[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 102 (Wednesday, July 17, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5733-S5735]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Global Warming

  Mr. President, it is no great secret that the Congress is currently 
held in very low esteem by the American people, and there are a lot of 
reasons for that. But I think the major reason, perhaps, is, in the 
midst of so many serious problems facing our country, the American 
people perceive that we are not addressing those issues, and they are 
right.
  Regardless of what your political point of view may be, we are 
looking at a middle class that is disappearing. Are we addressing that 
issue? No. Poverty is extraordinarily high. Are we moving aggressively 
to address that? No, we are not. We have the most expensive health care 
system in the world, enormously bureaucratic and wasteful. Are we 
addressing that? No, we are not. But the issue I want to talk about 
today--maybe more clearly than any other issue in terms of our 
neglect--is the issue of global warming.
  At a time when virtually the entire scientific community--the people 
who spend their lives studying climate change--tells us that global 
warming is real, that it is significantly caused by human activity, and 
that it is already doing great damage, it is beyond comprehension that 
this Senate, this Congress, is not even discussing that enormously 
important issue on the floor of the Senate. Where is the debate? Where 
is the legislation on what might be considered the most significant 
planetary crisis we face? I fear very much that our children and our 
grandchildren--who will reap the pain from our neglect--will never 
forgive us for not moving in the way we should be moving.
  I understand that some of my colleagues, including my good friend Jim 
Inhofe from Oklahoma--whom I like very much--that some of my Republican 
friends, especially, believe global warming is a hoax. They believe 
global warming is a hoax perpetrated by Al Gore, the United Nations, 
the Hollywood elite. This is what people such as Jim Inhofe actually 
believe.
  Well, I have to say to my good friend Mr. Inhofe that he is dead 
wrong. Global warming is not just a crisis that will impact us in years 
to come, it is impacting us right now, and it is a crisis we must 
address. In fact, global warming is the most serious environmental 
crisis facing not just the United States of America but our entire 
planet, and we cannot continue to ignore that reality.
  Science News reports that cities in America matched or broke at least 
29,000 high-temperature records last year.
  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 
2012 was the warmest year ever recorded for the contiguous United 
States. It was the hottest year ever recorded in New York, in 
Washington, DC, in Louisville, KY, and in my hometown of Burlington, 
VT, and other cities across the Nation.
  Our oceans also are warming quickly and catastrophically. A new study 
found that North Atlantic waters last summer were the warmest in 159 
years of record-keeping. The United Nations World Meteorological 
Organization in May issued a warning about ``the loss of Arctic sea ice 
and extreme weather that is increasingly shaped by climate change.''
  Scientists are now warning that the Arctic may experience entirely 
ice-free summers within 2 years. Let me repeat that. The Arctic may 
experience entirely ice-free summers within 2 years. Scientists are 
also reporting that carbon dioxide levels have reached a dangerous 
milestone level of 400 parts per

[[Page S5734]]

million, a level not seen on the planet Earth for millions of years.
  In fact, the world's leading scientists unequivocally agree. A recent 
review of the scientific literature found that more than 98 percent of 
peer-reviewed scientific studies on climate change support the 
conclusion that human activity is causing climate change. The American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the most important 
and prestigious scientific organizations in our country and the world, 
this is what they say:

       Among scientists, there is now overwhelming agreement based 
     on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate 
     change is real. It is happening right now. It will have broad 
     impacts on society.

