Congressional Record, Volume 160 Issue 39 (Monday, March 10, 2014)

[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 39 (Monday, March 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1377-S1415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

MORNING BUSINESS

______

CLIMATE CHANGE

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, just last week one of the world's most well-
known spiritual leaders, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet,
visited the Capitol. He talked about the moral

[[Page S1378]]

imperative to protect the planet we call home. The Dalai Lama spoke
with passion and longing of his native Tibet, where mountain snows melt
in spring to feed the rivers to provide Bangladesh, China, India,
Nepal, and Pakistan with water.
The Himalayas are sometimes called the ``third pole'' because they
contain nearly a third of the world's nonpolar ice. But in recent
years, manmade climate change has caused milder winters, less snow, and
less water for 1.3 billion people living downstream from Tibet.
In the Western United States we face a similar problem. For more than
a decade drought has plagued the Colorado River, both upstream and
downstream--the lifeblood of a number of Western States, including
Nevada, California, Arizona, and other States.
During this period of time, we have had some so-called average snows
in the Upper Colorado but none of it reaches the river. The climate has
changed. Milder winters have meant less Rocky Mountain snowpack and
less spring runoff to feed the river. Combined with more extreme summer
heat and other issues connected with climate change, the shrinking
western snowpack threatens the water source for more than 30 million
people. Far more than 30 million people, because 38 million people in
California are affected very adversely because of what is going on with
the Colorado River.
The seriousness of this climate problem is not lost on the average
American. The vast majority of Americans believe climate change is
real. They believe it is here.
A quarter century ago the first President Bush promised to use ``the
White House effect'' to combat the ``greenhouse effect.'' That is what
President Bush said, but not much has happened, I am sorry to say.
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence and overwhelming public
opinion, climate change deniers still exist. There are lots of
them. They exist in this country. They exist, I am sorry to say, in
this Congress--in the House and in the Senate.

So I am very grateful to Senator Schatz, Senator Whitehouse, and the
chairman of the very important environmental committee, Senator Boxer,
and many other Senators who will join this climate change debate and
presentation tonight for standing up against the deniers.
Climate change is real. It is here. It is time to stop acting as
though those who ignore this crisis--for example, the oil baron Koch
brothers and their allies in Congress--have a valid point. They don't.
Climate change is here. Climate change has brought harsh and drastic
situations all over our country.
In the last few years alone, the Midwest has experienced the most
punishing drought since the Great Depression. Wildfires have ravaged
the West, with places burning which have never burned before. The
mighty Mississippi nearly ran dry, and barge traffic had to be brought
to a stop because the river wasn't deep enough for them to travel.
While record droughts affected some parts of the United States,
torrential rains and extreme thunderstorms struck others. Temperatures
topped 60 degrees in Alaska in January. February brought a blanket of
snow and ice to Atlanta, GA--the South.
In other parts of the world, glaciers and ice sheets which have been
frozen for tens of thousands of years are melting and melting quickly.
Fires have consumed vast forests and monsoons and superfloods left
millions homeless all over the world. Since this new year, the United
Kingdom has had its wettest winter perhaps ever but far more than in
the last 100 years. Tokyo, Japan, in a period of a little over 2 weeks,
got 4 years' worth of snow. Australia experienced its hottest summer in
the history of Australia.
The vast majority of scientists say this is just the beginning of the
ravages of our world changing. Dozens of reports from scientists around
the globe link extreme weather to climate change, and the more extreme
climate change gets, the more extreme the weather is going to get.
Everyone has to understand that. It is easy to see the urgency to
confront climate change, but this challenge is also an opportunity--and
it truly is.
We have the ability now to reduce our reliance on oil and other
fossil fuels, increase our production of clean energy, and create good-
paying jobs which can never be outsourced. We have the ability to
choose the kind of world in which we live. We have that choice.
In Nevada we have done some good things. We have chosen clean
renewable energy as we retire older polluting powerplants. We only have
one left. We imported millions of tons of coal.
I remember I was in the House of Representatives and one powerplant
was on its way out. Al Matteucci, attorney for Nevada Power, was
telling me that little powerplant was importing 2 million tons of coal
a year. I said: What are you talking about? I thought, 2 million tons
of coal? But that is the way it was, just one relatively small
powerplant. We are no longer doing that in Nevada. We have only one
coal-fired plant left, and we have done this by going of course to some
natural gas, but we have done so many good things with renewable
energy. With geothermal we finally passed California. We are the most
productive State in the Union with geothermal energy.
We have done other things with renewable energy. This old plant I
just talked about, where millions of tons of coal came in every year,
why are we getting rid of that? For lots of reasons. But one reason is
this polluting powerplant, built on Paiute Indian land in Moapa, NV,
about 35 miles outside of Las Vegas, during the Johnson administration
was closed.
Next week, a week from this coming Friday, we are going to have a
groundbreaking on the Moapa land, where they are going to have hundreds
and hundreds of jobs because they are going to produce huge amounts of
energy through solar, and that energy is going to go to California. We
have huge amounts of solar energy all over the State of Nevada and we
are shipping it to California because California did the right thing.
They passed a law saying by a certain period of time one-third of all
their power must come from renewable sources. This is a progressive
State. It is important, and we are helping them meet those demands, but
we are also doing a lot to produce our own energy.
I talked about this powerplant. The powerplant, Moapa, at this Indian
reservation, is the first solar project to be built on tribal lands--
certainly in Nevada and likely in the whole country.
The largest solar plant in the world opened last month on the Nevada-
California border, the largest one in the world. Dozens of geothermal
wells on public lands power the cities of Reno and Sparks in northern
Nevada. Because some of Nevada's best renewable energy resources are
located in the rural areas, we recently completed a power line
connecting renewable energy sources. It was part of the Obama program
to help stimulate the economy, which certainly has done that all over
the country, but it certainly has done it in Nevada. We have this power
line connecting the northern part of the State and the southern State
for the first time ever.
What is being put into that power line? Renewable energy. Solar,
wind, geothermal. This power line connecting renewable energy resources
with the people and businesses that need them and making the electric
grid more efficient is a part of what we used to talk about all the
time, a smart grid. It is actually here. Nevada is the first place
where we actually have Federal programs which got us the smart grid. We
have permission to take this power line from northern Nevada to
southern Nevada, now into the great Northwest.
So we are doing some good work. This is what the smart grid is all
about. Nevada has proven it is very easy to reduce our reliance on
fossil fuels, which is good for the economy and good for the
environment.
But as the Dalai Lama said:

We have the capability and the responsibility to act. But
we must do so before it is too late.

He went on further to say:

This . . . is not just a question of morality or ethics,
but a question of our own survival.

I believe him.
I ask unanimous consent that following my opening remarks the
following Senators be recognized for up to 90 seconds in the order
listed: Durbin, Schumer, Murray, Boxer, Whitehouse, Schatz, Feinstein,
Wyden, Nelson, Cantwell, Cardin, Klobuchar, Udall of Colorado, Udall of
New Mexico, Shaheen, Merkley, Bennet, Franken, Coons, Blumenthal,

[[Page S1379]]

Heinrich, King, Kaine, Warren, Markey, Booker, and Gillibrand.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The assistant majority leader.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in this Chamber we spend a lot of time
debating how our actions will affect future generations and the
obligations we have to leave future generations a better nation and a
better world.
Nowhere is this responsibility more apparent than when it comes to
the issue of climate change. It is critical we leave our children and
grandchildren a sustainable planet with a promising, bright future.
We can no longer shy away from the fact that over 98 percent of all
working climate scientists believe that human activities have led to
climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found
it to be unequivocal that the world is warming due to human activities.
The existence of manmade climate change is not a debatable issue, nor
is it a vague or distant threat. It is a situation which requires
serious attention immediately.
I have heard it said there is only one major political party in the
world which denies what I just said: the scientific evidence which
points to climate change and the fact the world we are living in is
changing with extreme weather patterns the life we lead and the future
for many generations.
I hope, during the course of this debate, if the Republican Party
comes to the floor, they will dispute what I just said. I am calling on
them to name any other major political party in the world which agrees
with the proposition that they stand for, questioning whether there is
scientific evidence supporting climate change. I believe there is, and
I believe we should act now.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
The Senator from New York.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues. They did an
amazing job on the Climate Action Task Force, particularly Senators
Boxer and Whitehouse, who led the task force, and the indefatigable new
Member Senator Schatz for organizing and coordinating this effort.
The overwhelming majority of the world's scientists believe humans
are changing the Earth's climate. Climate deniers like to claim there
are competing stories about whether this is true, usually pushing
polluter talking points that there is not a scientific consensus on
climate change. We know this is utterly false, and I would pose the
following question to my colleagues who think ``the jury is still out''
on climate change: If you went to 100 doctors and 98 of them said you
were sick and should take medicine, but two told you that you were fine
and should do nothing, what would you do?
Climate change deniers need to wake up and realize the scientific
diagnosis about warming the planet is real. We need to take action,
much of which will be outlined tonight. I hope my colleagues and the
American people are listening.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as a member of the Senate Climate Action
Task Force, I am very proud to join with all of our colleagues to talk
about an action which is needed.
Climate change is real. We have seen it in the overwhelming
scientific evidence which is occurring today. It is not just about
science. It is impacting all of us. We see the rise in asthma attacks.
We see the impacts in my home State of Washington. I hear this concern
from my constituents, and we know rising sea levels are threatening all
of us. We see it in our rural communities where we are seeing drought.
We are seeing it in our forests where the dry weather is turning our
woods into kindling. We see it in our local fishing communities where
ocean acidification is hindering our shellfish development. These
impacts have enormous costs. They are devastating to our families and
communities who are suffering from droughts, superstorms, and
wildfires.
But it is not just an environmental issue; it is not just a health
issue. It is a budget issue. It is not just about rising temperatures;
it is about rising costs. As chair of the Budget Committee, I can tell
you this issue is a burden to our taxpayers. Federal disaster recovery
spending alone has increased year after year as the number and size of
weather-related disasters rise. These costs will continue if we don't
act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mrs. MURRAY. We know the jobs we can create with new economic
opportunities of climate change will help bring us out of the budget
deficits we face.
I congratulate all of our colleagues who are here tonight to talk,
and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, we know all Senators care deeply about
their constituents and their families. If any one of us saw danger
looming, we would do everything in our power to save them. Yet in the
face of irrefutable scientific agreement, the Senate does nothing to
make sure polluters pay for the carbon they emit, which would move us
toward a clean energy economy and away from catastrophic climate
change.
Yes, there is money, big money, behind the polluters. Yes, those
polluters are raging against us with layers of lies. Yet and still the
environment which used to be a bipartisan issue has turned truly
bitterly partisan, but we cannot and we must not and we will not give
in because it is our job. We must preserve our environment for our
people, which is pretty basic.
The deniers have given in to the power of wishful thinking, just as
those defending cigarette addiction did.
To those who would say let China lead, I say this is shameful. In
China 1.2 million people died in 2010 from air pollution. That is a
fact, not a fantasy. America doesn't sit around and wait for someone
else to protect the health and safety and the quality of life of our
people. It is wrong. So I am so proud tonight to stand with my resolute
colleagues as we fight back against those polluters who would put their
self-interests ahead of the salmon we have sworn to protect.

Thank you.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer.
The problem of carbon pollution could not be more real for my home
State of Rhode Island. It is real for our country's future. I will be
here in the wee hours and I will yield my time so we can compress this.
We have a lot of Senators who want to speak in a short period of time.
I want to yield my time and express my gratitude to Senator Schatz of
Hawaii who has coordinated tonight's event.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. I rise with 29 of my colleagues with a simple message for
Congress and for our Nation: Climate change is real; climate change is
caused by humans; and climate change is solvable. We will not rest
until Congress wakes up and acts on the most pressing issue of our
time.
Why are we doing this? Why are we taking this particular action to
take the floor tonight and into the morning right now? The answer is
simple: This is the floor of the U.S. Senate, the greatest deliberative
body in the world. This is where historically America has addressed
some of its toughest challenges. Tonight has to be the historic
beginning of us facing the challenge of our generation. The real
question ought to be: Why haven't we done this sooner and, perhaps more
pointedly, why isn't every single Member of this body down here with
us?
Tonight is just the beginning. We are going to continue to push
throughout the year, and the public is with us--Independents,
Democrats, and Republicans. Americans are calling for action. The only
place where climate change is still an open debate is within the four
corners of this Capitol.
I have seen what can happen when there is a real commitment to clean
energy and clear goals laid out. In my home State of Hawaii we set
aggressive goals and doubled our use of clean energy in just 3 years.
Tackling climate change is going to require the entire country working
together.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from Hawaii has
expired.
Mr. SCHATZ. I yield the floor.

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The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Thank you, Mr. President.
I thank Senator Schatz for all the work he did to put together this
effort tonight.
I simply want to say that when you look at the data from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Academy of
Sciences, I believe you reach a blunt judgment: Climate change is the
scientific equivalent of a speeding Mack truck. So tonight it is
appropriate that Senators start getting into these issues with
practical approaches. We have done our part in a bipartisan effort to
promote hydropower. I am very pleased the President has a new approach
in terms of dealing with wildfire, which is also bipartisan, because
fires we are seeing are getting bigger and hotter, and there are steps
we can take to deal with those urgent problems. This evening is all
about sensible action.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, one of the places that is threatened most
is a low-lying area such as Bangladesh, but do you know what area is
threatened most in the Continental United States? The Miami area. I am
going to be taking the commerce committee during the April recess to
have a hearing on climate change and sea level rise particularly right
in the heart of a city that has been experiencing flooding over and
over because of this climate change.
Florida is ground zero for sea level rise. We have a compelling story
to tell. Our leaders are making key decisions and investments today so
that our coastal economy will thrive. We are going to pull all this
together in the hearing. There are several members of the commerce
committee here tonight. I invite Senators during the April recess to
come to this hearing. Thank you all for organizing this all-night
event, and I look forward to the material that will be coming out this
evening.
Thank you.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, climate change is not a problem of the
future. Climate change is drastically impacting our oceans today.
Acidification is increasing at astonishing rates, and our oceans take
up 25 percent of our carbon emissions. Carbon and ocean acidification
kill our oysters, crabs, and other shellfish, and impact the shellfish
that other sea life depends on, such as our salmon, so the impact to an
industry in our State that is worth $30 billion and supports 148,000
jobs is serious.
Just last week there was a huge die-off of scallops in British
Columbia, resulting in 30 percent of employees in that region being
laid off. So climate change is not only killing oysters and scallops,
but it is killing our fishing jobs. That is why we are here tonight,
because we know we need to act to save jobs and help our economy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, as a member of the Climate Action Task
Force, I couldn't be more proud of my colleagues on the floor tonight.
I thank Senator Boxer, Senator Schatz, and Senator Whitehouse for
organizing this evening.
The information we want to present is clear. The facts are clear.
Science indicates what we do here on Earth is affecting the livability
of our planet, and we can do something about it. This is an urgent
issue, from climate refugees around the world, the visible signs we see
in China, to each of our individual States.
I am honored to represent the people of Maryland, where 70 percent of
citizens live in coastal zones. The Chesapeake Bay is iconic to the
survival of Maryland as we know it today and yet it is at risk.
But here is the good news: We can do something about it. We can
reduce our carbon footprint. We can reduce our carbon pollution, and in
doing so we not only help our environment, we also help our economy and
job growth, help make America more energy secure, which helps our
national security. So let's take the reasonable steps necessary to help
our future generations, help our economy, and help our environment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. I am also very pleased to talk about one of
the most pressing challenges confronting our Nation and my State of
Colorado, and that is climate change. We have seen in my State this is
not an obscure threat or distant problem. We have had catastrophic
floods and mega wildfires that have been the result of drought, of a
whole series of changes in a way we see climate systems operating in
Colorado. It is threatening our way of life.
I have a powerful photograph here. We have had in the past 2 years
three successive mega fires. Last year's Black Forest fire brought
destruction to Colorado Springs. Over 500 homes burned and we lost 2
lives. This fire quickly surpassed the Waldo Canyon fire which was the
most destructive fire in Colorado history.
Now is the time to act. Now is the time to grab the opportunity to
create new emergency technologies, to enhance our national security
and, by the way, to keep faith with our children. We do not inherit
this Earth from our parents. We are borrowing it from our children. If
we do not act on climate change, we will leave them a less bright
future. If we do act, we can create jobs and protect the environment.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, along with the Presiding
Officer, we can enhance our Nation's security with these new
technologies. Let's act now. I am here in this Congress and this Senate
to protect our way of life. If we act now, we can protect that special
way of life.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. President, thank you very much, and let
me first of all congratulate my chairman, Chairman Boxer, Senator
Whitehouse, and Senator Schatz for organizing this effort and what we
are calling an up-all-night conversation.
New Mexico is in the bull's-eye when it comes to climate change.
Everyplace else, if it goes up 1 degree, New Mexico and the Southwest
go up 2 degrees, so we know we are hit really hard. I am going to talk
later in this conversation about all of the impacts.
It is clear, forest fires, as my cousin talked about, droughts, huge
die-off in terms of trees, extreme rain events after fires, and
flooding are devastating. But New Mexico has been at the forefront of
the solution. When it comes to renewable energy, we are out there--
solar energy, wind, bio, advanced biofuels such as algae. We are
working in the direction we need all of us to be working in together in
this country, to make sure we orient toward renewables and tackle this
problem. I will be able to expand on this later.
I would yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Ms. CANTWELL. Thank you, Mr. President.
I am pleased to join my colleagues tonight in talking about the
economic and environmental imperative of addressing climate change. I
thank all of the members of the climate task force, all my colleagues
who are here, and particularly Senator Schatz from Hawaii, for
organizing tonight.
The fact is, as we have heard, climate change is real and it is
happening. According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a group of 3,000 scientists from over 130 countries who have
studied climate change for over 20 years, global emissions must be
stabilized by midcentury in order to avoid the most catastrophic and
irreversible consequences of climate change.
Studies from the National Research Council and the U.S. Global
Climate Research Program reinforce that global temperatures are
steadily rising and contributing to more extreme weather events and
rising sea levels. Scientists from the University of New Hampshire have
found that humans are responsible for releasing large amounts of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that are causing
rapid climate change. I only need to look at New Hampshire to see the
real economic and health implications.
In New Hampshire, climate change is contributing to sea level rise,
which

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imperils businesses, homes, and coastal communities such as Portsmouth.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from New Hampshire has
expired.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. The outdoor recreation community has less snow,
resulting in fewer tourism dollars. Wildlife health is becoming
increasingly vulnerable to disease. What is happening in New Hampshire
is happening around the world. We must take action now.
I look forward to coming back later this evening to talk more about
what we are seeing in New Hampshire.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, Theodore Roosevelt said:

Of all the questions which can come before this Nation,
short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great
war, there is none which compares in importance with the
great central task of leaving this land even a better land
for our descendants than it is for us.

We should reconsider those words now in the context of carbon
pollution--carbon pollution which is a direct assault to our rural
resources, on our farming, fishing, and forestry. In Oregon we had
three worst-ever droughts we have faced over a 13-year period,
devastating to the farmers, their families, and the farm economy.
In fishing, everyone who goes to their favorite trout stream knows
that if there is no snowpack, the stream is warmer and smaller in
summer and a poor place to fish, and certainly worse for iconic salmon
and steelhead.
The forests are burning, from pine beetles, which spread throughout
the land in the context of not having those cold snaps in the winter,
and in the context of tinderbox conditions on the forest floor. Those
forest fires have been some of the worst we have seen in a century, and
more is yet to come. We cannot wait for 20 or 30 or 40 years to act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. MERKLEY. We cannot wait for 2 or 3 or 4 years to act. The carbon
pollution is real and the damage is real. It is time for this Chamber
to act.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Why are we here tonight. We are here because if we
fail to act, our planet will be destroyed. As exaggerated as that claim
sounds, it is strikingly, irrefutably true. We are here because our
future is at stake, and not only ours but our children's. We are here
because of climate change, which is really climate disruption and
planet destruction. It is real and it is urgent.
Anyone who lives in Connecticut knows about the snowstorms and
hurricanes, Superstorm Sandy, the rising tide that will eventually
destroy our coastline, the rising temperatures that will emaciate our
vegetation and our produce. There are real human effects but also
economic effects. There are immense economic perils but also tremendous
economic promise. There are immense economic perils but also tremendous
economic promise if we invest in the steps that have to be taken to
stop climate disruption.

We can take advantage of the immense opportunity and obligation we
face by acknowledging the reality that our planet is at stake and
defeating and discrediting the climate change deniers, who are as much
a part of the problem as any of the natural forces or elements at
stake.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. That is why we are here tonight, and that is why we
will stay the course.
I yield the floor.
The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, as a member of the climate change task
force, I am pleased to join my colleagues in calling for action on
tackling one of our Nation's greatest challenges. I wish to start by
thanking Senator Whitehouse, Senator Schatz, and Senator Boxer for
their leadership on this issue.
Tonight we will illustrate that climate change is not theoretical and
cannot be ignored. We will discuss how sound science can be used to
better understand and manage climate impacts. We will highlight the
moral imperative that we have in Congress to implement real solutions.
In my home State of New Mexico we are seeing bigger fires, dryer
summers, more severe floods when it finally does rain, and less
snowpack in the winter. Our Nation's second most extreme year for
weather on record was in 2012, but in New Mexico we experienced the
hottest year on record. Over the last 4 years alone, we have seen the
two largest fires in New Mexico's history.
The reality is that things are only going to get worse if we don't
act. If we have any hope of reversing the effects of climate change--
and we truly must--it is critical that we embrace this challenge now
and lead the world in innovation, efficiency, and clean energy.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Mr. KING. Mr. President, Joe Sewall, David Huber, Harry Richardson,
Hoddy Hildreth, and Sherry Huber--those names mean nothing in this
Chamber, but they meant everything in Maine in the 1970s. They were the
parents of the environmental movement in our State. What do they all
have in common? They are all Republicans.
I rise tonight in puzzlement as to how this issue became a partisan
one. It is a scientific issue. Light travels at 186,000 miles per
second. That is science. That is not a partisan or debatable issue. The
science on this question is definitive.
I would not call myself a denier, but I was a skeptic until several
years when I encountered a chart, which I will show in a large version
later this evening, that talks about CO2 in the atmosphere
for the last million years. Yes, it varied over time between 150 and
250 parts per million, but in the 1860s, at the dawn of the fossil fuel
age, it started to go up, and now it is at 400 parts per million. That
number has not been seen in this world for 3 million years. The last
time we were at that figure, the sea level was 80 feet higher.
We are playing with the future of this planet. We have to do
something, and that is why we are here.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, as a member of the climate change task
force, I am proud to join my colleagues today. I particularly wish to
thank Senators Schatz, Whitehouse, and Boxer for getting us organized
and bringing attention to the urgent need to address climate change. We
are on the cusp of a climate crisis. We are at a point of no return
that will threaten our health, our economy, and our planet.
For the next several hours and all through the night and into
tomorrow, dozens of Senators will add their voices to the millions of
voices around the country of people who are committed in the fight
against climate change.
I got ready for this event by asking people for help. I sent out an
email asking a simple question: What do people think the world will
look like 25 years from now if we don't do anything at all to stop
climate change? Nearly 5,000 emails have already poured in from
workers, teachers, grandparents, and students. These Americans see what
is happening to our environment. They see the paralysis of our
politics. They see that we are headed down a dangerous path. They see
that we--our country and our Congress--must change.
This is where we start--a moment of great peril for Massachusetts,
for America, and for the world, but also a moment of great opportunity.
This is a time for us to come together.
During my time on the floor, I plan to read letters from some of the
people who have emailed me.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Ms. WARREN. I yield the floor.
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, the science proves there is a danger, the
economics prove there is a solution, and the politics tonight begin the
process of saying there is a way to deal with this issue.
The planet is running a fever, but there are no emergency rooms for
planets. We have to engage in the preventive care so that we deploy the
strategies which make it possible for our planet to avoid the worst,
most catastrophic effects of climate change. We can do it and do it in
a way that helps our economy.
There are now 80,000 people working in the wind industry in the
United States. There are 142,000 people in the

