[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 33 (Thursday, March 7, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1257-S1258]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am back to again urge my colleagues to wake up to
the stark reality of climate change. We often hear in this Chamber
colleagues extolling the virtues of the marketplace. Indeed, a fair and
open marketplace is the cornerstone of our economy. Markets work--not
perfectly always but better than any other mechanism.
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, one might say that markets are the
worst form of setting prices and exchanging goods, except all of the
other methods that have been tried. But markets only work when they are
fair. Markets are not fair if the price of goods does not take all the
costs into account.
A grocery store, for instance, has to pay to have its garbage
removed. It has to build that garbage removal into its prices. And that
is the right thing. That is the market working. If that grocery store
can recycle or compact or composite its trash and make removal cheaper
and lower its prices, then that is right too. That is the market
working. But if a second grocery store down the street breaks the law
and throws its garbage into the park next door and then competes with
lower prices, that is not a market in proper operation. That is not a
fair market. That is just one person cheating another.
If a factory makes a product and treats its waste, that is part of
its cost. That is good. That is how it is supposed to be. If the
factory can figure out how to treat its waste more efficiently and
lower prices, terrific. That is also the market at work. But a factory
down the river that breaks the law by dumping its waste into the river
may have better prices as a result, but that is not a fair market.
The value of open and fair markets is lost when people cheat, when
they offload their costs onto the general public. The garbage in the
park, the waste in the river--the grocery store down the street and the
factory down the river--does not reduce costs; businesses just
offloaded them onto their neighbor, onto the rest of us. They may
actually have even made it more costly for everyone, but they have
managed to impose that cost on the public.
There is even a word for these offloaded costs. They are
externalities, the harms that are caused that are external to the
company. This is not complicated. It is econ 101. It is also law 101.
Seventy years ago a soda bottle exploded and injured the hand of a
waitress named Gladys Escola. Ms. Escola sued the bottler. The court
decision has been in most every law student's first-year classes ever
since.
In a famous concurrence, Justice Traynor ruled in the case of Escola
v. Coca-Cola Bottling Company that the cost of Ms. Escola's injury
should fall on the bottler. His logic was simple and clear: They made
the bottle. If they did not have to pay for the injuries exploding
bottles caused, they would just keep making exploding bottles. If you
made them responsible for the exploding bottles they made, they would
have a big incentive to improve their bottles and everyone would be
safer.
As Judge Traynor said 70 years ago, ``Public policy demands that
responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the
hazards.''
This idea that you shouldn't be able to offload your costs and have
the park, the river, or Ms. Escola's hand pay the price is not new, and
it is not unusual. Frankly, we see it in our own lives. It is also
fairness 101, as well as econ 101 and law 101. You may not rake your
lawn and throw the leaves over the fence into your neighbor's yard. The
principle is the same--they are your leaves, and you clean them up.
What do soda bottles and yard work have to do with climate change?
The very same principle applies. We now know how much harm carbon
pollution is causing. We see the costs all around us in storm-damaged
homes, flooded cities, in drought-stricken farms, raging wildfires, in
dying coral and disappearing fish, in shifting habitats and migrating
diseases, in changed seasons and rising seas, in vanishing glaciers and
melting icecaps. These are costs. In some cases they are economic
costs. People lose money. The owner of a ski lodge, for example, losses
money when the ski season gets shorter and shorter. In some cases they
are personal costs, such as not being able to take your granddaughter
to the stream near where you grew up because it is dried up or the
beach island you used to explore as a kid because it is underwater. In
some cases the cost is life-and-death. Powerful storms and severe heat
waves take a deadly toll. These are real costs, and they come as a
result of carbon pollution.
These costs, however, are not factored into the price of the coal or
oil that is burned to release the carbon. The big oil companies and the
coal barons have offloaded those costs onto society.
There is nothing inherently wrong with producing energy. There is
nothing inherently wrong with bottling soda or running a grocery store.
What is wrong is when you knowingly pass on the cost of your exploding
bottle, your waste disposal, or your carbon pollution to everybody
else.
Oil and coal companies have been sending carbon pollution into the
atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. When these industries
started, the risks were poorly understood. Today they know better. They
know what the harm is that they are doing, and they continue. When they
lie and pretend those costs aren't out there--leaves? What leaves?
There is no garbage in the park. Your hand is just fine, Mrs. Escola--
and when they pay people to lie and pretend those costs aren't out
there, well, that is all just flat wrong. And when they do it with fat
campaign contributions, slick lobbyists, and marauding super PACs, that
makes it worse. That is dirty pool. It is a market failure. It takes
unfair advantage of competing energy sources that don't pollute so
much, and it makes the competition between them unfair. The big oil
companies and the coal barons are no different than the grocery store
dumping its garbage in the park or the factory spilling its waste into
the river. They are not bearing the costs of their product, and they
are cheating on their competitors. There is a right way to do it. They
figured out how to do it the wrong way and have other people pick up
the tab.
When it comes to carbon pollution, economists can estimate the true
cost of dirty energy. It is often called the ``social cost of carbon.''
The social cost of carbon includes the financial consequences of a
change in climate, such as property loss, increased health care costs,
and loss of productivity that come with heat waves, drought, heavy
rains, sea-level rise, habitat shifts, ocean warming, and
acidification.
We recently learned from NOAA that their scientists predict that
worldwide, the average summertime loss in labor capacity will double by
2050, as the climate warms and periods of extreme heat become more
frequent and more intense, affecting labor-intensive outdoor work such
as construction and farming. That is a social cost of carbon.
Of course, certain costs can be hard to predict. How do you calculate
the cost of an extinct species? What does it cost to leave to our
children and grandchildren warmer, more acidic, less biodiverse oceans?
These calculations may not always be perfect, but that doesn't make the
costs any less real. For instance, in my home State of Rhode Island,
the costs to our fishermen of these changes is very real.
In the final tally, economists tell us that big carbon emitters are
unloading a big cost onto the public and onto future generations. On
average, estimates of the social cost of carbon are about $48 per ton
of carbon dioxide--$48 per ton that these big businesses dodge and that
we all pay for.
[[Page S1258]]
Whatever the exact dollar amount, it is time for Congress to wake up
and start discussing these very real costs. This is why I am working
with several colleagues to establish a fee on carbon pollution. We hope
to have a draft framework soon to start this discussion. The idea is
simple: The big carbon polluters pay a fee to the American people to
cover the cost of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans--
the costs they now push off onto the rest of us, giving them unfair
advantage against their competitors.
I am pleased to participate in an effort to determine how best to
assess a carbon pollution fee, how to protect American manufacturers
from overseas competition that is cheating, and how to protect middle-
and low-income families. It has been recognized by Republicans and
Democrats alike that a carbon pollution fee can reduce emissions and
help make the market more efficient.
Last month Senator Sanders and Senator Boxer introduced related
legislation, and I commend them for their efforts. I also wish to
commend Senator Boxer this week, as chairwoman on the Environment and
Public Works Committee, for beginning a regular appearance on the floor
to draw this Chamber's attention to the dangers of carbon pollution. I
hope more colleagues will join us in this important discussion. It is
economics 101, it is law 101, and it is fairness 101.
We have had enough sleepwalking. We have had enough silence. We have
been warned by our national defense and intelligence communities, we
have been warned by the national academies, we have been warned by the
Government Accountability Office, we have been warned by the
overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, and, of course, we
are hearing from millions of concerned Americans. It is time for this
Congress to wake up and to put a price on carbon pollution that matches
the costs of carbon pollution. We won't get it done if we don't wake up
to what is happening all around us.
I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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