Climate science, policy, politics, and action
Witness
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While weather extremes, melting glaciers, and crop failures dominate the public discourse on global warming, human health risks from climate change are of growing concern to both the public and health professionals. This briefing will provide an overview of these health risks and health system responses.
Speakers
Moderator
First, Dr. Rita Colwell (University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health) will review major health threats, including heat waves, weather and hydrologic extremes, reduced air quality, rising allergen exposures, infectious diseases, reduced agricultural output, mental health consequences, and civil disruption such as population displacement. She will draw particularly on her research on infectious diseases, including both vector-borne diseases (e.g. malaria, plague, and many viral diseases) and water-borne diseases (e.g. cholera), explaining recent scientific advances in understanding the links between environmental change and disease risk.
Second, Dr. Howard Frumkin (CDC) will discuss the public health response to these threats, drawing on a framework developed at CDC and now being implemented at the Federal, state, and local levels. This response involves longstanding core public health activities, such as disease surveillance, outbreak investigations, vulnerability assessments, health communication, and preparedness planning. He will also emphasize the importance of assessing the health consequences of mitigation strategies, so decision-makers can choose the most health-protective approaches.
Finally, Dr, Jonathan Patz (University of Wisconsin) will introduce the concept of co-benefits, a key strategy in both addressing climate change and promoting health. For example, transportation strategies that reduce travel demand and favor walking, bicycling, and transit over automobiles, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote physical activity as well as improve air quality. The net result is a steep drop in cardiovascular disease, cancer, asthma and other ailments. Dr. Patz will cite recent analyses in the US suggesting that climate change mitigation could offer a substantial opportunity to improve the health of the public and save billions of dollars in healthcare costs and worker productivity.
Witness
Witnesses
Witness
10:05 Bingaman Obama proposed spending $15 billion a year on energy efficiency and renewable energy research and development. It is troubling that some of the climate proposals before Congress don’t emphasize the need for energy R&D. In the coming weeks we have scheduled hearings on the DOE budget request and the loan guarantee program.
10:11 Murkowski As we look to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we need to look at all the technologies that are out there. Oil, coal, and natural gas will continue to be primary sources of energy for our nation for years to come. Also nuclear.
10:13 Chu I’m here to speak up for clean energy R&D.
10:21 Bingaman Some of us who have tried to understand these climate change proposals is that these cap-and-trade proposals would have much more impact on some sectors than others. The transportation sector has 1/3 of emissions, but putting a price on carbon is not going to substantially affect the transportation sector compared to the electric power sector. If this is the case, then we are back to trying to find other policy intiatives to deal with emissions from the transportation sector, which means R&D should be particularly focused there. Does that make sense?
Chu I agree with you. The transportation sector is most difficult. We should continue to improve the efficiency of our vehicles. We think in long-haul trucking we can reduce energy consumption by 30 percent. The electrification of short-range personal vehicles. People in cities and suburbs typically don’t drive more than 50 miles per day. We think we can make batteries with are two to three times more energy density. And the last part is how you move away from traditional fuels.
10:27 Murkowski Nuclear nuclear nuclear.
Chu The White House is supportive of nuclear. We’re looking aggressively to help restart the American nuclear industry.
Murkowski ARPA-E did not make any nuclear funding.
Chu If we received any nuclear proposals, there were only a very few. In ARPA-E, we’re looking at short-term funding, two to three years. Many of the things that are nuclear take ten to twenty years.
Murkowksi Does the administration agree we need some kind of geologic repository?
Chu Yes.
10:32 Dorgan Power of government R&D.
Chu We need a long-term signal. Industry has to get a long-term signal that carbon limits are going down. Right now, from utility companies there’s a lot of money sitting on the sidelines wanting to know when it’s going to happen. It’s money not invested it’s jobs not created.
Dorgan We’re headed to a lower-carbon future, and we need to find ways to do that. I see two issues: energy security and the need to address climate change in a thoughtful and appropriate way.
Chu High-technology vehicles, biofuels, electrification. The loan guarantee program is held up by still frozen credit. We constantly talk about this opportunity and responsibility. We see ourselves as a major innovator in the United States for our economic prosperity. If we do this right this will be a key to American prosperity.
