[Senate Hearing 118-74]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-74
UNDER THE WEATHER: DIAGNOSING THE HEALTH COSTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
April 26, 2023
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53-165 WASHINGTON : 2023
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island, Chairman
PATTY MURRAY, Washington CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
RON WYDEN, Oregon MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
TIM KAINE, Virginia MIKE BRAUN, Indiana
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico RICK SCOTT, Florida
ALEX PADILLA, California MIKE LEE, Utah
Dan Dudis, Majority Staff Director
Kolan Davis, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Mallory B. Nersesian, Chief Clerk
Alexander C. Scioscia, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2023
OPENING STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Chairman............................. 1
Prepared Statement........................................... 36
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Ranking Member...................... 3
Prepared Statement........................................... 38
STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Senator Chris Van Hollen......................................... 5
Senator Alex Padilla............................................. 14
Senator Ron Johnson.............................................. 18
Senator Tim Kaine................................................ 30
WITNESSES
The Honorable Stephanie Smith, Esq., Member of the House of
Delegates, District 45, Baltimore City, Maryland............... 6
Prepared Statement........................................... 40
Dr. Katelyn Moretti, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine,
Brown Emergency Medicine....................................... 7
Prepared Statement........................................... 43
Dr. Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service
Professor in Economics, and Director, Becker Friedman
Institute, and the Energy Policy Institute, University of
Chicago........................................................ 9
Prepared Statement........................................... 50
Dr. Carl J. Schramm, University Professor, Syracuse University... 11
Prepared Statement........................................... 65
Mr. Michael Shellenberger, Founder & President, Environmental
Progress....................................................... 13
Prepared Statement........................................... 69
APPENDIX
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record
Hon. Smith................................................... 85
Dr. Moretti.................................................. 86
Dr. Schramm.................................................. 87
Mr. Shellenberger............................................ 89
Charts submitted by Senator Charles E. Grassley.................. 90
Documents submitted for the Record by Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse 92
Statement submitted for the Record by the National Ski Areas
Association.................................................... 117
UNDER THE WEATHER: DIAGNOSING THE HEALTH COSTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2023
Committee on the Budget,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:15
a.m., in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sheldon
Whitehouse, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Whitehouse, Kaine, Van Hollen, Padilla,
Grassley, Crapo, Johnson, Marshall, Braun, and R. Scott.
Also present: Democratic staff: Dan Dudis, Majority Staff
Director; Alexandra Gilliland, Climate Policy Expert; Dan
Ruboss; Senior Tax and Economic Advisor and Member of Outreach
Director.
Republican staff: Chris Conlin, Deputy Staff Director;
Krisann Pearce, General Counsel; Jordan Pakula, Professional
Staff Member; Nic Pottebaum, Professional Staff Member.
Witnesses:
The Honorable Stephanie Smith, Esq., Member of the House of
Delegates, District 45, Baltimore City, Maryland
Dr. Katelyn Moretti, Assistant Professor of Emergency
Medicine, Brown Emergency Medicine
Dr. Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished
Service Professor in Economics, and Director, Becker Friedman
Institute, and the Energy Policy Institute, University of
Chicago
Dr. Carl J. Schramm, University Professor, Syracuse
University
Mr. Michael Shellenberger, Founder & President,
Environmental Progress
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN WHITEHOUSE \1\
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\1\ Prepared statement of Chairman Whitehouse appears in the
appendix on page 36.
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Chairman Whitehouse. Let me call the hearing to order, and
welcome Ranking Member Grassley and our witnesses and guests to
our seventh Committee hearing. Today we will continue our
series on the economic costs of climate change, costs that are
already affecting workers, families and governments across the
country.
Today we explore the climate harms to public health and the
associated economic and budgetary burdens. As we've heard
throughout this series, the climate crisis brings with it what
witnesses have repeatedly called systemic risks, ones that
cascade beyond a particular troubled sector to harm the entire
economy and pose serious threats to the federal budget.
Their warnings aren't for future lawmakers; they're for us
in this room to protect against. Health care costs related to
combustion of fossil fuels are estimated to total nearly $820
billion in the United States annually. Over the ten-year budget
window, that's over $8 trillion.
The direct costs of health care, doctor's appointments,
emergency room visits, rehabilitation and home health support,
prescription drugs, strain the pocketbooks of American
families. The indirect economic costs from lost work and school
days, reduced productivity and increased economic instability
all add to that $8 trillion budgetary burden.
If you care about deficits or economic growth, you have to
care about climate change and its costs and risks. Yet with
evidence of the economic dangers of climate change piling up
around us, House Republicans propose eliminating clean energy
tax credits and investments.
They have completely lost their grip on reality, and are so
subservient to fossil fuel overlords that they're willing to
eliminate hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, cause
trillions in climate harm and shrink our economy by letting
China build the technologies of tomorrow.
Their non-starter of a default plan would escalate carbon
pollution, raising temperatures around the world. In Rhode
Island in the last century, the average temperature is up three
degrees. Rhode Island emergency rooms see a rise in hospital
visits any time there are multiple 80 plus degree days in a
row.
On average, there are 702 heat-related deaths and over
67,000 emergency room visits each year in America due to heat.
Extreme temperatures are more frequent and severe, and that
costs lives and dollars. The Pacific Northwest's deadly
heatwave in 2021 saw approximately 600 additional deaths in one
week in Oregon and Washington state. A heat wave of that
intensity would have been virtually impossible without human-
caused climate change.
Higher temperatures also encourage smog formation and
contribute to higher levels of airborne particulate matter and
pollen. The combination of heat and poor air quality increases
cardiovascular and respiratory risk, and the likelihood and
severity of asthma attacks.
Warming climates expand disease vectors northwards,
particularly insects that carry disease like Lyme disease, West
Nile virus, dengue fever and Zika. Indeed, there is evidence
that climate shifts are the driving force behind more frequent
disease outbreaks.
Climate upheaval brings more frequent and extreme weather
events, which bring their own health care costs. The news
reports regularly how hurricanes, wildfires, floods and
droughts lead to death, injury and illness. Hurricane Sandy is
estimated to have cost $3.3 billion in health costs, including
nearly 4,700 emergency room visits, over 6,600 hospital
admissions and 273 deaths.
The public health harms from climate change fall most
heavily on the elderly, on children, on people of color, on the
poor and on people with pre-existing conditions. Climate change
is a multiplier, both of illness rates and economic
disparities. As a result, it will worsen economic inequality
and widen gaps in health outcomes and life expectancy between
poor and wealthy.
Federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid will be heavily
impacted, given the populations they serve. In 2021, Medicare
and Medicaid constituted almost 40 percent of all U.S. health
care spending, and almost 20 percent of all federal spending.
Of course, these climate-related health care costs come on top
of the many other climate costs we've heard about at previous
hearings.
Witnesses have warned us of risks that could take down the
economy. The risk of a coastal property values crash, the risk
of a similar wipeout in property values in wildfire country,
the risk of insurance collapse as unpredictability drives
insurers out of markets, the risk of the carbon bubble bursting
in a disorderly transition from fossil fuel.
These are not alternative scenarios, they all could happen.
We're playing with dangerous stakes. The consulting firm
Deloitte has pegged the difference between getting climate
right and getting it wrong at a more than $220 trillion swing.
In a world in which those long warned-of evils have come to
pass, the $8 trillion health care cost burden will likely grow,
as a crashed economy and budget will shrink. Not a good
combination.
As this hearing will make clear, the effects of climate
crisis on our nation's public health are dangerous and costly
to families, to businesses and to the federal government, and
this problem will only get worse and become more expensive
unless we act now. I turn now to our distinguished Ranking
Member, Senator Grassley.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR GRASSLEY \2\
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\2\ Prepared statement of Senator Grassley appears in the appendix
on page 38.
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Senator Grassley. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse, Mr.
Chairman. I want you to know that last week's hearing on tax
policy was really refreshing. Revenues are a critical part of
the federal budget, and we should remain very focused on the
pressing fiscal issues facing our country.
My Republican colleagues in the other body introduced
legislation to lift the debt ceiling and curb our federal
spending. This week, I don't agree with every item in the bill.
In fact, I have read only excerpts of it. But things are clear.
America's fiscal problems are serious and Republicans are
working to tackle those problems head on.
The U.S. is facing public debt that in a few years will
surpass record levels set in the wake of World War II. Even if
we don't agree with all the contents of the House bill,
Republicans are following through with concrete solutions to
address our dire fiscal situation and to reduce inflation.
It's been 88 days since President Biden and the Speaker of
House McCarthy met down at the White House as an initial
meeting to deal with these issues. No meeting has taken place
since then. So I see President Biden refusing to even enter a
negotiation room with Speaker McCarthy. Senate Democrats
haven't lifted a finger to prevent us from going head-long off
the fiscal cliff.
The Budget Committee is currently holding its sixth hearing
on climate change. Let's now work together to write a budget
that has guardrails to rein in federal spending. I have a
reputation for traveling to each of the 99 counties, holding a
Q and A with my constituents in each of those counties 42 years
in a row. 28 counties so far this year.
Not every Iowan agrees with every decision I make as a
Senator, but I'm always willing to have a conversation about
the topics that matter most to them and our country. Health
care concerns often come up. Now, however, the health effects
of climate change isn't one that I've heard much, if at all.
Our government health care programs, including Medicare,
Medicaid and public health, are projected to spend $21 trillion
over the next ten years. I do hear a lot from my constituents
about preserving Medicare, and I agree that we should be doing
that.
We need to ensure that these taxpayers funds that we call
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are used wisely to
address pressing health issues facing Americans, and we should
be doing that right now. If Members are really interested in a
bipartisan conversation about public health challenges and
health care financing, I suggest that we focus on the key
health challenges facing Americans right now, and some of these
are the 107,000 Americans that died from drug overdose,
particularly fentanyl, killing 70,000 of that 107,000, how to
lower prescription drug costs so patients don't delay treatment
and save money, how to improve access to rural health care as
hospitals and clinics are struggling to stay afloat, and how to
address the leading cause of death in America, which happens to
be heart disease.
We have significant health care challenges right now. A
climate change mandate from Washington, D.C. won't solve the
public health and health care finance challenges that we face
this very day. I look forward to hearing testimony of Mr.
Shellenberger. He was invited to serve as an expert reviewer by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He's also been recognized by Time magazine as quote-unquote
``a hero of the environment.'' The majority argues that climate
change will catastrophically lead to more heat-related
illnesses and deaths. They argue it will dramatically amplify
global disease, damage respiratory health and harm more
Americans from natural disasters. I'm confident that Mr.
Shellenberger will be able to separate their alarm from
reality.
Dr. Schramm, I also welcome you back to the Committee. You
remember when the Budget Committee focused on budgetary
matters. You testified as a witness on the Reagan
administration budget proposal in 1983.