  That is from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
We are not into speculation. We are not into debate. The conclusion is 
there. Global warming is real. It is happening right now. It is 
impacting the United States of America and the world right now. It will 
only get worse if we do not act.
  The examples of that are so numerous that one can go on hour after 
hour. But let me give you just a few. Extreme weather events are now 
occurring with increased frequency and increased intensity; that is, 
extreme weather disturbances. In 2011 and 2012, the United States 
experienced an extraordinary 25 billion-dollar disasters--25 separate 
billion-dollar disasters, so called because they each caused more than 
$1 billion worth of damage.
  That is unprecedented. NOAA's Climate Extreme Index, which is a 
system for assessing a wide range of extreme weather that includes 
extreme temperatures, extreme drought, extreme precipitation, tropical 
storms--NOAA's Climate Extreme Index tells us that 2012 was 
characterized by the second most extreme climate conditions ever 
recorded.
  A number of colleagues make the point--they come up and say: Senator 
Sanders and others, dealing with climate change is going to be 
expensive. Transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels is 
going to be expensive. They are right. It is going to be expensive.
  But the question we have to ask is, compared to what? Compared to 
doing nothing? Compared to conducting business as usual? Compared to 
allowing a significant increase in drought, in floods, in extreme 
weather disturbances? Compared to that, acting now and acting boldly is 
cost-effective. Yes, it will be expensive. But it will be a lot less 
expensive, cause a lot less human pain and less human deaths than 
allowing global warming to continue unmitigated.
  The cost--and this is an interesting point, especially for my 
conservative friends who look to the business community for information 
and for analysis. The cost of catastrophe and extreme weather events 
has been trending upward for 30 years. This is very much a budget and 
economic issue. Munich Re, the largest reinsurance company in the 
world, the company that insures the insurance companies, has already 
documented a fivefold increase in extreme weather events in North 
America since 1980.
  They keep track of this stuff pretty closely because for them this is 
a dollars-and-cents issue. They are the ones who help others pay out 
the benefits when there is extreme damage as a result of storms and 
floods, et cetera. Munich Re calculated that the economic cost of 
damages due to natural catastrophes in the United States exceeded $139 
billion in 2012 alone.
  So when you talk about money and you talk about expense and you talk 
about cost, let's understand that we already are racking up 
recordbreaking costs in terms of dealing with the extreme weather 
disturbances we have seen in recent years.
  The Allianz insurance company noted bluntly last fall, ``Climate 
change represents a threat to our business.'' That is an insurance 
company. But it is not just the insurance companies; it is the 
businesses that are seeing insurance become unaffordable when they are 
hit with floods and other disasters. That comes right out of their 
bottom line.
  Global warming, of course, is closely tied to drought and fire as 
well. Last year's drought affecting two-thirds of the United States was 
the worst in half a century. But the United States is not the only 
country on Earth being impacted.

  We obviously pay attention to what is happening within our borders. 
But global warming is having huge impacts all over this planet. Brazil 
is experiencing its worst drought in 50 years. It is directly affecting 
over 10 million people in that country. Because of impacts to wheat 
farms, the price of flour rose over 700 percent.
  Australia just experienced a 4-month heat wave with severe wildfires, 
record-setting temperatures and torrential rains and flooding causing 
over $2 billion in damage in that country.
  In recent years, other parts of the world--Russia, China, Southern 
Europe and Eastern Europe--have also suffered severe heat waves and 
droughts, with substantial impacts to agricultural communities and 
their economic well-being.
  Just weeks ago, as everybody in America knows, we watched as fires 
raged across parts of the Western United States, including the massive 
and dangerously explosive West Fork fire in southwestern Colorado. Let 
me take a moment now to acknowledge the deaths of 19 unbelievably brave 
firefighters from Prescott, AZ, who lost their lives trying to protect 
their neighbors and property near Phoenix.
  Wildfires such as these appear to be increasingly common. In fact, 
the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service Thomas Tidwell reported to 
Congress that America's wildfire season lasts 2 months longer than it 
did 40 years ago and burns twice as much land as it did then because of 
the hotter, drier conditions from climate change.
  Last year's extraordinary wildfires burned more than 9 million acres 
of land, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Chief 
Tidwell also warned of the increasing frequency of monster fires. When 
we are talking about drought, it is not just some kind of abstraction. 
When drought occurs, agriculture suffers. When agriculture suffers, the 
cost of food goes up. In parts of the world where people have very 
little money, this is catastrophic.
  That is one of the points made by the CIA, the Department of Defense, 
many of our intelligence agencies. When they talk about national 
security issues, they often put at the top of the list or close to the 
top of the list global warming because they understand that drought and 
floods mean people do not have the food they need, people do not have 
the water they need, people are going to migrate from one area to 
another. It is going to cause tension. It is going to cause conflict. 
So global warming is also a major national security issue.
  One of the issues we do not talk enough about--I know Senator 
Whitehouse of Rhode Island does talk about it--is the impact that 
global warming is having on our oceans that is driving fish to deeper, 
cooler waters, threatening the fishing industry and food security. In 
the Pacific Northwest, for example, according to NOAA and as reported 
by USA Today, just this spring shellfish farmers on the west coast are 
increasingly experiencing collapses in both hatcheries and natural 
ecosystems.
  Extreme weather and rising sea levels also threaten people across the 
planet. More than 31 million people fled their homes just last year 
because of disasters related to floods and storms tied to climate 
change. According to a number of sources, climate change will create, 
in years to come, even larger numbers of what we call climate refugees 
as low-lying countries lose land mass to rising seas and to 
desertification, consuming once-fertile territory.
  In northern India, nearly 6,000 people are dead or missing from 
devastating floods and landslides just last month. Closer to home, 
Hurricane Sandy alone displaced three-quarters of a million people in 
the United States and is costing us up to 60 billion Federal dollars in 
helping those communities rebuild.
  Permanent displacement is already occurring in the United States. In 
other words, people are permanently losing their residences. The Army 
Corps of Engineers predicted that the entire village of Newtok, AK, 
could be underwater by 2017, and more than 180 additional Native 
Alaskan villages are at risk. Parts of Alaska are literally vanishing.
  Scientists believe that entire U.S. cities or parts of coastal cities 
are in danger of being flooded as well. In fact,