[[Page S1382]]

solar industry. That is 220,000 people. There are 80,000 people in the
coal industry. Most of the wind and solar jobs have been created in the
last 5 years. This is a job-creating revolution which is taking off.
Tonight we are going to stay up all night to talk about this climate
change issue in the hopes that tomorrow will be the dawn of a new era
where the Congress begins to do something about this issue and where it
responds to its historic duty to the next generation to end this
crisis.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, climate change is real and it is
here. Rising sea levels, disappearing coastlines, longer droughts,
colder winters, hotter summers, and massive so-called storms of the
century are occurring routinely, such as Hurricanes Irene and Lee and,
of course, Superstorm Sandy that devastated the Northeast. But powerful
special interests and too many politicians who should simply know
better would have us believe that it is a hoax or that any reasonable
action would kill jobs.
I, for one, refuse to believe that somehow harmful pollution is the
only way to grow and sustain our economy. I, for one, know for a fact
that what is good for our environment can be good for business when we
act responsibly.
It is time to invest in clean energy with wind, solar, biofuel, and
other sources of energy that do not pollute our environment and
contribute to climate change. We have everything it takes from
sustainable resources, American innovation, and manufacturing know-how
to produce new sources of clean energy that are made here in America.
That is how we can cut our dependence on costly foreign oil and make us
more secure; that is how we can spark new businesses, new jobs, and a
stronger middle class, all while protecting the air we breathe and the
water we drink and preserving all the beauty of our most cherished
places for the next generation.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, how much time remains under the
control of our side?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 3 minutes 30 seconds.
Mr. INHOFE. If the Senator needs more time, I will not object.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is kind of the distinguished Senator, but I
think we have managed to come within our time.
As we close, I wish to thank so many colleagues who have participated
in this early lightning round of statements by Senators. We expect to
have 30 Democratic Senators speaking on this issue during the course of
the night, through the night, and into tomorrow morning.
It is a matter we are overdue in addressing. It is a matter that is
really beyond legitimate scientific dispute--at least as to the
fundamental truth of the planet warming and why. Indeed, Abraham
Lincoln was the President when a scientist named Tyndall--over in
England--first presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences his work
showing that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the Earth as it
increases its density. We are now more carbon dense.
As Senator King said, we spent about 800,000 to 3 million years in a
zone of 150 to 300 parts per million. We had never been at 400 parts
per million in the history of human habitation on the face of this
planet until just a few months ago when the first 400-parts-per-million
reading was recorded. We have to pay attention to this.
I will close by saying that not only is this a vital point for our
home States, it is vital for California, which is riven by drought. It
is vital for New Mexico and Colorado, which have also seen drought and
wildfires. It is also vital for New York, which was clobbered by
Superstorm Sandy. It is vital for Hawaii, which is seeing sea level
rise and acidification. It is vital for Massachusetts, where the sea
level is up 10 inches, and we are beginning to see fisheries move north
and away from our waters to avoid the warming seas. It is vital for
Connecticut, which has virtually lost its lobster fishery because of
its warming season. And, of course, it is vital for Rhode Island. My
Narragansett Bay is 3 to 4 degrees warmer in the winter, and that means
that fisheries, such as the winter flounder fishery, are simply gone--
90-plus percent crashed.
We have to face this as States, we have to face this as a nation, and
if we fail, we will have failed the fundamental test of every American
generation. The fundamental test of every American generation is, will
you bring the reputation of this country and the integrity of this
democracy forward through your time so the next American generation can
carry it forward with honor?
We received our democracy from the ``greatest generation.'' They
fought world wars to make it safe for us. If we fail now, we will not
be the greatest generation; we will be a disgraced generation. I intend
to do everything I can to make sure we do not get there.
I yield back the rest of the Democrats' time
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, all night long? Well, that is going to be
fun.
By the way, the Oklahoma City Thunders are not playing tonight, so we
may get a few more viewers.
It is nice to look over and see probably the most articulate and
knowledgeable of all of the alarmists historically as our newest
Senator from Massachusetts, Ed Markey.
You can be good friends and still disagree. The Senator from Rhode
Island certainly knows that because we had a little disagreement last
week. The Senator from California certainly knows this as well.
We have been working on this for a long time. This started with the
Kyoto Treaty. I think most people have forgotten about that. During the
Clinton-Gore administration, Gore came back from Rio de Janeiro and
said we are all going to die from global warming. I will say that he
knows what he is doing. The New York Times speculated that Al Gore is
very likely the first environmental billionaire in existence, so I
guess he knows what he is doing there.
In spite of the fact of what has happened recently, I think it is
probably necessary to have something all night, something to get the
attention of the American people, because they keep saying--and I hear
it over and over--climate change is real, global warming is real; it is
real; it is real; it is real. If you say it enough times, then people
are going to think it is real.
Tonight, all night long, you can say ``it is real, it is real, it is
real,'' but I think people have heard that before and times have
changed. A couple of things have happened, and I know a lot of you
regret this.
I remember so well when Lisa Jackson was the Administrator of the
EPA.
I have often said some very good things about her, even though she is
very liberal and I am ranked most of the time as the most conservative
Member of the Senate. Yet when she is asked a direct question, she
always comes out with an honest answer.
I asked my good friend Senator Markey just a few minutes ago, who was
there--first of all, let me say the United Nations started all this
stuff. They have one big annual party, and it is usually in very nice
places. I think at last count 190 countries were there. I remember
talking to one of my good friends from one of the sub-Saharan African
countries who was there with his administration. I said: You don't
believe this stuff, do you?
He said: No, but this is one of the biggest parties of the year.
One of the big parties in 2009 was Copenhagen. They set a record of
how cold it was in Copenhagen. I remember that very well. I remember at
that time--and I hope I get this right because we had several people
from the administration. We had at that time Senator John Kerry, of
course, Congressman Ed Markey, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama, who
was Senator Obama at that time--no, he was already President at that
time. Their job was to convince the 191 other countries that were in
Copenhagen that we in the United States were going to pass some type of
real cap and trade legislation.
So we had a hearing. At that time I think the Republicans were in
control. But I said to Lisa Jackson: I am going to go to Copenhagen
tomorrow to be a one-man truth squad. Everybody has been there talking
about what we are going to do here in the United States and somebody
has to tell them the

[[Page S1383]]

truth. So I said: I have a feeling when I leave tomorrow, you are going
to have a declaration and when you do, it has to be based on some type
of science. I could tell by looking at her that they were going to have
the endangerment finding.
I ask my friend if he remembers that, the endangerment finding.
Anyway, I left the next morning for Copenhagen, and that afternoon
they had the endangerment finding. Before I left I said: When you have
the endangerment finding, it has to be based on some type of science.
What science are you going to use?
She said: Well, mostly the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
So that is the kind of science they have been using for a long period
of time.
But, ironically, the timing couldn't be better. It wasn't a matter of
weeks after that; it was a matter of hours after that, that climategate
was exposed. Climategate was the--it all started with East Anglia
University's Climate Research Unit--the CRU--one of the main
universities that helps put together the information about global
warming for the IPCC. There it was disclosed that the IPCC was
systematically distorting the facts, cooking the science of global
warming to either cover up data that didn't tell the story they wanted
everyone to hear and exaggerating the impacts of changing climate to
help drive people out of fear into action.
There are three things one needs to know about the IPCC. First of
all, the Obama administration has referred to the IPCC as the gold
standard of climate change science and global warming. Some say its
reports on climate change and global warming represent the so-called
consensus of the science opinion about global warming. IPCC and Al Gore
were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for their efforts to build
and disseminate greater knowledge and doing so through the IPCC. Simply
put, what this means is that in the elite circles, the IPCC is a big
deal.
So as a result of climategate--when they found they had been lying
all this time--when ABC News, when The Economist, when Time Magazine,
when The Times of London, among many others, report that the IPCC's
research contains embarrassing flaws and that the IPCC chairman and
scientists knew of the flaws but published them anyway, we have the
makings of a major scientific scandal. There are two examples of how
the IPCC was cooking the science.
The IPCC claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. Of
course, this is not true. It is simply false. Yet it was put into the
IPCC's fourth assessment report. According to The Sunday Times, the
claim about the Himalayas was based on a 1999 story in a news magazine
which, in turn, was based on a short telephone interview with someone
named Seyed Hasnain, who is a very little-known Indian scientist.
Next, in 2005, the activist group World Wildlife Fund cited the story
in one of its climate change reports. Yet despite the fact that the
World Wildlife Fund report was not scientifically peer reviewed, it was
still referenced by the IPCC. Next, according to The Times, the
Himalayan glaciers are so thick at such high altitude that most
glaciologists believe it would take several hundred years to melt at
the present rate.
Anyway, all of that was taking place. It has to be really disturbing
to a lot of those individuals who are alarmists, that all of a sudden
this backbone of the science they have been referring to of the IPCC
was exposed.

I remember one of the emails in 1999. These were the emails that were
exposed. These are the ones that are behind--giving the information to
the IPCC:

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the
real temps to each series for the last 20 years, i.e., from
1981 onwards, and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

So they were actually adding higher temperatures to give the trends
they wanted.
In 2009:

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming
at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.

These are the people who were supplying the information to the IPCC.
I could go on and on; there is not time to get to all of them.
Christopher Booker of the U.K. said: ``This is the worst scientific
scandal of our generation.'' He was talking about the IPCC. That is the
basis of all of this.

Clive Crook, Financial Times: The closed mindedness of
these supposed men of science . . . is surprising, even to
me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.
IPCC Prominent Physicist Resigns: Climategate was a fraud
on a scale I've never seen.
U.N. Scientist Dr. Phillip Lloyd calls out IPCC ``fraud''--
``The result is NOT scientific.''
Newsweek: Once celebrated climate researchers feeling the
used car salesman.
Some of the IPCC's most quoted data and recommendations
were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures . . .

Now, I am quoting right now. This was in Newsweek.
George Monbiot--I probably mispronounced that. He is a columnist who
is on the other side of this issue from me. He said:

It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The
emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic unit at the
University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging . .
. I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them . . . I was too
trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I
championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had
investigated the claims more closely.

We have the other problem, and that is that instead of increasing, we
are going through now some cold spells that are just shocking and
setting new records. In January of 2014, 4,406 cold temperature records
were set around the country. In January of 2014, in my city of Tulsa,
it got down to minus 2 degrees, breaking a record that was held since
1912--over 100 years; in Enid, OK, minus 3 degrees. In Bartlesville, it
went down to minus 14 degrees--colder than the South Pole, where it was
only minus 11 on that same day.
February 2014: 5,836 cold temperature records set around the country.
March 2014: Snow cover at third highest level on record; 1969, 1978
were higher. The Great Lakes, second highest ice cover on record--91
percent; 1979 is highest at 94 percent.
This is not surprising given the 15-year pause in global warming.
Nature magazine stated that over the last 15 years ``the observed
[temperature] trend is . . . not significantly different from zero
[and] suggests a temporary `hiatus' in global warming.''
The Economist magazine said the same thing.
The President hasn't acknowledged this. On multiple occasions he has
said--this is a quote from the President: ``The temperature around the
globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago.''
Unfortunately for his talking point, the data that has been reported
in Nature, The Economist, and even in the United Nations IPCC report
shows that this simply is not true. Increases in global temperature
have stalled over the last 15 years.
This has to be really shocking to an awful lot of advocates who put
their reputation and their lives on the idea that this world is coming
to an end and global warming is a reality.

Several weeks ago, in a hearing held in the EPW Committee, Gina
McCarthy--she is the one who is the current EPA Administrator--was
pressed on this point. Asked whether or not President Obama's statement
was true, she responded: ``I can't answer that.''
With all this in mind--climategate, recent cold temperatures, and a
15-year hiatus--how could Congress, in good conscience, move forward
with legislation that gives EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse
gases? How could EPA, more importantly, move forward with regulations
based off of this cooked science?
There have been several votes on global warming-related legislation
over the past decade since we first started debating it here in the
late 1990s, but they have all failed to show that there have even been
the 60 votes required to pass cap and trade.
In 1997 the Byrd-Hagel legislation, 95 to 0, the United States should
not be a signator to the Kyoto Treaty. The Kyoto Treaty was a treaty
that was negotiated with Al Gore down in South America.
In 2003 we had the McCain-Lieberman bill. It failed 43 to 55. Then we
had the McCain-Lieberman bill again in 2005, and it failed 38 to 60.
The trend is going in the wrong direction for them.
In 2008 the Lieberman-Warner bill failed 48 to 36.

[[Page S1384]]

In 2010, a resolution of disapproval on EPA's greenhouse gas rule was
47 to 53.
In 2011, the Inhofe-Upton prohibition on greenhouse gas regulation
was 50-50. In 2013, the Inhofe-Upton prohibition on greenhouse gas
regulations as a budget amendment was 47 to 52.
What I am saying here is the sentiment of the House and the Senate is
going in the reverse direction. So it has been virtually impossible to
try to pass a cap-and-trade bill.
I know there are a lot of people who at one time were looking at this
and feeling as though this was something that was going to be a
reality. But I have to say this. One of the reasons--this is kind of
interesting. I am sorry my good friend from Massachusetts is not on the
floor right now. But I can remember back when Republicans were in the
majority in the Senate, and I was the chairman of a subcommittee of the
Environment and Public Works Committee that was addressing this item.
At that time everyone was talking as though global warming was here and
it must be true, and I believed it probably was true, until they came
out with the financial analysis. What would it cost if we passed cap
and trade as a law?
At that time the scientists and the economists from the Wharton
School of Economics and from MIT who participated--all of the estimates
were between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. That is something we
want to be very careful about. I know every time we hear ``billion
dollars'' it doesn't really register how much that is. In my State of
Oklahoma, what I do at the end of each year is I get the total number
of people who filed a Federal tax return, and then I do my math as to
what it is going to cost. For $300 billion to $400 billion a year, it
would cost each taxpayer in the State of Oklahoma some $3,000 a year.
That could be really significant, but not if there is a problem they
are addressing out there. Getting back to Lisa Jackson, who is the
Obama appointee to be Administrator of the EPA, I asked the question--
and this was at a hearing, and I am sure the Senator from California
remembers this as well because it was in one of the hearings of that
committee, live on TV.
I said: Right now we are looking at different bills. We are looking
at the Waxman bill and several others. The cap and trades are pretty
much cap and trades. If we were to pass this, any of this legislation,
would this have the effect of lowering the release of CO2?
Her answer was: No. The reason is this is not where the problem is.
The problem is in China, in India, in Mexico, and in places where they
do not have any regulations.
In fact, you can carry it one step further. If we were to pass that
either by regulation or by legislation, and go ahead and incur this
huge tax increase--the largest tax increase in the history of America--
if we were to do this, as she said, it would not lower greenhouse
gases. It could increase them because we would have to be chasing our
manufacturing base where they could find the generation of electricity;
and that would be in countries I just mentioned where they have no
restrictions at all. So it could increase, not decrease, the greenhouse
gases.
This is very significant, but it is in the weeds to the point where
it is rather difficult to understand. Under the Clean Air Act, the
EPA--well, I want to talk about the timing just for a minute because we
are going through this. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must finalize
new rules within 1 year of its publication in the Federal Register.
What I am saying now is, what they could not get done through
legislation they are trying to do through regulation. One of the things
they are trying to do is have the greenhouse gas legislation come under
the EPA.
Anytime you have a new EPA rule, it has to be finalized within 1 year
of its publication in the Federal Register. So the rule was released on
September 20, 2013, but it was not published until January 8, 2014. Why
do you suppose that was? Had the new rule been published on September
30, the rule would have gone into effect 6 weeks prior to the midterm
elections and people would have known how much it was going to cost
them.
If there is any doubt in anyone's mind, I have an article that was
published on December 14 in the Washington Post that goes through the
details as to why they did this so people would not know when they were
voting how much all these regulations were going to cost. I ask
unanimous consent this article be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Washington Post, Dec. 14, 2013]

ICYMI: White House Delayed Enacting Rules Ahead of 2012 Election to
Avoid Controversy

(By Juliet Eilperin)

The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of
rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to
prevent them from becoming points of contention before the
2012 election, according to documents and interviews with
current and former administration officials.
Some agency officials were instructed to hold off
submitting proposals to the White House for up to a year to
ensure that they would not be issued before voters went to
the polls, the current and former officials said.
The delays meant that rules were postponed or never issued.
The stalled regulations included crucial elements of the
Affordable Care Act, what bodies of water deserved federal
protection, pollution controls for industrial boilers and
limits on dangerous silica exposure in the workplace.
The Obama administration has repeatedly said that any
delays until after the election were coincidental and that
such decisions were made without regard to politics. But
seven current and former administration officials told The
Washington Post that the motives behind many of the delays
were clearly political, as Obama's top aides focused on
avoiding controversy before his reelection.
The number and scope of delays under Obama went well beyond
those of his predecessors, who helped shape rules but did not
have the same formalized controls, said current and former
officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of
the sensitivity of the topic.
Those findings are bolstered by a new report from the
Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), an
independent agency that advises the federal government on
regulatory issues. The report is based on anonymous
interviews with more than a dozen senior agency officials who
worked with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
(OIRA), which oversees the implementation of federal rules.
The report said internal reviews of proposed regulatory
changes ``took longer in 2011 and 2012 because of concerns
about the agencies issuing costly or controversial rules
prior to the November 2012 election.''
Emily Cain, spokeswoman for the Office of Management and
Budget, said in a statement that the administration's
``approach to regulatory review is consistent with long-
standing precedent across previous administrations and fully
adheres'' to federal rules.
Administration officials noted that they issued a number of
controversial rules during Obama's first term, including
limits on mercury emissions for power plants and Medicaid
eligibility criteria under the Affordable Care Act.
``OMB works as expeditiously as possible to review rules,
but when it comes to complex rules with significant potential
impact, we take the time needed to get them right,'' Cain
said.
But Ronald White, who directs regulatory policy at the
advocacy group Center for Effective Government, said the
``overt manipulation of the regulatory review process by a
small White House office'' raises questions about how the
government writes regulations. He said the amount of time it
took the White House to review proposed rules was
``particularly egregious over the past two years.''
Previous White House operations have weighed in on major
rules before they were officially submitted for review. But
Jeffrey Holmstead, who headed the EPA's Office of Air and
Radiation in the George W. Bush administration, said the
effort was not as extensive as the Obama administration's
approach.
``There was no formalized process by which you had to get
permission to send them over,'' Holmstead said, referring to
rules being submitted to the White House.
The recent decision to bring on Democratic strategist John
Podesta as a senior White House adviser is likely to
accelerate the number of new rules and executive orders,
given Podesta's long-standing support for using executive
action to achieve the president's goals despite congressional
opposition.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chairs the Judiciary
Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Action,
said he's concerned about the real-world impact of the
postponements in the first term.
``Legal protection delayed is protection denied,''
Blumenthal said. ``I've spoken to officials at the top rungs
of the White House power structure and at OIRA and we're
going to hold their feet to the fire, and we're going to make
sure they're held accountable in a series of hearings.''
The officials interviewed for the ACUS report, whose names
were withheld from publication by the study authors, said
that starting in 2012 they had to meet with an OIRA desk
officer before submitting each significant rule for formal
review. They called the sessions ``Mother-may-I'' meetings,
according to the study.

[[Page S1385]]

The accounts were echoed by four Obama administration
political appointees and three career officials interviewed
by The Post.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, a
former official said that only two managers had the authority
to request a major rule in 2012: then-administrator Lisa P.
Jackson and deputy administrator Bob Perciasepe. Perciasepe
and OIRA's director at the time, Cass Sunstein, would have
``weekly and sometimes semi-weekly discussions'' to discuss
rules that affected the economy, one said, because they had
political consequences, the person said.
``As we entered the run-up to the election, the word went
out the White House was not anxious to review new rules,''
the former official said.
Sunstein, who has returned to his post as a Harvard Law
School professor, declined to comment.
Several significant EPA proposals were withheld as a result
of those meetings, officials said, including a proposal
requiring cleaner gasoline and lower-pollution vehicles that
had won the support of automakers but angered the oil
industry.
That regulation, which would reduce the amount of sulfur in
U.S. gasoline by two-thirds and impose fleetwide pollution
limits on new vehicles by 2017, was ready in December 2011,
said three officials familiar with the proposal. But agency
officials were told to wait a year to submit it for review
because critics could use it to suggest that the
administration was raising gas prices, they said. The EPA
issued the proposed rule in March.
Other EPA regulations that were delayed beyond the 2012
election included rules on coal ash disposal, water pollution
rules for streams and wetlands, air emissions from industrial
boilers and cement kilns, and carbon dioxide limits for
existing power plants.
Ross Eisenberg, who serves as vice president of energy and
resources policy at the National Association for
Manufacturers and has criticized several EPA regulations,
noted that in the past year the administration moved ahead
with proposals such as the rules on greenhouse gas emissions
and boilers.
``The agenda certainly did slow down, but it doesn't
change,'' he said.
The administration also was slow to handle rules pertaining
to its health-care law. Several key regulations did not come
out until after the 2012 election, including one defining
what constitutes ``essential health benefits'' under a health
plan and which Americans could qualify for federal subsidies
if they opted to enroll in a state or a federal marketplace
plan.
The latter focused on what constitutes ``affordable.''
Treasury proposed a regulation in August 2011 saying an
employer plan was affordable as long as the premium for an
individual was no more than 9.5 percent of the taxpayer's
household income. Several groups--including labor unions--
argued that the proposal did not take into account that the
premium for a family plan might be much higher than that
standard.
Unions represent a vital part of the Democratic coalition,
in part because they help mobilize voters during elections.
The Treasury Department held the proposal back while
finalizing all the other tax-credit rules on May 23, 2012.
Treasury officials later told those working on the regulation
that it could not be published before the election, according
to a government official familiar with the decision who spoke
on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitive
nature. The department made the rule on Feb. 1.
OMB has reduced the length of time that rules are pending
this year. The agency has cut the number of rules that were
under review for more than 200 days by more than half.
But while the administration is pressing ahead, activists
say the delays took a toll. Peg Seminario, director of safety
and health for the AFL-CIO, points to an update of the
nation's silica standards proposed Sept. 12 after a long
delay. The rule, which would prevent an estimated 688 deaths
and 1,585 silica-related illnesses each year, won't be
finalized until 2016.
Jon Devine, a senior lawyer in the Natural Resources
Defense Council's water program, said small streams and
wetlands remain vulnerable because of the administration's
foot-dragging. The EPA recently withdrew a proposal to
outline what kind of water bodies deserve federal protection
that had been pending since February 2012 and announced it
would issue a legally binding rule instead.
``What's disappointing is it leaves waters subject to the
existing, weak state of affairs until they get the rule over
the final hurdle,'' Devine said.

Mr. INHOFE. There are more impacts that are taking place. The
greenhouse gas regulations for existing powerplants are expected to be
released in June of 2014.
The other regulations that are out there--and I am not going to spend
any time on this because there are too many. But on the greenhouse gas
legislation--even though when it started, it was Charles Rivers and the
Wharton School and MIT--they came out with the approximation of $300 to
$400 billion a year; and that is every year. The greenhouse gas
regulatory costs under the Clean Air Act are totally different. No one
has even calculated this yet.
I would like to make sure we understand that under the bill my good
friend Ed Markey and Waxman put forth, it would regulate the emissions
of those organizations that emit 25,000 tons or more. However, if you
do it through the Clean Air Act, it would be 250 tons. So you are
talking about instead of 25,000 tons--which might be only the very
large organizations; refineries and that type of thing--under the Clean
Air Act, which is what they are attempting to do today as we speak, it
would be just 250 tons, which would be every school, every hospital,
every shop, and many residences.
So the greenhouse gas regulatory costs--if it costs $300 to $400
billion to regulate organizations that emit 25,000 tons, how much would
it be if they emitted 250 tons? It is something that has not even been
calculated yet.
So we have all of these impacts of the regulations that take place.
But the greatest of all would be, if you think about the cumulative
impact study back--I have introduced legislation, along with several
others. I know John Barrasso and several others have cosponsored
legislation that would tell the public the cumulative effect of all
these regulations.
For example, as to the ozone regulations: 77 Oklahoma counties would
be out of attainment; 7 million jobs would be lost.
As to Utility MACT--that is something that did pass--a $100 billion
cost--1.65 million jobs lost. It has already been implemented.
Boiler MACT--and every manufacturing company has a boiler; and
``MACT'' means ``maximum achievable control technology''--Boiler MACT
is costing $63 billion, and 800,000 jobs have already been lost.
The BLM fracking regulations would be $100,000 per well--duplicative
of effective State regulations, which have been doing very well now
since 1948.
And there are greenhouse gas costs of $300 to $400 billion.
So I guess what I am saying here--and I know I am using up quite a
bit of time, but it is important to look and see what has happened
since the time they were all talking about global warming. Everybody
was talking about it, and how they are going to have an all-night thing
to try to revive it because the public has gone in the other direction.
George Mason University had a study where they actually interviewed
several hundred of the TV meteorological people. Mr. President, 63
percent of them said that if global warming is taking place, it is from
natural causes, not from global warming.
Polar bears. Everyone is concerned about polar bears. I know my good
friend from California gave me a polar bear. It is my favorite coffee
cup and I use it all the time. But between the 1950s and 1960s, the
number of polar bears that were wandering around out there was between
5,000 and 10,000. Today, it is between 15,000 and 25,000.
The threats. A lot of times when people cannot win an argument, then
they threaten. NASA's James Hansen said this is ``high crimes against
humanity.'' Robert Kennedy, Jr., called me a ``call girl,'' a
``prostitute.'' Robert Kennedy, Jr., also said: ``This is treason. And
we need to start treating them as traitors.'' In other words, we need
to start killing people.
In 2006, the eco-magazine Grist called for Nuremberg-style trials for
skeptics. September 29, 2007: Virginia State climatologist skeptical of
global warming loses his job after a clash with the Governor. ``I was
told that I could not speak in public.''
Barone: Warmists have a ``desire to kill heretics.''
The Weather Channel--Heidi Cullen, by the way, is a meteorologist on
the Weather Channel. She is off with an environmental group right now,
so she is not around anymore.
Polling--where the American people are going; I think it is important
to understand--this is a Gallup poll that is a current one right now.
According to a Gallup poll, climate change is the least important
environmental issue among the voters.
In March of 2010, the same Gallup poll: Americans rank global warming
dead last, 8 out of 8 environmental issues.
In March 2010, Rasmussen: 72 percent of American voters do not
believe global warming is a ``very serious problem.''
The global warmist Robert Socolow laments:

[[Page S1386]]

We are losing the argument with the public, big time. . . .
I think the climate change activists, myself included, have
lost the American Middle.

