 Okay, ladies and gentlemen, apologies for the delay, but this time in Washington, east-west travel is sometimes difficult, but we're delighted that Representative Jay Inslee, who represents the first congressional district in Washington state, is able to join us as advertised fresh from the, I think, very difficult negotiations on the energy bill, so we look forward to hearing his views on that. Just a quick word of introduction. Representative Inslee has been serving the first district. He had also previously served in Congress in 92-94 as a representative of the fourth district in Washington state. He's been a strong advocate of environmental protection and dealing with the effects of climate change and reducing energy dependence. He has served on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and worked very diligently to promote the vision of a clean energy future and the new Apollo Energy Act as a number of other pieces of legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In March of 2007, he was appointed to the 15th member select committee on energy independence and global warming, and he served on that select committee which has really been instrumental set up by Speaker Pelosi to develop the legislative dimensions of a strategy on dealing with climate change and enhancing energy diversification and moves towards greater independence. So, previously in his career, he was a public servant. He was a state legislator and prosecutor in Silla, Washington, and he and his entire family still live in Washington state, so we have a perspective not quite from the literal areas of the Arctic, but certainly a state close by and heavily influenced by and concerned about the developments in the Arctic region. So, Representative Inslee, thank you for joining us. And just for the journalists who are here, this will be a non-attribution off the record, but if you want to speak later as Representative Staff is here, we can, if anyone did want to quote him or have a, if he has time, I think we can make any statement for the record, but this will be off the record. Thank you. Thank you. Well, this is a treat to get to join you. I'm amazed that people are still here this time of the afternoon, but it is an interesting subject. I'm particularly interested in this, and I'll mention why. Number one, the only real qualifications I have to address this great group on this subject is that I represent the first woman to ski alone to the North Pole. And she wrote a book about it, and I'm terribly embarrassed. I believe her name is Tayer, and it is a wonderful account of a great adventure, the first person, I believe, woman to ski alone to the North Pole. And I recommend it, and hopefully by the time we're done, I'll have her name so you can read her book. So that gives me credibility on this subject, that I have a constituent who's actually traversed the now-disappearing ice to get there. And there's a certain symmetry to this story. The reason I mention it, there are some ironies because on her trip to the North Pole, a polar bear took particular interest in her, as an hors d'oeuvre, not as a companion. And it's a great story in her book about how her dog essentially warded off this polar bear to allow my constituent to get to the North Pole. Well, that was several years ago. Now, jump ahead. Now, her congressman is trying to, despite that incident, trying to save the habitat for the polar bear, even though sometimes they are tended to munch on my constituents. So there's a certain irony here about kind of the work I've been engaged in. But the reason I'm doing that is in part, but just in part due to my desire to keep the polar bears on Earth. And I think they are in great, great danger right now because we know about the danger of the shrinking ice cap. We know that they are dependent in a significant part of their life cycle and the existence of life that basically is their hunting platform. And as that ice disappears, and university scientists, I'm from Seattle, that's one of the hot beds of research on this. They've concluded, as you know, that within this century you may have essentially a disappearance of the Arctic ice shelf, perhaps even as soon as in a decade or two, at least during the summer months. So the polar bears are in great, great danger to actually become extinct during my grandchild. My first grandchild is now four and a half months old during his lifetime. He may not be able to talk about polar bears to his kids or grandkids, and I think that's a sad thing. But that's not the principal reason that I've been engaged in this effort to get Congress to develop a new clean energy economy. The principal reason I'm engaged in that effort is that humans are endangered by the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap. This is an anthropomorphic selfishness on our part that we have a great stake in the preservation of that ice cap. And the reason is that that is the great modulating a heat shield, if you will, for the United States. You know, I remember when John Glenn, when he was orbiting, those of you who are old enough remember, his heat shield, there was a great question whether it essentially came off and he was going to burn up when he came back into the atmosphere. And those of you who will remember, it was pretty amazing, because the only person who didn't know that that his heat shield had maybe come off was John Glenn. They didn't tell him. I thought that was kind of interesting. We all knew it, but he didn't know it. Turns out he was okay. The heat