[[Page S5735]]

experts are telling us that cities such as Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, New 
York, New Orleans, and others will face a growing threat of partial 
submersion within just a few decades as sea levels and storm surge 
levels continue to climb and that entire countries--small island 
nations such as Micronesia and the Maldives and large nations such as 
Indonesia face similar risk.
  Ironically, rising sea levels are even threatening key oil industry 
infrastructure. For example, scientists at NOAA are estimating that 
portions of the Louisiana State Highway 1 will be inundated by rising 
high tides 30 times per year. Highway 1 provides the only access to a 
port servicing nearly one out of every five barrels of the U.S. oil 
supply.
  What is my point? My point is that we are facing a horrendous 
planetary crisis. We cannot continue to ignore it. We must act, and we 
must act now.
  In my view, the first thing we must do is we must not make a terribly 
dangerous situation--i.e., global warming and greenhouse gas 
emissions--even worse than it is right now. We must break our 
dependence on fossil fuels, not expand it. We must modernize our grid 
and transform our energy system to one based on sustainable energy 
sources, and we must move aggressively toward energy efficiency.
  In that process, we must reject the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal, 
which would dramatically increase carbon dioxide emissions, according 
to the EPA, by the equivalent of 18.7 million metric tons per year, 
releasing as much as 935 million metric tons over 50 years. In other 
words, the planet faces a crisis right now. Why would we think for one 
second about making that crisis even worse?
  Further, Congress needs to end wasteful subsidies for the industries 
that are causing climate change. According to a report by DBL 
Investors, between 1918 and 2009, the oil and gas industry received 
government subsidies to the tune of $446 billion, to say nothing of 
State subsidies which have benefited from decades' worth of backroom 
political deals. In other words, why are we continuing to subsidize 
those industries that are helping to bring devastating damage to our 
planet.
  Thirdly, even though fossil fuels are the most expensive fuels on 
Earth, the fossil fuel industry for too long has shifted these enormous 
costs onto the public, walking away with billions in profits while the 
American people have to bear the real costs of rising seas, monster 
storms, devastating droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather. 
When people tell you that coal or oil is cheap, what they are 
forgetting about are the social costs in terms of infrastructure damage 
and in terms of human health. These fuels are not cheap.
  As we transform our energy system away from fossil fuels, we must 
finally begin pricing carbon pollution emissions so the polluters 
themselves begin carrying the costs instead of passing them on to our 
children and grandchildren.
  I am proud to have joined with Senator Barbara Boxer, the chairperson 
of the Environment Committee in the Senate, to introduce the Climate 
Protection Act earlier this year. Our bill establishes a fee on carbon 
pollution emissions, an approach endorsed by people all across the 
political spectrum, including conservatives such as George Shultz, 
Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker, Mitt Romney's former economic 
adviser Gregory Mankiw, former Reagan adviser Art Laffer, former 
Republican Congressman Bob Inglis, and others.
  Our bill does a number of things. One of the things it does is return 
60 percent of the revenue raised directly back to taxpayers in order to 
address increased fuel costs. It puts money, substantial sums of money, 
into supporting sustainable energy research, weatherizing homes, job 
creation, and helping manufacturing businesses save money through 
energy efficiency and deficit reduction.
  This begins the process of transforming our energy system by imposing 
a fee on carbon. It deincentivizes fossil fuel by putting money into 
energy efficiency and sustainable energy. It helps us move in a very 
different and healthier direction.
  Let me conclude by going back to the point that I made when we 
started. The American people are shaking their heads at what goes on in 
Washington.
  This country is facing enormous problems, economic problems, social 
problems, and I would argue that in global warming we face a planetary 
crisis. The American people want us to act. It is incomprehensible that 
week after week, month after month, year after year, we are not 
addressing the issue of global warming.
  I hope sooner rather than later we will bring serious legislation to 
the floor of the Senate, that we have that debate, and we do what the 
planetary crisis requires; that is, transform our energy system, move 
away from fossil fuel, and move to energy efficiency and sustainable 
energy.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Texas.