So there are definitely some things going on here that are not in
their favor.
I would like to mention this, though. I think a lot of people have
talked about the various scientists. On my Web site you can look up
several thousand--this is a long time ago--I think we passed through
1,000 qualified scientists way back in 2006, and it has gone up since
that time to many, many, so it is something where there are a lot of
scientists. One of my favorite scientists is one because he is a Nobel
prize-winning Stanford University physicist. He said:

Please remain calm. The earth will heal itself--climate is
beyond our power to control. The earth doesn't care about
governments and legislation. Climate change is a matter of
geologic time . . . something the earth does on its own
without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.

Richard Lindzen of MIT was a former U.N. IPCC receiver. He said: If
the government wants carbon control, that is the answer the NAS will
provide. He is the one who also said: The ultimate controlling factor
is once you control CO2, you control people.
The Harvard Smithsonian Study. The study examined the results of more
than 240 peer-reviewed papers published by thousands of researchers
over the past four decades. The study covers a multitude of geophysical
and biological climate indicators. They came to the conclusion that
climate change is not real and that the science is not accurate.
Dr. Fred Seitz--he is the former president of the National Academy of
Sciences--said: ``There is no convincing evidence that human release of
carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will,
in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's
atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.''
So we have a lot of scientists on both sides of this issue. I think
the American people have woken up. I use something quite often because
it is a little bit comical--and this is just kind of from memory, but
this is something that actually did happen. Mr. President, 1895 was the
first time we had, in recent history--we have had cold spells before,
and we had the medieval warm period and all of that stuff; that was a
long time ago--but in 1895--starting with current, more modern
history--they had a cold spell that came in. That is where, I say to my
friend from New Hampshire, they first came up with a new ice age that
was coming. That was in 1895. That lasted from 1895 to 1918. Then, in
1918, they came along with a warming period. That was the first time we
heard the term ``global warming.'' That was in 1918, and that lasted
until 1948.
And get this. These are about 30-year cycles. That lasted until about
1945. In 1945, all of a sudden it changed from this warming period to a
cooling period. That lasted until 1975. Then it changed to a warming
period. Now, since 2000, it has leveled off, and we are going into
another cycle. You can almost set your watch by these cycles.
Here is an interesting thing about that. In 1948, when it changed
from a warming period to a cooling period, that coincided with the
greatest single release of CO2 in history. That was right
after World War II.
So these are the things that are happening. I know they are going to
enjoy staying up all night. They will have an audience of themselves,
and I hope they enjoy it.
But I have to say this in all sincerity. When you see something, and
instead of going right along with the public and saying, it must be
true because everybody is saying it--and everybody goes over and over
again and talks about the climate is real and the science is real, and
all that--well, that happens when it is not real, and that is what we
have been going through.
Right now I know President Obama is going through all kinds of
efforts to try to do through regulations what the elected people would
not do in the House, as well as in the Senate. When people realize--and
they will be reminded again, even though it has been a while--now, I
think it might be clever that after several years now where people have
been talking about global warming that now they are trying to revive
it, and that is what you are going to hear all night long here tonight.
It is kind of interesting that this is happening at a time that we
are going through this cold spell. It certainly has not been much fun
in Oklahoma.
So I think the American people are not ready to pass the largest tax
increase in the history of America, and we will have to wait and see.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, it was with great interest that I listened
to my friend. I suppose we are making progress. He used to call climate
change a hoax, and he did not say that. So maybe he is moving in our
direction.
But I also want to point out, he says we are going to be talking to
ourselves. I am happy to report that I just learned of two petitions,
one that has 65,000 signatures calling on us to act and another that
has 30,000 signatures calling on us to act, and the night is young.
Now, my friend from Oklahoma----
Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for an observation, since the
Senator mentioned my name?
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, if the time is taken off their time, I am
happy to yield.
Mr. INHOFE. The reason I did not use the word ``hoax'' is because
then I might be guilty of advertising my book, and I certainly did not
want to do that.
Mrs. BOXER. That is wonderful. I am so happy you did not use hoaxes,
and maybe there is a way for us to come closer together on this issue.
But let my say this: People are listening. People care. Because when 97
to 98 percent of the scientists say something is real, they do not have
anything pressing them to say that other than the truth. They do not
have any other agenda. They do not work for the oil companies.
I will tell you, as chairman of the environment committee, every time
the Republicans choose a so-called expert on climate, we have tracked
them to special interest funding, those 3 percent. They know where
their bread is buttered. I am sorry my friend left. I guess he could
not stand to hear the truth. So I will put that truth into the Record.
I do not know how my Republican colleagues can continue to deny that
climate change is happening. One would think they could see it out
their window, because as my colleague says: Oh, there was such cold
weather. That has been predicted by the scientists, extreme weather.
Here is the U.S. Global Change Research Program, their National Climate
Assessment draft: Some extreme weather and climate events have
increased in recent decades. We have seen heavy downpours, more severe
droughts, and some extremes.
At the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works climate
change briefing, Dr. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American
Meteorological Society, and a director of the Atmospheric Sciences
Program at the University of Georgia, said:

Climate change is increasing the probability of extreme
events, and in some cases maybe strengthening their intensity
or increasing their frequency. We are loading the dice
towards more Sandy or blizzard-type storms.

So when my friend says: The planet is not warming; it is cold, we all
know it is not about the weather. It is about the climate. It is about
the long term--and, yes, we are going to see these extreme weather
conditions.
I would say that when my friends call us alarmists, that is
ridiculous. We are trying to do our job. We are not scientists. We are
not doctors either, for the most part, but we want to make sure people
have health care coverage. We are not scientists, but we want to
protect our people from the ravages of climate.
I would ask my colleague Senator Schatz would he like me to go
another 5 minutes, 10 minutes or 2 minutes? It is up to him. I can
withhold. I am going to be here for quite a few hours.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. If the Senator from California wanted to go for another 2
or 3 minutes, I could give remarks for about 10, and then the senior
Senator from Oregon has remarks to give as well.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

[[Page S1387]]

Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely. Will the Presiding Officer tell me when I
have used 3 minutes and then I will yield the floor at that time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator will be so notified.
Mrs. BOXER. We just heard 45 minutes from my friend Jim Inhofe, whom
I have a very friendly relationship with but who I think is a dangerous
denier, a dangerous denier in the face of 97 percent agreement among
scientists.
He talks about international groups. I wish to talk about the
National Academy of Sciences. Here is what they said: ``Levels of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses in earth's atmosphere are
exceeding levels recorded in the past millions of years.''
That is our own National Academy of Sciences. I guess if we went out
and asked the public do they support the National Academy of Sciences,
I think it would come in at 90 percent, and the other 10 percent would
say, I will get back to you.
Then we have more from the National Academy:

Climate change is occurring. It is very likely caused
primarily by the emission of greenhouse gasses from human
activity.

They go on:

Human activities have increased greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas, is emitted by human activities and it has
risen almost 40 percent over the past 150 years.

So when you hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle stand
and deny this, how about the U.S. National Climate Assessment? This is
the United States of America, our experts:

Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable
recordkeeping began. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4
feet by 2100.

That is dangerous. We have already seen it happening. I could go on,
and I will come back, but I will conclude with this. I am, in my
concluding remarks, going to tell you about every incredibly
prestigious scientific group that has warned us about climate change:
The joint world science academies' statement, the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the
American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Biological
Scientists, the American Society of Plant Biologists, the Association
of Ecosystem Research Centers, the Botanical Society of America, the
Crop Science Society of America, the Natural Science Collections
Alliance, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Soil
Science Society of America, the American Medical Association, the
American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union----
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 3 minutes.
Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent for 30 additional seconds.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. BOXER. The Geological Society of America. All I can say is, to
come down here and accuse the Democrats of being alarmist, when all we
are trying to do is protect the health and safety of the American
people, of their families and future generations, is extreme while we
are in the mainstream.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I would like to address some of the tropes
that our climate deniers tend to use. I will go through a couple of
those before our great senior Senator from the great State of Oregon
gives his remarks.
The first trope is: It is not warming. The ``it is not warming''
crowd will not even admit that the Earth is warming. Their favorite
tactic is to point out the window during winter and say: Look at the
snow on the ground. Climate change is bunk.
That is not an adult argument. Under that theory, winter weather
anywhere disproves climate change. Snowstorms are weather. Weather is
not climate. Weather is a local phenomenon over extremely short
timespans. Weather is what it is going to be like tomorrow. Weather is
not climate. Climate is long-term weather trends over vast regions.
This is not difficult to distinguish among adults. It is easy to make a
joke about how cold it is and therefore climate change is bunk.
But the vast majority of science disproves that assertion. Pointing
out the window on a cold day and laughing about climate change is one
of the most profoundly unserious things that otherwise good and
responsible leaders in this Chamber do. Part of this country's
greatness is our pragmatism. We see the world as it is and fix the
things we can. For that, we need reliable information. When it comes to
climate change, we have reliable information. We ignore it at our
peril.
For those who say the Earth is not warming, I would like to talk
about thermometers. They measure temperature. We have them all over the
world, very sophisticated ones run by very smart people. They provide a
lot of data that has proven beyond a doubt that the atmosphere and that
the oceans are warming. Even prominent climate skeptics such as
American scientist Richard Muller can no longer argue.
After exhaustive research, Dr. Muller said in 2012:

Our results show that the average temperature of the
earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit
over the last 250 years, including an increase of one and a
half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it
appears likely that essentially all of this increase results
from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

This was a prominent climate denier previously.
Two, relying on anecdotes to disprove what is actually happening. A
research vessel got stuck in summer ice in Antarctica. More and more
deniers are being forced to rely on out-of-context anecdotes to support
their false claims. In December, they got very excited about a research
vessel that was stuck in the summer sea ice in Antarctica, claiming it
as proof that the Earth is not warming. Here is the thing. It is an
Antarctica. It is at the bottom of the Earth. It is one of the coldest
places in the world. One summer's ice in Antarctica does not suddenly
invalidate millions of worldwide temperature measurements from all over
the planet.
They do this whether glaciers are growing or melting. Even though 90
percent of the world's glaciers are melting, they pick off one and use
it as proof that climate change is somehow not an established
scientific fact, even though it is.
The fourth trope we hear, and this is a pivot, we are starting to
hear it more and more: It may be warming, but maybe we did not cause
it. They begrudgingly admit that the Earth is warming but say: Hey,
this is part of a natural cycle. Natural cycles have happened before
and they will happen again.
Recently, Dr. James Powell, a geochemist, former college president
and National Science Board member, studied all peer-reviewed articles
on climate change--all peer-reviewed articles on climate change from
1991 to 2013. He found just over 25,000 articles written since 1991. Of
25,000 articles, only 26--only 26 rejected the premise of human-caused
climate change. This is no longer a real debate. It is only a debate in
the four corners of this Capitol. People across the Nation, insurance
companies, the Department of Defense, most governments across the
planet, our biggest corporations, regular people of all political
stripes and in every State understand that this is what is happening to
us.
Some deniers also like to use responsible scientists' methods against
them. The truth about scientists is that they are scientists, which is
to say they entertain doubt; they ask questions; they are not afraid to
express their doubts; they observe and refine their theories. So
deniers cannot in good conscience use the scientific process as
evidence that doubt still exists. Sure, there is uncertainty among
scientists, but it is pretty much just about whether future impacts of
climate change will be really bad or extremely bad.
The sixth trope is: It is not a big deal. Maybe it is even good. As
deniers paint themselves even further into a corner, they become
desperate. We now come to the category of those who admit the Earth is
warming, admit it is caused by humans but claim the effects are
negligible or, even more preposterously, they might be good for us.
My colleagues and I have presented evidence from study after study
after study showing that while the changes so far are manageable in
some places, if we do not change our ways, the bad news will start
coming faster and faster. Absent major reforms, the rate of

[[Page S1388]]

change will increase. We may not notice half a degree of average
temperature increase here and there, but on a geological timescale,
these changes are occurring at recordbreaking speed.
In many cases, they may be happening too quickly for nature or
humanity to adapt. A 2012 study commissioned by 20 governments, which
was written by more than 50 scientists, economists, and other experts,
found that by 2030 the cost of climate change and air pollution
combined will rise to 3.2 percent of global GDP, with the world's
least-developed countries most impacted, possibly suffering losses of
up to 11 percent of their GDP.
Developed countries will not be exempt from these impacts. The study
finds that climate change could wipe out 2 percent of our GDP by the
year 2030. That is a big deal.
Finally, the trope that China is doing nothing so our actions do not
matter. This category of deniers accepts the reality, causes, and
seriousness of climate change, but then they say it is hopeless because
countries such as China and others are doing nothing to reduce their
image.
That is flat wrong. Here is the evidence. In September, the Chinese
State Council released its atmospheric pollution action plan, which
called for a reduction in the construction of new coal-fired
powerplants and a goal of generating 13 percent of its electricity from
clean energy from renewable sources by 2017.
Chinese officials have announced they plan to institute a tax on
carbon pollution in 2015 or 2016. Certain regions have also begun to
implement pilot cap-and-trade programs, and they have plans to create a
national carbon market by 2020.
How about current investments? In 2012, the United States spent about
$35 billion on renewables, while China spent $64 billion.
Finally, there is the nothing-we-can-do denial trope. Let's throw in
the towel. This crowd accepts the science, accepts the impacts but
seems to have just given up.
When did we start thinking we couldn't solve America's big problems?
When did we start thinking we were too small or not important enough to
make a difference?
I don't believe that. I believe that when America leads, the world
follows. For this country to lead, this Congress needs to act.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Warren). The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, earlier this evening I touched on the
numbers that underlie this debate--the numbers from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the numbers from the National
Academy of Sciences--and said they really drive me to the judgment that
climate change is the scientific equivalent of a speeding Mack truck.
But I believe numbers don't really capture this discussion fully
because what people want to know is the impact of climate change in
their community, what it truly means for them in their part of the
country.
To get into those impacts, I will start with one that is shellacking
my home State; that is, the wildfires that are burning longer, getting
hotter, and starting earlier. Drought and high temperatures from
climate change are driving all of this. During the early part of this
past year's fire season, intense wildfires once again burned across the
Western United States, threatening population centers and destroying
hundreds of homes. This winter, fires have already burned in western
Oregon--something that used to be very rare. The number of houses that
have burned in our country from wildfires has increased a staggering
400 percent in only the past couple of years and is projected to get
far worse. In 2012, 2 percent of my home State of Oregon burned in just
one summer and nearly 1.5 million acres burned across the Pacific
Northwest. Wildfires, of course, have always been part of life in my
home State, but the fires of recent years are getting hotter and are
significantly more threatening to homes.
Our country's top scientists say the conditions that caused these
recent fire seasons to become more severe, including drought
accompanied by above-average temperatures, are more common now due to
human-induced climate change. Over the past 30 years the fire season
has become 2\1/2\ months longer and both the number and severity of
forest fires in the American West have increased several-fold.
Scientists who have examined this issue say climate change is a
significant factor behind it.
To their credit, the Obama administration has indicated that they
want to work with Senators of both political parties to tackle this
issue. In particular, what they have suggested--and Senator Crapo, the
Republican Senator from Idaho, and I have pushed this strongly--is that
instead of shorting the prevention fund, which is the heart of the
problem--we have to go in and thin out these overstocked stands--
instead of shorting the prevention fund, which is what happens every
year now, because these fires are so big and so hot, what happens is
the bureaucracy comes in and takes money from the prevention fund in
order to suppress the fires, and the problem, of course, gets worse
because we don't have the funds for prevention.
The administration wants to work with Democrats and Republicans in
the Senate and in the other body so that the most serious fires--only
the most serious ones--get handled from the disaster fund. We believe
this is going to free up additional support for efforts to prevent
these fires, and that will be beneficial to our communities.
Second, I would like to focus on power sector vulnerability. The
drought and high temperatures that can lead to the wildfires and make
our power grid more vulnerable also raise the question of the
implications for our grid and for taxpayers.
Much of that vulnerability comes from changes in water supply and
water temperature. Water plays two critical roles in generating
electricity. Water is needed for generating hydropower--something we do
a lot of in the Pacific Northwest. It is also needed for cooling in
many other types of generation, such as nuclear, biomass, and coal. For
those generators, water must not only be available in sufficient
quantities, but it has to be cool enough to allow the plants to run
safely and efficiently. That means climate change poses a double threat
to some of these facilities.
This is not a hypothetical situation; recent history has already
shown the power sector's vulnerability to both drought and high
temperatures. In 2001, for example, severe drought in the Pacific
Northwest and California significantly reduced hydroelectric
generation, causing tight electricity supplies and high prices
throughout the West. That drought was estimated to have an economic
impact of between $2.5 billion and $6 billion.
High temperatures have also made water too hot to actually be able to
cool some powerplants. In 2007 the Tennessee Valley Authority had to
temporarily shut down its Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant because the intake
water temperatures were too high. In 2012 the Millstone nuclear plant
that powers half of Connecticut had to take 40 percent of its capacity
offline for almost 2 weeks because the cooling water it was getting
from Long Island Sound was too warm. In that same year the Braidwood
nuclear facility in Illinois had to get an exemption to use intake
water that was 102 degrees instead of shutting down during a heat wave.
When somebody has their air-conditioning on high because it is over 100
degrees, that is not a time that we can afford to be taking a base load
powerplant offline.
So far it has been possible to get through the heat- and drought-
related shutdowns of these powerplants without major outages, but let's
make no mistake about it--the ratepayers have definitely felt them in
their power bills. In Texas during the summer of 2011, for example,
electricity was selling on the spot market for $3,000 per megawatt
hour--well over 100 times the normal rate.

Next I would like to talk about the effects of climate on energy
infrastructure. The power sector isn't the only bit of energy
infrastructure that is vulnerable to climate change. Recently, I--along
with the majority leader, Senator Reid, Senator Franken, Senator
Harkin, and Senator Mark Udall--asked the Government Accountability
Office to look into the effects of climate change on energy
infrastructure.
That report was just released. What the Government Accountability
Office

[[Page S1389]]

found is that climate changes are projected to affect infrastructure
throughout all major stages of the energy supply chain--of course, once
again increasing the risk of energy disruption.
In addition to power sector vulnerabilities, the GAO also found
vulnerabilities among the infrastructure for producing and extracting
natural resources, including oil and gas platforms, refineries, and
processing plants. This infrastructure is often located near the coast,
making it vulnerable to severe weather and sea level rise.
Fuel transportation and storage infrastructure, including pipelines,
barges, railways, and storage tanks, are also susceptible to damage
from severe weather, melting permafrost, and increased precipitation.
I close by outlining some of the steps that can actually be taken to
deal with these issues. I am sure people who are following this
discussion tonight are saying: All right, they are making a good case
about the nature of the problem. So what else. What comes next in terms
of our ability to take action to deal with this.
I have said before that there are a host of areas where we are going
to have to work in a global kind of manner to build support with other
countries for tackling climate change, but there is no question that
this Senate can put points on the board this year in the fight against
climate change.
I am very pleased to have been able to work with our colleague
Senator Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, over this past year. Until recently I served as
chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and we were
able to pass a major law to spur development of hydropower, which is
one of America's forgotten renewables. Hydropower already makes up two-
thirds of our country's renewable power, so this is obviously a vital
renewable source of energy. Our legislation makes it easier to put
hydro on existing dams, irrigation canals, and conduits, and we believe
it is going to spark big investments in clean renewable power. The
National Hydropower Association estimates that there are 60,000
megawatts of potential new hydropower in our country yet to be
harnessed.
In addition, our committee passed an important bill to cut redtape
associated with developing geothermal power on public lands.
My colleagues and I urge the administration to take steps to have
tools at their disposal to invest in energy efficiency and use the
savings to pay for those upgrades.
I look forward, here on the floor of the Senate, to being able to
pass what I would call the platonic ideal of consensus energy
legislation; that is, the bill that has been sponsored by our
colleagues, Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman. I am very pleased that
we had a promising development over the past few weeks where we brought
together those who care about trying to promote clean and renewable
energy in Federal buildings. We have been able to get common ground
between Senators of differing views. I look forward to seeing that
bill, the Shaheen-Portman bill, on the floor of the Senate.
The fact is a number of our renewable energy sources have been on a
roll over the past several years, demonstrating their potential.
For example, onshore wind has installed tens of thousands of
megawatts of capacity in recent years when the policy support has been
in place. As expected, the costs have come down with technology
improvements, experience, economies of scale, and as a deep domestic
supply chain has built up to manufacture all of the components of the
wind turbines and towers. The policy support has been working, and wind
is now knocking at the door of competitiveness with fossil
technologies.
Offshore wind is also picking up steam, even off the coast of my home
State, where the waters have always been too deep for offshore wind to
be possible. A company called Principle Power is trying to solve that
problem by demonstrating floating offshore wind turbines just off the
coast of Coos Bay in my home State. Putting a turbine on a floating
platform instead of mounting it on a tower on the ocean floor has the
potential to dramatically change the potential for offshore wind. It
would let developers tap into the huge windy resource above the deep
waters off the coast of Oregon and elsewhere but without the footprints
on the ocean floor and without affecting views from the coast. It is a
promising technology, but, like all first-of-a-kind technology, it is
going to cost a bit more. That is why we ought to get policy support--
so we can realize the potential of commercial-scale energy.
Finally, the costs of solar power have also been dropping like a
rock. The potential for sustainable biomass to provide a quadruple win
of low-carbon energy, increased forest health, reduced danger of forest
fires, and economic growth is still there waiting to be fully
developed.
I wish to touch on two remaining issues, and one is before the Senate
Finance Committee. It is my strong view that the tax treatment of all
energy production in the United States ought to be modified so that all
energy sources compete on a technology-neutral level playing field.
That ought to be one of the major goals of comprehensive tax reform,
which, in my view, is really the grand bipartisan prize for Senate
Finance Committee members.
In the short-term, we have another challenge. We shouldn't let the
renewable energy industries that are so important simply fall off the
cliff just when the supply chains have been developed and just when
they are reaching a level of competitiveness where they can really take
off.
It is my hope that it is possible to work in a bipartisan way. I
intend to talk to Senator Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Finance
Committee, and colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work on a tax
extenders package that includes a variety of clean energy and
efficiency credits. Senator Hatch and I have been interested in moving
forward this spring through the regular order and markup of this kind
of energy package in the Finance Committee.
I will close by talking about natural gas because to capture all of
the climate benefits we also have to factor in the dramatic shale gas
revolution. We understand that natural gas has turned the energy
equation upside down over the past few years. Along the way, it has
provided a low-cost way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same
time. Increased usage of natural gas has helped our country to reach
its lowest level of greenhouse gas emissions since 1994, even as the
economy has been picking up steam. Manufacturing and industrial
operations have been moving back to the United States to take advantage
of cheap reliable gas.

This is good news that was almost unimaginable just a few years ago,
but we have some major challenges as well. I am concerned that methane
emissions from leaky compressors and leaky pipes could undermine the
emission benefits of natural gas in a way that isn't being accounted
for. A recent report which showed a leakage rate of just 3 percent
through the entire natural gas supply chain can make burning natural
gas the same as burning coal from a climate perspective. So I have been
pushing hard with colleagues here in the Senate to keep that leakage
rate below 1 percent from production to usage to make sure that climate
benefits come to reality.
There are technologies that can address the issue of leakage, and
they already exist. They can be put in place at almost no net cost,
with many of the measures paying for themselves. There has been a
comprehensive survey of the measures for reducing methane leaks through
the natural gas supply and usage chain, and it found emissions could be
reduced by 40 percent with technologies that already exist and are
practical today.
The scale of this problem is, of course, immense, and it is what
Senators are talking about here tonight. It is going to take everyone
pulling together at every level to make the meaningful changes actually
happen. We are going to need continued leadership from our
entrepreneurs, who aren't sitting idly by but are innovating to come up
with solutions to climate change. We are going to need savvy consumers
demanding lower carbon and more efficient goods and services. We will
need leadership from retailers who are going to ask more of their
suppliers and supply chains to

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give them products to sell to those consumers. Of course, the key is
always innovation in the private sector--the private-sector leaders
working with our national labs and universities.
I am especially proud that my home State of Oregon is going to lead
the State efforts in trying to promote sustainability, renewables, and
efficiency at the local level.
To wrap up my remarks, let me state the obvious. It is going to take
new leadership from the Congress. The Congress is going to have to lead
if we are going to get a long-term framework for a low-carbon economy
that innovators, entrepreneurs, and others can use in the days ahead to
address the global nature of this problem, and I think we are up to it
here in the Senate. I think we are up to doing it in a bipartisan way,
and that is what I look forward to being part of in the days ahead.
I yield the floor.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, Senator Feinstein is scheduled to
speak next, and we are delighted that she is.