shield stayed. But unfortunately, our great heat shield, which is the Arctic ice cap, which reflects massive amounts of energy back right now, as it disappears, I think it's three to five times more energy will be absorbed by the dark sea water now when the ice cap disappears. That is our heat shield for humanity because it reflects that light, now will be absorbed. Now we humans, even though we may never step foot at the North Pole, will be endangered by the fact that that heat will be absorbed. And that includes Midwestern farmers whose crop yields will go down. That's people who rely on the forest in Washington state, which is now being eaten by bugs alive. That is people in North Africa who will see increasing desertification and the wars that will break out as a result of mass migrations associated with that. The polar bear is a symbol of humans being endangered. And canary in the coal mine, of course, is a cliche, but I think it's not too far off as what the occasion is that we're engaged in here. And a great irony is developing that I think needs to be sort of cut off at the beginning. The irony would be, as soon as I read about the disappearance of the Arctic ice shelf, I immediately started hearing about squabbles between nations to grab the oil and gas underneath the disappearing ice cap. With no sense of irony about that from those who wanted to do that. To me, there's a great sense of irony that basically because of our dependence on oil, we destroy the Arctic ice cap. We expose us to a great danger associated with that. And our immediate response is if the nation's not to figure out how to stop that, but how to go accelerate that by increasing access to the oil and gas under the Arctic ice shelf. That seemed a little ironic to me that we sort of burned down our neighbor's house and the first reaction we had is how can we get in there and salvage some of his coins that may not have melted in the fire. So to me, the first reaction ought to be how are we going to work internationally to solve this problem and prevent the destruction of that environment. We are now engaged, literally as I speak, in that effort in the U.S. House. So let me address what we're up to right now. We believe it's time for the United States to fulfill its historic destiny to join and lead the world in an effort to stop global climate change. And I can report to you we are now fully engaged in that effort after a long drought. If you watch, if you're a fan of western movies, there's always the plot about the town that's in great peril and this sheriff rides up when there's a new sheriff in town and the saying is there's a new sheriff in town. Well, I can tell you at the White House there's a new sheriff in town. And we have a leader who's now kindled this action in spirit of vision of America really getting off the dime. We went to Commerce Committee I served in and we went and met with Barack Obama the day before yesterday at the White House and he was abundantly clear that he's going to put his shoulder of the wheel to help us to pass a clean energy jobs bill this year that will simultaneously reduce our addiction to Middle Eastern oil, stop or at least slow down global warming and create millions of jobs in this country. And that's what we're in the cause of doing right now. This is a heavy lift because it is a new idea but I believe we have every chance of success and I'll give you the broad contours of the bill we want to pass. We want to have a bill that caps the amount of CO2 going in the atmosphere put a hard limit on it just like we did on sulfur dioxide and just like we did in acid rain then charge polluters to in fact buy at auction over time the permits for those limited scarce resources. And we think that's only fair that the polluters have to pay for the pollution associated with this. Now there are those who said this will wreck the U.S. economy hogwash. We have seen this movie before on sulfur dioxide. When we came to stop acid rain people said can't do it. It will ruin the U.S. economy. But we did it and the reason we did it is because Americans are very innovative we're very entrepreneurial and there are very few technological challenges that given a chance we can't solve. And what happened with sulfur dioxide is Americans went to work creating new technologies on how to solve this problem and they cut in half the cost of solving the problem and we were spectacularly successful in that effort. We intend to recreate that success story but this time with carbon dioxide the model is proven it's just a different gas that's involved in this situation. We intend to supplement that effort with carbon fuel standard which we'll call for a percentage and that is in flux right now somewhere between 15 and 25% that will come from clean renewable sources of electricity a portion of which will come from efficiency and of course we know efficiency is the first fuel it's always the cheapest it's always the fastest way to effectively clean up your energy economy. We intend to have a low carbon fuel standard which will drive and put out much less carbon over their life cycle. We intend to have a significant investment pool in research and development to help move forward in that regard. We intend to have a green bank which will be a permanent lending source of capital to help these new entrepreneurial companies across what they call the valley of death where they get venture capital they invent the prototype but then they can't get financing for the first commercial plant across the valley of