10:40 Bunning Nuclear nuclear nuclear! Do you know how long the nuclear industry has been on the sidelines?
Chu The last plant constructed went online in the 70s.
Bunning Isn’t it time that this and other administration have failed to pursue nuclear as an alternative, if we want a green production of electricity, that that is the prime source of doing it?
Chu I would agree that it is a very important part of the portfolio we need in the coming century.
Bunning Why do we drag our feet in licensing, assisting with the moneys available?
Chu I wouldn’t characterize it as dragging our feet. NRC is working to streamlining the procedures.
Bunning If a country like France, which I don’t consider a very progressive country, can produce 80% of its electricity from nuclear, and we’re at 20%, there’s a big gap there! If we’re going to have a greener America, nuclear power has got to be at the top of the list.
Chu I don’t think we have a disagreement here.
10:45 Sanders We have a transformational moment. Energy conservation.
Chu A lot of it will actually save money. We’re looking very hard at how we can develop self-sustaining programs.
10:51 Corker I do think 35% of energy consumption can be reduced through energy efficiency. I hope we can find ways of leveraging efficiency. To me the whole vision of using underutilized baseload to charge vehicles in the evenings is something we can get behind. Nuclear nuclear nuclear! It feels to us you’re slow-walking nuclear. It’s carbon free! It makes me less trustful of the department.
Chu I can assure you that I am not slow-walking this.
Corker To the degree climate enthusiasts can figure out how to do that without it being a net extraction from people’s pockets that would be great.
10:58 Stabenow You’ve done a good job with cars.
Chu Clean energy investment will create meaningful jobs. We should not say manufacturing is not important. It’s vitally important. There are a lot of policy tools, all of them important. You need market demand, long-term signals, tax credits, loan guarantees. If hydro power is made more efficient and better for the fish, should we give them renewable credit? Yes.
11:06 Barrasso Fascinated with carbon capture with enzymes. Coal is abundant, reliable, secure.
Chu Scientists threw the tree ring data out. It’s being investigated. It’s just a snippet. There are all these warts and bumps as science moves forward.
11:14 Menendez What policies are most important to lowering the price of solar?
11:24 Wyden Import-export and commerce.
11:32 Cantwell
11:38 Shaheen
11:45 Risch Nuclear loan guarantees to move the renaissance forward!
11:45 Murkowski I’ll submit further questions for the record. I found it troubling about White House interference with nuclear funding.
11:49 Chu Energy reaches into everything. We will be living in a carbon-constrained environment worldwide. There are a lot of smart people who are very concerned about this.
The sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are open to Parties of the Convention and Observer States (Governments), the United Nations System and observer organizations duly admitted by the Conference of the Parties. In addition, accredited press is allowed to cover the proceedings of the Convention.
Participation in COP15 is restricted to duly nominated representatives of Parties, observer States, admitted observer organizations and accredited press/media. The sessions are not open to the public.
COP 15 comprises a number of sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies of the Convention, its Kyoto Protocol, bilateral and multilateral meetings as well as side events and exhibits.
Five Parties have recently made proposals for a protocol under the Convention pursuant to Article 17 of the Convention.
The secretariat has also received twelve proposals by Parties for amendment to the Kyoto Protocol pursuant to Articles 20 and 21 of the Protocol.
With the international climate change talks in Copenhagen fast approaching, there is real urgency to reach diplomatic consensus on a planetary solution. In a hearing this Wednesday, the Select Committee will explore with climate scientists from the Obama administration the urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse.
At the hearing, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) will host two of America’s preeminent climate scientists, Dr. John Holdren and Dr. Jane Lubchenco.
Dr. Holdren is the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and was formerly a professor at Harvard University and the director of the acclaimed Woods Hole Research Center.
Dr. Lubchenco is the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States’ leading climate office.
The past decade has been the hottest in recorded history, with all of the years since 2001 being in the top 10 of hottest, according to NASA. This summer, the world’s oceans were the warmest in NOAA’s 130 years of record-keeping. Meanwhile, global heat-trapping pollution continues to rise.
Witnesses * Dr. John Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy * Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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Panel I
Panel II
Witnesses