Dinner Invitation

I just wanted to make a public service announcement at this point in
the evening. Any staff, Senators who are here through the night, any
floor staff, Republican floor staff as well, all are invited; and for
any of the parliamentary staff who are interested, there is dinner
available in Room S. 219, and better to get it while it is hot.
That is the end of the public service announcement.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

Order of Procedure

Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I ask unanimous consent that the order with respect
to alternating blocks of time be vitiated and that the Senate remain in
a period of morning business until 8:45 a.m., Tuesday, March 11, with
Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for
between 20 and 30 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I want to begin by thanking my friend and colleague,
Senator Boxer, for her leadership. It was 2 years ago that she began a
climate action task force that took place at noon, when all our
stomachs were grumbling for food, but it provided some very interesting
advice, very interesting knowledge, from interesting scholars who came
to speak. She was then joined by Senator Whitehouse, when he came. Now
there is Senator Markey, and there is quite a large number--certainly
of Democratic Senators--who attend these Tuesday meetings at noon. So I
want to thank them very much for this leadership.
As we have heard already, debate over climate change has raged for
years here on Capitol Hill, but the scientific facts actually have been
conclusive for some time now. Most people I have found don't realize
that the greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere just don't go
away. They do not dissipate. These gases can stay for decades. Our
actions--the greenhouse gas pollution we put into the air and the
forests we cut down--are changing the composition of Earth's
atmosphere, increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere to above 400 parts per million.
Just look at this chart. As this chart shows, these are global
warming gases. This is carbon dioxide. You can see how it has run quite
along at this level, and then in the last few years it has begun to
jump up, so much that the average in 2013 was 396 parts per million.
People don't know this--that all these gases remain in our atmosphere
year after year, decade after decade, and century after century.
This change is altering how our atmosphere interacts, with massive
amounts of solar energy radiating out from the center of our solar
system. It is well known within the scientific community that the
Earth's blanket--our atmosphere--is getting more effective at trapping
heat. The full effects of this stronger blanket--or shield or whatever
you want to call it--must be projected into the future. Different
projections show different effects, but we know this. Change is coming,
and it has already begun.
A lot of people also believe our Earth is immutable, that we can't
destroy it and that it can't change. They assume our planet has always
been pretty much the same. But the last time the Earth's atmosphere
contained 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide was more than 3
million years ago when horses and camels lived in the high Arctic in
conditions that averaged 18 degrees warmer than today. Seas were at
least 30 feet higher, at a level that today would inundate major cities
around the world and flood the homes of a quarter of the United States
population.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen, as I said, from the 280
parts per million to more than 400 parts per million in just the last
150 years. Scientists tell us there is no known geologic period in
which concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased
as quickly. Bottom line: Never has our planet faced a faster or more
ecologically devastating change.
To settle the scientific debate over climate change, the Bush
administration appointed a National Academy of Sciences Blue Ribbon
Panel. The group, which included former climate change deniers,
reported to Congress in 2001 that greenhouse gases are ``causing
surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.''
They said: ``Temperatures are, in fact, rising.''
The United Nations created its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a group of more than 600 leading scientific experts; and what
did they say? They said the ``warming of the climate system is
unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are
unprecedented over decades to millennia.''
Average temperatures over lands and ocean surfaces globally have
increased 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit from 1880 to 2012, with the highest
rate of increase in the past 3 decades.
Just look at this. See the line indicating carbon dioxide
concentration. Start from here. Now notice that the temperatures are
still down. Watch the line start to go up and notice the climate warm
up to where it is today.
The IPCC report continued: ``The atmosphere and ocean have warmed,
the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and
the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.''
This makes that clear. If we don't reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions, the National Research Council predicts the average global
temperatures will increase by as much as 11.5 degrees--11.5 degrees by
2100. Such a dramatic and rapid increase would be catastrophic to our
planet Earth. It would change our world permanently.
As temperatures have increased, we have seen that ice sheets that
cover the North and South Poles have begun melting. The average annual
Arctic sea ice area has decreased more than 20 percent since 1979. That
is when satellite records first became available. The Greenland ice
sheet has melted by nearly 30 percent.
Here we can see the Arctic, the red line shows what it was in 1979,
and current picture shows what has been lost and what is left.
The melting of glaciers and ice caps, along with expansion of ocean
water due to the increase in temperature have caused the global sea
level to rise by 8 inches since 1870, with over 2 inches just in the
past 20 years. If we do nothing to stop climate change, scientific
models project that there is a real possibility of sea level increasing
by as much as 4 feet by the end of this century--4 feet.
Now, what would 4 feet do? At risk are nearly 2.6 million homes
located less than 4 feet above high tide nationwide.
Let me speak about my home State of California. We have, within those
4 feet, the homes of 450,000 people, 30 coastal power plants with
generating capacity of 10 gigawatts, 22 wastewater treatment plants
with capacity of 325 million gallons per day, 3,500 miles of roadway,
280 miles of railway, 140 schools, and 55 hospitals and other health
care facilities. These could all be inundated by the end of the
century.
Oakland and San Francisco International Airports are susceptible to
flooding, and both are today studying expensive new levy systems to
hold back the tides.
Sea level rise in California would also cause flooding of low-lying
areas, loss of coastal wetlands, such as portions of the San Francisco
Bay Delta,

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erosion of cliffs and beaches, and saltwater contamination of drinking
water. Bottom line: Rising seas put California's homes, public
facilities, and environmental resources in great peril, and adapting to
this change will impose great cost.
Temperatures in California have increased 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit
over the past 4 decades. The warmer climate could be particularly
devastating to us where threats from catastrophic wildfire and
reduction in water resources will likely make sunny California a desert
State. The Sierra Nevada snowpack--and we are hearing a lot about that
now--which includes Lake Tahoe--is the State's largest source of water.
It equals about half the storage capacity of all of California's man-
made reservoirs. If we do nothing, the Sierra Nevada spring snowpack
could drop by as much as 60 to 80 percent by the end of the century,
eliminating the water source for nearly 16 million people.
Only four States have populations as large as 16 million people, and
the largest agricultural State in the United States--California--needs
water resources to farm and grow crops. The 38 million people living in
California also need water to drink, to bathe, to water flowers, for
businesses to flourish.

Major fire is another danger because the size, severity, duration,
and frequency of fires are greatly influenced by climate. This is the
Rim Fire, from not too long ago. It gives us an idea of how things
burn. Fire seasons in the West are starting sooner and lasting longer.
The average length has increased by 78 days since 1970, a 64-percent
increase. This isn't a coincidence, and climate change is suspected as
a key mechanism for that change. The change is apparent.
During a recent Senate hearing, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tidwell
testified:

On average, wildfires burn twice as many acres each year as
compared to 40 years ago, and there are on average seven
times as many fires over 10,000 acres per year.

I believe this: We cannot stop climate change from happening. We do
not have a silver bullet. There is no action we can take to stem the
tide. But if we can hold the warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, we
can accommodate for it. But if the warming reaches 5 degrees to 9
degrees Celsius, the effects are catastrophic for our planet Earth.
Dramatic and catastrophic effects are far more likely. Through a series
of incremental but somewhat aggressive policy steps, we can slow the
change.
The combustion of fossil fuel--coal, oil, and natural gas--accounts
for 78 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in our country. Most of the
fossil fuel emissions come from the smokestacks of our power plants and
the tailpipes of our vehicles.
The bottom line: To address climate change, we must take steps to use
fossil fuels more efficiently, and we must initiate a shift away from
fossil fuels where we can and toward cleaner alternatives.
I believe we can attack this problem by: establishing aggressive fuel
economy standards to reduce emissions from the transportation sector;
enabling a shift to renewable sources of power; limiting the emissions
from stationary sources, especially power plants; and, most important,
putting a price on heat-trapping carbon pollution.
Let me mention some steps we have taken because we have begun a
transition to a cleaner energy economy. The good news is that carbon
dioxide emissions have dropped 12 percent since 2005, due in part to
the policies we have adopted.
One of my proudest achievements was working with Senators Snowe,
Inouye, Stevens, Cantwell, Lott, Dorgan, Corker, Carper, and many
others in the 2007 Ten-in-Ten Fuel Economy Act, raising the corporate
average fuel economy known as CAFE at the maximum achievable rate.
Let me say what these new standards mean. They mean we will have a
fleetwide average of 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025. These standards
will cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks in half by
2025, reducing emissions by 6 billion metric tons over the life of the
program, more than the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the
United States in 2010. Better yet, these standards will save American
families more than $1.7 trillion in fuel costs, resulting in average
fuel savings of more than $8,000 per vehicle.
Our legislation also directed the administration to establish the
first ever fuel economy standards for buses, delivery trucks, and long-
haul 18 wheelers. The first standards, which apply to trucks and buses
built from 2014 to 2018, will reduce greenhouse gas pollution by
approximately 270 million metric tons.
I am very sorry Senator Snowe from Maine isn't here today because I
began this effort with a simple sense of the Senate resolution in 1993
with Senator Slade Gorton from Washington, Senator Bryan from Nevada,
and myself, and we couldn't get a simple statement passed. We then
tried an SUV loophole closer, which was to bring SUVs down to the
mileage of sedans and we couldn't do this.
We then did the Ten-in-Ten and we didn't think it was going to go
anywhere. Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye put it in a commerce
committee bill. Senator Stevens changed his view on it, put it in a
commerce committee bill, and it swept through the Senate and through
the House, was signed by the President, and is now the law. Today
President Obama has made completing CAFE standards for trucks built
after 2018--which are required by our 2007 law--a key part of his
Climate Action Plan.
Power plants are our largest single source of greenhouse gas
emissions. It is fair to say Federal tax incentives and financing,
State mandates, federally funded research, and a dramatically improving
permitting process have led to a recent shift away from coal-fired
power plants and toward renewable energy and lower emission natural
gas.
Additionally, renewable energy production has more than doubled since
2008, and it continues to boom. Last year 4,751 megawatts of solar were
installed nationwide. This is a 41-percent increase over the previous
year. Power plant carbon dioxide emissions have dropped 17 percent
since 2005.
The lesson is clear: We must continue the policies which are working,
such as the wind and geothermal production tax credits, the solar
investment tax credit, and a project-permitting process which advances
projects on disturbed and less sensitive lands expeditiously, but we
must also take longer term steps to ensure that power plant emissions
continue to drop.
I support the President's plan to use Clean Air Act authorities to
limit greenhouse gas emissions. The Supreme Court's landmark global
warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA, found greenhouse gases are
pollutants with the potential to endanger human health and welfare.
President Obama and EPA have an obligation to comply with these
directives to limit such emissions. So I very much look forward to the
President advancing a strong rule which will use market-based
mechanisms.
I also believe Congress could act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
from power plants by putting an explicit price on pollution. It has
taken me a long time to get there--approximately 20 years. I supported
various other mechanisms--and will continue to support--but I am
convinced, based on information by the Energy Information
Administration, a fee on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants
starting at only $10 per ton could reduce emissions 70 percent to 80
percent by 2050, if the fee steadily increases over time. This is the
emissions reduction level experts say is necessary to stabilize the
climate at less than 2 degrees Celsius warmer than today. If we can do
this, we save planet Earth. If the climate goes 5 degrees to 9 degrees
warmer by the end of the century, we have lost.
Such a fee could be responsive to emissions performance. If emissions
were falling consistent with science-based emissions targets, the fee
would not have to go up every year. It is estimated a fee on power
plant emissions would be nearly as effective in reducing heat-trapping
emissions as an economy-wide fee. The difference is 2 percent. So both
policies deserve consideration.
Such a fee would provide industry with cost certainty, and the
revenues--exceeding $20 billion annually--could help address our
Nation's debt. They should go back to the general fund. The revenue
could finance other important national priorities, such as tax reform,

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income inequality, energy research development.
An MIT study found that if the fee revenues were used to cut other
taxes or maintain spending for social programs, ``the economy will be
better off with the carbon (fee) than if we have to keep other taxes
high or cut programs to rein in the deficit.''
Science has clearly shown the planet is warming and now at a faster
rate than ever. We know this. Now we as leaders must make a choice: Do
we act, do we lead, do we tackle the problem or do we wait until it is
too late? Do we continue the progress we have made on fuel economy by
taking on other large emitters or do we simply claim it is impossible,
it is intractable, we can't do anything about it? Do we blame the
problem on China? And China has a big problem. Do we deny undeniable
facts due to current politics?
I believe we have an obligation to lead. There is no question it is
difficult and there is no question there are hard choices, but we have
an obligation to control our own pollution. Our Nation has the
opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of the world it can be done, and
tonight shows there are some leaders.
I thank Senator Boxer, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Markey, and
Senator Schatz for their leadership, not only on this evening but for
the years they have led on this issue. So let's get it done.
Before I end, I would note that my legislative assistant, the young
man sitting next to me, is leaving to work for the Department of
Energy. He has worked on fuel efficiency standards, climate change,
energy, transportation, and a number of other issues.
Matthew Nelson, I want you to know your expertise, your unique
creativity and capacity, and your dedication will be missed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, may I thank the distinguished
Senator from California for her speech. For those who know of her
history with this issue and her leadership on pollution issues over
many years, this was an important speech, and I thank the Senator very
much.
Before we turn to Senator Boxer, I wish to say a few things about the
comments the Senator from Oklahoma made earlier, I suppose in an effort
to suggest climate change is not all that we shake it up to be. The
first point he made was about a group of emails that came out of East
Anglia University, which the climate denier community seized on and
nicknamed climategate, as if like Watergate there was a big scandal in
those emails. There were some probably not entirely appropriate
comments that were said in the emails, but the question is, Was the
science underlying it affected or compromised in any way?

So-called climategate was actually looked at over and over again.
Because it was at the University of East Anglia, the University of East
Anglia did an investigation. Because it involved scientists at Penn
State, Penn State did an investigation. Both of those universities gave
a complete clean bill of health to the underlying science that was at
the base of this.
The House of Commons--the British House of Commons did its
investigation. That is how much fuss the deniers kicked up about this.
They came back and they said: Nothing wrong with the science there.
Nothing wrong with the science. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency and National Science Foundation also did investigations, as did
the inspector general of the Department of Commerce. Three for three,
those investigations came back as well, saying: If they did say
anything inappropriate, nothing wrong with the science.
After all that, after six published reviews whose results confirmed
that there was nothing wrong with the science as a result of these
emails, for people to continue to come to the floor and to suggest that
the email chain revealed some flaw in the data or some flaw in the
science, it is untrue. It is as simple as that. It is just not true.
In fact, if you wanted to nickname this properly, you would actually
call it climategate-gate because the real scandal is the phony scandal
that was whipped up about these emails when the underlying science had
been confirmed by every single investigation that followed. So much for
climategate or climategate-gate, more properly said.
He also indicated that because the IPCC report had said the Himalayan
glaciers were retreating, but they weren't, that there was something
obviously wrong with the science. Let us start with some glaciers
closer to home. This is Grinell Glacier in Montana. Here is what it
looked like in 1940. That is all snow. Here is what it looks like in
2004. It is melted down to this little puddle of snow and ice.
We are indeed losing our glaciers. Have a look in Washington at
Lillian Glacier in Washington's Olympic National Park. This is in 1905.
Look at the size of that glacier. Here it is, the same bowl, virtually
dried of snow--glacier gone.
The fact that glaciers are disappearing is something people see in
front of them all around the world. All you have to do is go to
mountains with glaciers and look. I went with Senator Boxer to the
glaciers in Greenland. You could see the glaciers retreat. You could
see the increased speed as the ice moved more rapidly down and out to
sea because of the melt.
Now the question of the Himalayan glaciers has also been reviewed. A
recent article in Nature said:

The Tibetan plateau and surroundings contain the largest
number of glaciers outside polar regions. These glaciers are
at the headwaters of many prominent Asian rivers and are
largely experiencing shrinkage. . . .

Which is exactly what one would expect from the science of climate
change.
Now the National Academy of Sciences recently did a report on this
very subject about 6 months ago, and a quote on that report says:

The report examines how changes to glaciers in the Hindu
Kush-Himalayan region, which covers eight countries across
Asia, could affect the area's river systems, water supplies,
and the South Asian population. The mountains in the region
form the headwaters of several major river systems--including
the Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers--which serve
as sources of drinking water and irrigation supplies for
roughly 1.5 billion people. So the irrigation and drinking
water for 1.5 billion people is nothing to laugh about.

Here is the conclusion:

The entire Himalayan climate is changing, but how climate
change will impact specific places remains unclear. . . . The
eastern Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau are warming, and the
trend is more pronounced at higher elevations. Models suggest
that desert dust and black carbon, a component of soot, could
contribute to the rapid atmospheric warming, accelerated
snowpack melting, and glacier retreat.

The Senator also mentioned the cost of a carbon fee. Just to make the
record completely clear, I would propose a carbon fee whose every
dollar of revenue was returned to the American people if as a result of
a carbon fee they end up paying more in their energy bill somewhere.
Every dollar of that should come back to the American people. It
could come back in the form of a check to the head of a family. It
could come back in the form of lower tax rates. It could come back in a
variety of ways, and I hope soon we are actually having that
discussion. But do not think there is any need for this to be a net
cost to the economy. Every dollar can go back to the American people.
Because of the nature of this tax, it is actually probably more
efficient than others, so it should create economic lift for a net
economic gain if you are truly offsetting the revenues. So I reject the
proposition that this would create a cost. It would be easy to design
it in such a way that it is actually net improvement.
Finally, I will agree with something Senator Inhofe said. He said
this has to be international; and indeed it does have to be
international. India has a vote. They have a lot of powerplants. China
has a lot of powerplants. They have to work together. We can do that.
America can lead in the world. If the others are slow to come, we can
erect tax adjustments at our border that protect us and our products.
We can make this happen, and we should.
The last is job loss claims. If you go back through the history of
regulation of big industries, every time you roll something out they
say it is going to be a huge economic disaster. They said this about
the ozone layer; the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act. In fact, in
some cases such as in the Clean Air Act, subsequent review showed the

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amount that is saved from not being polluted exceeds the cost of
compliance by as much as 30-to-1. Why would we not want a deal like
that, particularly where the costs of climate change are going to be so
severe?
The Senator said it is important to look at what has happened since
the original IPCC report. Here is what happened since the original IPCC
report. They doubled down. They are even more sure than they were of
their findings on climate change. Other scientific organizations such
as NASA have chimed in in unflinching language. I happen to have a lot
of respect for NASA. If you can put a vehicle the size of an SUV up and
out of our atmosphere, into orbit, send it to Mars, land it safely on
Mars, and then drive it around, I think there is a pretty safe bet that
you have some good scientists who know what they are talking about. I
will put them up against the scientists paid for by the polluters every
day.
I will yield the floor first to Chairman Boxer.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Ms. BOXER. I wish to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership. We
are now 30 minutes behind, so I would take up to 30 minutes, and then I
will be followed by Senator Franken.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection.
Ms. BOXER. Madam President, I have been on this floor since early
this evening and it is very clear that deniers are standing with 3
percent of the scientists while we Democrats who are here tonight
calling for action are standing with 97 percent of the scientists.
As I mentioned before, every time the Republicans call a so-called
expert to the Committee on Environment and Public Works, I track their
path and they seem to be tied to the oil industry or to major
polluters. That is just a fact. I am going to talk a little bit later
about what has happened and why this suddenly has become a bitter
partisan fight. It never used to be. It never used to be, but it is and
it is wrong.
No one party can put together the votes needed. We have to share
responsibility and that is critical. People have said to me, the press:
What is the point of this all-nighter? I said, very simply: The Senate
Climate Action Task Force, which has membership of getting toward 30
percent of the Senate, we want to wake up the Congress to the fact that
time is running out. We have to act now. We have to do everything we
can legislatively in every way.
The good news--and there is some good news which has nothing to do
with the Senate. It is all bad news for the Senate, frankly. But the
good news is that we have a President who gets this and who is moving
forward with a climate action plan. I am sorry to say every step he
takes we have people trying to repeal what he is doing. So far we have
beat back those naysayers and those voices of the polluters.
One of the major functions of the Senate Climate Action Task Force is
not just rallying around the scientists and calling attention to
climate change, but it is clearly to play defense when we see attempts
to roll back the President's plan.
We have already seen a CRA, which stands for congressional review
act, that is in the works to overturn what the President is trying to
do to clean up coal-fired plants before they even finish the rules.
Senator McConnell is talking about a race to repeal it before it is
even put into place. I do not understand this--well, I understand it,
but it is wrong.
We have to stand up for our families. As I said in my earlier
remarks, if you saw any member of your family or any one of your
constituents standing in the wake of a disaster, say an oncoming car,
you would do everything in your power--everything in your power--to
save that constituent or that family member.
We are facing an out-of-control problem here with our climate. It is
out of control. If we do not wrap our arms around it, we will have
catastrophic warming. It has already started and it will lead to
horrible pain and suffering whether it is heat waves and deaths. We
have already seen it in Europe. Colleagues from New Mexico and Colorado
have already talked about horrible floods and fires. I can tell you
more about fires in my State.
I have never seen anything like it. We have seen drought. All of this
was predicted by the scientists back in the early nineties. I cannot
believe that is 20 years ago that they told us. I think we have proven
the point that deniers are standing with 3 percent of the scientists
and every major scientific organization has warned us to act.
One of my colleagues, Senator Inhofe, came down and said: Oh, it is
snowing. It is cold. It is called extreme weather, and it is what was
predicted. The vortex up in the Arctic, we are feeling the impacts of a
weakened jet stream. We are seeing these terrible temperatures in an
extreme fashion hit the lower 48 States, some of which have never had
it before. We have seen with our very own eyes snow in places such as
Atlanta, people stuck on highways. No one knew what to do because it
has never happened before. I think we have made the clear case.
I say to my colleague Senator Schatz, who has worked so hard with
Senator Whitehouse to put this together, we have proven the point. I
believe that we stand with science in the mainstream, and our
colleagues--most of whom have not come to the floor to debate us--are
standing with the extreme and, frankly, the special polluting
interests. Now, after they get done with denying, they have a fallback
position, and they say: Well, even if you believe there is climate
change, we should not act until China acts. Since when does the
greatest country on Earth sit back and allow China to lead us out of a
climate change impending disaster? Since when do we cede that
authority?
I want to talk about that. All you have to do is take a look at China
to see what happens to a country that throws the environment under a
bus. Let's take a look at some of the people in China and what it looks
like. These are people on their bicycles. You can't see anything around
them. They have masks on. We are going to wait for China to lead us out
of the climate change problem? I don't think so.
I went to China on a very interesting trip with Leader Reid a couple
of years ago. We were there for a good 10 days. We really saw the
country. It is fascinating. There are a lot of interesting things going
on there with transportation and so on. We never saw the Sun--never.
One day the Sun was behind the smog, and the guy who was with us
said: What a beautiful day.
I said: No, it is not. This is terrible.
We went to the American Embassy. They have a measuring tool that
tells them how dirty the air is in China. It is a hazardous duty post.
People who were there with their kids were told not to go out because
it was too dangerous. China has hazardous levels of pollution and toxic
emissions which have had very harmful effects on the Chinese people.
We are supposed to wait for China to clean up carbon pollution? I
don't think so. According to a scientific study from the Health Effects
Institute, outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature
deaths in China in 2010 alone. This is not fiction; this is fact.
We have voices on the Republican side of the aisle who are begging
us: Don't do anything on carbon pollution until China acts. Air
pollution was the fourth leading risk factor for deaths in China. The
threat is expected to get worse.
Urban air pollution is set to become the top environmental cause of
mortality worldwide by 2050--ahead of dirty water and lack of
sanitation. It is estimated that up to 3.6 million people could end up
dying prematurely from air pollution each year, mostly in China and
India. Think about that. Yes, we will hear our colleagues say China and
India too.
I represent a very large and great State with a population of 38
million people. We are on the cutting edge of a clean environment. We
are tackling carbon pollution. We are seeing great jobs being developed
in solar, wind, and geothermal. We are going to have one-third of our
electricity generation come from clean sources by 2020. I am so proud
of my State. The special interests came in there and they tried to
repeal all of our laws that had to do with cleaning up carbon
pollution, and the people--even though they were faced with millions of
dollars in oil company ads--said no.