death. We hope we'll have a provision to accelerate the building of high capacity electrical grids in the United States because we know improving our transmission system is pivotally important to getting access to concentrated solar energy in the southwest to move it to markets on the west and east coast to move midwest wind to the east coast we've got to have a national grid system that in fact can move that. We intend to improve our efficiency standards and we started. By the way, we had a great start in the stimulus bill on this whole revolution. We put 70 billion dollars the first real investment ever in America and real dollars for clean energy and I was very very happy with that and it was basically the inspiration of Barack Obama that got us to this point so we've made sort of a down payment the way I look at this this is sort of akin to the original Apollo project in fact if you want to know anything about this I wrote a book about it's called Apollo's Fire basically we think we need to recreate we need to recreate we need to recreate the investment that Uncle Sam made in those technologies and we made the first investment of that in the stimulus bill and I kind of liken it that we sort of now designed the redstone rocket which is the first rocket that we used to launch a little satellite to finance the real Apollo project and that's why we're going to take revenues from auction of these permits in this clean energy system we're going to adopt and put those revenues to work in an R&D platform to get this done so we are now trying to develop a full consensus it isn't there yet this is a very complicated bill and we're a diverse country and we're working to get that consensus there will be lots of trade-offs I can promise you the bill will not be as I would have written it but I do believe there's every reason to believe it's going to be successful and we are going to keep our eyes in our prize on the prize in doing this and you know Barack Obama made one of the most telling pitches I've ever heard a president made when we were at the White House the other day he listened to a lot of the concerns of members about the bill these are sincere legitimate but he said you know what you got a tough job when you're in Congress you're in the Jets a lot of time people criticize you a lot at times can be a trying job but once in a while you have a chance to do something really historic and this is a very historic moment for us where America can really fulfill its destiny to do what we did in World War II in World War II the world needed America it needed us to be the tool to be the arsenal of democracy to provide the world with the tools to beat back some forces of darkness and we fulfilled that destiny and I believe now it is America's destiny to again assist the world in becoming the arsenal of clean energy and when we fulfill that destiny it'd be great for America and it's going to be great for the rest of the world and most importantly be great for our grandkids too and it's going to be great for the U.S. economy when we get into the game to have an honest competition with Germany about selling solar cells and a competition with China to build lithium ion powered electric cars and an honest competition with our friends in Denmark to provide wind turbines and when we do that it's going to help our economy a lot and create a lot of jobs so that's kind of what's cooking could I stand for some easy questions or general criticisms here yes I'm a foot soldier in what you're doing good I'm from North Carolina and for you folks about talking about carbon we produce more carbon from our power plants to screw up the rest of the world than probably most other states here's the whole point Franklin D. Roosevelt back in 42 or 43 and Jolston Ambassador Michael straightened me out one time about this said when you're fighting the enemy up to Norway here's the whole point why try to reinvent things that the Norwegians have been doing for years they've ingrained the environment I've got two grandkids over there ingrained the environment they know how to do it not everything because nobody knows how to do it my suggestion is get yourself and a few senators up to Obama up to Norway and see what has been done because they know how to do it I brag about Norway all the time in North Carolina and they realize that hey we don't have to reinvent it again well I'm a real fan of Norway for a lot of reasons one of which is the most Norwegian city in the United States is Pawsville Washington Norwegian fisherman in it than any place in the country and it has a Norwegian theme to the entire city so I'm a real fan of Norway your point is though there are great lessons to be learned from other countries including Norway which has done incredible work in science and economic development there's no other country I don't think has been so helpful to other countries in their development as Norway who have shown the way on how to help the developing world move forward there's a lot of reasons to be a good fan of Norway but there are great lessons from Europe in general not just Norway let me list some of them that we can learn number one you need to have a limit on the amount of gas that goes out you can't just do taxes you have to have an absolute limit like we now are proposing on the amount of gases that go out in Norway and Europe that we have to have a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide goes out that's number one number two a lesson from Europe is that efficiency is incredibly economically