leading the way on lowering its CO2 production anyway. It has a lower net number than before, without an accord. The other countries in the developing world, in the Third World, in the Eastern Bloc, whatever, are still increasing their numbers, building new coal-powered plants in China--one a week, some crazy number like that.
We are supposed to adhere to that in this country and curb our production and curb our economy, even though we are leading the way in cleaner technology, cleaner-burning automobiles and trucks, cleaner-
burning power plants.
It is so crazy that in my home State of California, for example, when we look at the type of electricity production that comes from green power sources, the environmentalists are trying to get rid of them. We had two nuclear-powered plants in California. They already closed one, San Onofre, down by San Diego, and then one in San Luis Obispo. Those two themselves are responsible, at their peak production, for somewhere around 16, 18, even 20 percent of the whole grid of California. Imagine knocking out 20 percent of the grid in that short amount of time and trying to replace it with more politically correct green power.
It is hard to get the permits to do the politically correct green power, such as making tens of thousands of acres covered with solar cells or windmills, but nonetheless, we are hellbent on that direction.
At the same time, they want to get rid of the use of natural gas and propane to power people's stoves, power people's water heaters, things like that, and have them go electric. They are hellbent on changing cars into being electric powered by 2035, no more combustion engine cars, all because of this 0.04 percent.
What are we doing here? It is a political agenda.
Indeed, every committee in this new Congress has to spend a good portion of their time not talking about whether it is childcare, agriculture, or finance. They have to run it all through a climate change filter before we can move on to the work that needs to be done.
Coming back to California, we sometimes have public safety power shutoffs, they call it, because we have an issue of trees that might fall onto power lines or branches that the wind might catch and blow into power lines. Right here is an example of three fires that have happened in northern California in the last couple of years.
{time} 1215
This one here is the current Dixie fire. I am using an older poster, because I am cheap, but this is now, instead of 100,000 acres, a million acres. It would come all the way up here past Mount Lassen.
What is the CO2 equation here of unmanaged forests? We need to manage forests, so we don't make all the CO2 and have all the fire and soot and ash that blows all the way back to the East Coast. This CO2 this is deceptive, and we need to think differently.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 168
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