[[Page S1394]]

So the people who say this isn't real, we have already disproved
that. I put out the names of every possible organization. If you ask
the American people about those organizations, they would say: We
respect those organizations. So that is out.
Then they say: Wait for China. That is out. In January the U.S.
Embassy issued warnings to China's citizens that the air quality in
Beijing was so bad it exceeded the upper limits of its measurements,
and the exposure to fine soot was many times above what the World
Health Organization considers hazardous. They call it an
``airpocalyse.'' It forced the Chinese Government to close highways
because the visibility was so bad.
This goes on in cities across China. A woman looked out her window in
Harbin and said: ``I couldn't see anything outside the window, and I
thought it was snowing.'' Then she realized it wasn't snow; it was
dangerous toxic smog. That is what the people are living with. They are
beside themselves. They walk around with masks. They can't go out. They
are suffering and dying. And this is the country that my colleagues say
we ought to wait for before we tackle climate change? You have to be
kidding me. This is an embarrassment. Citizens of Harbin can see only
10 yards in front of them because small particle pollution soared to a
record 40 times higher than international standards.
By the way, the cost of environmental degradation in China was about
$230 billion in 2010 or 3.5 percent of the Nation's gross domestic
product.
We know that Superstorm Sandy cost us about $60 billion. One storm
cost $60 billion. So when you talk about the economic impact of putting
a price on carbon polluters who are polluting this country, put that
into the context of what happens if you let them continue polluting.
Superstorm Sandy--we all lived through it. We all saw what happened.
I have seen the fires in California. We have seen them in New Mexico
and Colorado. We know the costs that come from those fires. We have
seen the drought. The President was out there. Thank God he came out
there to give some money. Do you know that our ranchers were destroying
their cattle, killing their cattle because there was no feed? The
President went out there and made sure that emergency help was
delivered so they could buy feed for those cattle.
When people say it is going to cost a lot to solve climate change, I
beg them to think about the costs if we do nothing. Look at China. They
did nothing about clean air, and they are paying the price with
premature deaths, lost productivity, and people who are miserable.
Here is the thing: We learned a long time ago that stepping up to an
environmental challenge pays off. Decades ago, the United States
experienced damage and degradation--tremendous damage--to our
environment. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio was on fire, massive air
pollution hung over our cities, and lakes were dying from pollution.
The American people demanded action. Guess what. We didn't wait for
China or India or anybody else to act. We came together as Democrats
and Republicans and said: This isn't appropriate.
President Nixon helped on the environment, President George Herbert
Walker Bush helped on the environment, Jimmy Carter helped on the
environment, Bill Clinton helped on the environment, and Barack Obama
is helping on the environment. But now it has become a partisan issue.
The Clean Air Act goes back to 1970, and it was strengthened in 1990.
Since 1990, the United States has cut fine particulate emissions. Those
are the emissions that get into your lungs and cause all of our
problems. Since 1990 we have cut those particulates by 57 percent
because Democrats and Republicans came together. Now Republicans want
to repeal all of that, but we won't let them. Fine particulate
emissions is what is making the Chinese people sick.
In 1976 there were 166 days when health advisories were issued in
southern California to urge people with asthma and other people with
lung sensitivities to stay indoors. That was in 1976. The American
people said: No, no, no; this isn't right. The people of California
said: This is terrible. There were 166 days where I couldn't go out and
breathe the air and take a walk and take my kids out.
Thanks to the action taken by Democrats and Republicans who worked
together to pass the Clean Air Act and carry it out, the number of
smog-related health advisories in 2010 in southern California dropped
to--drum roll--zero days. So anyone who stands here and says, ``Oh,
this problem is too big. I can't wrap my arms around it. China and
India have to act,'' no, no, no, that is not America.
We have brilliant people in this country with great technological
skills. Many of our States--and I am so proud of my State--have the
latest technologies to clean up the air and water, make cars fuel
efficient. My friend Senator Feinstein spoke about fuel efficiency in
cars, and I am so pleased we have done that. President Obama is now
applying it to trucks.
We are literally saving lives because we know outdoor air pollution
causes cancer. We know that. Let me tell you what the National Climate
Assessment--that is our country--is saying about climate change:

Climate change threatens human health and well-being in
many ways, including impacts from increased extreme weather
events, wildfire, decreased air quality, diseases transmitted
by insects, food and water . . . Some of these health impacts
are already underway in the U.S.

Clearly we have proven tonight that we stand with science. We are not
scientists, but we are humbled before the science.
We know our Nation has shown great leadership in the environmental
movement for years. We started this back in the 1970s when that river
caught on fire and we said: What are we doing to our planet?
We should not and we must not wait for other countries to act. We
must take action now, and that is the purpose of the Senate Climate
Action Task Force. I am so proud of my colleagues who are here tonight
and who go to those meetings every Thursday. Ed Markey is leading us in
meetings on Tuesdays, which is the clearinghouse. The clearinghouse is
more of a think tank where we bring in the experts. We listen and
question them. On Thursdays we meet with the task force. Members of the
task force speak to the Democratic caucus.
I say to Harry Reid, if he is listening, how much I appreciate his
leadership on this issue. He has seen some of the horrible impacts of
climate change in his great State. His State has leaders in alternative
clean energy. They are moving away from coal and toward clean energy.
They are creating good-paying jobs.
When we put a price on carbon, the dirty industries start to pay for
the pollution they are causing, and that will move us toward clean
energy. When we move to clean energy, we will see a tremendous
difference in the amount of carbon pollution in the air, and we will be
able to avert the most dire predictions for climate, which is 7 degrees
Fahrenheit. We don't want to see that for our children and our
grandchildren and our great grandchildren because that will literally
change the face of the way America lives.

We have it in our hands. Tonight we are saying: Wake up, Congress.
Please, wake up. To my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Inhofe, who is
my friend, who said: You guys are just talking to each other; good
luck, good night, I respond: I am proud to say more than 100,000 people
have so far signed petitions calling on Congress to act, and this is
just early in the evening. We are going to be going another almost 11
hours.
To Senator Whitehouse and Senator Schatz I say thank you for
organizing this. It is a little like herding cats, getting us all here,
but it is working. It is working because Senators here get it. They
know they are going to be here for a finite time, and when we get a
challenge such as this, we stand up to it. We find the solutions and we
fight for them, and we fight for the people of this great Nation.
Thank you so much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaine). The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. FRANKEN. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank Senator Boxer and
Senator Schatz and Senator Whitehouse for organizing this.

[[Page S1395]]

I rise tonight to talk about climate change, along with 25 to 30 of
my colleagues who will be speaking through the night.
The recent extreme weather events we have experienced across the
United States are our call to action. We in this body need not just to
talk about climate change but to take action to address it. If we fail
to act, the extreme weather events we have seen will only grow more
extreme in the future.
This winter has been exceptionally cold in many areas of the United
States, including Minnesota. Some deniers have taken this as a sign
that climate change isn't happening. They have pointed to the cold
weather as evidence that global warming is not occurring. But they are
missing the point. We already know that on average the Earth is
warming. This isn't complicated. We have been using thermometers to
make measurements around the globe for a long time. We know average
temperatures have gone up significantly in recent years.
But climate change isn't just about the average temperature. As the
average temperature continues to rise, most experts agree we will see
ever more frequent extreme weather events, including drought, storms,
floods, and other extreme events. It is important to remember that we
are not attributing any one event to climate change, but we can say
there will be more extreme weather events as the Earth grows warmer.
As the Presiding Officer knows, we have seen the polar vortex bring
Arctic weather to much of the United States during this winter.
According to White House Science Adviser Dr. John Holdren, we can
expect to see more of this kind of extreme cold as global warming
continues. This is going to have serious consequences--it already has.
In my home State of Minnesota, the extreme cold has contributed to
very serious propane shortages. Many rural residents are unable to
properly heat their homes. Turkey growers are finding it difficult to
heat their barns and, therefore, their turkeys. This is not just a
problem in Minnesota. Other areas of the country have been affected. We
in the Senate have to talk about what is happening and start taking
action in the face of climate change threats.
The ongoing drought in California and other States is another
example. The situation is particularly grave in California where vast
regions have been classified as D4, which is the most severe drought
category. This has cost farmers their crops and livestock and created
severe water shortages for residents and businesses. Farmers have had
to stop farming half a million acres of what normally is irrigated
land. That is about 6 percent of the entire State of California.
According to the California Farm Water Coalition, it is already costing
that State $5 billion. These costs get passed on to every American. As
a result of this drought, Americans have to pay more and will continue
to pay more for groceries this winter.
Unfortunately, droughts such as this are becoming commonplace. In
2012, drought caused more than 70 percent of U.S. counties to be
declared disaster areas. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration estimated the economic impact of droughts to be $30
billion. The droughts destroyed or damaged major crops all over this
country, making corn and soybeans more expensive and increasing animal
feed costs. Again, Americans pay more for meats and other animal-based
products because of drought.
In the Midwest, the 2012 drought dramatically lowered water levels in
the Mississippi River, seriously interfering with our ability to
transport our agricultural goods to market to compete with those from
other countries. So that barges wouldn't run aground, shippers sent
them down the Mississippi only half full with, say, soybeans. This made
Minnesota soybeans less competitive with Brazilian soybeans.
Climate change is also exacerbating our Nation's wildfires, as we
heard Senator Wyden from Oregon describe about his State. When Forest
Service Chief Tom Tidwell testified in 2012 before the Senate Energy
Committee, I asked him about the link between climate change and forest
fires. He told us that throughout the country we are seeing longer fire
seasons--more than 2 months longer--compared to fire seasons in the
1970s. Wildfires are also larger and more intense. I asked Chief
Tidwell whether scientists at the Forest Service thought climate change
was causing this increase in the size and intensity of wildfires and
extending their season, and without hesitation he said yes. The Forest
Service is spending more and more fighting wildfires--now about half of
its entire budget.

Longer fires and larger, more intense fires are going to eat up more
and more of that budget. In addition, these wildfires--especially ones
that occur at the wildland-urban interface--are increasingly
threatening homes and property. Most importantly, more intense fires
are costing lives. The 19 brave firefighters who perished in Arizona
last June should be a reminder of the gravity of this issue.
Of course, we cannot talk about climate change without talking about
sea level rise. As I said, I serve on the Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources. In 2012, I attended a hearing on sea level rise and
heard testimony about how rising sea levels are increasing the size of
flood zones and increasing damage from storm surges. One example they
used--they said this is a possibility--is that a few inches of sea
level rise could result in a storm surge that could flood the New York
City subway system. It sounded like something out of science fiction.
Yet 6 months later, that is exactly what happened when Hurricane Sandy
hit New York City and flooded the subways. My colleagues do not need to
be reminded of the cost of Hurricane Sandy. It cost taxpayers a
staggering $60 billion.
So when people talk about the harmful consequences of climate change
and its costs in terms of homes and dollars and lives, they are not
talking about some far-off future problem. Climate change is already
hurting us.
Unfortunately, only one of my colleagues from the other side of the
aisle--the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, Senator Murkowski from Alaska--attended that hearing. This
has been pretty much the case whenever we have a hearing that even
tangentially relates to climate change.
A number of my colleagues in Congress don't believe human activity is
contributing to climate change. Many others, I suspect, don't talk
about climate change because addressing it requires that we make some
difficult choices.
This is despite the fact that even some of the major fossil fuel
companies that previously funded anti-climate change efforts have
turned the page on this issue. ExxonMobil used to fund the Heartland
Institute, one of the leading organizations spreading climate change
denial propaganda. But if we go to ExxonMobil's Web site today, it
states: ``Rising greenhouse gas emissions pose significant risks to
society and ecosystems.'' That is ExxonMobil.
Shell Oil states on its Web site: ``CO2 emissions must be
reduced to avoid serious climate change.'' That is Shell Oil.
So even the major oil and gas companies have begun to acknowledge
that climate change is real. I would respectfully suggest that my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle here in Congress also need to
engage in a serious conversation on climate change.
At a time when Americans are dealing with record droughts and other
extreme weather events, the Senate cannot afford to simply ignore
climate change. Ultimately, we have to come together to start
addressing climate change before its damage and costs to society get
out of control.
I know this is not going to be easy. Some will point out that climate
change is a global problem--sometimes called global climate change--and
that we can't solve it alone. They are right. Emissions in the
developing world are on the rise. China now surpasses the U.S. in total
greenhouse gas emissions. But China is also starting to wake up to its
serious pollution problem. In fact, at the opening of the annual
meeting of its parliament last week, the Chinese Premier stated that
his country is declaring a war on pollution. Overcoming pollution
challenges will require China to invest heavily in renewable and other
environmentally friendly technologies. It is going to make the global
clean energy race even more competitive. If we are going to

[[Page S1396]]

win this race and create good-paying jobs for Americans, we have to
invest in clean energy.
We know that government investment in energy can pay off. Take the
example of natural gas. We are currently experiencing a natural gas
boom in this country. Sometimes my colleagues forget that this boom
happened in large part because of years of Federal support to develop
hydraulic fracturing technology. The Eastern Gas Shales Project was an
initiative the Federal Government began back in 1976, before hydraulic
fracturing was a mature industry. The project set up and funded dozens
of pilot demonstration projects with universities and private gas
companies that tested drilling and fracturing methods. This investment
by the Federal Government was instrumental in the development of the
commercial extraction of natural gas from shale. In fact, microseismic
imaging--a critical tool used in fracking--was originally developed by
Sandia National Laboratory, a Federal energy laboratory.
The industry was also supported through tax breaks and subsidies. In
fact, Mitchell Energy Vice President Dan Stewart said in an interview
that Mitchell Energy's first horizontal well was subsidized by the
Federal Government. Mr. Mitchell said:

DOE--

That is the Department of Energy--

DOE started it, and other people took the ball and ran with
it. You cannot diminish DOE's involvement.

This is from one of the pioneers of horizontal drilling: ``You cannot
diminish DOE's involvement.''
So the basis of the natural gas revolution that is helping make
America more energy independent can be traced back to Federal research
and Federal support.
In the same way, we have to support the renewable energy sector now.
We have to be the ones who will develop these technologies and the ones
who sell them to other nations. We need to lead the world in clean
energy innovation.
(Mr. MERKLEY assumed the Chair.)
At the moment, we are not doing enough. Last year the Senate Energy
Committee heard testimony regarding a report from the American Energy
Innovation Council entitled ``Catalyzing Ingenuity.'' The report,
authored by Bill Gates, Microsoft; former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman
Augustine; and other business leaders, states:

The country has yet to embark on a clean energy innovation
program commensurate with the scale of the national
priorities that are at stake. In fact, rather than improve
the country's energy innovation program and invest in
strategic national interests, the current political
environment is creating strong pressure to pull back from
such efforts.

The report is a wakeup call and makes a convincing case for why
government needs to support innovation in the energy sector.
Unfortunately, it has been difficult for Congress to pass
comprehensive clean energy legislation, even though this is an
essential prerequisite if we are going to win the global clean energy
race. The good news is that many individual States, which really are
the laboratories of our democracy, have gone forward with their own
clean energy programs.
As chair of the Energy Subcommittee on the Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, I recently held a hearing on lessons from State
energy programs. Among the innovative programs developed by many States
are goals and mandates for renewable energy production as well as for
increased energy efficiency of government and commercial buildings.
I say to the Presiding Officer, you probably know this because you
are Senator Merkley and you know a lot. You probably know this. But
over half the States have renewable portfolio standards. These
standards are improving the air, creating jobs, and growing the
economy.
My home State of Minnesota is one of the leaders in this area. We
have a 25-by-25 renewable portfolio standard in place, which means that
25 percent of the State's electricity must come from renewable sources
by the year 2025. Excel Energy, Minnesota's largest utility, is
following an even more ambitious plan of generating over 30 percent
renewable energy by the year 2020, and they are on track to do that.
I believe the Federal Government should follow what the States are
already doing and put a comprehensive and long-term clean energy plan
in place.
One of the issues we discussed in my subcommittee was the upcoming
EPA rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing coal-fired
powerplants. I know that a number of my colleagues are concerned about
these regulations and have argued that they will increase the cost of
electricity, especially in areas that are heavily dependent on coal and
coal-fired plants.
I understand these concerns. I believe these regulations should be
crafted using common sense. For example, if you give flexibility to
States to implement these regulations, you can allow powerplant
operators to offset their emissions by investing in energy efficiency
in homes and buildings. Buildings consume about 36 percent, 37 percent
of the energy in this country. If you retrofit our buildings, you will
get the same environmental result at a lower cost to powerplant owners.
And just as important, you will unleash energy efficiency manufacturing
and installation jobs throughout the country. It will reduce our energy
use. It will benefit the environment and send a signal throughout the
business sector that we are serious about deploying long-term energy-
efficient solutions. That is why NORESCO, a major energy service
company that testified at my hearing, was a strong proponent of this
proposal.
In fact, we learned during my hearing that there was universal
agreement among witnesses--both Democratic and Republican witnesses--
that giving States more flexibility to implement these regulations
would be good.
So when we talk about taking on climate change, let's start with what
we can all agree on. Let's do that stuff first. Let's do Shaheen-
Portman.
The stakes are simply too high to ignore this issue. We cannot leave
it to future generations. Last year my first grandchild Joe was born,
and I do not want to look back in 20 years and tell Joe that when we
were in a position to do something about climate change we chose not to
because it involved some difficult choices.
Now, Joe is going to live through this century and, God willing, into
the next. Unless we act now, his generation will pay a very high price
for our inaction. Tonight, throughout the night, you are going to be
hearing about that. You are going to be hearing about the Department of
Defense research into this and the costs that we will pay when we have
to address this.
I do not want to have to have my grandson think of me long after I am
gone and ask: Why didn't we do anything to address climate change while
we could.
So I invite my colleagues from both sides of the aisle--both sides--
to join in this endeavor. We really owe it to the Nation, and we owe it
to future generations.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as I begin, I thank Senator Boxer for her
wonderful leadership of the Environment Committee and for her strong
activism regarding climate change. I thank Senator Whitehouse and
Senator Schatz, as well, for organizing this important discussion
tonight.
The scientific community has been extremely clear--no debate--climate
change is real, climate change is manmade, and climate change is
already causing severe damage in terms of drought, floods, forest
fires, rising sea levels, and extreme weather disturbances. Given that
reality, I find it extremely disturbing that virtually all--not all but
virtually all--of my Republican colleagues continue to ignore the
scientific evidence and refuse to support serious legislation which
will address this planetary crisis. My hope is that my small State of
Vermont will be a national leader, will be a model for the rest of the
country in transforming our energy system, moving us away from fossil
fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. And doing
that, by the way, will not only help the United States become a leader
in reversing climate change but can, over a period of years, create
millions of good-paying jobs in this country. And that has to be the
goal.
Some people ask--many people ask--they say: Well, why aren't you guys

[[Page S1397]]

doing anything on this issue? The scientific community is almost
unanimous about the causation of climate change or about its severity.
What are you doing?
Let me answer that by just very briefly reading an exchange that took
place in the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee on April
11, 2013. Let me preface my remarks by saying Senator Jim Inhofe of
Oklahoma is a friend of mine. I like Jim Inhofe. He is an honest
person, a straightforward person. But on this issue, he is dead, dead
wrong. This is the exchange that took place on April 11, 2013. I was in
a committee hearing, and this is what I said:

What Senator Inhofe has written--

And he has published a book on this issue--

What Senator Inhofe has written and talked about is his
belief that global warming is one of the major hoaxes ever
perpetrated on the American people. That it's a hoax pushed
by people like Al Gore, the United Nations and the Hollywood
elite.

Senator Inhofe was also in this committee hearing, and I said:

I think that is a fair quote from Senator Inhofe. Is that
roughly right, Senator Inhofe?

He was right here, and Mr. Inhofe said:

Yes, I would add to that list: Moveon.org, George Soros,
Michael Moore and a few others.

So that is where we are. We have a gentleman--again, a very honest,
decent man whom I like--a former chair of the Environment Committee, a
former ranking member of the environment committee, who believes that
global warming is a hoax pushed by people like Al Gore, the United
Nations, and the Hollywood elite. So when people ask me why we are not
doing anything, I would say that is pretty much the reason.
But let me respond to that, to Mr. Inhofe's views, by saying the
following: Climate change is real, and there is no longer a scientific
debate about that. In the words of the U.S. Global Change Research
Program, which includes EPA, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and
the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, Health, Interior,
Transportation, and Commerce: ``global warming is unequivocal and
primarily human-induced.''
It is not my view. It is not Senator Boxer's view, not Senator
Schatz's view. That is the view of the U.S. Global Change Research
Program, which includes some of the major agencies of the U.S.
Government. By the way, clearly it is not just the U.S. Government or
agencies that believe that. There are agencies representing virtually
every country on Earth that have come to the same conclusion.
Now, when some people say: Well, there is a debate; the evidence is
not yet clear; the scientific community is not quite sure, let me clear
the air on that one. According to a study published in the journal
Environmental Research Letters in May of last year, more than 97
percent of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate supports
the view that human activity is a primary cause of global warming.

I believe I read yesterday that the minority leader,
Senator McConnell of Kentucky, was saying: Well, for every
person who believes that climate change is real, there is
another person who disagrees. Well, the polling indicates
that is not quite accurate. But what is really important is
not what this person feels or what that person feels, it is
what those people who have studied the issue extensively
believe. That is really what matters. And for those people--
the 97 percent of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on
this issue--they say very clearly that climate change is real
and that human activity is a primary cause of global warming.

I am reminded--I think Senator Boxer made this point a while ago--
that the debate we are having now is very reminiscent of the debate we
had 30 or 40 years ago about the role tobacco plays in cancer,
emphysema, heart conditions, and so forth. We had people, well-funded
by the Tobacco Institute, coming before the American people, putting
ads on television, saying: You know smoking is okay; there is no
evidence linking smoking to cancer.
Well, they were lying, as a matter of fact. Many of these people were
being funded by the Tobacco Institute. I think we are in the same
position now. A lot of the information--misinformation--which is coming
forward is funded by the fossil fuel industry. We should be clear about
that.
Is there still a scientific debate about anything related to climate?
What is the debate? Well, the only remaining scientific debates are
about just how devastating climate change will be. Of that, the
scientists are not exactly sure. There is a disagreement. Are we on
track for a 2-degree change by the end of the century? Will the planet
warm by 2 degrees? Will it warm by 4 degrees? Will it warm by 6
degrees? People are not exactly sure. But they are certainly sure that
it will warm. Will sea levels rise by 1 foot? Will they rise by 3 feet?
By 4 feet? Again, scientists are not clear. But they are absolutely
clear that sea levels will rise.
As a result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions, Earth's climate
warmed more between 1971 and 2000 than during any other 3-decade
interval in the last 1,400 years, reports a paper in the journal Nature
Geoscience, based on research conducted by 78 scientists from 24
nations, analyzing climate data from tree rings, pollen, cave
formations, ice cores, lake and ocean sediment, and historical records
from around the sea.
The globe has already warmed 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit from 1880 to
2012, and the vast majority of that warming, 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit,
has happened since 1950. According to NOAA, November 2013 was the
hottest November on record, and 2012 was the warmest year on record in
the contiguous United States, and saw at least 69,000 local heat
records set.
2013 was the fourth warmest year ever recorded since 1880. The World
Bank, no bastion of left-leaning environmental thinking, is among those
expressing grave concern about the trend. The World Bank concluded that
limiting the global temperature increase to 2 degrees centigrade might
allow us to keep sea level rise by 2100 to less than 2.3 feet.
Unfortunately, the World Bank also acknowledges we are on track for a
4-degree centigrade increase, which would result in extreme heat waves
and life-threatening sea level rise. Since 1901, the global sea level
has risen about 7.5 inches and it is getting worse; over the last 20
years seas have been rising nearly twice as fast.
All over the world glaciers and icepacks are melting. Glaciers in the
Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years.
Glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania have already shrunk by 80
percent and are expected to be completely gone by 2020. Greenland's ice
sheets lost ice at a rate of about 60 cubic miles per year between 2002
and 2011. This is six times faster than the ice was melting during the
decades before that. All of these impacts and more can be traced
directly to carbon emissions and their effect on the atmosphere.
In 2013, as the Presiding Officer knows, we witnessed an ominous
milestone: The daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million. The last time
CO2 levels were this high was probably between 2.2 million
and 3.6 million years ago, when it was so warm there were forests in
Greenland.
What does climate change mean? What are the consequences of global
warming? How is climate change already impacting our lives--not in 5
years, not in 50 years, but right now? For one thing, climate change is
making droughts in the Western United States and in other parts of the
world more severe, longer lasting, and more frequent. Scientists expect
the precipitation pattern will continue shifting, expanding the
geographic extent of the dry subtropics, leading to warmer and drier
weather, which then causes air temperatures to increase even more.
This helps explain why drought-stricken Texas saw the hottest summer
ever recorded for a U.S. State in 2011, leading to a combination of
drought and wildfires, costing $10 billion in damage, and the drought
continues. As of last month, Texas had only received 68 percent of its
normal rainfall between 2011 and 2013, and reservoirs are at their
lowest levels since 1990.
We should be very clear about this: When we talk about global
warming, we are talking about the globe, the global community, not just
the United States, not just Texas, not just California. Australia last
year endured an ``angry summer,'' which is what it was called, which
brought both the hottest month and the hottest day the country had ever
witnessed, and a 4-month heat