That year, the Committee held six hearings in one month as
we prepared a budget resolution, and when Reagan and Tip
O'Neill got together in 1983 to solve that problem, I doubt if
they thought that they were doing it for a whole half century.
But it works out that Social Security won't run out of surplus
money until 2033, then afterwards we're in a crisis because
people will only be getting 77 percent of what they're getting
right now.
Dr. Schramm, you founded the nation's first research
organization dedicated to understanding health care financing,
and I'm interested in exploring your current work to ensure our
public health institutions focus on their core mission where
they've been failing. I yield.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you. We have five witnesses
today, including a witness from Maryland, who will be
introduced by Senator Van Hollen. I want to thank Delegate
Stephanie Smith for being here, and turn to Senator Van Hollen
for his introduction.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR VAN HOLLEN
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you Mr. Chairman and Ranking
Member Grassley. Welcome to all our witnesses today. I have the
special honor of being able to introduce a colleague and friend
from the state of Maryland, Delegate Stephanie Smith, who's a
member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing District
45.
Delegate Smith was just reelected to serve a second term
representing a part of Baltimore City. She serves on the
Maryland House Appropriations Committee and chairs the
Education and Economic Development Subcommittee. She's also the
chair of the Baltimore City delegation in Annapolis, and I
congratulate her on wrapping up a very successful 90 day
session.
But Delegate Smith is here not only because she's a skilled
legislator, but more important for today's purposes she's a
federal policy expert and an advocate on many of the issues
that the Committee will cover today, especially her
understanding and knowledge of the negative health impacts that
climate change will have broadly, but especially in American
cities and especially the rising health care costs due to urban
heat.
So Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank you for
inviting her to be with us today. I look forward to returning
to try to ask questions of both Delegate Smith and other
members of the panel. But welcome and thank you Mr. Chairman
and Members for inviting a very important witness today.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you Senator Van Hollen and thank
you Delegate Smith. Our other witnesses are Dr. Katelyn
Moretti. She's an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Emergency Medicine at Brown University, and a board-certified
emergency medicine physician, practicing in Providence, Rhode
Island.
She founded and co-chairs the Rhode Island Medical
Society's Climate Change and Health Committee. We look forward
to her testimony and her unique perspective as an emergency
medicine physician.
Next we have Dr. Michael Greenstone, who is the Milton
Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, as well
as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the
Director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of
Chicago.
His research focuses on uncovering the benefits and costs
of environmental quality and society's energy choices. Dr.
Greenstone, thank you for being here. We look forward to your
testimony.
Next we have Dr. Carl Schramm, who is a university
professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse
University. He previously served on the faculty of the Johns
Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, where he focused
on public policy in hospital finance.
Additionally, he has founded and co-founded several
companies in health care finance and information technology. We
welcome him and look forward to his testimony.
Finally, we'll hear from Michael Shellenberger, who is the
founder and president of Environmental Progress. He is also the
co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, where he served as
president from 2003 to 2015. We welcome him as well.
Delegate Smith, you have five minutes to deliver your
testimony. Your full statement will be made a part of the
official record. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE STEPHANIE SMITH, ESQ., MEMBER OF THE
HOUSE OF DELEGATES, DISTRICT 45, BALTIMORE CITY, MARYLAND \3\
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\3\ Prepared statement of Hon. Smith appears in the appendix on
page 40.
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Delegate Smith. Good morning Chairman Whitehouse, also good
morning, Ranking Member Grassley and to all the distinguished
Members of the Committee. For the record, I'm Delegate
Stephanie Smith. I properly represent Maryland's 45th state
legislative district in Baltimore City, and as you heard from
my great Senator Van Hollen, I am honored to serve on the
Appropriations Committee and also chair of the Baltimore City
House delegation.
But outside of my work as a legislator, I've spent my
career for nearly two decades at the intersection of
environmental health, urban planning and community development,
and today I will share observations about the public health
costs of climate change, and that will come from both my
professional ends, as well as the experiences of my neighbors.
Baltimore's average temperature has risen three degrees
over the last century, nearly twice as much as the national, as
the nation at large and beyond overall increases in average
temperature. Baltimore is one of the leading U.S. cities rather
for the urban heat island effect.
Urban heat islands are hyper-local pockets of elevated
temperatures within a city that can exacerbate adverse health
outcomes for residents with diabetes, cardiovascular conditions
and respiratory health challenges, just to name a few. A
concentration of paved surfaces, buildings and industrial
activities amplify rising temperatures, and Baltimore's urban
heat islands make our city the ninth hottest urban hot zone in
the United States.
Residents inside Baltimore's urban heat islands are more
likely to be people of color, low income and live shorter
lives. My district is home to landmarks like Pennsylvania
Station and Johns Hopkins Medical Center, as well as
communities that have faced the policy harm of redlining and
disinvestment.
The top of my district boasts mature trees and significant
green spaces like Herringbone Park. However, I live at the
bottom of my district in East Baltimore, which is home to dense
rowhome communities with the hottest temperatures in Baltimore
City.
As climate change delivers more extreme heat days,
Baltimore is on pace to see a sixfold increase in these very
hot days in the next 15 years. In East Baltimore, communities
like Madison-Eastend and Mcelderry Park, this can mean more
emergency medical calls for chronic conditions.
As the heat index approaches 103 degrees, emergency calls
for congestive heart failure can double. I personally live in a
123 year-old rehabbed rowhome with my husband, my young
children and my mother, who has a chronic heart condition.
Thankfully, our home has central air conditioning that can
maintain her comfort on the hottest days.
All of my neighbors deserve to live with the dignity and
the baseline resilience needed to survive extreme heat.
Unfortunately, news reports have detailed some of the
difficulties my neighbors face as extreme heat days multiply.
In July 2019, the University of Maryland put sensors inside
of Mcelderry Park homes and recorded interior temperatures as
high as 97 degrees, with a heat index of 119 degrees. Parents
are keeping children confined in hot homes or do not install
window air conditioning units on the first floor, due to
concerns about public safety.
Tammy Jackson, a resident of Mcelderry Park lamented the
interior temperature was 92 degrees on a 100 degree day. With
asthmatic grandchildren, Jackson doesn't know where to find
relief. She simply exclaimed ``This is too much! Lord, this is
too much.'' Yes, the scope of this challenge can feel like it's
too much, but I do have good news to share.
While climate change continues to increase temperatures,
there are investments that we can make at every level of
government, including increasing the urban tree canopy,
prioritizing green roofs and surfaces and construction,
providing more accessibility to cooling centers, and
proactively reaching out to our most vulnerable community
members during Code Red days.
While this problem is enormous, mitigating adverse health
impacts of extreme heat can mean cost savings from reduced
Medicaid claims, reduced emergency medical care for the
uninsured, and increased economic productivity from improved
healthiness.
The state of Maryland through our Climate Solutions Now Act
of 2022 invested in five million urban tree plantings and
encouraged green infrastructure. But we will need local, state
and federal strategies and investments to blunt the aggressive
harm extreme heat poses to urban centers.
I'm honored to have the opportunity to speak today, and to
lift up the experiences of my neighbors, and thank you again
for your time.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you very much, Delegate. I
appreciate you being here. Dr. Moretti, please proceed.
STATEMENT OF DR. KATELYN MORETTI, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF
EMERGENCY MEDICINE, BROWN EMERGENCY MEDICINE \4\
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\4\ Prepared statement of Dr. Moretti appears in the appendix on
page 43.
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Dr. Moretti. Thank you Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member
Grassley, and honorable Members of the Committee for this
invitation to speak with you today. As an emergency physician,
I see the impacts of climate change on my patients every day
right now. However, the health consequences are so vast and
varied that the role of climate change is often hidden.
At times, the relationship is clear. For example, I treated
a young man who suffered heat stress while working in
construction. With his body temperature elevated to unsafe
levels, he required rapid cooling through IV fluids. He
suffered muscle breakdown and poisoned his kidney, requiring a
hospital admission.
But other times, this link is not as clear. Consider my 85
year-old patient who presented with a heart attack. It was only
because of astute EMS providers that we were able to connect
her heart condition to an overheated apartment that lacked air
conditioning, coupled with her inability to leave.
Climate change is a threat multiplier, with health impacts
happening through many different pathways such as temperature
extremes, air pollution or disruptions in supply chains.
Climate change is also a threat magnifier, worsening chronic
diseases such as heart disease, and causing acute flares of
other conditions such as asthma exacerbations.
Because these effects are so widespread, it makes
calculating the total magnitude of these impacts difficult.
Therefore, the economic impacts are severely underestimated.
Only easily quantifiable disasters and their infrastructure or
crop damages are typically considered.
Health-related costs are seldom if ever included in the
math on climate change economic impacts. In addition, climate
repercussions are not felt equally. When I come to work during
a heat wave, I worry about the elderly. I worry about the blue
collar workers outside, and I worry about my pregnant patients
unable to regulate their body temperatures.
I worry about their unborn children, as heat increases the
risk of fetal death, premature labor and long-term health
problems after birth. Similarly, when I consider the potential
effects of a hurricane in my home state, I worry about my
patients that lack the resources to evacuate.
I worry about my patients with disabilities that rely on
electricity for their health, those that need breathing
machines or dialysis. Notably, the patients that are most at
risk are the same patients most likely to be on Medicaid or
Medicare and least able to afford these costs. While we may not
know the total cost of climate change on health, we know they
are immense and growing.
Nearly every child in the world is at risk from one climate
threat, and Medicaid covers almost 40 percent of children in
the U.S. Children and infants have increased vulnerability to
climate change. For example, smaller airways are more sensitive
to swelling from air pollution. Children are at increased risk
for mental and physical trauma from disasters, and they bear
the consequences of these impacts for many more years to come.
This spring, I have seen the same teen on multiple
occasions for her asthma. On one visit, her breathing was so
bad we needed to put her on a breathing machine, pushing air
into her lungs. Her asthma is worsened by an extended pollen
season, and her house close to the highway puts her at constant
exposure to air pollution.
Recently, there were brushfires in western Rhode Island,
and I expect to see her again in the Emergency Department. In
the Medicare population, chronic conditions such as
disabilities, increased vulnerability to climate change, age
and heart disease are risk factors alone. However, in addition,
medications for chronic diseases can limit the body's ability
to respond to heat stress. Mobility issues may limit access to
cooling centers or safe evacuations during a disaster.
Disruptions in infrastructure and supply chains limits
these patients' ability to access the care they need to
maintain their health. When we consider specific climate
hazards, heat is often the first to come to mind. Where I live
and work in Rhode Island, we are experiencing increasing use of
hospital resources, emergency visits and mortality as summer
temperatures rise, and these trends are nationwide.
We also need to consider disruption in health care
delivery. During COVID-19, I witnessed this firsthand. I cared
for a patient, a young woman with COVID, who presented in
decompensated diabetes because she could not access insulin. In
the span of four hours, she went from speaking on the phone
with her family to dead. I still think about her small children
and how different their lives would have been if she had just
had access to insulin.