productive Norway Denmark a whole host of the other European countries have squeezed enormous efficiency out of their systems with relatively common sense measures such as building codes and incentive for consumers and the like number three a lesson from Europe don't do this and grow your economy you know you look at Great Britain they've grown their economy in large part because of the industrial base that they've been able to grow in some of these clean tech economic models so yes and by the way Europe made some mistakes they made a mistake of giving away all their permits and having bad information when they started and we're not going to follow that we're going to learn from the mistakes they've made too so sometimes it's good to put second let the other guy first go first Congressman thank you very much for the leadership that you have shown on clean energy and climate change and in the creating the arsenal of the clean energy economy I'd like to briefly mention an effort by a group of retired generals and admirals released in about 10 days May 18th on powering America's defense energy and the risk to national security by a military advisory board at CNA that produced a report on climate change national security and the threat of climate change two years ago and they are now prepared to and we'll be talking about energy from the point of view of reducing the threats to our national energy posture our national security and using America's military which is the single largest energy user in the US as a way to innovate towards that clean energy economy using the military as a test bed an incubator and an innovator for new technologies as it has done as you've noted over many over many years the innovation both technological and cultural so I think that's going to be another tool in this arsenal of clean energy as we proceed through the debates here over the next year well I'm very appreciative of you and the generals work on this it's been most enlightening and let me tell you the now is the time for the generals to assault the last bastion they need to I'm going to give them a mission statement if you will even though many of them are retired I hope they will volunteer for the duty of sharing some of their wisdom and experiences with the people who represent them on Capitol Hill in the next week and I'm not lobbying any particular position but I hope generals will share what they know right now with very important members of the US Congress because they have very important insights on this subject and they have been very very clear on the threats that we face as a result of this problem we had this letter from 20 generals about the security threats associated with this if we do not act and you are entirely right the DOD now their mission is to not have such a long logistic tail associated with God knows how many gallons you have to burn a gas to get one gallon of gas to a rock and if we can figure out technologies that free them for that it's going to be a wonderful thing for their missions as well so their help in getting colleagues to understand the duality of these benefits will be very very important and I'm giving them a mission statement here well thank you I think they are up to the challenge thank you I know they are and they have great credibility sure we get any other softball questions there's a lady yeah in addition to the energy bell I was wondering what you thought the prospects were on passing the bill to regulate black carbon yeah actually in the bill we have a in the bill is the guts of a bill I've introduced to start a study an eventual potential regulation of black carbon it is in the bill in the base bill right now so cross your fingers we hope it will stay there and we know how important this is the new science has in fact been shockingly disturbing the black carbon because it absorbs all this energy when it gets up in the ice is a major part of this destructive pattern that's associated with health issues as well so we got to get to the bottom of this and have some regulatory approach to it and it will as of the moment it's in the bill thank you Sarah Ladislaw congressman thanks so much for being here today it's really great to have you here I really appreciated your intro comments I work in the sorry I'm Sarah Ladislaw I work in the energy and national security program here at CSIS often times things like climate change seems so far away because some of the more aggressive changes that are taking place happen in the Arctic region of the world or the changes that we're talking about happen over time frames out to 2050 just wondering you know from your perspective and what you're seeing on the hill people from all over the world come here to ask us how are these perspectives changing in congress are these are the awareness of these issues being here and now things we need to deal with today actually really resonating with more and more people I often try and argue on behalf of the states this being a steep learning curve for us and something that we're really trying to aggressively learn and keep pace with really quickly so I'd like just some of your views on how perspectives in congress have evolved to appreciate sort of the need to tackle these things earlier rather than later but then also some of the larger organizational challenges so going forward say we passed the bill or say we come to an agreement in Copenhagen how does congress and the government have to sort of change the way they think about these issues to react in time well sometimes when