[[Page S1398]]

wave, severe wildfires, and torrential rains and flooding, causing $2.4
billion in damage.
Last year's heat wave in China was the worst in at least 140 years.
These droughts have very real consequences for water availability. Many
regions in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, for
example, are expected to experience a decline of 20 percent in water
availability if the climate warms 2 degrees centigrade and a 50-percent
decline if the climate warms by 4 degrees centigrade. What we are
talking about here is the inability of people to get water to drink,
the inability of people to get water to farm. This then leads to other
problems, including mass migrations and struggles of limited natural
resources.
With sustained drought and heat waves comes wildfire. As Thomas
Tidwell, Chief of the US Forest Service, explained to Congress last
year: America's wildfire season now lasts 2 months longer than it did
40 years ago--2 months longer than just 40 years ago--and burns up
twice as much land as it did then because of the hotter, drier
conditions from climate change.
We are seeing this very horrendous and expensive situation of
wildfires in the southwest of this country. The wildfires, in fact, are
expected to increase 50 percent across the United States under a
changing climate, while some studies predict increases of more than 100
percent in parts of areas of the Western United States by 2050. When
you think about climate change and you think about drier forests, we
are looking at very serious problems regarding wildfires.
Rising sea levels, another great concern and impact of climate
change, also lead to more destructive storm surges. According to NOAA,
Hurricane Sandy's storm surge exceeded 14 feet in places, which was a
record for New York City. The National Academy of Sciences estimated
every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit increase in global average surface
temperature could be a twofold to sevenfold increase in the risk of
extreme storm surge events similar to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.
When some people tell us: Well, gee, we cannot afford to address the
problems of climate change, I would suggest we cannot afford not to
address this crisis, if only for the kinds of money we are going to
have to be spending repairing the damage of hurricanes like Sandy, and
maybe hurricanes that are even worse.
We heard during a recent Senate environment committee hearing that
the State of Florida has already seen 5 to 8 inches of sea level rise
in the past 50 years, with no end in sight. In the Florida Keys we
expect that nearly 90 percent of Monroe County would be completely
inundated at high tide, with just 3 feet of sea level rise, and New
Orleans can expect to see an ocean level increase of well over 4 feet
by the end of the century.
In other words, what we are looking at here, in Florida, Miami,
Louisiana, New Orleans, Massachusetts, Boston, New York City, what we
are looking at is seas rising, which actually threatens the very
existence of parts of those cities.
Experts are predicting that cities such as Miami, Fort Lauderdale,
New York, and New Orleans will face a growing threat of partial
submersion within just a few decades as sea levels and storm surge
levels continue to climb. What will it mean if the seas continue to
rise and extreme weather events--severe drought, wildfires, storms,
flooding--become much more common? One of the most important
consequences will be massive human dislocation all over the world.
More than 32 million people fled their homes in 2012 because of
disasters such as floods and storms. An estimated 98 percent of this
displacement was related to climate change. So when you look into the
future--and one of the reasons that agencies such as the CIA and the
Department of Defense and other security agencies worry very much about
climate change is they see the national security implications of
massive dislocations of people in different States or regions of the
country fighting over limited resources, water, land, in order to
survive.
The Department of Defense, in its 2010 Quadrennial Review, called
climate change a potential ``accelerant of instability or conflict.''
The potential economic impact of climate change on agriculture, for
example, is huge. Water scarcity will make it harder to irrigate
fields, and higher temperatures will make some areas unsuitable for
growing crops. A study from the International Food Policy Research
Institute found that globally climate change will greatly increase
prices for staple crops such as corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans,
including an approximately 100-percent increase in the price of wheat.
What this means for Americans, for people all over the world who are
already struggling economically, is that climate change will mean less
areas being farmed and higher food prices, something we cannot afford
right now.
I think the question some viewers may have is, if the science is so
clear--and it really is quite clear here in the United States and
around the world--why do we not fix it? Why do we not come up with the
bold strategy we need so America is a leader in the world in cutting
greenhouse gas emissions and transforming our energy system? The good
news here is the transformation of our energy system is going to be
less expensive, if you like, than doing nothing.
Doing nothing means that we will see higher food prices, we will see
wildfires, we will see scarcities of food, and we will see weather
disturbances wreaking havoc on communities all over America and around
the world, requiring huge amounts of monies to address those problems.
What is the alternative? What do we begin to do?
The answer and the good news is that we--right now, today--have the
technology to begin the process of significantly transforming our
energy system. We know how to do it with today's technology, and that
technology will only be improved in months and years to come.
I will give a few examples of some of the good news that is happening
in terms of the ability that we now have to move to sustainable energy.
The cost of solar--which certainly will be one of the major
sustainable energy technologies that we look to in the future--
continues to plummet.
The Solar Energy Industries Association, in a report issued only last
week, reported that the average weighted cost of a solar PV system was
$2.59 per watt, a 15-percent drop from the year before.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, utility-scale
solar--perhaps the best comparison to utility-scale conventional
electricity generation--now costs on average 7.7 cents per kilowatt
hour compared to about 10 cents per kilowatt hour on average for power
plants now operating across the United States.
The cost of wind energy is also comparable to or even less than the
cost of other more traditional energy sources. The average cost of wind
power coming online between now and 2018 is estimated to be 8.6 cents
per kilowatt hour, even without including the value of the production
tax credit.
Moving to sustainable energies such as solar, wind, geothermal,
biomass, and hydropower clearly is something that we should be doing
very aggressively.
When we do that, we not only cut greenhouse gas emissions, we not
only significantly cut air pollution but in the process we create many
jobs as we transform our energy system. But sustainable energy is only
one part of the equation. What we must also do is invest very
significantly in energy efficiency and in sustainable energy. Every
dollar invested in efficiency and low-income households through the
Weatherization Assistance Program results in $2.53 in energy and
nonenergy benefits for a community.
I suspect the story is the same in Maine as it is in Vermont, but I
can remember meeting with two older women who were sisters. They lived
in Barre, VT, and they were able to get their homes weatherized. Their
home, as many of the homes in Vermont, was old, leaking energy, not
well insulated, did not have good windows, did not have good roofing,
and the heat was just going right through the walls. As a result of a
weatherization project in their home, their fuel bill went down by 50
percent.
These were seniors and low-income citizens. When we move in this
direction, we can save Americans substantial sums on their fuel bills.
We create local jobs. We cut greenhouse gas emissions. If that is not a
win-win-win situation, then I don't know what is.

[[Page S1399]]

It seems to me that we should be investing substantially in subsidies
such as the Investment Tax Credit and the Production Tax Credit. Every
dollar we invest in these efforts yields many more in savings.
It is also true that when some of my friends object to the government
helping to assist sustainable energies or putting money into energy
efficiency, they seem to forget that the very mature and very
profitable fossil fuel industry benefits very substantially from the
subsidies that we have provided them. In fact, American taxpayers are
set to give away over $100 billion to the oil, gas, and coal industries
over the next decade through a wide range of subsidies, tax breaks, and
loopholes.
If we can subsidize the coal industry, if we can subsidize ExxonMobil
and the oil industry, if we can subsidize the gas industry, we sure as
heck can subsidize and provide support for wind, solar, and other
sustainable energies.
I come to the end of my remarks and suggest the following: The time
is now for us to take bold and decisive action. As my colleague Senator
Franken mentioned, those of us who have kids--and I have four--and
those of us who have grandchildren--I have seven beautiful
grandchildren--they will look us in the eye 20 years from now and say:
Why did you let this happen? Didn't you know what was happening? Didn't
you understand what lack of action would do for our country and the
planet?
That is the issue we face. We need to have the courage now to stand
up to extremely wealthy and powerful forces in big energy--and that is
the coal companies, the oil companies, the gas companies--and come up
with an alternative vision for energy in America.
In that regard, I am proud to have joined with my colleague, the
chair of the environmental committee, Senator Barbara Boxer, to
introduce last year the Climate Protection Act.
Our bill does what, at the end of the day, every serious person
understands must be done, and that is to establish a fee on carbon
pollution emissions--an approach, by the way, endorsed not only by
progressives but also by moderates and even prominent conservatives
such as George Shultz, Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker, Mitt
Romney's former economic adviser Gregory Mankiw, former Reagan adviser
Art Laffer, and former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis.
In other words, there is an understanding that if we are to be
serious about addressing the need to cut carbon emissions, there has to
be a tax on those emissions.
Our legislation, which has been endorsed by, I believe, almost every
major environmental organization, does several things. What we do in a
very significant way is to invest in energy efficiency and
weatherization because that is the low-hanging fruit. What we also do
is invest, very significantly, in sustainable energy. Also,
importantly, in the event that folks are paying increased costs for
electricity or for other areas, much of the money is returned directly
to taxpayers.
Let me conclude by saying we can have an honest debate about the best
path forward to transform our energy system. This is complicated stuff,
and I don't think anyone has the magic answer, but we can debate that.
What we can no longer debate is whether climate change is real, whether
it is caused by human activity or whether it is today causing serious
harm to our country and serious damage all over this planet or whether
that devastation will only get worse in years to come.
Right now we have to summon up the courage to acknowledge that we are
in a crisis situation and that bold action is needed now. I happen to
believe that with the United States playing a leadership role, China,
India, Russia, and other major consumers of fossil fuels will follow
our leadership. Our credibility is not much if we are not what we are
talking about. If we want to lead the world, we have to act. This is
something our children, and our grandchildren expect of us and
something I hope we can, in fact, do.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. I thank my colleagues for drawing attention to this
critical issue and problem.
I want to start with the solution. The solution to climate change is
American innovation. The solution to climate change is American
innovation.
We have to get beyond the idea first that we need to choose between a
clean environment and a strong economy. We all want cleaner air and
water. We all want jobs. They don't have to contradict each other.
When we frame the debate as a conflict between an economy and the
environment, we talk past one another and we are not realistic about
our own history. This is, at the beginning, kind of a math problem.
According to the EPA's annual inventory of greenhouse gas emissions,
the U.S. pumped about 6 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere in 2005--6 billion tons.
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that putting this much
pollution into the air is bad for the planet, bad for our kids, and bad
for our grandkids. Most scientists tell us we need to reduce emissions
about 17 percent from that peak by 2020 and over 80 percent by about
2050 in order to contain climate change to manageable levels.
So the question is this. How do we establish the appropriate
incentives to get that number lower to produce energy more cleanly, at
prices we can afford, in quantities that support modern life.
We have to reduce pollution. We need to create jobs. Instead of
arguing which is more important, let's figure out how we can use
American innovation to do both.
My colleague from Vermont has talked a lot about some of the
evidence. It is important to pay attention to patterns. In Virginia, we
have huge areas of risk of the negative impacts of climate change,
especially sea-level rise, all effects that can be traced to carbon
pollution.
The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is the second-most populous part
of our State, 1.6 million people, and it is the second-most vulnerable
community on the east coast after New Orleans, the eastern half of the
United States, to sea-level rise.
Our second-largest area, which is the home of the largest
concentration of naval power in the world, and critical to our defense,
is deeply vulnerable to climate change.
In fact, I have friends who live in Hampton Roads in a historic
neighborhood where homes have been occupied for 150 years. In the last
15 years, their home has become completely unable to be occupied. They
cannot sell it. There is no way the bank will take it back, and there
is no way anyone will issue insurance to them.
In addition to being vulnerable because of our coast, our largest
industry in Virginia is agriculture and forestry. If we want to talk
about an industry that is affected by climate, that is our industry,
$70-plus billion a year of economic activity in our State--our largest
industry affected by climate.
Tourism is big in Virginia industry--outdoor tourism. That is $20-
plus billion a year. We are directly affected by climate, and we see
extreme weather patterns. It is not only a Katrina, a Sandy or an Ike.
It is the pattern of one after the next, droughts one after the next,
fire damage one after the next.
To use a recent example, we are having to deal with this in these
halls. We passed a flood insurance bill to delay sharp premium
increases for flood insurance policies that are subsidized by the
National Flood Insurance Program.
For those who weren't around when we had that debate, these increases
in premiums were not because of new beach homes that millionaires are
building on the flood plain out on the beach. No, these were policies
for homes whose owners had lived in them for decades. They were never
in flood plains before, but they are now in flood plains because of
sea-level rise.
My Portsmouth friends are people who fit into that category, with a
home that never had these challenges--that is now a home that they
cannot sell because of the sea-level rise in that area.
The debate in the Chamber focused on what it would cost to delay
premiums, how many people would be affected and impacted by the
solvency of this national program. The larger point is this: Premiums
are higher because flood risk is higher. When we see flood risk getting
higher in every coastal area of the country, we have to pay attention
to what the pattern tells us. If we don't, we are foolish.

[[Page S1400]]

Now, we have naysayers. There are two kinds of naysayers. There are
science deniers and leadership deniers, and I want to talk for a minute
about both. The first are a group of people who, despite the
overwhelming scientific consensus, say: Oh no, there is no scientific
evidence that humans affect climate change or that there is even any
change in the climate going on at all, despite this overwhelming
scientific consensus. The Senator from Vermont mentioned some quotes
from Members in this body who deny science exists.
To science deniers, I am happy to say that Virginians are pro-
science. We are pro-science. The quintessential Virginian, Thomas
Jefferson, was the preeminent scientist of his day. You cannot be a
proud Virginian and be anti-science. We accept the science in Virginia.
In fact, the polling overwhelmingly, among the Virginia public--and we
are not the bluest State in the country; we are a coal-producing State,
which I will get to in a minute--even in coal-producing Virginia, the
polling shows overwhelmingly that the Virginia public accepts that
humans are affecting climate, causing bad things to our economy, and we
have to do something about it.
Now, there is a second argument. It is not science denial; it is
leadership denial. These folks may not deny the climate science, but
they deny that the United States can or should be a leader in taking
steps. They say: Look, even if we reduce U.S. emissions to zero, it
wouldn't offset world emissions unless China or India did something, so
let's just not do anything.
It is just not the American way, folks, for us not to lead on
something as important as this. It is true that we need every country
to reduce emissions in the long run, but that is not an argument for
the United States to do nothing; that is an argument for the United
States to step up and be leaders.
Part of leadership is sending the right signals into the market at
the right time. That is one of the reasons I think it would be very
good if the President rejected the proposal to expand use of tar sands
oil in the Keystone Pipeline program. We ought to send the right
message right now. That is one of the most powerful things we could do
in our country and beyond to show we are going to be leaders.
It is very difficult to lead and impossible to get people to follow
if you are not willing to take a step as the most powerful and
innovative economy in the world. We are the largest economy in the
world, and we have been since 1890. We are the global economic leader.
We have a burden of leadership. And if we lead, we will succeed.
It is not too hard to reduce emissions. We can reduce them. In fact,
we are already starting. The Senator from Vermont mentioned this. I
mentioned that in 2005 the United States was putting 6 billion tons of
CO2 into the atmosphere. That was our base year. We have now
actually dipped down to 5.6 billion tons. We have reduced it since 2005
thanks to greater energy efficiency, natural gas, uptick in renewables,
and better fuel standards in our vehicles. So we are already on a
positive path. We are actually on the way to meeting our goal of
reducing emissions 17 percent by the year 2020. We are on the right
track; we just have to take more steps forward.
So what is the strategy we need? I hear the President sometimes and
others--and I may even use these words on occasion--talk about an ``all
of the above'' energy strategy, and I have decided I really don't like
that phrase. When I hear somebody say ``all of the above,'' it is like
when I ask one of my teenagers something and he says: ``Whatever.'' I
don't like ``whatever'' as an answer because it kind of sounds
indifferent and anything goes and who cares and what difference does it
make. ``All of the above'' kind of has that attitude a little bit.
Now, sure, we should use all of our energy resources--I get that--in
a comprehensive strategy, but what we really need is a comprehensive
strategy that reduces CO2 emissions--that reduces
CO2 emissions. Such a strategy to reduce emissions does mean
everything: wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and advanced biofuels. I
think it also means natural gas as bridge fuel to reduce our carbon
footprint; nuclear, if we can reduce costs and resolve disposal issues;
and, yes, coal, so long as we always work to make it burn cleaner.
This is my punch line of what we have to do: We have to do everything
cleaner tomorrow than we are doing it today--everything cleaner
tomorrow than we are doing it today.
We will have fossil fuels with us for some time, and we won't bring
emissions to zero anytime soon. But just because we can't immediately
go from 6 billion to zero tons of CO2, we can't rest in our
effort to reduce our CO2 every day a little bit more. On
fossil fuels, we have to take any progress we can that replaces dirty
with less dirty even if it doesn't get us the whole way. Over time, the
portion of our total energy footprint that is carbon based will get
smaller as we develop more noncarbon alternatives, and it will also get
cleaner as we reduce carbon-based energy emissions with better
technology.
This is why I am against dirty fossil fuels, such as tar sands, which
make us dirtier tomorrow than today. I want to be cleaner tomorrow than
today. Tar sands oil is about 15 to 20 percent dirtier than
conventional oil. Let's not be dirtier tomorrow than today. We have the
trendline moving in the right direction. We are reducing CO2
emissions. Let's be cleaner tomorrow than today. Why would we embrace
tar sands oil and backslide to be dirtier tomorrow? The bottom line is
that we have to create energy cleaner tomorrow than today.
Remember, it is a math problem--6 billion tons a year. We have 6 more
years to reduce it 17 percent, 36 years to reduce it by more than 80
percent. So we have our goal. We have our goal. We have to give
innovators the tools they need to meet it. Since innovators will solve
this problem, here is the really fundamental challenge. This is the
fundamental challenge. Will Americans be the innovators? See,
innovation will solve this problem. Will Americans be the innovators or
will we bury our heads in the tar sands and let other nations'
innovators be the ones who grab leadership in this new energy economy.
I don't want to bury my head in the tar sands. I want us to be the
leader. Will we create the new technologies and sell them to other
nations or will we be late to the game and have to buy all the
technologies from other nations?

The good news is, as I said, we are already on our way to the 2020
goal, so we don't have to make it all dire. Let's celebrate a little
success and then figure out how to accelerate our success.
The transportation sector, the fuel economy standards for cars,
changing to natural gas in power production--all these things have
helped us move toward lesser emissions. Wind is the fastest growing
source of new electricity capacity in the world and in the United
States, even above natural gas, which is growing rapidly. In a few
years Virginia will be contributing, with some of the first offshore
wind turbines near Virginia Beach.
I would like to talk now for a second about a specific Virginia issue
because I am not sure how many folks who are in this all-nighter
speaking on this come from States that have coal and have produced
coal, and Virginia does. I want to talk about coal for a second.
EPA is expected to issue standards later this year on reducing
pollution from coal-fired powerplants, and, in fact, there is already
talk on the other side of introducing a bill to repeal the regulation
before the regulation has even come out. I am not exactly sure that is
kosher, but I suspect we will be having that debate later.
There is a natural anxiety in a coal-producing region such as
southwest Virginia. That is where my wife's family is from. It is five
counties in southwest Virginia. They are hard-hit counties. Coal is a
big part of their economy, and traditionally it has been. We mine as
much coal today in Virginia as we did 50 years ago with one-tenth of
the workers because it is a heavily mechanized industry, but there are
jobs at stake. And it is not just jobs; coal has been traditionally low
priced, and so the issue that is important--and even States that don't
have any coal often use a lot of coal to produce power, and the low
price has been helpful to consumers who rely on cheap and abundant
electricity made possible by coal.
Coal has been hit hard in some recent years, but I disagree
fundamentally

[[Page S1401]]

with the cynical argument that is made by some--mostly in the coal
industry--who blame coal's woes on a regulatory ``war on coal.'' When I
talk to folks in the industry, they are always talking about there is a
Federal ``war on coal.''
I am going to tell you what is hurting coal. What is hurting coal is
innovation and natural gas. Innovation in the natural gas industry has
brought natural gas prices down, and utilities are deciding to use
natural gas rather than coal. That is what is hurting coal these days,
and we ought to take a lesson from that. Innovation is driving
environmental cleanliness. Innovation is driving lower cost. The
solution is not to stop innovation. The solution is not to shake your
fist and blame regulation. The solution is to innovate.
Coal currently accounts for 37 percent of U.S. electricity generation
and about the same percentage in Virginia. Today we don't have 37
percent of anything else that can step right in and replace coal, which
means we need coal and we are going to be using it for a while.
Since we need to reduce emissions--do it cleaner tomorrow than
today--and we are going to need coal for a while, the challenge is to
convert coal to electricity more efficiently and with less pollution
than we do today. We have to innovate to make coal cleaner for that
portion of the pie chart. I learned this as Governor working to permit
a state-of-the-art coal plant in Wise County, VA. It opened in 2012. It
is designed in a way that dramatically reduces sulfur dioxide, nitrous
oxide, mercury emissions, and water use. It was also a plant that was
only permitted when the company that wanted it agreed to take a dirty
coal plant--one that preexisted the Clean Air Act and was grandfathered
in for all of its pollution--and to convert that to natural gas. That
was innovative. The fuel mix of this plant needed to run the burners
accommodates biomass and waste coal as well.
If we can use innovative practices to reduce these emissions, we can
do the same with carbon emissions. But coal cannot stand still, let
others innovate, and then complain if it is not competitive. Coal has
to be as innovative as everything else, and we have to figure out ways
to assist.
That is why I support Federal investments in advanced fossil energy
research and development. Last fall the Energy Department made
available $8 billion in advanced fossil energy loan guarantee authority
for low carbon fossil technologies. I advocated for appropriations for
fossil energy R&D, and there is a strong boost for those programs in
the omnibus budget bill. There is a great Center for Coal & Energy
Research at Virginia Tech that is doing some of this research that can
help us take that portion of the pie chart, make it cleaner, and over
time make it smaller as we expand noncarbon energy.

We have to make sure the upcoming standards the EPA will put out are
ambitious and appropriate incentives to get cleaner and disincentives
to get dirtier and at the same time avoid catastrophic disruptions in
reliability or affordability.
I am going to come back and conclude where I started. Remember, when
I started I said I am going to give a solution. The solution to climate
change is American innovation, and I want to finish there.
Reducing CO2 emissions is a hard problem, maybe harder
than any pollution problem we face because most pollutants tend to come
from a particular economic sector, but CO2 comes from
transportation and buildings and manufacturing and power production--
all sectors. So the solution won't be simple. But we do not have to
accept the false choice of an environment against the economy. Instead,
we just need to innovate to find the solution. That is the innovation
challenge we have.
I make it a habit--apparently unlike some of my colleagues here--to
never bet against American innovation. We are the Nation that said we
would put a man on the Moon in a decade with computers that had less in
them than your cell phones do, and we did it. We are the Nation that
harnessed the power of the atom. We are the Nation that unwrapped the
riddle of DNA and are now using that knowledge to cure disease. Nobody
should ever bet against American innovation.
In fact, we have already shown it again and again, that innovation
and regulation--smart regulation--can help us tackle pressing
environmental problems.
When we were kids and my wife was growing up in Richmond, where we
now live, nobody--and I mean nobody--fished or swam in the James River
in downtown Richmond. You would be taking your life into your hands if
you swam or if you ate fish you caught in that river because of ketone
pollution, other industrial pollution, and poor treatment of municipal
solid waste. But the Nation passed the Clean Water Act and we got
serious about cleaning up our rivers.
Naysayers said: It will damage the economy. It will bring our economy
to its knees.
But come and see what the Clean Water Act has meant to my hometown.
You can swim or fish in the James River today, and you can eat the fish
you catch. You can see herons and bald eagles there that were never
there before. You can see residents and tourists who flock to the James
River because they enjoy it.
It took a law, it took some tough regulations, it took American
ingenuity in finding new ways to clean up industrial and municipal
waste, but we did it, and our environment and economy are better off as
a result.
When we needed to reduce nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions
because of acid rain, industry said that any new law would be a
burdensome job killer, just as they are saying today. But President
George H.W. Bush worked with Congress to pass a cap-and-trade law to
bring down these emissions. After the new law, somebody invented the
catalytic converter. After the new law, somebody invented the sulfur
scrubber. Not only weren't they burdensome job killers, they improved
air quality, and they created jobs for American companies that
manufacture catalytic converters and sulfur scrubbers, and our economy
and environment are better off as a result.