These similar barriers have been documented for both
Hurricane Katrina as well as Hurricane Harvey. These health
complications are not only tragic, but they are costly, and we
have only scratched the surface. Consider worsening vector
board diseases, wildfires, droughts, food security. The impacts
are broad, substantial and worsening, and the economic impacts
are immense.
In 2008, the Congressional Budget Office presented this
evaluation. For the federal government, rising health care
costs constitute the principle challenge of fiscal policy. No
other single factor will exert more influence over the long-
term balance of the federal budget.
In closing, I'd like to leave you with these two reiterated
points. The economic toll of climate change health effects are
immense, but under-recognized and under-quantified. Medicaid
and Medicare recipients will bear the brunt of these
consequences. My patients depend on your action. Thank you.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you, Doctor. Now Dr. Greenstone.
STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL GREENSTONE, MILTON FRIEDMAN
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE PROFESSOR IN ECONOMICS, AND DIRECTOR,
BECKER FRIEDMAN INSTITUTE, AND THE ENERGY POLICY INSTITUTE,
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO \5\
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\5\ Prepared statement of Dr. Greenstone appears on page 50.
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Dr. Greenstone. Thank you Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking
Member Grassley and Members of the Committee for inviting me to
testify today. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you
about the temperature-related impacts of climate change and
public health and our economy.
The health impacts are likely to be some of the dominant
costs of climate change. So what impacts would temperature
changes due to climate change have on public health? This is a
topic of some research of mine that was done with the Climate
Impact Lab that I co-founded. It's a team of about 30
economists, climate scientists and computational experts.
The headline finding is that the projected mortality risk
from temperature changes due to climate change are at least in
order of magnitude larger than has previously been understood.
This finding holds whether one uses a high emissions scenario
that likely overstates the future growth of emissions, or a
moderate emissions scenario that likely understates it.
As supported by recent work at the IPCC, the true impacts
of climate change are likely to lie between the estimates based
on these two emissions pathways. There are four main points
that come out of my written testimony. First, global mortality
risk is projected to increase by 85 deaths per 100,000 people
by 2100, if the world is on the high emissions trajectory.
This is larger than the current global mortality rate due
to all infections and parasitic diseases. Under a moderate
emissions trajectory, the increase in global mortality risk
would remain significant at 14 deaths per 100,000, similar to
the current global diabetes mortality rate. Some of this is
illustrated in the slide that we've put up here.
Two. Second, in the United States, the projected increase
in mortality risk from higher temperatures under the high
emissions scenario is about ten deaths per 100,000, about on
par with the current fatality rate due to auto accidents.
In contrast this change, and I'm going to come back to
this, is roughly zero under the moderate emissions scenario,
though this overall figure masks meaningful increases in some
places and meaningful declines in others. I've included a table
in my written testimony with data for each state under both
scenarios, to give a sense of the risk that your constituents
face.
There are also global and domestic maps of projected
changes in mortality risks that are displayed here. But some
examples might be instructive. In my home town of Chicago, the
mortality risk is projected to decline by about 35 to 40 deaths
per 100,000 by 2100.
Over time, we'll see fewer cold days, decreasing mortality
risks during the winter, which will outweigh the risks of more
hot days. However, other places will be harmed in that. Henrico
County, Virginia, represented by Senators Warner and Kaine, has
projected to experience is high mortality risk under both
emissions scenarios, about 35 under the high one and 17 under
the moderate one.
Johnson County, Kansas, represented by Senator Marshall, is
projected to see an increase of 31 deaths per 100,000 under the
high emissions one, and about 11 under the moderate emissions
one.
The third main finding, and this is important, is that the
level of emissions is not a law of physics. It reflects policy
choices to restrict emissions and technical advances that can
also be influenced by policy. It's therefore useful to consider
what policy might be able to accomplish or unlock in terms of
benefits.
An illustrative example is that a policy moving the world
from the high emissions scenario outlined on the graph there to
the moderate emissions one, would reduce the attendant global
mortality risk by about 84 percent at the end of the century.
In the United States, temperature-related mortality risk due to
climate change would be eliminated by moving from the high to
the moderate.
The point is that robust climate policy offers the
potential for some of the most significant public health gains
in human history.
Fourth, following the National Academy of Sciences 2017
recommendations, the Climate Impact Lab has developed new
methods to estimate climate damages. A key output of these
efforts is an estimate of the social cost of carbon or SEC,
which is the monetary cost of the damages caused by the release
of an additional ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The SEC provides a value which can be used in cost benefit
analyses, regulatory policy and for determining efficient
prices for market-based policies, such as a carbon tax or cap
and trade system. The CIL's approach produces an estimated SEC
of $190 per metric ton. This means that every ton of
CO2 abated reduces climate damages by $190.
The use of frontier climate--this use of frontier climate
science in economics leads to a social cost that is
significantly higher than either President Trump's estimate or
President Obama's. Finally, in conclusion, given the scale of
the climate challenge, I want to underscore that our nation
would be well-served to seek out the least expensive reductions
in greenhouse gases.
Markets have been shown time and time again to be the most
successful tool to find these opportunities. This means that
markets would allow us to confront the climate challenge
without imposing unnecessary costs in American families. Thank
you for allowing me to speak today. I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you very much. I turn now to Mr.
Shellenberger, sorry Doctor. No, I'm sorry, I'm out of order.
Dr. Schramm.
STATEMENT OF DR. CARL J. SCHRAMM,
UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY \6\
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\6\ Prepared statement of Dr. Schramm appears in the appendix on
page 65.
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Dr. Schramm. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you Ranking
Member Grassley for inviting me to come and speak with you
today.
I am pleased to speak about the implications of climate
change that may be imposed on the nation's public health. Much
of my career has been devoted to studying health care costs,
especially in the context of how these expenditures may or may
not be proportionally related to improvements in the public
health.
In the interest of time, I'll skip over much of my
biography only to point out that the last time I was here Mr.
Grassley, I was running the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital
Finance and Management. I served on the faculty of the Public
Health School there for 16 years.
I left Hopkins for a career focused on health insurance,
including being president of the Time Insurance Company, now
known as Assurant, headquartered in Milwaukee. For the last few
years, my research has been focused principally on the question
of COVID and the performance of the Centers for Communicable
Diseases.
I've been a member of the COVID Crisis Group and only
yesterday we published our final report, which is called the
Lessons from the COVID War. At this very moment, the report is
being debuted at the National Academy of Sciences.
As the Committee considers the question of public health
implications of global warming, I want to emphasize two issues.
First, the efforts to expand the idea of what public health is
and why it is seen by many to be failing. As most of us would
agree, the CDC, the nation's principal agency charged with
protecting public health, failed to effectively control the
COVID pandemic.
I believe the principal reason is that both the CDC and the
country's larger public health establishment, including the
public health schools, have expanded the scope and definition
of public health such that its boundaries are nearly
meaningless to the public.
Consider that the CDC currently deals with a wide range of
problems that are not encompassed by traditional definitions of
public health, the science and art of preventing disease,
prolonging life and promoting health.
Instead, the CDC deals with a long list of ``epidemics''
that are not related to communicable pathogens, and cannot be
corrected by traditional public health tools. Among these are
epidemics of gun death, traffic fatalities, obesity, domestic
violence, workplace accidents and a long list of issues
distant, far distant from traditional public health threats.
In addition, we find the CDC working on problems that again
cannot be solved by the traditional tools used to prevent the
transmission of communicable disease. Two of the newest involve
the CDC's attempt to ameliorate the ``social determinants of
health,'' and its commitment to promoting health equity.
Simply, the CDC is the archetype of an agency beset by
mission creep. Thus, even if global warming presented a clear
and present danger to the health of every American, there is
little that the CDC can do to mitigate such a threat.
Among other things, the agency's managerial focus is so
diffused it is unlikely that it could effectively absorb
another issue, particularly one in which the correlation
between global warming and the public's health is so ambiguous.
My research on the CDC budget suggests that only about one
in seven of its employees work or are engaged in traditional
efforts to identify and control contagious pathogens. Far more
CDC professionals work on international health issues that may
or may not be related to protecting the U.S. population from
communicable threats.
Now on the brighter side, I've included two charts, one
that shows that we have continuously grown GDP rather
extensively over the last 50 years since the passage of the
Clean Air Act, and at the same time reduced virtually all of
the noxious particulates that we breathe, showing that we can
in fact grow the economy and make the entire society and our
nation much healthier at the same time.
Similarly, important to global health and the argument that
we are witnessing the implications of global warming on global
health, I'm including a chart that shows that over the last 50
years, we have been on a course of making virtually all of our
GDP growth with much less fossil fuel burn.
This is a huge achievement. It's an achievement of
engineering, among other things, and this is a time to salute
the engineers in public health that have brought us clean
water, clean sanitation and clean air. Thank you.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you, Dr. Schramm. Next, we'll
hear from Mr. Shellenberger.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER,
FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS \7\
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\7\ Prepared statement of Mr. Shellenberger appears in the appendix
on page 69.
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Mr. Shellenberger. Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member
Grassley and Committee members, thank you for requesting my
testimony. I'm honored to be able to provide it. High per
capita use of cheap and abundant energy is essential to lifting
people out of poverty. There is no rich, low energy nation and
no core high energy one.
Adapting to higher temperatures, excuse me, adapting to
higher temperatures requires cheap energy so people and nations
can afford air conditioners, irrigation, desalination and other
technologies. The bottom line today is that cheap and abundant
energy is the key to a better future, including reducing deaths
from heat waves, disease and pollution.
The good news is we know how to do this. Between 2005 and
2020, U.S. carbon emissions declined by 21.5 percent, which is
4.5 percentage points more than what the U.S. promised to
reduce as part of the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement,
and 4.5 percentage points more than what was promised under the
2009 Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade legislation.
61 percent of those reductions were due to the shift from
coal to natural gas, and 39 percent came from intermittent
renewables backed up by natural gas, which was required in most
situations. The relationship goes in the opposite direction as
well. Thanks to natural gas shortages and higher costs in 2021,
coal-fired electricity increased 22 percent as compared to
2020.
Carbon emissions are thus following the same trajectory as
other air pollutants. As a result of cleaner-burning coal, the
transition to natural gas, cleaner vehicles and other
technological changes, developed nations have seen major
improvements in air quality. Between 1980 and 2018, the U.S.
carbon monoxide levels decreased by 83 percent, led by 99
percent, nitrogen dioxide by 61 percent, ozone by 31 percent,
sulfur dioxide by 91 percent.
While death rates from air pollution can rise with
industrialization, they declined with higher incomes, better
access to health care and reductions in air pollution.
Contrary to the assumptions of people who want to make
energy more expensive, we moved towards cleaner energy sources
by making them cheaper and more abundant. Thanks to fracking,
natural gas became cheap and abundant during the first decade
of this century. The same has been the case with nuclear.