I'm in congress I feel like I'm in a Star Trek episode and I've landed on a foreign planet that's alien to me and the reason is we still have quite a number of people who refuse to accept the clear science on this issue and it's stunning to me why that is and a lot of those people are never going to accept this because they have this ideological bent that they think it's a communist plot to subvert the basic character of America and they got into that mindset which is stunning to me because people will fly on airplanes that depend on modern science and they'll use cell phones that depend on quantum mechanics but then they'll refuse to accept the clear science of this issue and I've struggled with why that is and I think it's unfortunate because a lot of people thought this became some kind of partisan issue on it and the other is just fear I think a lot of my colleagues and Americans are afraid that we can't solve this problem and it's the reason I've been I wrote this book because I want to give people confidence and we should have confidence we can solve this problem if you don't think you can solve the problem you tend to shy away from recognizing that it exists so I think fear has been the fundamental reason why people will not accept the basic science but let me suggest that in the debate in the next couple months the most important thing we will be talking about is not global warming and is not the Arctic the most important thing for us to talk about during this time of economic recession is the job creating potential of these policies that is the singular most important thing to Americans right now how do we build our economy how do we create jobs where are the jobs going to come from where are the jobs that we have lost and there is one and only one clear winner in the sweepstakes to figure out where those jobs are going to come from they're going to come from the bright source concentrated solar energy company that's building concentrated solar they're going to come from the clipper wind company or building wind turbines in Iowa they're going to come from the altar rock company or do an engineer geothermal in Seattle they're going to come from the McKinstry this is clearly without argument the best strategy for creating jobs in this country that we have at our disposal so I challenge anyone to come up with a better strategy on how to create jobs in this country than this one right here so during the next two months we are going to talk about jobs frankly much more than we're going to talk about global warming now there will be a side benefit that might save the Arctic and not destroy the planet but the main thrust and job of Americans in Congress right now for Americans is to respond to this economic uncertainty that we have and the good news in good news is that these both exactly dovetail the best economic policy right now happens to be by coincidence the best policy for our grandchildren in the long term so we're going to focus on job creation and I think that's the right approach to get this bill done it's the thing that people care about right now and by the way I just fully believe this you can't turn the corner in America and not find a business person with an idea that if you can marry it with some capital has a chance to really create jobs in this country I mean literally I don't go a day without meeting two people that have a new company and maybe only one of three of them but they all have potential to succeed to create jobs in this country now mention this other thing is we need to reach an international agreement with our friends about how to move forward on climate change so when I make this other comment it's not to diminish our friendship and alliances around the world but Americans also respond to competition right the original moon race responded to the race with the Ruskies at that time as we referred to them gently to get to the moon it was a race well right now we are in an economic race with China to decide who's going to be dominant building lithium ion powered cars we are in a race with Germany to see who's going to build the advanced solar systems we're in a race with Denmark and other countries you know about wind turbines so far their way you know is not for us but we can catch up and eventually pass our friends and that competitive instinct and self interest is something we need to unleash and I think we'll succeed ultimately in a friendly competition and I believe we will be successful in Copenhagen but it is critically important that America act first domestically and I cannot envision sending the world you know this Barack Obama is pretty interesting I was talking to a guy in the Philippines the other day the people in the Philippines are counting on Barack Obama's success he is now a world inspirational figure and I cannot imagine the prospect of America sending him to Copenhagen without a domestic success on this issue to take to Copenhagen we owe him that we owe ourselves that we owe the world that and I think it's so important for us to get this bill done this year and our intention is to get this bill out of committee by Memorial Day and we're working on that to do that so I want to thank you for an opportunity to say hello I hope you'll talk to any of your elected representatives about anything you think about this issue pro or con and look forward to success, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you very much Representative Isley and we better let you get back to your battle station I fear the Klingons may have landed