Not long ago we heard requiring automakers to make cars which got
better gas mileage would be devastating to the American auto industry.
But President Obama struck a deal with the industry, and guess what.
The quest to build more fuel-efficient vehicles helped revitalize an
American auto industry which was on its back. Plants operating with
skeleton crews just sweeping the floors at night now have multiple
shifts making better vehicles which save drivers more money every day.
The skeptics were loud, but we moved ahead with smart regulation and
American innovation, and our environment and economy are better off as
a result.
It is the skeptics and the deniers who fight against these strategies
who are actually naive, because again and again they always claim that
taking steps to help the environment will hurt the economy, and again
and again they have been proven wrong. Protecting the environment is
good for the economy and good for the planet.
So I say to the skeptics of whatever variety, climate denier or
leadership denier, don't underestimate American innovation. We can
solve the problem of climate change for the good of the economy and the
good of the planet. The story of American innovation is a story of
solving the hard problems, and I know we can solve this one.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I appreciate the words of my colleague
from Virginia, especially his focus on innovation and how it must be a
major part of the solution to our climate change problem.
As I look around the Chamber and see Senators from Vermont, Virginia,
Hawaii, California, we may be 5,000 miles apart, but what unites us
today--including the Presiding Officer's home State of Maine--is the
focus on climate change and the recognition we are connected by the
impact of global climate change. It is time for Congress to wake up and
tackle this issue. This is why we are staying up all night tonight to
make that major point.
The consequences of climate change include rising seas and larger
tidal surges for seaside communities, the devastating drought and water
shortage we are seeing in California, extreme weather harming the
habitat for

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native animals in Hawaii, but it also impacts the Midwest, which I
don't think is the first area of the country people think about where
we are seeing climate change problems.
We have seen increased potential in my home State of Minnesota for
extreme weather wreaking havoc on our local economies, particularly
those anchored in forestry and farming. In Minnesota we export about
one-third of our agricultural production which contributes
significantly to our country's record high agricultural trade surplus
of $38 billion. This is a major part of our economy and the second
biggest industry in my State.
The 2012 drought in Minnesota threatened our ability to produce the
food needed to feed a growing world. Look at our lakes and our rivers.
For many years our snowmobilers, the tourism industry, and ice fishers
couldn't even get out. They had to cancel many activities because--not
this year but many years before--we had issues with the heat in the
middle of the winter. We certainly have issues with the heat in the
summer.
What is this industry? Every year nearly 2 million people fish in our
lakes and streams, and close to 700,000 people hunt our fields and
forests nationwide. The hunting and fishing industry is valued at $95.5
billion a year and brings in $14 billion in direct tax revenue. This is
why, as a member of the farm bill conference committee, we worked very
hard with conservation groups such as Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants
Forever to make sure we had strong conservation protection in the bill
and new ideas, such as the sod saver provision Senator Thune and I
introduced and got signed into law.
For the people of our State, the economic impact of climate change is
about their livelihood. It is about a way of life. I mentioned the 2012
drought. It was the worst drought since 1956 and cost over $30 billion
in damage nationwide. The drought was uneven in our State. For one
farmer their crops were fine; in the next county crops would be
devastated. At the same time, as some farmers were experiencing not
enough rain, farmers in other parts of our State actually lost their
crops due to flash floods.
Research which looks at weather changes in Minnesota indicates that
extreme weather events, which include heavy rainfall, are becoming more
and more frequent. These are costs borne heavily by farmers, ranchers,
and consumers. These production costs lose revenue, they lose supply,
and they drive up costs at the grocery store for everyone.
One of the things I don't think people always think about when they
think about the economic connection with climate change--in the Midwest
we think about our crops; we think about extreme weather, with
tornadoes, flash floods, and extreme heat and drought. But it actually
affects the transportation of goods to market.
In 2012 Lake Superior was near its lowest level in the last 80 years,
impacting our ability to transport cargo. It is simple: The heat was
there, the water wasn't. The barges couldn't be filled all the way
because the water was simply too shallow. Why is this happening? In the
years when we don't have solid ice cover, the ice is melting more
quickly so the water evaporates and you see lower water levels in
places such as Lake Superior.
This isn't just a problem for Lake Superior; it is also a critical
issue impacting the shipping industry on the Mississippi River. The
Mississippi moves hundreds of millions of tons of goods, such as corn,
grain, coal, and petroleum. The Mississippi River starts in Minnesota.
In Minnesota one can actually walk over the Mississippi at Itasca State
Park. The 2012 drought led to low water conditions which made barge
travel down the Mississippi very difficult. If shipping were completely
cut off, as was possible, the economic repercussions would be severe.
If barge traffic is disrupted, cargo valued at over $7 billion could
experience shipping delays, including 300 million bushels of farm
products, 3.8 million tons of coal, and 5 million barrels of
domestically produced crude oil. A prolonged shipping delay would be
devastating to the bottom lines of farmers, businesses, and common
citizens. These are just a few examples of the economic costs of
climate change.
Global climate change is a challenge with so many dimensions, some
moral, some economic, some scientific, and I will spend a few minutes
talking about the science. My colleague from Virginia talked about
Virginia being the home of science. I kind of wanted to break in and
say we have the Mayo Clinic. Minnesota is truly a home of science. We
are the home of great medical institutions. We helped launch the green
revolution in agriculture with University of Minnesota alumni Norman
Borlaug one-half century ago. We have brought the world everything from
the pacemaker to the Post-it note. We believe in science.
As we know, climate change doesn't mean every day we will have a
hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico or every day will be as hot and sticky
as a 100-degree, humid Minnesota afternoon. But scientists say we are
sure to see more days outside the range of normal, which includes
extremes of all kinds.
In fact, scientists at NASA found that at 2013, factoring all the
cold temperatures Minnesotans bravely endured last year, the United
States was still warmer by 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit than the mid-20th
century average.
The last time the United States had a below-average annual
temperature was 1976. Climate change means simply, over time, the
average temperature is getting warmer and weather patterns are changing
and becoming less predictable. How many times have we heard in our
States: This is the hottest summer I can remember. I can't believe it
warmed up this quickly. I can't believe the ice is melting this
quickly.
The debate on whether climate change is happening should be over. The
facts are in and the science is clear.
The National Academy of Sciences finds climate change is occurring,
is very likely caused primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases
from human activities, and poses significant risk for a range of human
and natural systems. We know certain kinds of gases, including carbon
dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, absorb or trap the Sun's heat as
it bounces off the Earth's surface.
This wouldn't be such a big problem except that carbon dioxide
doesn't dissipate quickly. It stays in the atmosphere for five decades
or more, causing Earth's temperatures to rise. This means most of the
carbon dioxide produced in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is still
in the atmosphere. It means carbon dioxide produced today will still be
in the atmosphere in 2050 and beyond. This carbon dioxide-trapping heat
is in our atmosphere. Over time, it means global temperatures rise; in
turn, sea levels rise, both because water expands and glaciers melt.
The 2013 draft National Climate Assessment found human-induced
climate change is projected to continue and accelerate significantly if
emissions of these heat-trapping gases continue to increase.
In short, there is robust scientific evidence that human climate
change is occurring. Climate change is impacting our Nation's systems
in significant ways, and that is likely to accelerate in the future.
The result is ocean levels are rising, glaciers are melting, violent
weather events are increasing, and certainly we have seen them in my
State.
When it comes to climate and environmental policy, I think we all
know we have seen gridlock in this country, just as we have seen in so
many ways--despite the Presiding Officer's good efforts as the Senator
from Maine in trying to break through and mine as someone who came out
of a background which wasn't at all partisan. I was involved early on
in Kent Conrad's bipartisan energy group during my first few years in
the Senate, where we were trying to forge some kind of a compromise on
a policy approach to energy and the environment which brought people
together. We were stymied in our effort. I served on the environmental
committee for many years under Senator Boxer's leadership. We were
again stymied in our efforts.
As I look back at the moments where we could actually move on the
issue, where the Nation was captivated, I think we blew it.
We blew it when President Bush stood before the American people after
9/11; and if he had truly sold the Nation on energy independence from
the countries involved in that tragic historic moment, if he had made
the case for a

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new American energy agenda, I believe 80 percent of Americans then
would have said sign me up. That didn't happen.
The second moment we lost was during the summer of 2008. The
Presiding Officer wasn't a Senator then; I was a brandnew Senator. We
actually took action. We raised gas mileage standards for the first
time since I was in junior high. We also made some energy efficiency
improvements. I called them ``building a bridge to the next century.''
But we fell short of one important thing, and we didn't just fall
short. We fell one vote short of beating the filibuster to get a
national renewable electricity standard like we have in Minnesota. That
was a lost moment by one vote.
The third moment we lost was when President Obama first came into
office. We had some new Senators. We were in the middle of a downturn.
It was an incredibly tough time. But I still believe, as I have said
many times, if we had moved forward on a renewable electricity standard
at that time in those first 6 months with those new Senators, we would
have passed it with the House of Representatives. We chose to do some
other things with the environmental committees. We passed a bill, but
we were, unfortunately, unable to get it done on the Senate floor. That
is where we are.
So when is the next opportunity? The next opportunity is now. We have
the potential for leadership on energy. We have the potential because
of the people in this country--the innovators Senator Kaine so
eloquently talked about. I continue to be optimistic. I wouldn't be
standing here late at night if I wasn't. This desk is the desk of
Hubert Humphrey, who was known as the Happy Warrior. He was willing to
tackle anything which came his way.
Why am I optimistic? The first is the leadership of Gina McCarthy at
the EPA. Her background working with Republican Governors, her
reputation among business leaders as being tough but fair, and her
experience navigating the ways of Washington make her well suited to
look at the bigger picture issues.
As someone who comes from an agricultural state, I understand full
well how the EPA can sometimes get bogged down in minor issues from my
perspective, taking on things that create a huge firestorm that
actually do not solve the problem. I believe this Administrator, Gina
McCarthy, is going to look at the larger mission of the EPA, especially
when it comes to climate change.
Secondly, I am optimistic because we still have some good happening
here. There is some realism going on in Congress. The Washington Post
ran an editorial last fall where the editorial board wrote:

The overriding problem is that Congress hasn't faced up to
the global warming threat. Instead of updating clean air
rules and building a policy that addresses the unique
challenge of greenhouse emissions, it has left the EPA and
the courts with a strong but sometimes ambiguous law that
applies imperfectly to greenhouse gas emissions.

That is true, and that is why we have something to do here.
Given the current mix right now, given what we are facing on this
issue, I still believe.
What can we do this year? This year we can be pragmatic. We can
foster leadership. We passed the farm bill. It had good measures in it
for conservation and the environment.
Another example is the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill which
contains a range of policies that would reduce residential, commercial,
and industrial use. Not every bill is supported with everyone from the
Chamber and NAM to many environmental groups. This bill is.
This leads to my third reason for hope. There are a lot of businesses
out there that realize they cannot afford the pure cost of the old way
of doing things. More and more businesses are seeing the good in going
green, whether it is Walmart in its push toward energy efficiency or
Apple which is working toward a goal of getting 100 percent of its
energy from renewables.
The fourth reason to be positive is because there are some current
economic positives and market changes out there that are actually
moving in the right direction. We have reduced our dependency on
foreign oil in just the last 7 years from 60 percent to 40 percent. It
is a combination of things. Yes, some of the natural gas and drilling
in North Dakota is a major force, but we also have stronger vehicle gas
mileage standards. We have biofuel. We have cleaner fuel. We are moving
on a number of fronts.
Look at the efforts on the State level ranging from the rules in
Texas that are helping to encourage the construction of transmission
lines bringing wind energy from the plains to the homes and businesses,
to Colorado's strong renewable portfolio standard and the use of woody
biomass for power.
I would add my own State of Minnesota where we have a renewable
electricity standard requiring 25 percent of electricity coming from
renewable sources by 2025. Xcel Energy, our largest utility, is on its
way to meet their even more ambitious standard. By law they will get 30
percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. I have met
with their CEO. They are more than on their way to meeting that
standard. They believe in wind. They believe in renewable.
The bill we passed in Minnesota, which could be a model for the
Nation, has overwhelming bipartisan support. It had bipartisan support,
and when it passed, nearly every legislator voted for it and it was
signed into law by former Governor Tim Pawlenty.
What does this mean? The investment in renewable energy and energy
efficiency technology means that Xcel is actually on its path to reduce
its greenhouse emissions by 31 percent. Xcel will cut its emissions a
full 11 percentage points by 2020, more than the standards proposed by
the passed cap-and-trade law that came out of the environment
committee.
Minnesota Power is another utility in our State that is working to
meet the State's renewable portfolio standard by bringing more wind
energy onto the grid. They are looking to keep costs low to their
consumers by using Canadian hydropower to back up their wind resources.
Because the wind doesn't always blow in Minnesota, the hydropower will
act as a battery, storing energy when there is too much on the grid,
and providing electricity when it is needed. By working together we can
get more wind and solar energy on the grid in a way that provides
reliable service and keeps prices low for our consumers.
The Rural Electric Co-op also implemented another way to make better
use of wind energy in Minnesota, to make our goal of 25 percent by
2025. They installed large capacity hot water heaters in people's
basements. How can something as basic and boring as a hot water heater
play a role in reducing energy consumption and climate change? The hot
water heaters are only turned on at night when the wind blows the
strongest and the demand for energy is the lowest. In the morning when
people wake up and turn on their lights, the heater is already off. The
wind energy is stored in the form of hot water that can be used
throughout the day. Heating water is a major source of energy
consumption and our co-op could find a way to provide an important
service in a way that incentivizes wind development and saves consumers
money.
It was the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who said that ``the
states are the laboratories of democracy.'' We are certainly seeing
that right now with energy and environmental policy.
I would like to see a major Federal policy back at those moments that
I went through back when Bush was President and the tragedy of 9/11
occurred, back when we had that vote in the summer, when we missed the
renewable electricity standard by just one vote. But I am hopeful that
we are going to get back to a point where compromise is possible in
Washington, and we will get there just as the American people have
demanded. And when we get there, we know that the States are useful
models for how to get this done.
Before we can act on a comprehensive national blueprint for climate
policy in this country, we need to bring together Americans who share
these values and speak with a common voice. We are starting that
discussion tonight. The message is to get Congress to wake up and get
this job done.
As I close, I think about this challenge and I recall a prayer from
the

[[Page S1404]]

Ojibwe people in Minnesota. Their philosophy told them that the
decisions of great leaders are not made for today, not made for this
generation, but leaders must make decisions for those who are seven
generations from them. That would be an Ojibwe philosophy, that led
them to take care of their land. This is now a part of our burden and
our challenge as we approach this issue. I have always believed we
should be stewards of the land.
In the past, leaders from both parties--you know this so well from
me--have worked to protect our land, keep our air and water clean.
President Theodore Roosevelt took executive action to create the
National Parks System which Ken Burns famously called ``America's best
idea.''
Congress has come together to make great progress to protect our
natural resources. The 1970 Clean Air Act passed in the Senate 73-0 and
the House by a vote of 371-1. The Clean Water Act in the House, the
final vote was over 10-1 in favor of this landmark legislation to
protect our water.
Global climate change is our generation's challenge to solve. It is
our generation's challenge. I believe if we work together
constructively, we can address this threat. We can be stewards of our
world.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I am honored to be joining Senator Schatz
who has been working with Senator Whitehouse and with Senator Boxer to
put together this very important discussion, very important evening.
While we are discussing climate change, I thought I would first talk
a little bit about baseball. Something very funny happened in baseball.
From 1920 all the way through the entire modern baseball history, the
average number of players who hit more than 40 homeruns in a season was
3. That is all--Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle,
Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio. No matter who was playing in the United
States, the average number of players was 3.3 who made it over 40
homeruns in a season.
Then something very strange started to happen. All of a sudden there
was a dramatic spike in the number of players who could hit more than
40 homeruns. In 1996 it went up to 17 players all of a sudden, with an
average of only 3.3 who hit more than 40 homeruns. Year after year the
same thing was occurring.
Then it occurred to someone, maybe they are injecting these players
with steroids. Now some people said, no, the ballparks are getting
smaller, maybe they are corking the bats, maybe they are juicing the
baseball. But, no, it turned out that they were injecting steroids into
baseball players. And all of a sudden the average of 3.3 players
averaging more than 40 homeruns in a season had spiked to three and
four times that, until Major League Baseball decided that they were
going to test for steroids. A very strange thing started to happen. The
average number of players hitting more than 40 homeruns went right back
down to the traditional average.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, NOAA has the same kind of chart for our
climate. NOAA has been able to do the calculation going back to 1880 of
what the average temperature is on the planet. As you can see, it
stayed at a pretty current level until all of a sudden, especially
beginning in the 1970s, there is a dramatic spike. As we all know, 20
of the warmest 30 years ever registered have occurred in the last 30
years. As we all know, the fourth warmest year of all time ever
recorded occurred just last year, 2013. But we haven't applied the same
steroids equivalent test for this change in temperature. We have a
pretty good idea of what has happened because scientists all across the
United States agree on this issue: It is manmade. The chemicals we are
putting into the atmosphere are causing the same kind of chemicals
ballplayers were putting into their bodies were causing in the dramatic
rise in the number of homeruns that were being hit in Major League
Baseball.
(Ms. KLOBUCHAR assumes the Chair.)
This is basically an obvious correlation between what we are doing as
human beings and impact on the world in which we live. And just as
those homeruns went up when the players used chemicals, so too has the
temperature on the planet. And the same distortions that occurred in
our national pastime are now occurring on our planet.
Ladies and gentlemen, the planet is running a fever, but there are no
emergency rooms for planets. There are no hospitals to go to. We have
to engage in preventive care. We have to put in place the measures that
reduce dramatically the likelihood that we are going to see the worst
catastrophic effects of this dangerous warming of our planet.
If you are still skeptical, perhaps the findings of another skeptic,
Dr. Richard Muller and his colleagues at the Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature Project, will reassure you. Let me quote from Dr. Muller's
July 2012 New York Times column entitled ``The Conversion of a Climate
Change Skeptic.'' Here is what he said:

Our current understanding of human influence on climate change rests
on 150 years of wide-ranging scientific observations and research. It
is informed by what we see today with our own eyes measured by our own
hands. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are melting, sea
levels are rising, extreme downpours are increasing. The ocean is
becoming more acidic.
But climate change is more than just numbers in a scientist's book.
In my home State of Massachusetts it is having tangible impacts now. My
State, Massachusetts, loses an average of 49 football fields of land to
rising sea levels each and every year. Rates of sea level rise from
North Carolina to Massachusetts are two to four times faster than the
global average. Extreme downpours and snowfall in New England have
increased by 85 percent since 1948.
According to scientists at the University of New Hampshire, New
England winters have become 4 degrees warmer on average since 1965. In
other words, we now have in New England the same weather that
Philadelphia had in 1965. We are 4 degrees warmer than we were in New
England in 1965. We have Philadelphia's weather. Thank God in Boston we
do not have their athletic teams, but we do have their weather and it
is getting warmer.
In Massachusetts and most of New England, spring has sprung 5 days
earlier on average than it did in the latter part of the 20th century.
Around the iconic Walden Pond, plants now flower 10 days earlier on
average than they did in the 1850s, according to the careful records
kept by Henry David Thoreau. Our iconic cod have been moving north as
ocean temperatures warm. Cod need cold water. As the ocean warms, they
are moving farther and farther north. In Massachusetts, Cape Cod is our
iconic beach front, ocean front, and fishing front. The cod are moving
north and away from our State because they need cold water.
The coastal communities that depend upon them are being affected
negatively by the absence of these fish. Scientists are just beginning
to understand the consequences of the increasingly acidic ocean on
scallops, lobsters, and plankton, which are the base of the food chain
in the gulf of Maine.
As Dr. Aaron Bernstein, from the Harvard School of Public Health, has
written, climate change is a health threat, no less consequential than
cigarette smoking. Increasing temperatures increase the risk for bad
air days, and in turn it increases the risk of asthma attacks. It is
worse for people with lung disease.
I have two stories. Rachel is from Cambridge and Sylvia is from
Amherst. Their moms talked about the impact of pollution on the health
of their children. I think it is important for us to understand that
asthma and other illnesses that are created by pollution are
preventable but only if we here in the Senate put in place the policies
that make it possible for us to reduce the risk to these young people
all across our country.
I strongly support all of the efforts the Members are putting
together tonight to focus on this issue. It is not

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just the planet, it is the children of the planet who are negatively
impacted by all of this additional pollution. Left unchecked, the
impacts of climate change will only become worse in the future.
An analysis by the Sandia National Lab found that changes in rainfall
alone could cost Massachusetts $8 billion in GDP and nearly 38,000 jobs
between 2010 and 2050. That is Massachusetts alone. New England could
see a $22 billion hit to our GDP and almost 100,000 jobs lost from
changing precipitation patterns. Sea-level rise will also threaten
coastal communities where one-third of the Massachusetts population
lives.
The seas are getting hotter and they are getting higher. Those
hotter, higher seas are making storms more damaging. Storm surges on
top of sea-level rise could cause hundreds of billions in damages to
cities on the Massachusetts coast during the next decade.
In 1775 Paul Revere warned Massachusetts revolutionaries of an
invasion coming from the sea. With climate change, Boston and the Bay
State could face an invasion of the sea itself in Massachusetts and all
across New England.
As sea levels rise and storms become more severe, many of Boston's
best known landmarks will be threatened, including Faneuil Hall, Quincy
Market, North Station, Fan Pier, Copley Church, John Hancock Tower, the
Public Garden. The Back Bay will revert to its original personality as
a bay.
We have to be realistic about this. The threats are there. The
scientists are warning us. This can happen. There but for the grace of
God and a few degrees, Hurricane Sandy would have damaged the city of
Boston. We have been warned. Anyone who hasn't been hit by a Hurricane
Sandy yet has been warned. It is coming, and it will be worse than
Hurricane Sandy.
By the end of this century, Massachusetts summers could feel like
North Carolina's summer--not Philadelphia. By the end of the century,
the temperatures are going to keep warming. By 2100, Maine could be the
only State in New England that still has a skiing industry. That is how
rapidly the snows are disappearing. The economic impact of climate
change isn't confined to New England because we already feel the cost
of climate disruption. The GAO added climate change to its 2013 high-
risk list based in large part on two reports they did at my request.
GAO found that climate change presents a significant financial risk to
the Federal Government. GAO could just as easily say it presents a
significant financial risk for all of America.
As daunting as the impacts of climate change are, the good news is we
have the solutions to address it. We can generate good jobs in America
that are also good for saving all of creation.
With wind and solar, we have a tale of two tax policies. Here is the
solar industry in the United States. Back in 2007, there was a
production of perhaps 200 megawatts of electricity from solar. It was
at the dawn of the solar industry. It wasn't as though the Sun had not
been up there or that the technologies did not exist or could not have
been created in order to capture it, but the tax policies were not
there.
In 2008, Congress passed a law which added an 8-year tax incentive
for the solar industry. We can see what happened to this industry. It
had been denigrated for years--up until last year when there was 5,000
new megawatts. Think of five Seabrook nuclear powerplants of
electricity generated by solar in 1 year. That tax break stays on the
books until the end of 2016, and by the end of 2016, there is an
expectation that 10,000 new megawatts of solar will be installed in the
United States in 1 year, ladies and gentlemen, if we keep those tax
breaks on the books. We can see what happens when there is a
consistent, predictable tax policy on the books.
Let me show you another tax policy. This is the tax policy for the
wind industry. The wind industry has not had the same good fortune
which the solar industry has had. Every time there is a tax policy that
is put on the books, wind starts to build upwards of 2,000 megawatts in
2001, but then the tax policy evaporated and it collapsed as an
industry. When we put it back on the books, it went back up to 2,000
megawatts. It expired at the end of that year and collapsed again.
In 2005, we put a policy on the books that began to see the kind of
installation of wind that we knew was possible from the beginning of
time. We all knew it. We all knew the Dutch were right with those
windmills. We all knew there was something to it, but there was no tax
policy that was consistent, until we reached 2012 when,
unbelievably, 13,000 new megawatts of wind was installed in the United
States--13 nuclear powerplants. There is only 100,000 megawatts of
nuclear power in the United States after 70 years of tax subsidies.
Look at what happened with wind in 1 year--13,000 megawatts. But then
it expired, and it collapsed down to only 2,000 megawatts in the year
2013.

That is our challenge, ladies and gentlemen. If we give the same kind
of predictable tax and policy treatment to these renewable energy
resources that were given to the oil industry over the last century,
they have a lot to worry about. By the way, you don't have to worry
about the oil or the gas industry. Their tax policies stay the same.
Through the good times and the bad times, the oil industry keeps the
same tax breaks on the books. They know they can rely upon that. Those
two industries know the $7 billion in tax breaks they rely upon are
going to be there year after year after year.
Let's talk about what else can happen in other industries. Let's talk
about the automotive industry. The Senator from Minnesota just talked
about the fuel economy standards we put on the books. Look what
happened since the fuel economy standards were put on the books and
implemented by Barack Obama. George Bush did not implement them. I am
proud to be the host author of those fuel economy standards, but it
took Barack Obama to put them on the books--54.5 miles per gallon by
the year 2026. Look what has happened. We are now nearing 600,000
hybrids, plug-in vehicles, and all-electric vehicles per year. It is
skyrocketing. Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler are reporting record
profits and record sales. People will buy them, but you have to create
the policy in the country.
By the way, that one policy--the fuel economy standards that were put
on the books in 2007 in this body, and over in the House of
Representatives--backs out 4 million barrels of oil per day that we
import into our country by the year 2040 when all of these standards
that we put on the books are finally implemented.
How much is that? The United States imports 3 million barrels of oil
a day from the Persian Gulf. We are backing out 4 million barrels just
by putting together a policy that incentivizes the industry to invest
in the kinds of technologies that Americans want to buy and citizens
around this planet want to buy. Wind, solar, hybrids, all-electric
vehicles--it is all there. It is what we can do in order to create jobs
and at the same time save the planet.
I will talk about some other numbers that I believe are really
relevant. The coal industry now has 80,000 employees. The wind industry
has 80,000 employees in the United States. We saw how low it was in
2007. Well, they now have 80,000 employees. The solar industry has
142,000 employees. Coal only has 80,000 employees. We saw what happened
from the moment that predictable tax policy went on the books until
today, and it is continuing to go off the charts, but we know there
will be people who are going to be out here fighting to take away those
tax breaks and will compromise the ability of the EPA or the Department
of Transportation to keep those standards on the books.
Back in the 1990s, I was the chairman of the Telecommunications
Committee in the House of Representatives, and I was able to put three
bills on the books. One bill created the 18-inch satellite dish,
another one created the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth cell phone
license. That is what drove the price of a phone call from 50 cents a
minute down to 10 cents a minute. It was 1996 when you started to have
one of these devices in your pocket. At 50 cents a minute, you didn't
have one. By the way, it was the size of a brick before that bill
passed.
Finally, the 1996 Telecommunications Act moved us from analog to
digital. It moved us from narrow band to broadband. It created this
revolution of Google, eBay, Amazon, YouTube, and Facebook. All of that

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happened because of the policies created by the House and Senate and
signed by the President, and it unleashed $1 trillion worth of private
sector investment. It revolutionized villages in Africa and Asia. We
invented those technologies and sold them around the world.
We have the same kind of economic possibility for renewable energy
and new energy technologies as we had in the telecommunication sector,
and we have a chance to cap another $1 trillion to $2 trillion worth of
investment in the private sector.
Let's move on to our Nation's carbon emissions from energy due to
fossil fuels. The total amount of greenhouse gases in our country from
energy sources fell from 2005 to 2012 by 12 percent. We installed more
wind, solar, and fuel-efficient vehicles. We got more efficient and we
reduced our coal use from 2005 to 2012, but in 2013 that reversed, and
the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy sources increased by 2
percent in 2013. What happened? The price of natural gas increased in
2013 by 27 percent. As a result, U.S. electric utilities returned to
burning more coal and using less natural gas. U.S. energy-related
carbon emissions are still 10 percent below 2005 levels, but to keep
driving them down, we need to keep the price of natural gas low and
continue to drive the deployment of wind and solar up.