France and other nations built large, standardized nuclear
plants, reducing the construction times and bringing the cost
down.
Better nutrition, better health care, more air conditioning
massively outweigh climate change as factors determining
health. Over a decade ago, the World Health Organization
predicted the global burn of disease will have declined by 30
percent between 2004 and 2030, which is amazing news, and we
are on track to do that, and said the WHO ``Mortality rates
will continue to fall in most countries, so long as economic
growth continues.''
In its report last year, IPCC noted, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, noted that nations have adapted well
to heat, thanks to ``heat warming systems, increased awareness
and improved quality of life.'' That included particularly air
conditioners.
Quote, this is from the IPCC, ``Evidence suggests a general
decrease in the impact of heat on daily mortality,'' as well as
``a decline in the relative risk attributable to heat,'' and
``an increase in the minimum mortality temperature.'' We should
be celebrating this.
It's true there have been more heat waves in the United
States since 1960, but what determines whether people die in
heat waves is primarily whether they have air conditioning.
Proof of this comes from the fact that heat-related deaths in
the United States declined by between 50 and 75 percent since
1960, thanks almost entirely to air conditioning, even as heat
waves grew in frequency, intensity and length. Kind of amazing
that I'm the first speaker to even mention that.
I want to now point out something. This is profoundly
misleading, and I want to explain why. This picture, this map
combines two things that the IPCC says not to combine. It's the
shared socioeconomic pathway 3--I may need my glasses now to
read the fine print, and RCP 8.5.
Those two things are not supposed to be combined. Look,
this is the IPCC combination of these two different scenarios,
RCPs and SSP. In SSP 3, there is no 8.5 combination because
it's so implausible to have a situation of low economic growth
and high emissions, unless you were somehow using all of your
GDP to produce emissions deliberately, which is so ridiculous
the IPCC doesn't conclude it.
It's been stated that we're somehow between RCP 4.5 and
8.5. That's not what the IPCC says. This is the most recent
report that came out last November, and you can see here it
shows that we're on track to be below RCP 4.5. So I think it's
very misleading to suggest we're somehow between RCP 4.5 and
8.5.
I will just end by saying I think we all agree that the
future is not written, that we decide what will occur based on
our actions. That means we need abundant natural gas to
continue to transition away from coal, and we need a national
nuclear power buildout based on what we did in the 1960's and
70's, and based on France, Sweden and other nations have done
since then. Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA
Senator Padilla. Thank you Mr. Shellenberger, and to all
the witnesses for your testimony. We now turn to questions from
the Committee, and as I've been asked to sit in as chair until
Chairman Whitehouse returns, that means I get to ask my
questions first.
Dr. Moretti, take a deep breath, because I'm going to tap
into your experience and expertise here on a couple of topics.
I want to discuss the increasing risks to the health and safety
of workers who are exposed to dangerous heats and conditions,
and the absence of adequate workplace protections.
And despite Mr. Shellenberger's testimony, not all career
paths enjoy the luxury of air conditioning. Farmworkers are
disproportionately at risk and die from heat-related illness at
a rate 20 times greater than the average worker. That's why
last session I co-led the legislation with Senator Brown to
direct OSHA to more swiftly establish a national standard to
protect workers and ensure common sense workplace protections
during extreme heat conditions.
Farmworker is just one example. A lot of times truck
drivers, warehouse workers, others are exposed to extreme heat.
This and other efforts to protect workers are critical policy
components of climate adaptation. So Doctor, as global
temperatures continue to rise, what impacts should we expect to
see on workers and what additional steps can we take to protect
the vulnerable individuals, especially those in agriculture?
Dr. Moretti. Thank you very much Senator for the question.
I think you hit on a very important point, which is that there
are certain populations that are very vulnerable, outdoor
workers in particular. When they show up to the Emergency
Department with heat stress or heatstroke, we treat them with
IV fluids and we cool them down.
But then we discharge them home, and they go home and they
go back to work, and they're put at the same risk. The problem
is is that adaptation only gets us so far. We can only adapt to
a certain level before those adaptation mechanisms start to
fail us, and here's a prime example. The way that we protect
those workers is that they don't work on really hot days where
our bodies are not safe.
That means they're not working. That means they're not
earning a wage, and it hurts our economy. So that's a severe
limitation as our temperature starts to rise.
Senator Padilla. And if you can just expand on that for a
second. Outside of mortality cost, that's what people tend to
focus on, can you just speak for a minute on the economic
impacts or lost labor productivity as a result of unsafe
working conditions?
Dr. Moretti. Correct. So there--I don't have exact numbers,
but I am happy to find them for you. But these are patients
that I would tell not to work. I tell them not to work on
certain heat days if possible, and I will tell you that there
is a subset of my population that will not be able to listen to
me, that will go to work regardless and that will come back to
the Emergency Department with the same problem I sent them out
with.
This is a huge actually example. Out west, I was speaking
to a college of mine during the wildfires, who was treating
asthmatics as a revolving door. He would treat them, they would
get better, he would send them back out into the smoke, and a
day later they would come back, because he couldn't treat the
underlying cause. He couldn't get to that root cause to treat
them.
So we (1) have increasing health costs, because a lot of
them are covered on Medicare and Medicaid, (2) we have their
lost labor and they're unable to work, out with sick days. And
so we're losing, we're losing economic drive on multiple
fronts.
Senator Padilla. You're such an expert, you anticipated my
next question, which is this, you know. Fire, excuse me,
extreme heat often leads to fire.
Along with fire, we get a lot of smoke, and Californians in
the fire-prone areas of this state are exposed to smoke for an
average of about three months per year, resulting in poor
health outcomes that you've begun to describe in addition to
the economic losses and a reduced quality of life.
As climate change continues to increase, the frequency and
severity of wildfires, more and more communities beyond just
the western United States are impacted by these harmful
effects. I know the last couple of years, I'll get occasional
calls from colleagues in the Midwest complaining about the
smoke emanating from large fires in California, even the
colleagues on the east coast.
A recent study in Nature suggests that wildfire particulate
matter may be ten times more harmful than other sources of
pollution. So given that wildfires are only growing more
extreme and frequent, how can we better mitigate the impact of
smoke-related health risks for underserved and rural
communities that are often most at risk?
Dr. Moretti. So we talk about mitigation and we talk about
adaptation. To mitigate these risks, we need to mitigate
climate change, and we need to limit our fossil fuel combustion
and that which is emitted.
As an adaptation mechanism, we need to identify these at-
risk populations and we need to start to put in public health
policies that protect them, such as allowing them to be indoors
with air conditioners when it's safe, air purifiers when PM 2.5
levels get to dangerous levels. But these treatments happen
before they get to me in the Emergency Department.
Senator Padilla. Thank you very much. Senator Grassley.
Senator Grassley. Thank you Senator, Mr. Chairman. I'm
going to read to Mr. Shellenberger three or four sentences from
a July, 2021 Wall Street Journal op ed, and ask if you can give
a short answer that it's right or wrong from your point of
view.
``Heat deaths are actually a bigger problem than the news
reports would suggest. Most heat deaths happen without a news
crew to document them. Studies show that heat kills about 2,500
people every year in the United States and Canada. Each year,
more than 100,000 people die from cold in the United States,
and 13,000 in Canada, which is more than 40 cold deaths for
every heat death.
``On a worldwide basis, cold deaths vastly outnumber heat
deaths.'' The last sentence says ``Globally every year, about
300,000 deaths are caused by heat, whereas about 1\7/10\
million people die of cold.''
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes sir, that's accurate.
Senator Grassley. Okay. Then I want to--I was going to ask
Dr. Greenstone a question, but I'm just going to make a
statement about some testimony that he gave in 2020 before the
House Oversight Committee. He claimed that the mortality rate
under a quote-unquote ``high emissions scenario'' will be ten
deaths per 100,000 Americans by 2100, similar to today's
mortality rate from car accidents.
The CDC recently published this graph for the ten leading
causes of death in America, and as you can see, each of the ten
deadliest public health conditions currently have mortality
rates above your worst case scenario for climate change.
Now to Dr. Schramm, let me read you a few headlines of the
past six months from the New York Times. ``Deaths from
substance abuse rose sharply among older Americans in 2020.
Following a two year decline, suicide rates rose again in 2021.
Alcohol deaths claim lives of working age Americans. These are
real public health challenges. However, many on the left have
become accustomed to labeling everything from sexism to gun
violence to President Trump somehow as a public health
challenge.
So Dr. Schramm, what sort of data framework or methodology
should policymakers use to determine what is or is not a public
health challenge?
Dr. Schramm. Senator, thank you. I think perhaps the best
way to approach this to think about whether or not public
health can intervene in those problems. So for example, the
question of elderly drug abuse or substance abuse, how is that
they can be dealt with by the CDC or by public health
officials?
It's not clear that traditional methods of intervention,
that is case finding and case tracking, can modify or mitigate
this problem. The real issue has to go to denying our
population these drugs. This is a huge issue and that's where
the real costs are imposed on the public budget.
Secondly, it goes in the same direction for suicide. It's
very difficult for the CDC to effectively mount a program that
would reduce suicide. The tools of public health just don't go
there. Suicide reflects much larger conditions in the society,
some of which actually Dr. Moretti points to in terms of the
implications of disease on emotional stability and emotional
security.
These are difficult issues, and they are really difficult
when we consider them in the context of the federal budget,
because we spend huge amounts of money needlessly and without
any effect, and don't point to the issues that could really be
changed if we could in fact mitigate these by the control of
substances.
Senator Grassley. Thank you. Mr. Shellenberger, in your
testimony, you say ``Poor people and people of color are
disproportionately impacted by climate policy restricting
energy consumption.'' Could you elaborate on how climate
policies implemented in the name of disadvantaged groups often
harm more than help such groups?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah, absolutely. I mean one of the main
ways is just by making electricity more expensive, which makes
it--which means that people use air conditioning less. So one
of the ways that people end up dying is that they, they can't
afford to turn on the air conditioner or they can't afford air
conditioning. So anything that makes electricity expensive is
going to result in less air conditioning and higher deaths.
Senator Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Padilla. Thank you. Senator Johnson.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Dr. Moretti, in
your testimony you said that the health consequences are so
vast and varied that the role of climate change is often
hidden. Then you go on to say ``but sometimes, the relationship
to climate change is very clear.'' Then you talk about a
construction worker who was overcome by heat.
Well, I think it's very clear that that construction worker
was overcome by heat, but as Mr. Shellenberger talked about, a
heat wave that tops out at 110, is it going to be that much
more threatening than a heat wave that tops out at 109?
And then you go on. Again, you just made it seem like
climate change is causing all these things with such certainty
it kind of amazes me. I'm not a climate change denier; I'm just
not a climate change alarmist. You seem to be an alarmist.
Dr. Moretti. I think that's because I've seen it. We've had
seven years in Rhode Island of worsening, record-setting heat.
