Chairman engles joining us. Were here joined by the select committee on Climate Crisis and an esteemed panel of witnesses for this hearing leading to the next generation on the global Climate Crisis. I know a few of our witnesses have a hard stop at 11 30 in order to get to their next event advocating on these issues. Ill just ask that all members keep their questioning to five minutes or less so we can fit in as many members as possible. Without objection all the members may have five days to submit statements, questions, exrainious materials for the record, subject to length limitation in the rules and id just like to call on the chairman of the full committee to who has a few words to offer. Chairman engel. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to invite everyone to come to the Foreign Affairs committee, and by the looks of it youre all here. I want to welcome everybody. Climate change is certainly something that is so important, and the aggravating thing about it is that there are
I also want to address my concerns about the administrations 3 billion pledge to the Green Climate fund. The American Public does not support paying their hardearned taxpayer dollars into a slush fund that spends billions of International Climate change programs in developing nations to address the impacts of extreme weather. The need for spending our natural disasters is down historically while other International Priorities have increased. According to the 2014 annual Global Climate and catastrophe report released, Global Natural disasters in 2014 combined to cause economic losses of 132 billion. 37 below the tenyear average of 211 billion. With immediate global priorities such as the upheaval in the middle east and syria and iraq to a resurgent russia in Eastern Europe and abroad we should be focusing our resources on countering global terrorist threats with humanitarian assistance, democracy promotion and Embassy Security measures. The only reason i can see the administration wants
Negotiations is that each country will have to decide based on its own circumstances, its own capabilities, hopefully with as much salutary pressure as possible to do your best but that each country was going to have to make the decision about exactly what to do and how to do it. By the way, that goes for developed countries as well as developing. But even more important for developing countries who were trying to reassure that they can take on the fight for Climate Change without imperilling their own priorities for development, growth and eradication of poverty. So that flexibility is absolutely essential and is really in some sense the core of our approach. Thank you very much, senator kaine. Senator coons. Thank you mr. Stern, for your testimony, leadership, for your hard work and creativity in pursuing such an important global goal. Let me start in some ways where i think senator kaine was pursuing a conversation about some limitations of previous agreements and how this hopedfor
For austria as well as the osce mission that you and i had a chance to talk about all are housed in vienna. So youre part of a Diplomatic Team that we have in a critically important place where major decisions are being made. Obviously the focus today is very much on the responsibilities and the implementation of the iran agreement by the iaea and as we talked privately and ill repeat now and as i pointed out to ambassador shannon, your openness with us is critically important and appreciate the commitments that youve made in that regard. Mr. Chairman, im also pleased to note that a former member of this body who worked closely with Laura Holgate during the eight years she worked at the Nuclear Threat initiative has written a letter on her behalf touting mrs. Holgate superb only in and skills and passion for reducing global dangers. I would request that be part of our record. Without objection. Thank you, senator cardin. I will turn to our second nominee. Thats Laura Holgate who is nom
Indicated that we are real into the 80s with probably the u. S. Amount i already told you. I dont think this is a huge problem. Senator udall . I yield my time to senator boxer. And mr. Chairman, here we are again. We have two different venues where we can argue about climate. [ laughter ] and always very pleasant. Were friends. But here we go. I continue to be perplexed by those who wish to obstruct action to reduce Carbon Pollution. Some are deniers, and weve been through there before. They say theyre not scientists and i would agree with them. They ought to be listening to the 97 , 98 of scientists who tell us human action and activities is causing too much Carbon Pollution. And some just dont seem to grasp the incredible advantages that we have in moving toward clean energy and im not going to go into it because were not the environment and Public Works Committee and its not about public health, but its so clear that when we do this we also create a tremendous number of jobs that c