So today was a very important day for my office. Today Representative Faleomavaega hosted a hearing for the Congressional Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment, for which he is the chairman, to discuss Americas response to the Copenhagen Accord. First off if you don't already know the Copenhagen Accord is a non legally binding agreement signed by the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa; and endorsed by the majority of the European Union including Great Britain, to make an effort to end climate change. While the document itself is crazy long there are some note worthy points. For instance the accord sets a world goal of raising 100 billion dollars, each year, from 2010 to 2012 to help developing counties create clean energy sources. Also the signing countries pledge to continue their endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol. Similarly each signing nation must pledge to raise 30 billion dollars from 2010 to 2012 for new and additional resources. One final point is that each nation is required to recognize that climate change is a real scientific issue that affects today's economic and ecological future.
So as I was saying, Representative Faleomavaega was hosting a hearing today on the topic of appropriations for the 130 plus billion dollars to be pledged to climate change issues. Without getting into the details of the hearing, it consisted of a panel of Representatives having face time with "subject matter experts" in order for them to gain a better understanding as to the reasons for appropriating this money at some later point in time. In an effort to create healthy debate on the issues and insure a better understanding of the topic this hearing continued on for roughly two hours. Now instead of talking about the mountain of issues that were discussed today I will be breaking this topic up between at least two days. So tomorrow there will be another topic concerning climate change that was discussed at this hearing.
As for today I want to talk about the economic issues of climate change. Specifically I want to discuss how developed countries are to respond, economically, to the changing energy market. What I mean exactly is that since most developed nations have their own sources of energy, whether it be clean or not, the real need for clean energy is coming from those nations who are now developing that need. One Representative made a point today that while it is the U.S. who has dedicated more federal and private funds into the development of new "greener" sources of energy, it is China who is utilizing the energy needs of the undeveloped world to create a source of income. The Representative went on to note that the reason for hesitation in financing green technologies or developments is risk. He identified that it is the lack of an energy market in this country, which has been decreasing for the past two years; the first time since world war II, that has prevented a greater drive for development. So todays question is, what should the U.S. do to compete with China, and all the other developed nations for that matter, to secure a clean energy market?
Question:
How should the U.S. compete with China, and the rest of the developed, world for a clean energy market?
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