We know that temperatures are rising because of climate change.
We know that the main----
Senator Johnson. But that's actually disputed, okay? I mean
I know you know it, but it's disputed. Let me ask you a
question. Do you know how many deaths have been reported
worldwide on the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System related to
the COVID-19 vaccine? Do you know how many worldwide deaths are
reported?
Dr. Moretti. I do not, Senator.
Senator Johnson. You should, but let me tell you. It's
35,152. Now most people don't know that because it's been
largely suppressed and censored. 8,743 of those deaths have
occurred on either day of vaccination or within one or two
days. That's 25 percent of those 35,000 deaths reported on
VARS, associated with COVID-19 vaccines.
Now our federal health agencies, who have not been honest
and transparent with us, they've not made the correlation. As a
doctor I want to ask you, would you be--are you concerned when
you hear, you weren't aware of those statistics and I'm just
giving them to you.
Would you be concerned if there is any kind of drug
intervention where you have reported to our federal health
agencies 35,000 deaths and 25 percent of those occurring within
two days of the administration of that drug? Would that concern
you? Would that be something you'd want to investigate?
Dr. Moretti. I would need to understand more about the
statistics of where those numbers came from.
Senator Johnson. Okay well----
Dr. Moretti. I do know that we're seeing rising
temperatures in Rhode Island, increasing heat waves with
increasing frequency, and increasing stress on the Emergency
Department with worsened outcome.
Senator Johnson. So now I'm aware there are all kinds of,
and you know, climate change alarmists are leaping to all kinds
of conclusions to scare the you know what out of the American
public, to spend trillions of dollars, money we don't have that
are much better spent in other ways.
Mr. Greenstone, I actually found that chart of yours
somewhat comforting for at least America. When you take a look
at the mortality, and again these are all projections. I don't,
I don't put any stock in them whatsoever.
But by your own projections, throughout the United States
because of climate change, we're going to actually have a
reduced risk of mortality overall in the United States, and
wouldn't that be a tie-in with what the study from Lancet in
2021 said, that we suffer about 600,000 deaths due to heat
every year, but 4.5 million deaths because of cold?
So in terms of excess deaths, a warming globe is actually
beneficial. In my own state, your study shows that we would
have a reduction in mortality of somewhere between 54 and 56
people per I guess it's 100,000. Why wouldn't we take comfort
in that?
Dr. Greenstone. So thanks for the question, Senator
Johnson, and what the work shows and the chart is that the
effects of climate change are going to very unequal, and
absolutely Wisconsin, Chicago where I live, the reduction in
cold days, the benefits from that will outweigh the damages
from the hot days.
But if you look more carefully at that, there's large
swatches of the country where the damages will be much larger,
and in fact----
(Simultaneous speaking.)
Senator Johnson. But again do you want--if you want to
balance, if you want to balance--if you want to balance it all
out globally, if you're trying to mitigate harm globally, isn't
it true that the number of deaths, according to this Lancet
study, the number of deaths caused by heat are 600,000 per
year; deaths caused by cold are 4.5 million annually?
In terms in global health, in terms of excess death, we're
actually--you're in a better position to prevent death by
having the climate increase in temperature a little bit, right?
Dr. Greenstone. So Senator, I'm not familiar with that
study. What I am familiar with is my study. Your
characterization of it is incorrect.
Senator Johnson. Well your study is very favorable to my
state. Our mortality----
(Simultaneous speaking.)
Dr. Greenstone. Wisconsin will benefit in terms of
mortality. There are 49 other states in the United States. Many
of them will suffer. Many of them will suffer more than
Wisconsin will gain, and that is--that is the nature of climate
change. It's very unequal.
Senator Johnson. According to your study, you're concerned
if you're in the hot region of Africa, but in terms of the
United States and most of Europe, we're in pretty good shape.
We're all blue. We have reduced risk of death.
Dr. Greenstone. If you look carefully at the top of that
figure, a large section of the country is not blue. Those are
the areas where some of your colleagues represent people, and
those people are going to face increased risk of mortality.
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thanks Senator. Delegate Smith, the
effect you mentioned of the three percent increase in
temperature, 3 degree increase in temperature in Maryland being
exacerbated by urban heat islands, do you have any rough
quantification of how much beyond the 3 degrees the urban heat
island effect can take a neighborhood?
Delegate Smith. Thank you so much for the question. So the
City of Baltimore has over the past century seen a 3 degree
increase, but that's larger than the average across Maryland as
a state, and also it's about double the national average for
the country.
And so that's pretty alarming for the communities I
represent, particularly because as you've noted from some of
the other testimony and responses, when you do not have a lot
of green space nearby, it makes it very difficult to cool.
Personally, when I lived at the top of my district, I did not
have central AC. I was in another home almost 100 years old,
but the trees were mature, there was grass all around, and I
could just put a fan on and be relatively comfortable.
But one of the things that makes rowhomes great in the
winter is that they trap heat, which is good in the winter.
However in the summer, and now that I live in a row home, it
can be incredibly hot and these are communities quite frankly,
there's been research to show that the same communities that
were impacted by redlining are disproportionately the
overheated parts of the city presently that are experiencing
the urban heat island effect, and my communities are no
different from that.
So communities that were redlined are less likely to have
trees in them, and as many of us know it takes a while for a
community to get the full benefit of a tree, right? And so we
need to make these investments yesterday, and I know that just
in the past few years and we've seen tree plantings in my part
of East Baltimore, you're seeing more comfort for those that
are situated nearby.
But quite frankly, if we do not simply provide more green
attributes to communities like the ones I represent, you can
have all the AC you want, but you're really not getting to the
root of the problem. We can't be resilient and we can't reduce
emissions if we're not looking at some new avenues.
Chairman Whitehouse. And your constituents in urban heat
islands are likely to turn where for health care, to federal
programs?
Delegate Smith. Absolutely. As a city, approximately 60
percent of residents in Baltimore City are on Medicare and
Medicaid, and particularly the communities that are closely
situated near me in East Baltimore. These are some of the
communities that have some of the lowest life expectancies in
the city.
So even though they have proximity to world class health
care at Johns Hopkins, it doesn't mean they always have access.
And so yes, federal programs are instrumental and often under
strain when extreme heat and other challenges present.
Chairman Whitehouse. As we saw in Oregon and Washington,
where they've had to actually revamp Medicaid programs to
address with the risk after the heat waves out there, the
deadly heat waves out there.
Dr. Moretti, last summer was the hottest August on record
in Rhode Island. How did that play out in your emergency room?
Dr. Moretti. So thank you Senator for the question. We are
struggling. Health care is tenuous and has not recovered since
COVID. I think that we saw how fragile our health system can be
with COVID-19, and I am concerned as we continue to see more
climate hazards, to what this will do to the health care
system.
Last summer, the Emergency Department was full. My bosses
were on local television asking patients to seek care elsewhere
whenever possible because we were struggling to treat the
patients that showed up to our door. We were seeing patients in
waiting rooms, we were seeing patients in hallways.
(Pause.)
Dr. Moretti. This was exacerbated by the heat, and it's
worsened by poor staffing since COVID. I am concerned what will
happen as we continue to see increased climate hazards. In
emergency medicine, we define a disaster as an event, such as a
climate hazard, whatever it may be, that overcomes our
resources. Right now, the health care system nationally is
perpetually on the edge of a disaster.
Chairman Whitehouse. There have been roughly speaking two
ways that the reporting about health harms from heat have been
quantified. One has been to look at the actual diagnosis or the
cause of death report, and pick out the causes that reference
heat.
Separate from that, in Rhode Island, by Brown University as
I recall and also out in California and perhaps others, there
have been studies that looked at the statistical coincidence of
various morbidities and mortalities during heat wave events,
and then looking at those additional deaths and illnesses, and
going back and seeing could that correlated.
Could you talk a little bit about what that second round of
inquiry has established, and then I'll turn to Senator Van
Hollen it looks like.
Dr. Moretti. Yeah, thank you Senator. So because heat
impacts health through many different mechanisms, we cannot
only look for heat stress or heatstroke within the medical
records. Similarly, the patient I talked about who suffered
heat stress working in construction, it's very likely that in
his hospitalization, his diagnosis was coded as rhabdomyolysis
and acute kidney injury, with no mention of heat.
So even as clinicians when we know heat is playing a
factor, it may not be coded correctly within the medical
records. So when we do the second methodology that you're
talking, when we look at a population level and look for
increasing, increases in hospitalizations over all diagnoses,
we see much greater effects, up to 37 percent increase in
visits, which is missed in that first mechanism of only pulling
out diagnoses of heat illness and heatstroke.
Chairman Whitehouse. So the statistical method is more
reliable?
Dr. Moretti. It captures a larger patient population.
However, that does not allow us to look at individual patient
characteristics.
Chairman Whitehouse. Senator Van Hollen.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good to be
back. So Delegate Smith, I do want to follow up on some of the
points you made in your testimony regarding the impact of
climate change and how it's affected temperatures in Baltimore
City, and the heat islands that it's created, and measures that
we can try to take to mitigate that, right, even as we also try
to address the overall issues.
Can you speak to some of the issues the Chairman raised,
and I appreciate him talking at the outset about the House
Republican plan that may be voted on this week, that would
essentially undo entirely the climate benefits of the Inflation
Reduction Act, including investments in energy efficiency and
providing rebates for homeowners to make their homes more
energy efficient, which not only has air quality benefits but
also saves people in their pocketbooks.
If you could just talk to the role of federal investments
in trying to address some of the issues that you've raised?
Delegate Smith. Thank you Senator for the question. The
investments that are in peril that you've highlighted are
incredibly important to the people I represent. So you know
that in many instances, seniors are over-represented in the
vulnerable groups that we've been discussing today as we--in
regards to heat.
And so having some of those energy efficiency rebates made
available means so much to legacy residents that want to be
able to age with dignity and comfort in the homes that they're
living in.
But also in Baltimore City, it's the most transit-dependent
part of the state of Maryland. So many people, roughly a third,
do not have access to a vehicle. So the investments we're
making in just infrastructure to be safer for pedestrians and
bikers, those are also relevant to people I represent, because
we want to ensure that we're doing things that allow people to
move safely, but also reduce emissions that bring them harm.
From my residents that have to stand at bus stops, it's
going to be advantageous to have buses go by that are not
emitting the same amount of pollution as others. So it's been
critical to see that investments in green infrastructure and
having community-led initiatives around climate resilience that
are also going to create jobs in communities.
So the same communities that are most exposed to the harm,
could also be at the forefront of the remedies. I know we have
great organizations like the Baltimore Tree Trust and Civic
Works that are at the forefront of, you know, planting trees
and also doing other installations related to climate
resilience that the Inflation Reduction Act are making
possible.
