WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources Committees, addressed the United States Conference of Mayors.  In his speech, Rep. Markey urged them to call on the federal government to act this year on global warming.

Rep. Markey’s remarks as delivered are below:

Thank you for inviting me to join with you this morning to talk about the issue of global warming in the 110th Congress.  

It is great to be here with Barbara Boxer, the new Chairman of the Senate Environment Committee.  Senator Boxer is a giant on environmental issues, and she has been a strong and effective leader going back to the days that we served together in the House.  Under her strong leadership, I am fully confident that the Senate will move forward aggressively on the issue of Global Warming, and I look forward to partnering with her and other Senate leaders on this critical issue.  

At the end of November, I attended the Supreme Court argument for the case of Massachusetts v. EPA.  My home state of Massachusetts has been forced to sue the Bush Administration because the failure to move forward on the federal level is beginning to cause economic and environmental harm along the 200 miles of Massachusetts’ coastline.  There was some skepticism expressed by one of the more conservative justices about whether the harm so far was bad enough to bring the case.  This led the lawyers to go back and forth about the science of global warming.

Given the make-up of the current Supreme Court, I don’t know who is going to win this case, but it reminded me of the experiment that scientists like to describe – the boiling frog experiment.  Al Gore uses this example in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”.

It was never my science project, but perhaps you have tried this yourself.

First. Place a frog in put in a pot of boiling water. You will find that when the frog hits the boiling water, he has the instinct to flee.  He jumps out of the pot.

I believe we are in the early stages of a global science project that could end very badly for us if we do not heed the parable of the boiling frog.  

Or we can turn down the heat.

It is heartening to come before you at a moment in time when those who want to turn down the heat are beginning to out number those who would like to tempt fate in an ever-warmer world.

It is now clear that the Congressional climate for climate change legislation has fundamentally improved as the result of the November elections.

The Speaker has asked each of the standing Committees with legislative jurisdiction on the issues of energy independence and global warming to hold hearings and be prepared to report out legislation sooner rather than later, suggesting that the Fourth of July of this year would be a good deadline for having legislation debated on the Floor of the House.

That alone is a big step forward.  What else has changed?

Early next month, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a seminal report, written by more than 600 of the world’s leading scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts, reportedly stating in some of the strongest terms yet, that there now exists overwhelming and compelling evidence that climate change is occurring and is mostly attributable to man-made greenhouse gasses. It is becoming more and more difficult for our elected officials at the federal level to ignore the scientific smoking gun on climate change.

Indeed, the leaders of many of our nation’s largest businesses have recognized the challenge we are facing. Earlier this week some of my colleagues and I met with the heads of General Electric, Duke Energy, Alcoa, Caterpillar, DuPont and 7 other companies who have partnered with environmental groups to call for mandatory reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions. I believe that we finally have the public, industry leaders, the scientific community, and politicians from both sides of the political aisle standing together in a grand coalition calling for action on global warming.

The scientific consensus, and the increasing support from business and industry for legislative action, is underscored by the real world evidence we are seeing in the news day after day:
·           When we see the devastation wrought by increasingly savage storms such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita;
·           When we hear the Arctic ice is now the thinnest it has ever been;
·           When the  Swiss Banks will no longer insure ski resorts buying land below 5,000 feet because the snow in the Alps is so unreliable;
·           When we hear that the snows of Kilimanjaro may no longer be around to inspire future generations of Hemingways within a matter of a few decades.
·           When we consider that there may soon be no glaciers at Glacier National Park; and,
·           When the summer ice floes in the Arctic are melting so quickly that Polar Bears are getting stranded at sea and drowning, forcing the Bush Administration to add the Polar Bear to the endangered species list;

When we see all of these things are happening, something is very terribly wrong.

Now is the time for action to halt the generation of greenhouse gases before we reach the tipping point.  Before we have irreversible climate catastrophe.  Is the notion of legislating in this area by the summer an aggressive plan?  Yes it is. Does it challenge the status quo?  Yes it does.  Can it be accomplished?  I believe that it can and it must.

We also cannot allow our nation to continue to become more and more dependent on imported oil from unstable regions like the Middle East.  There is a consensus that America’s oil addiction has left our national economy vulnerable to the volatile price swings of the world energy market. It funnels money into the pockets of Middle Eastern countries that finance terrorism.

In his State of the Union Speech on Tuesday, the President again called for greater energy independence.  And for the first time he linked this to addressing the problem of climate change.   Democrats welcome his call for action, and want to work with him towards the goal of energy independence and halting global warming.

As you know, the Conference of Mayors has called for the federal government to “enact bipartisan climate change that includes clear timetables and emissions limits...”  And I believe that support in Congress for that kind of legislation is growing rapidly.

While many industries are understandably concerned about the cost of regulation on them, we have to keep in mind that the costs of global warming itself could quickly overwhelm the regulatory costs.  The good news is that even  the Bush Administration’s own Energy Information Administration recently found that if we are smart about how we do this, if we employ market incentives using a cap-and-trade system and tougher minimum standards where technology makes it feasible, our economy could certainly handle the impact of a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse emissions.  Indeed the Bush Administration report found that the impact of a mandatory cap-and-trade system on the Gross Domestic Product of our country would be less than TWO TENTHS OF ONE PERCENT.

For example, California has a law that will require a 30% reduction in the carbon dioxide emissions that come out of the tailpipes of cars and trucks on the roads by 2016.

In the Northeast, 9 states have entered into a bipartisan agreement to first cap carbon dioxide emissions from power plants at current levels and then reduce emissions 10% by 2019. These states have gone across party lines and around the federal government to tell power plants to clean up the carbon dioxide emissions coming out of their smokestacks. And there are similar proposals in the works in the Southwest and the Northwest. Around the country, Mayors are also taking the initiative to make our cities and towns more energy efficient.  Just recently, I spoke with Chicago’s Mayor Daley, for example, who told me about his cities’ Green Building initiatives.

Mayor Menino has just announced a Green Awards program to recognize citizens and business owners who advance the city’s sustainability agenda.  And Mayors from smaller cities in my district – such as my home town of Malden, Medford and Woburn -- are not far behind.

Our leaders must stand up and say that our energy policy will be a bold example to be held up for the rest of the world.In the absence of federal action, it has fallen to you – the nation’s mayors – as well as to the governors -- to exercise leadership on the issue of global climate change.  But now, with a new Congress, we have an opportunity to adopt strong federal legislation. 

Over the coming months, those of us in Congress who are focusing on these issues want to hear from you about your experiences at the local level in promoting energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, and investment in renewables.  We want to hear your ideas, and partner with you so that together we can achieve energy independence and put in place legislation that would freeze and then reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

In the end, we are either going to work together, or suffer the consequences together.  We are either going solve this problem together, or we are going to destroy the planet.

That is our choice.  This is problem that the Baby Boom generation has failed to tackle yet. The generation that follows us, the Green Generation, is demanding action.

The challenge now is whether our country can break the chain of our addiction to oil, whether we begin to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions.  The time to act is now.  The fate of the earth hangs in the balance.

Thank you.