And so I want to thank this body. It was a bipartisan
effort that made that Act possible, and it's going to have real
benefits for the communities I represent, and other communities
across this country that bear a disproportionate burden because
of heat exposure.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Delegate Smith. So there
have been a number of studies obviously that look into the
health impacts of climate change. There was a study done by
Johns Hopkins in our state of Maryland and MIT's Laboratory for
Aviation and the Environment, indicating that Baltimore's
asthma hospitalization rate is one of the highest in the
country, and that the city's premature death rate due to air
pollution is also one of the highest in the country.
Dr. Moretti, can you discuss that link between climate
change and how it acts as a threat multiplier and threat
magnifier for communities like Baltimore?
Dr. Moretti. Thank you Senator for the question. So we see
climate change acting to impact our health through many
different mechanisms. It's a threat multiplier in that regard.
So increasing temperature in and of itself has increasing
health harms.
But at the same time, it increases levels of PM 2.5 air
pollution, which are toxic when we breathe them in and cause
airway inflammation. Secondarily, we can see other effects as
we see disasters that affect supply chains, disrupt health care
systems and those affect health.
We see decreased number of days for growing and so we see
increasing food insecurity globally, as we're having increasing
droughts. So through all of these different mechanisms, we see
climate health impacts. However, certain populations are more
at risk for these, and so we get risk upon risk upon risk for
vulnerable populations.
For example, heat is a risk. That heat risk is magnified in
an urban heat island. At the same time, that urban heat island
is next to a highway, where you have increased air pollution
and increased PM 2.5 levels. Moms were exposed to that level,
which means that transmit that risk to baby, who has an
increased risk of asthma before birth. Then at birth they live
in an environment which augments this risk even further.
Senator Van Hollen. Thank you. I appreciate your testimony.
Thank you all for being here.
Chairman Whitehouse. I'm going to do a quick second round,
since I haven't had the chance to speak with all of the
witnesses yet.
Dr. Greenstone, your testimony I believe was that some of
the dominant economic impacts from climate change occur in
health costs. I observed the fossil fuel industry's latest
strategy to argue that climate safety policies are too
expensive, that studiously ignoring the climate harm side of
the balance sheet. What does your research say about the
economic costs of ignoring climate harms?
Dr. Greenstone. Thank you for the question Senator, and
again for the invitation. So I do think it's worth saying that
climate policy will have costs. There's no question about that.
But what comes out of my research, as you were suggesting, is
the other side of the ledger, the benefits.
And what my latest research is indicating is that we had
and the U.S. government had been grossly understating the costs
of or the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And so
I think a clear way to think about the problem is that every
ton of CO2 that gets reduced, it will cost
something, but it's going to generate benefits of $190 per ton.
And we know from the operation of the RGGI greenhouse gas
market along the Atlantic coast and in California, it's quite
possible to get reductions in CO2 at much lower
prices. So the price in RGGI is maybe $15; in California it's
20-30 dollars. So you can get benefits that exceed costs by a
factor of six or seven to one. That's kind of the bottom line
for my research.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thanks, and with respect to Dr.
Moretti's observation about the difference between the two
methods of determining health-related harms, do you agree that
that's a cause of the understatement of the health harms?
Dr. Greenstone. I absolutely agree with that, Dr. Moretti.
The evidence is very clear. The challenge if you're trying to
count up deaths from heat waves is it's not written on the
death certificate, and it actually doesn't just lead to
premature mortality the day of the heat wave, but can take a
couple of days or even a week.
And so you have to use statistical methods to add all that
up, and that is why we end up with much larger numbers from the
second approach.
Chairman Whitehouse. You closed your comments with an
affirmation of the importance of markets in making these
decisions. You're also the Milton Friedman chair I think is the
right term. My recollection is that it was Milton Friedman's
teaching that you didn't get a proper market signal if you
didn't put the costs of pollution into the price of the product
that was causing the pollution.
Is that a correct layman's summary of the economics of
market pricing and negative externalities?
Dr. Greenstone. Yeah. So Senator Whitehouse, you've far
surpassed being a student at the University of Chicago, but
that would certainly be an A at the University of Chicago, and
I think the broader point, which I'd like to pick up on is--
which I actually found quite interesting in Mr. Shellenberger's
testimony, is that he ended with a call for there to be a use
or reliance on lower fossil fuel, energy sources that lower
fossil fuels, and I want to connect it to your question.
You know, I personally don't believe in fairies and I don't
believe in unicorns, and I don't think rainbows happen just
because you want them. And so in order to make the transition,
there has to be, and in a reliable way there has to be a market
signal exactly along the lines that you suggested Senator.
And that will unleash the creativity and the
entrepreneurialism of people in the energy industry, and
produce exactly what Mr. Shellenberger was asking for, and lead
to lower emissions, benefits at $190 per ton and minimizing
costs for American families.
Chairman Whitehouse. Just to put a bit of a quantification
out there, my recollection is that the latest study on the
effective subsidy supporting fossil fuel consumption in the
United States, which was performed by the International
Monetary Fund, which I think you'll agree is a credible
economic agency.
Dr. Greenstone. Yes, I do. It would not be an A like you,
but A minus we'll say.
Chairman Whitehouse. Great, is that the subsidy, the
effective subsidy for fossil fuel runs to $660 billion just in
the United States annually, and that the bulk of that subsidy
comes from this point that we were talking about, which is that
they get to pollute for free, and don't have to put the cost of
the harm quantified in my opening statement at $800 billion per
year in health care costs, into the cost of their product.
And around here, there's an entire political party
dedicated to protecting them as they pollute for free. I'll
turn it back to Senator Johnson, if he wishes to have another
round. But before I do, let me just be clear. Does anyone on
this panel contend that there is not a reliable correlation
between carbon emissions and increasing global temperatures?
(No response.)
Chairman Whitehouse. Zero for five. No one contends that.
Okay. Senator Johnson, you wanted to take another round.
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Greenstone, I
have to admit I was surprised you've done all this research and
you weren't aware of the Lancet July 2021 article comparing
deaths caused by heat versus cold. But let me give you another
question here.
In a previous hearing, I asked the witnesses whether they
knew how much we had already spent on climate change. You're
saying there's a, you know, six or seven dollar benefit for
every dollar spent. So first of all, do you know how much we've
already spent combatting climate change globally? Do you have
an estimate for that?
Dr. Greenstone. I'm unaware of a reliable estimate,
Senator.
Senator Johnson. Okay. Anybody here? I'll tell you, we had
a witness that says about $5 trillion. So if your multiplier is
accurate, we should have already seen about a 30 to 35 trillion
dollar economic benefit from that $5 trillion.
By the way in the Inflation Reduction Act here, supposedly
we got a little under $400 billion of energy credits and
dollars going to what I would call green energy boondoggles.
Goldman Sachs estimated that cost about $1.2 trillion. So you
directly understate how much we're going to spend on this, in
what I would say is a futile effort to try and hold back the
tides.
Dr. Shellenberger, I read your book, Apocalypse Never, and
I don't want to summarize it for you but I will. Seemed like
you were making the point that economic progress and having a
strong economy is probably the most important thing to
concentrate on and spending like $5 trillion, to apparently
have no impact on our environment because they're still, you
know, people are still saying it's going to--the world's going
to end in 12 years. It's wasting limited resources. Does that
pretty well typify your views?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah, that's definitely one way of
describing it. I think the way to think about this issue in
general is around energy transitions, and we go from wood and
dung to coal, hydro, oil and gas, to nuclear. Each step along
the way, those transitions are made by the new fuel becoming
cheaper and more abundant than the older fuel.
It's simply not the case that we got a transition from coal
to natural gas by making coal expensive. We didn't have a
carbon price. I mentioned that we did not pass Waxman-Markey
Cap and Trade, and yet we reduced our emissions by almost 22
percent.
That's the story everywhere in the world. So these economic
models are very misleading in that sense, and just to make one
other point here, the Chairman--Chairman Whitehouse mentioned
this IMF study. That is an absolute garbage study, and I assure
you that Mr. Greenstone, I do not think that he agrees with
that study.
That study counted as a subsidy for fossil fuels the
externalities of fossil fuels. It counted externalities and
relabeled them ``subsidies,'' and it did not count the
benefits. So it was a cost analysis, not a cost-benefit
analysis.
Senator Johnson. So let's talk about the costs of green
energy. Let's talk about the cobalt mining in the Congo
utilizing child labor. Let's talk about the mining of other
rare earth minerals. We don't even have close to enough
currently to produce what's being envisioned. Can you just kind
of speak to I would call it the fantasy nature of what is being
proposed right now and what's being imposed on our economy?
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely. So the supply chains for
renewables and batteries are a total human rights and
environmental nightmare. Starting in the Congo with cobalt
mining, which is absolutely barbaric. Many people have seen the
videos of people being buried alive.
Ensuring that the solar panels being made predominantly by
Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps. That's a part of China
that the Biden administration says the Chinese government is
committing genocide against the Uyghur Muslim minority there.
That's how our solar panels are being made.
The calculations and the carbon intensity of solar panels
appear to be totally incorrect, because they're based on a
cleaner European grid rather than the coal-based China grid. So
a total nightmare, and then the other final problem with
renewables is because sunlight and wind are energy dilute. It
requires three to eight hundred times more land and a
significantly higher number of projects to produce the same
amount of energy as you would from a nuclear natural gas plant.
That's why there's 8,000 solar, wind and battery projects
in the United States right now that are not hooked up to the
grid, because they can't get enough transmission because of all
the different land use problems and regulatory and cost burdens
associated with moving from energy dense to energy dilute
fuels.
Senator Johnson. So I'm highly concerned about the
corruption of scientific inquiries, scientific studies, because
they're being funded by organizations, sometimes government
that know what they want in terms of result. Can you just kind
of speak to the problem that we're experiencing in terms of,
for example, scientific studies that can't be repeated?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah.
Senator Johnson. The corruption from medical journals,
these other scientific journals?
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely. I mean we need evidence-
based policymaking, not policy-based evidence making, and yet
that's what we've seen here. We've seen it with the IMF study,
seen it in many other studies where people have an outcome in
mind like 100 percent renewables, and then they proceed along a
course to do things like shutting down nuclear power plants,
increasing carbon emissions, making electricity expensive,
preventing poor people from having access to air conditioning.
So you're absolutely right. We need to have evidence-based
policymaking, not policy-based evidence making.
Senator Johnson. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Whitehouse. Mr. Greenstone, you seem to be wanting
to respond.
Dr. Greenstone. Oh, there's--thank you, Senator. There's a
lot to unpack here. I think I would just say I'll return to the
peer-reviewed scientific literature that I've participated in,
and the evidence is quite clear that reducing carbon emissions,
and I think Senator Johnson makes an important point.
Climate change isn't going to just go away. It's a massive
problem. The whole world is contributing to it. So if the test
is will X dollars cause climate change to forever more
disappear, the answer is always going to be no. But what the
evidence is clear about is that policies have reduced
emissions. There's a wide berth for them to have benefits that
are many times larger than their costs, and I think that's
the--you know, God grant me the wisdom to know the difference
between the things I can control and the things I can't.
The things I can control or the things that the United
States can control are its emissions, and those reductions in
those emissions have the potential to be one of the largest
public health benefits in human history, and have the potential
to have benefits that would vastly exceed their costs.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you. Mr. Shellenberger, first
thanks for being here. It seems that there are some areas where
you and I agree, so let's start with your assertion that
climate change is happening. Is that correct?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes sir, and I think we also agree on
the importance of nuclear energy. So I'd like to acknowledge
that agreement as well.
Chairman Whitehouse. And you believe that humans are
contributing to climate change?
Mr. Shellenberger. Oh absolutely.
Chairman Whitehouse. Through carbon emissions.
Mr. Shellenberger. I have for 30 years sir.
Chairman Whitehouse. And to quote you the cause of climate
change is rising energy consumption using fossil fuels;
correct?
Mr. Shellenberger. Correct.
Chairman Whitehouse. And you also argue in your testimony
that ``It would be best for global temperatures to remain
stable''?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah.
Chairman Whitehouse. And that's because there are risks and
dangers associated with rising temperatures globally?
Mr. Shellenberger. Any, really any change. It would be risk
of global cooling as well.
Chairman Whitehouse. Yeah, but that's not the risk we're
presently facing, is it?
Mr. Shellenberger. Correct.
Chairman Whitehouse. With respect to the IPCC, do you
consider their work to be solid and reliable?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah absolutely for the most part, and I
rely almost entirely on it.
Chairman Whitehouse. You claim that renewable energy is
always expensive. One of your critiques is its cost, yet I
repeatedly see studies that renewable energy is now less
expensive, less costly than various fossil fuel sources, and
that comparison showing clean energy to be less expensive does
not even take into account the question of the negative
externalities.
Are you sure that it is true that renewable energy is
always expensive compared to fossil fuel?
Mr. Shellenberger. So my claim is that renewable, that
intermittent renewables, excluding hydro, make electricity
expensive. But let me ask you sir, if solar and wind are so
much cheaper than existing energy, why did the Congress approve
$370 billion to subsidize solar and wind?
Chairman Whitehouse. I would argue because it's such a tiny
fraction, to give it half a chance against the $660 billion
subsidy for fossil fuel.
Mr. Shellenberger. But if it's already cheaper, then why
would you need any subsidy?
(Simultaneous speaking.)
Chairman Whitehouse. It's pretty basic economics that
negative externalities belong in the price, and therefore are a
subsidy, everything from Milton Friedman to the IPCC to the
IMF. So you and I are just going to have to disagree on that.
You have expressed skepticism about the relationship
between climate change and various extreme weather events.
Mr. Shellenberger. Skepticism wouldn't be the word I would
use.
Chairman Whitehouse. What word would you use? I want to
make sure I say it right.
Mr. Shellenberger. Evidence-based. I mean everything that
I--every statement I've made is either in the IPCC or peer-
reviewed scientific literature. So it depends on the extreme
weather you're talking about.
Chairman Whitehouse. So you have former colleagues and
collaborators who are actual climate scientists, which you are
not, who have said some things about these claims of yours.
Zeke Hausfather----
Mr. Shellenberger. He's never been a colleague of mine.
Chairman Whitehouse [continuing]. Who worked at the
Breakthrough--you worked with him at the Breakthrough
Institute, did you not?
Mr. Shellenberger. He was never a colleague of mine.
Chairman Whitehouse. Okay. He wrote ``Shellenberger's
claims that climate plays no role in natural disasters and
wildfires fly in the face of a large peer-reviewed scientific
literature showing clear links between climate change and
extreme heat events, drought and extreme rainfall, as well as
links between hotter and drier conditions and wildfire areas
burned in many regions of the world.''
And Kerry Emanuel, professor at MIT who provided you a
blurb for your book, wrote ``The cleanest way to look at
climate effects on natural phenomena is to look at the
phenomena themselves. Here, there is strong and mounting
evidence that climate change is increasing precipitation
extremes, floods and droughts, conditions for wildfires and the
incidence of strong hurricanes. Whichever way one looks at it,
Shellenberger's statement is not defensible.''
Mr. Shellenberger. Do I have time to respond, or are you
not going to let me?
Chairman Whitehouse. Well, I'll give you a minute to
respond.
Mr. Shellenberger. Okay. So first of all Tom Woodley, the
co-founder of climate science modeling called Apocalypse Never
``perhaps the best environmental book ever written.'' Kerry
Emanuel, as you mentioned, also blurbed the book and I've been
working with James Hanson to save nuclear power plants around
the world for the last several years.
(Simultaneous speaking.)
Chairman Whitehouse. I didn't say you were wrong about
everything. I just said you were wrong about that.
Mr. Shellenberger [continuing]. Natural disasters, there's
a single--there's a single source of data on natural disasters
globally called the EM-DAT Data Center in Belgium. It shows
natural disasters going down over the last 22 years. Do you
know why that is? It's because what we classify as disaster's
costs and deaths, and those have been going down because human
resilience has been going up.
So the conflation of extreme weather and natural disasters
is extremely misleading. Yes, I agree with more heat waves,
greater temperature extremes, greater precipitation,
absolutely. But no increase in landfalling hurricanes in the
United States. Anybody who claims different is lying to you.
Chairman Whitehouse. Isn't that truly the measure, when you
count the actual harm from the hurricanes like----
(Simultaneous speaking.)
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah, because when you factor in--when
you factor in more--when you factor in more wealth and more
people in harm's way, you do not see an increase. In fact,
we're seeing a decline.
Chairman Whitehouse. Did you factor in increased rainfall
and increased wind speed?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah, absolutely. I mean look, there's a
single source of data on it. You can check it yourself. I'm
sorry, what is the question?
Chairman Whitehouse. Do you factor in increased rainfall
and increased wind speed in your analysis?
Mr. Shellenberger. It's not in my research. There's only
one--I mean there's only--and we're looking at landfalling
hurricanes, is that what we're talking about? It's flat, okay.
So it's not like there's--it's not like there's multiple
studies. There's just counting landfall, and the best study is
by NOAA. NOAA predicts----
Chairman Whitehouse. Well, you keep changing the subject
back to landfalling hurricanes.
Mr. Shellenberger. What do you want to talk about sir?
Chairman Whitehouse. I asked you about increased
precipitation from those hurricanes and increased wind speed?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah.
Chairman Whitehouse. With more wind speed and more
precipitation, you get more damage, even if it were correct----
Mr. Shellenberger. No, not if you have rising resilience
you don't sir. In other words, and if you look at NOAA, they
predict five percent increase in intensity of hurricanes, 25
percent decline in frequency, both of which are predictable by
the physics. There's not really a debate. But I agree. We will
see more precipitation because of climate change.
Chairman Whitehouse. Correct. Senator Kaine. Saved by the
bell.
Senator Kaine. This is one of these days where I have made
four committee hearings between 9:30 and 11:45, and when I do
that, my staff rewards me by allowing me to start tomorrow at
6:45 a.m. instead of 6:30.
But I'm sorry that I've missed the entire discussion. I'm
very, very interested in this topic, and I guess maybe----
Chairman Whitehouse. On that subject Senator Kaine, if you
don't mind I will--I have another meeting to get to.
Senator Kaine. Oh okay.
Chairman Whitehouse. If you don't mind closing is up, we
have the closing materials.
Senator Kaine. That's what I'll do.
Chairman Whitehouse. Finish your questioning, and then
we're ready to go.
Senator Johnson. Well, I do get another round here, correct
Mr. Chairman?
Senator Kaine. Yes.
Chairman Whitehouse. You did.
Senator Johnson. No. You've had three now. I'm going to
have--I get another round of questions, especially after you
badgered our witness. We'll talk a little bit of reality when I
get around to it.
Chairman Whitehouse. I'm going to add these documents to
the record.\8\
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\8\ Documents submitted by Chairman Whitehouse appear in the
appendix on page 92.
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STATEMENT OF SENATOR KAINE
Senator Kaine. You will get more questions and out of
delusions of grandeur, I've decided to move up to dais, to take
advantage of Sheldon Whitehouse's departure. Virginia's a state
that really sees a lot of climate effects, and it's interesting
that over my time in public life, the dialogue in Virginia has
gone from likely effects in the near future to today.
And the two areas of the state that are seeing it the most,
but not only these two areas of the state, are the Hampton
Roads area, which is so vulnerable to sea level rise, and the
Appalachian area, which because of the narrowness of the
valleys is really vulnerable to intense flooding. The rainfall
in some of these areas in Virginia is not changing over time.
You can look at annual rainfall.
It's not changing very much, but it's just being produced
in fewer extreme storms, and the infrastructure that we have,
schools, roads and health care infrastructure frankly in a part
of the state where people often have less access to
infrastructure, including health care. The infrastructure just
isn't suited for it.
I think there has already been some testimony from Delegate
Smith about this issue of urban heat islands. I live in the
city of Richmond, and we're a pretty green city compared to
many but--in terms of tree cover. But I wonder if as we look to
the future in your experience, what more can local, state and
federal agencies do together to deal with this heat island
issue, which would have a whole range of health effects on
people's livelihoods?
Delegate Smith. Thank you Senator for the question, and
actually there's been a lot of coverage about Richmond and
Baltimore specifically in the heat and rising heat and
temperatures. So I know that there are pockets of both cities
that have great tree canopy, right, but there are still parts
that are lagging far behind.
I want to lift up--I know you're just coming into the
hearing right now, but I think we've talked a lot about the
seriousness of premature death because of heat, but I think we
need to lift up the fact that quality of life. Sometimes people
are merely surviving, they're not thriving, and I think that as
policymakers we don't want people to simply be existing in our
jurisdictions and states. We want them to be living their
optimal life.
And so what heat islands can really mean in an urban
context is if you already have a pre-existing condition like
asthma, who wants to have more asthma attacks than you need to
because you're constantly being triggered right? We also know
for families of school-aged children, asthma is the number one
reason for chronic absenteeism from schools, right?
And so as we have rising temperatures, there's not just an
impact to the mother or father or the guardian's ability to
work in a healthy manner; there's also implications for the
young people in the home to be able to thrive as students and
learners in the community.
So some of the things that we can do at the local and state
and federal level with strategic investments is improve tree
canopy. Also, painting roofs white. Sometimes these are simple
things we could be doing to reduce the absorption of heat into
some of these areas of the city. And then also I know that
there's a lot of conversation about where do you put solar
energy, right?
And so one of the bills I was successful in passing was
really just reducing some of the tax implications for using the
unusable, parking decks, other compromised lands, you know,
installing solar.
Senator Kaine. Rooftop spaces.
Delegate Smith. Absolutely, yeah.
Senator Kaine. Uh-huh, and the nice thing about these is
they can help you on the health side, but they also are income
producers. Somebody with a parking deck that has a roof that's
not being used, you can do solar. Somebody can paint a roof
white.
They're going to find that not only might that have a
positive health effect, it would have an effect on the utility
bills as well.
Delegate Smith. That's right.
Senator Kaine. Dr. Moretti, I want to ask you about one
topic, and then I'm going to come to Senator Johnson. As I
interact with young people, you know, and I've stopped just
thinking of myself like a young person when I got a Medicare
card six weeks ago, and when I interact with young people,
there is a palpable sense of anxiety among many, dread, fear,
kind of an existential one.
Earth Day was Saturday, and I noticed that in my--I live in
Richmond, the large public university, Virginia Commonwealth
University, had a very sizeable student Earth Day activism, and
you know, we have these every year. I see the messaging and it
might be pro-recycling messaging or----
But I see some of the messaging getting more and more
distraught and more and more anxious. We're living in an
anxious time. COVID was tough. Young people in particular, I
think, have had a challenging last few years. It's been a time
of isolation, COVID, and that's not good for young people or
seniors.
But talk a little bit about mental health impacts. As we're
talking about COVID effects on health care, I want to make sure
we give enough attention to mental health issues, and
particularly mental health issues with young people. So what
are you seeing in your practice?
Dr. Moretti. So we're seeing--thank you Senator for the
question, and I think you've done a very nice summary of how
people feel and how young people feel. We're seeing rising
depression and rising anxiety levels in our youth, in our
teens, and I think that this is multifactorial.
I think as you pointed out, COVID has had a huge impact and
I think that climate change and this recognition of climate
change, concerns about the future, add a baseline depression
and anxiety to our population. But similarly as we've talked
about today, climate change acts through many different
mechanisms.
So we have this baseline concern about climate change and
rising overall mean temperatures, but on top of that we have
mental health outcomes from disasters. So wildfires,
hurricanes, etcetera.
Senator Kaine. Yep, shootings.
Dr. Moretti [continuing]. That augments this. We also see
increasing depression and suicide attempts with heat waves and
temperature. So there's a physiologic link between these
changes as well. So we're seeing changes in mental health
through many different mechanisms.
Senator Kaine. And before I turn to Senator Johnson, I
guess the other thing I would say is while there are
challenges, there are also some upside opportunities in the
mental health space being involved as part of solutions,
knowing that there are some solutions you can do in your own
house, in your own neighborhood, being able to take part in
solutions can have a positive impact on mental health because
people don't just feel helpless and that it's beyond them.
They believe that they in fact can have a hand in solving
it. In Virginia, we've seen this in a significant way. We were
never a big producer of alternative energy, low and no carbon
energy. Coal yes, natural gas yes, but we were bottom ten solar
and no wind compared to other states.
And so when we talk about climate in Virginia, we tended to
talk about what I led with, which was the challenges of climate
change. Now we've moved into the top quarter in the nation in
deployment of solar, and we are going to be the east coast
center of excellence for offshore wind, and that is producing
not only some jobs; it's also producing a little bit of a
positive, you know, kind of can-do attitude.
We're not just a climate change problem child; we're also
going to be an innovator. It's going to help not only
Virginians and others, and there's a positive mental health
side to being a problem solver in something like this. I will
yield to Senator Johnson and note that I do not believe I
badgered any witness.
Senator Johnson. I appreciate that. Here's one proposed
solution, by the way, if you want to decrease the stress level
in our children. It would be nice if climate change alarmists
would stop scaring the you know what out of our children by
telling them that the world is going to end in a dozen years,
okay. It's not.
But let's talk about some realities. Does anybody here
expect either India or China to quit trying to drive, bring
their people out of poverty and stop using fossil fuels?
Anybody here think that's going to happen?
(No response.)
Senator Johnson. Does anybody dispute that by their own
models, if we were to eliminate all CO2 in America,
it would have a negligible impact on global temperatures.
Anybody want to dispute that one?
(No response.)
Senator Johnson. Can somebody explain to me--you know, I
look at just some basic facts. Again, this is--I don't deny
climate change. I'm just not an alarmist. I look at the Vostok
ice core sample, and I see we're in the fifth cycle now. Very
consistent, 22.7 degree temperature variations over the span of
440,000 years.
The Greenland ice core sample, the number of them. About
6.7 degrees over the last ten to twenty thousand years since
the last glaciation period. This is the one that always shocks
audiences, it shocked me, because we're always concerned about
sea level rise.
But the increase in sea level in the Bay of San Francisco
since that last glaciation period, 390 feet. So any of our
witnesses think that there's anything mankind could do or could
have done to hold back the tides?
(No response.)
Senator Johnson. The answer is no, there's nothing we could
have done. So again, like Bjorn Lomborg talks about, is we have
limited resources. Dr. Schramm talked about we've been very
effective at reducing some of these noxious pollutants that
obviously impact health. Spend money on that, you know. Spend
money on cheaper energy, nuclear, right? I totally agree.
But the environmental left generally has shut down nuclear
plants. So if you're really concerned about CO2 and
I'm not; I think it's a plant food, we'll adapt. But there's
far better ways of spending money. Mr. Shellenberger, would you
like to comment on that?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah. I mean absolutely. I think that
the nuclear issue just shows that maybe the people that are
raising the alarm about this, there's an ulterior motive going
on here. Something else is going on. I mean we've got some big
problems with renewables that we need to deal with.
I mean we have Steve Hayes from NOAA, who is a top
scientist at NOAA that said that you can't have any more
industrialization of the eastern seaboard without threatening
the extinction of the North Atlantic white whale. It's
extremely troubling. We're seeing a high number of dolphin and
whale strandings, beachings since industrial wind activity
occurred.
So you know, I know that many people here support nuclear
power, but we still don't have a plan to expand it, and that's
the easiest and fastest way to transition away from fossil
fuels without increasing electricity prices.
Senator Johnson. What big wind towers are ever repaired and
put back in service, and what is the life of one of these wind
towers? And how much copper goes into that, and what do we do
with them? Again, we're just ignoring. There was a really good
hearing, I saw a clip of it, talking about these large trucks
need two batteries. Each weigh 8,000 pounds.
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely, I mean these--we talk about
the externalities of fossil fuels, but what are the
externalities of renewables? It's not like you can put solar
panels on a compost bin and hope that they'll, you know,
decompose. There is no end of use for solar panels.
Europeans dump them on African nations. Ours go to
landfills. Same thing with used wind turbine blades. It's
because it's not cost effective to recycle them. So you have a
huge waste problem from these solar panel and wind turbines and
batteries that nobody's talking about.
Senator Johnson. So Dr. Greenstone, that would be a really
good analysis for your research, is again, take a look at the
externalities and the cost of all this green energy, what's
being proposed. Have you looked at that?
Dr. Greenstone. That's an excellent question, and I think
one thing that I'm a little confused about the exchange with
Mr. Shellenberger here is I don't--the planet doesn't care if
we run solar or if we run wind or nuclear for that matter. The
planet only cares about CO2, and so I think that's
why many climate, people interested in climate, certainly
including myself, advocate for a market-based solution that
penalizes the release of CO2 is causing damages.
So I find the debate about particular technologies a little
confusing, and then I just want to add one point that--where I
feel like there should be some agreement with Mr. Shellenberger
and I, but I'm a little perplexed by it.
He seems to be a big proponent of nuclear, and was engaged
in a kind of heated exchange with Senator Whitehouse, well if
solar and wind are so great, they would--the market would just
adopt them. Well the same challenge applies to the advocacy of
nuclear. Nuclear is not--nuclear plants aren't running, they're
not being built because they're out of the money. The reason
they're out of the money is they cost more than fossil fuels
and so fossil fuels have this kind of free subsidy.
So I've just come back to we should aim for a level playing
field that does not treat any technology better than the other,
and stay focused on what the planet cares about, that's
CO2. It's not a particular technology.
Senator Johnson. But nuclear, we kind of regulated up the
cost of that. Mr. Shellenberger, you should be able to respond
to that.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yeah. I mean look, the planet does care
if you use three to eight hundred times more land for producing
energy from solar and wind than you do at a nuclear, the planet
does care. The North Atlantic white whales do care about that.
If you produce solar panels in China with coal, those are
high carbon-intensive solar panels in contrast if you made them
in a place and you made them in France, which is mostly
nuclear. So of course it matters. So these--as nuclear as you
mentioned.
I mean California was shutting down a nuclear plant not
because it was expensive, but because of anti-nuclear phobias
that date back to the 60's. So nuclear is fundamentally just an
issue of public concern. We over-regulated it.
The people that pushed for that over-regulation were
pushing for it because they were ostensibly scared of it, but
they really favored renewables. There's a whole regulatory
paradigm here that has to be taken into consideration.
Senator Johnson. And what about the economic or the
environmental impact of mining?
Mr. Shellenberger. Massive. I mean that's why--that's why
you look at what's happening in the Congo. I mean just go
online and look at cobalt mining in the Congo. It's a shame.
What's happening in China, it's an absolute travesty. We should
not be importing any more solar panels or batteries produced in
China to the United States. It's just a fundamental human
rights issue.
Senator Johnson. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Senator Kaine. Well, I'll just conclude. When I have a
Republican witness who suddenly seems to be against all of the
above, I'm curious. And to have a Republican witness take up
for the whales, it's the first time in my career in public life
where someone has done that.
So I'm assuming it's a Road to Damascus experience. I come
from----
Mr. Shellenberger. I've been interested in conservation my
entire life, with all due respect.
Senator Kaine. Right, that's great. That's great. I'm from
a state that's 35 percent nuclear, probably double what the
national average is. We're perfectly fine with it. Helps us
with climate and we're really proud to be producing more
battery-powered heavy duty trucks than any state in the
country, and doing offshore wind and growing in solar.
So I--look, American innovation is again rocketing us
forward on clean energy. That's such an exciting thing. It's
creating jobs, creating opportunities, going to lead to a
cleaner planet, gonna lead to better health care and that's
exciting.
We've got, you know, we have policy challenges we have to
work out around regulations, statutes, taxes, benefits,
etcetera. But I kind of go back to Dr. Greenstone. We're
probably approaching a point where we could, within a few
years, the histories of subsidies of one form of industry over
another, we may be nearing the end of that and we may be able
to just have complete even playing field on energy, removing
all subsidies and tax breaks.
And as you say, let innovation and the market drive where
we go. I have a pretty strong feeling if that were to happen
where we would go.
Well, I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before
the Committee. Full written statements will be included. As
information for all Senators, questions for the record would be
due by noon tomorrow, with signed hard copies delivered to the
Committee Clerk in Dirksen 624. Email copies also accepted.
We ask witnesses to respond to questions for the record if
there are within seven days of receipt. With no further
business of the Committee, the hearing is adjourned.
(Whereupon, at 12:03 p.m. Wednesday, April 26, 2023, the
hearing was adjourned.)
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