For the oil and gas industry, the crisis in the Ukraine is an
opportunity to throw open the doors to unrestrained exports of American
natural gas. But the notion that gas exports will help Ukraine is an
illusion. It is a talisman, some lucky charm. This is a simple matter
of geo-economics, geology, and geopolitics. We have already approved
five export terminals that could send 4 trillion cubic feet of natural
gas abroad every year. That is nearly equal to all the gas consumed by
every home in America. Just take that slice of the pie, and we are
going to export all that natural gas. That is twice as much as Ukraine
consumes every year.
Exporting natural gas could raise U.S. prices upwards of 50 percent
and create an energy tax of $62 billion each year on American consumers
and businesses, and it will put the coal industry back in business
because coal will then be less expensive than natural gas. Then our
ability to meet this goal of reducing greenhouse gases will be replaced
by a policy to export all the natural gas we can get to the ports of
the United States, and the lower our supply is, the higher the price is
going to be for the remaining natural gas within our boundaries. The
Energy Information Agency says that just with the terminals that are
now being proposed, it is a 52-percent increase in the price of gas
here. We saw it last year. When gas went up 27 percent, coal replaced
natural gas, and our emissions went up, not down. So we just have to be
realistic about this whole debate in Ukraine about what it means for us
in handling this issue.
By the way, it is what has been leading to manufacturers returning to
the United States. It is what is a big part of why there is a move
towards natural gas vehicles, which also backed out imported oil. But
the higher natural gas prices are the more we undermine our ability to
make real progress on climate change, on manufacturing, on natural gas
vehicles, on utilities moving from coal over to natural gas. That is
our challenge as a people.
Then, finally, we are the leader, not the laggers. The whole world is
looking at us. So much of that CO2 is red, white, and blue,
and they look to us to be the leader. You started your industrial
revolution in the 19th century, they say to us. If you want us to
reduce our greenhouse gases, you reduce yours. So we cannot abdicate
this responsibility.
Last week I attended a conference here in Washington called Globe.
There were 100 legislators from around the world who came here--the key
players on energy and the environment in each country in the world. We
had a conference over in the Russell Building. Each of these
legislators said they are looking to us for leadership. Five hundred
new laws have been put on the books over the last 15 years in these
countries on climate change. But the question comes to us. What are you
going to do this year, next year, the year after on these issues? Their
countries are even more vulnerable than our country. They do not have
the resources which our country has. So that is our opportunity.
Henry Waxman and I built a coalition of utilities, of businesses, of
labor, of faith and environmental groups, and concerned citizens in
2009. The pieces are still out there, I say to my colleagues. We can do
it again, but we are going to need everyone's help.
Recently, the books of Massachusetts author and national treasure
Doctor Seuss have been popular and read on the Senate floor. I wish I
had time to read the entirety of his environmental classic ``The
Lorax.'' But since there are so many Senators who want to talk about
the impacts of climate change and the benefits addressing it will bring
our country, I will just have to close with this short portion. Here is
what it says:

But now says the Once-ler, now that you're here, the word
of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. Unless someone like you
cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's
not.

So to my colleagues in the Senate and to everyone watching and
following tonight, thank you for caring a whole awful lot. This is not
for us; it is for all the subsequent generations of this country and
this planet who are looking to this Chamber for leadership. We are
going to make things better from tonight onward. This is a moment. The
science is clear; the economics are clear; and now the politics is
clear. We are going to have a big fight about this in 2014 because
future generations are going to look back and know that this Senate
stood up and we had the debate on the most important issue facing this
planet.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Maine.
Mr. KING. Facing challenges is hard. The bigger the challenge, the
harder it is to face it because facing a significant challenge always
involves risk, always involves a little uncertainty, always involves
effort, always involves cost, always involves inconvenience, and always
involves change. The most profound observation I ever heard about
change is that everybody is for progress and nobody is for change.
In the 1930s, Europe and particularly England faced a challenge. They
faced a challenge that was to their very survival. But for almost the
entire decade of the 1930s, England didn't face that challenge. They
did not act, even though the data was overwhelming, even though the
facts were compelling, even though their greatest parliamentarian, the
greatest parliamentarian in English history--at least recent English
history--continuously warned them. Winston Churchill spent a good part
of the 1930s warning his country about the dangers of the rise of Nazi
Germany. But people didn't listen, and they didn't listen for much the
same reason I think people aren't listening now--because it is hard to
take on a new challenge. It is hard to take on something that will have
a cost. It is hard to take on something that will entail risk. But
ignoring warnings has consequences. In the case of the 1930s in England
and ignoring Winston Churchill's warnings, the consequences were 55
million people dead. Most historians believe Hitler could have been
stopped in 1938, 1939, but instead of facing the challenge, people said
it was too expensive; it was too inconvenient; it was too much of a
change. They were exhausted from World War I.
That was perfectly understandable, but the consequences were
catastrophic.
That is where we are today. We are facing a daunting challenge. For
all of us speaking tonight, this isn't easy. We can outline the
problems, but the solutions aren't easy, and the solutions aren't going
to be free. The solutions are going to involve change; they are going
to involve investment; they are going to involve innovation; and they
are going to involve facing up to a challenge that is very serious.
There are lots of ways to think about this. One way is this example:
All of us have health insurance. We all have homeowners insurance--even
simpler than health insurance. Homeowners insurance means basically we
are insuring our home against burning down. What is the risk of our
house catching fire? One in two? No. One in 365. Will your house burn
down once a year. No. One in 3,650? I suspect the risk is somewhere
around 1 in 10,000 or 20,000. But every family in America is paying an

[[Page S1407]]

average of $800 or $900 a year to insure against a 1 in 10,000 risk.
But we are being told in this body--in this country--that we can't take
steps to insure ourselves against a risk which 98 percent of the
scientific evidence says is a dead certainty. I don't want to take that
risk.
People say: You are wrong, Angus. This isn't true. It isn't going to
happen. Maybe I am. Maybe we are. Maybe that 98 percent of climate
scientists who have spent their lives studying this issue is wrong. I
hope they are. I hope I am. But what if we are not wrong? The
consequences are almost unimaginable.
Although I have a long history of involvement in environmental
matters in Maine, I was a climate skeptic. I heard all the arguments
about it, and I said, I don't know whether this is really true. We can
argue it both ways. Then, about 5 years ago, I ran across a little
chart and the chart to me answered the whole question. Here is the
chart.
This chart shows a million years of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
We often hear carbon dioxide naturally goes up and down in the
atmosphere. Well, yes, it does. That is what these figures show. But
for 900,000-plus years, it ranged between 160 parts per million to
about 250 or 275. That is the range. Then all of a sudden, we get up to
the year 1,000, and it is still in the same higher range. Then right
here, 1860, when we started to burn fossil fuels in large quantities,
and there it goes. It goes to levels that we haven't seen on this
planet for 3 million years. The last time we saw 400 parts per million
of CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperatures were 12 to 14
degrees warmer and the oceans were 60 to 80 feet higher.
This isn't politics. This isn't speculation. These are actual
measurements based on the Greenland ice cores. This is what the
CO2 concentrations were, and here we are at the beginning of
the industrial revolution.
This chart, it seems to me, answers two of the three basic questions
on the subject. The first question is: Is something happening? Yes,
inevitably. We just can't look at this and say this point and this
point are so different, and this is a million years. Something is
happening.
The second question about this whole issue is this. Do people have
anything to do with it? This is when we started burning stuff. This
answers that question. Of course, people have something to do with it.
It is just too weird a coincidence to say all of a sudden, when we
started to burn fossil fuels in large quantities and release them into
the atmosphere and increase the CO2, it just happened to
happen at the same time. One fellow I know said it is volcanoes. I am
sorry. We didn't have an outburst of volcanoes in the 1850s and 1860s.
We had little fires all over Europe, all over America. We had steel
mills. We had the beginnings of the industrial revolution. We started
to burn coal and later oil. This is what happened.
I mentioned there were three questions. No. 1, is something
happening? Yes. No. 2, do people have anything to do with it? Yes.
The third question is, So what. CO2 is going up in the
atmosphere. So what. What does that mean? This answers that question.
This is the relationship between CO2 and temperature. The
red line is carbon dioxide and the black line is temperature, an almost
exact correlation. If the CO2 goes up in the atmosphere, and
we are at about 500,000 years, we can see CO2 goes up,
temperature goes up; CO2 goes down, temperature goes down.
So this is the answer to the third question, so what. The answer is
temperature.
One of the things that worries me, and the reason I am here tonight,
is some research that has been done at the University of Maine. We have
a climate study center at the University of Maine. I was there a year
or so ago, and I was meeting with them. It was one of these meetings
where we are going around and we go to the university, factories, and
schools and meet with people and they give us briefings, and I was
listening to a briefing on climate change when a word crept into that
discussion that I had not heard before, and the word was ``abrupt.''
Climate change, I always assumed, happened in a very slow, long,
historic, geological time kind of way. That is not the case.
These are two lines on this chart. The yellow line is temperature;
the red is the extent of the ice in the Arctic. The point of the chart
is, look at these vertical lines. That is in a matter of a few years.
It is not a matter of 1,000 years or 10,000 years; it is a matter of a
few years. It is as if someone throws a switch, and I do not want to be
around when that switch is thrown, and I certainly do not want to be
the cause of the switch being thrown.
Abrupt climate change, that is what keeps me awake at night; that
this is something we are sort of assuming is going to be the next
generation's problem or the generation after that or by 2100. Who knows
about 2100? Who thinks about 2100? Well, it could be a lot sooner than
that.
If things such as this cause a melt-off in the Arctic ice and the
Greenland ice sheet, and it changes the currents in the Atlantic or
anywhere else in the world, for that matter, everything changes.
Without the Gulf Stream, England, Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia
are essentially uninhabitable. I do not know about the Presiding
Officer, but I have always thought of England as a being to the east.
It is not to the east; it is way to the northeast. England is on the
same latitude as Hudson Bay. The only reason it is of temperate climate
is because of the Gulf Stream. If something happens to the Gulf Stream,
Northern Europe is almost uninhabitable.
These changes can happen abruptly. Again, maybe I am wrong. I hope I
am wrong. But what if I am right? What if the science is right. Are we
willing to take that risk? Do you want to be the person who says to
your grandchildren: We saw this coming. All these people talked. They
talked all night in the Senate. But we decided not to do anything
because it would be expensive and it would disrupt some of our
industries and might cost us a few jobs, which, by the way, would be
replaced in other industries.
Do you want to be the person who says: Well, we had this warning but,
no, we didn't feel we had to do anything. I do not want to be that
person.
Does it have practical effects? It does have practical effects. There
is not a theoretical discussion. This is not just a science lesson.
This has effects in all of our States. We have heard them here
tonight--about the water temperature in the streams in Minnesota, the
forest fires in Colorado, the drought in the West, in California, that
is rendering millions of acres potentially unproductive that have been
the breadbasket of America.
In Maine, it is the lobster, the iconic product of the coast of
Maine. What is happening is the ocean is getting warmer. As the ocean
is getting warmer, the lobsters do not necessarily--they are not too
unhappy about it getting warmer, but the center of gravity of lobsters
is going to go where the water is colder, and that is what is
happening. That is what the lobstermen have told me.
The center of gravity of lobstering in Maine used to be right off of
Portland in what is called Casco Bay, where I live. But over the last
10 or 15 years, it has slowly moved northward. Now the lobsters
themselves have not moved northward, but the heavy catch has moved
northward.
Here is a dramatic picture of what has happened. In 1970, here was
the hotspot for lobster: south of Massachusetts, south of Rhode Island,
off the end of Long Island. This is where they were catching the most
lobster. Here is where they are in 2008. They are up along the coast of
Maine, headed for Nova Scotia. This is the center of gravity of the
lobster industry.
People around here may not know what is happening in the climate, but
the lobsters of Maine know it, and the green crabs and the shellfish
and the moose and the deer and the trees, they know it because that is
what is changing in my State.
There is another thing that is happening that I do not think has been
discussed tonight; that is, that the ocean is becoming a giant sink for
all this carbon that is in the atmosphere. When the atmospheric carbon
dioxide goes into the water and is dissolved in the water, it turns
into something called H2CO3--carbonic acid. Carbonic acid attacks
shellfish. Shellfish cannot form their shells because the ocean is
becoming acidic. This is a recent observation, and it is the result of
the massive load of carbon that we have been putting into the
atmosphere.

[[Page S1408]]

Here is another practical result, and the Presiding Officer talked
about this in terms of Boston. These are charts that show what happens
if the sea goes up varying levels--6 meters, 1 meter. One meter is
shown in dark red on the chart. Look what happens to Virginia Beach in
North Carolina at just 1 meter, and that is predicted in the next 100
years as the sea level goes up. Then we look at all these communities:
New York, Boston, Savannah, and Charleston, Virginia Beach, Miami,
Louisiana. Then we can multiply this all around the world. I do not
know the percentage, but a very significant percentage of the world's
population lives within about 40 miles of the coast--everywhere in the
world.
These are real consequences, and these are the kinds of consequences
that are unbelievably expensive and unbelievably destructive.
There is another piece of evidence, which is the sea ice extent. We
are now talking about the famous Northwest Passage actually existing.
Ships can now go from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the Arctic
because the ice is disappearing.
Here it is, as shown here, just from 1979 to the present. This is
evidence. This is data. This is irrefutable.
Here is essentially a chart of the Arctic sea ice. The red line was
the extent of the ice, the average place the ice was in 1979 through
the year 2000, and here is where we are in 2012. As it continues to
shrink, several things happen: the ocean levels rise, the acidification
of the ocean continues, and there is a threat of a change in the
ocean's currents, which would be catastrophic for many parts of the
world.
Another example is the Muir Glacier in Alaska. These two photographs
I have in the Chamber were taken from exactly the same spot. In 1941,
here is the glacier. In 2004, here is the lake. The glacier is gone.
That has changed, and that is a change that is the canary in the coal
mine. That is the change that tells us something is happening and we
ignore it at our peril.

What are the consequences? What are the consequences? I have talked
about the economic consequences: forest fires, floods, lobsters,
agriculture, all of those people living in low-lying areas. Multiply
Superstorm Sandy by two, three, four, five, and we are talking billions
of dollars of economic costs; we are talking about lost jobs. Something
like 30 percent of the businesses that were wiped out by Superstorm
Sandy never came back. They never came back. To each one of those
businesspeople, to each one of those insurers that insured those
businesses, to those families it is gone forever. That is the result of
these superstorms we are seeing more and more frequently.
An enormous economic risk, an enormous cost. Yes, it is going to cost
something to prevent this, but it is going to cost us either way. The
old ad I remember when I was a kid: Pay me now or pay me later. In this
case, it is pay me now or pay me more later.
But there is a second level of risk that is almost as significant as
the economic risk; that is, the national security risk. We have had
panels of retired judges and admirals who have looked at this issue.
Global climate change is a major national security risk. Why? Because
it is going to lead to friction, to riots, to famine, to loss of
agricultural land, to loss of homes, to territorial disputes about
water, and that increases our risk.
I am on the Armed Services Committee and Intelligence Committee. I
have spent the last year and a half listening to testimony about Al
Qaeda and what we are doing to confront Al Qaeda. Part of our strategy
is to fight them and to kill them, but we cannot kill them all. It is
like the Hydra. You cut off one head and two come back. What we have to
do is get at the basis of why young people are joining an organization
such as that and change their lives. This climate change, which
threatens people's livelihoods, particularly in the developing world,
is a grave threat to our national security because it generates the
very people who are dangerous. The most dangerous weapons of mass
destruction in the world today are large numbers of unemployed 20-year-
olds who are angry and dispossessed and have no hope and are willing to
take up arms against any authority they can find, and unfortunately
that may be us.
This is a national security risk. Water, I predict, will be one of
the most valuable commodities of the 21st century. It is going to be
something people fight about. It is going to be something people get
into wars about. Water is an enormously valuable commodity that global
climate change threatens.
Finally, on the question of what are the consequences, it is an
ethical risk. It is an economic risk, a national security risk, but it
is also an ethical risk. Another aspect of this that has struck me that
is not strictly related to climate change but is related to our
consumption of fossil fuels is what right do we have in two or three
generations to consume the entire production of fossil fuels that the
world has produced in the last 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 million years.
It reminds me of a dad sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner, where all
of his children are sitting around the table, mom brings in the turkey,
puts it in front of him, and he says: This is all mine. None of you get
any. I am going to take it.
None of us would do that, but that is exactly what we are doing. We
are saying this oil, this precious oil that is an amazing commodity,
can do all kinds of different things, we are going to burn it up in
about 200 years. It takes millions of years to make it, and we are
going to burn it all up. I think that is an ethical risk.
OK. I hate talking about problems and not talking about a solution.
What are the solutions?
I believe in markets. I believe in free markets as the best way to
allocate goods and services. But the market, in order to be efficient,
has to be accurate, and it has to accurately reflect the true costs and
price of the commodity. Right now we are not paying those costs. The
cost of climate change is not factored into the cost of consuming
fossil fuels. If you factor it in, then you have a free market and
people will make their decisions based upon their economic situation
and also their commitment to the environment, but the real costs are
not factored in.
I am old enough to remember when this debate took place in the 1970s,
when I worked here. But the debate then was about environmental law
itself, and the debate was characterized as payrolls versus pickerel. I
can remember that term, ``payrolls versus pickerel.''
The idea was that if you clean up the water and clean up the air, it
is going to put people out of business, we are going to lose jobs,
industry is going to run away, we can't possibly do it. Well, a man
named Edmund Sixtus Muskie from the State of Maine did not believe
that. He was raised in a paper mill town on the Androscoggin River--one
of the most polluted rivers in America. They used to say it was too
thick to drink, too thin to plow. Muskie did not believe it, and Muskie
stood in this body and fought for the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water
Act.
Here is the amazing thing. I was asked to do some research and to do
a presentation about Muskie's environmental leadership. I went back and
looked at the record. I could not believe my eyes, particularly in
light of where we are here today--tonight--in this body and in this
city. The Clean Air Act passed the Senate unanimously. In the midst of
the debate, Howard Baker, the minority leader, the Republican leader,
gave his proxy to Muskie. Can you imagine that happening today? It
passed unanimously. We could not pass the time of day unanimously in
this body. Yet it happened.
That brings me to a question that really puzzles me. How did this
become a partisan issue? How did it come to divide us so cleanly along
environmental lines? This discussion tonight is important, but it is
all Democrats and people--Bernie and I, the two Independents--Senator
Sanders, the Senator from Vermont, and I, the two Independents--no
people from the other party. I do not understand that. The leaders, the
giants of the environmental movement in Maine when I was a young man
were all Republicans.
When Ed Muskie got the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act passed
through this body, it was with the support of the overwhelming
majority--in the case of the Clean Air Act, all of the Republicans,
including very conservative Republicans. Senator Buckley

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from New York supported the Clean Air Act. I do not know how or why
this became a partisan issue. Maybe it was because it was invented by
Al Gore. I do not know. But somehow it has become this divisive
partisan issue. It should not be. This is our future that is at stake.
This is our children and grandchildren's future. This should not be a
partisan issue.
In my experience, if we can develop a common understanding of the
facts, we can find solutions. They will not be easy, but they are
there. Right now the problem is that we do not have a common, shared
understanding of the facts.
So what are the solutions? The market is one. Innovation, as Senator
Kaine from Virginia said, is another. There are ways to use electricity
and generate electricity through innovation that will be much cleaner,
support just as many if not more jobs, and help prevent this tragedy
from befalling us.
By the way, it does not mean we cannot burn coal. Coal is an abundant
resource that we have in this country that is loaded with energy, but
unfortunately it is also loaded with CO2 and other
pollutants. So I think part of our commitment should be intense
research on how to use coal efficiently, effectively, and cleanly. That
should be part of the deal. We are not trying to put any region of the
country out of business or control people's use of valuable resources,
but let's use them in the most efficient and effective and
environmentally safe way. That can be done in part through innovation.
I was a lobbyist in Maine 30 years ago. One of the things I lobbied
for was to get rid of pop-top beer cans. The Presiding Officer probably
remembers the first ones. You grabbed the ring, pulled it off, and it
became a little razor. People threw them on the ground. You would step
on them. They were dangerous.
I remember going to the lobbyist for the bottlers and I said: We want
to get rid of those things.
He said: There is no way. Our engineers have looked at it. It is
impossible to make one that you do not have to tear off.
Well, lo and behold we passed a law banning those pull-off tabs, and
the industry found a way to do it safely and in an environmentally
sound manner. Sometimes you have to help people find a way.
The final piece when it comes to solutions is that this has to be
international. I agree with my colleagues who say we cannot just do it
here. We cannot just do it here. If we just do it here and nobody else
in the world does it, if China and India do not do it, then it is not
going to be effective. We will have imposed costs on our society that
will simply make their businesses more competitive if they are ignoring
these externalities, these realities of price. It has to be done
through international cooperation.
I think the moment may be right. From everything I understand about
the air quality in China, they may be ready to discuss this. They may
be ready to take steps along with us. But we are going to have to be
the leaders. We are going to have to show what can be done and how it
can be done. We are going to have to innovate our way out of this. But
we have to do it with our international partners. Movement of air does
not respect boundaries.
When Ed Muskie was promoting the Clean Air Act, he would take a
globe--I do not think we are allowed to take props onto the floor of
the Senate--he would take a standard globe--imagine I have it here--and
everybody used to have these in their library. On a globe is a coating
of shellac to make it shine. That coating of shellac is the same
thickness in proportion to the globe as our atmosphere is to our real
globe. In other words, it is very thin and very fragile. We destroy it
and threaten it at our extreme peril.
I can boil it all down to one simple concept. This is a Maine
concept. It is the Maine rototiller rule.
For those of you from urban States, a rototiller is a device that you
use to turn the ground in your garden. I guess it is a homeowner's
plow. It turns the dirt. Not too many people own rototillers, but
enough do so that you can borrow one when you need it for that one day
in the spring when you are going to put in your garden.
The Maine rototiller rule is very straightforward: When you borrow
your neighbor's rototiller, you always return it to them in as good
shape as you got it with a full tank of gas. That is all you need to
know about environmental policy. We do not own this planet. We have it
on loan. We have it on loan from our children, our grandchildren, and
their grandchildren. We are borrowing it from them. We have a moral,
ethical, economic, and security obligation to pass it on to those
people in as good or better shape than we got it. That is what this
issue is all about.
I deeply hope we can put aside the partisanship and the arguments,
agree on the facts, and then have a robust and vigorous discussion of
solutions. It is not going to be easy. It is not going to be free. But
it will make all the difference in the world to the people to whom we
owe our best work--the future of America and the world.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate so much the comments of my
colleague from Maine, bringing his insights and his expertise through
the years and his stories about how the land and waters of his home
State are being impacted and our responsibilities to the broader
planet.
I am reminded of the comment that Henry David Thoreau said, which is,
``What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to
put it on?'' His comment now seems very much ahead of the time and the
context of the issue we are discussing tonight.
Then we have the insight from Theodore Roosevelt, who said, in terms
of our responsibility, ``Of all the questions which can come before
this Nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a
great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great
central task of leaving this land even a better land for our
descendents than it is for us.''
But right now we are failing that challenge. Carbon pollution is a
direct threat to our resources on this planet, a direct threat to our
forests, to our fishing, and to our farming. So I am going to take a
little bit of time tonight to talk about those aspects.
I would like to start by taking a look at our forests. Indeed, if
there is something that symbolizes some of the dramatic impacts carbon
pollution is making, it is the spread of the pine beetle.
This is a picture of a forest devastated not by fire, not by drought,
but by the spread of the pine beetle. I have gone up in a plane and
flown over a vast zone of the Cascades known as the red zone, where the
pine beetle has killed thousands of acres in my home State. They start
out looking red because the needles turn red. That is why it is called
the red zone. Then the needles fall off, and you have essentially this
brown desolate remainder of what was once a thriving forest.
Timber is something that is very close to our hearts in the State of
Oregon. So many of us--myself included--are children of the timber
industry. My father was a millwright--that is the mechanic who keeps
the sawmill operating--a job he absolutely loved. He used to say that
if he did his job right, then everyone had a job to come to, and the
mill made money and everyone was happy as long as the machinery ran.
Oregon is still the top American producer of plywood and softwood
lumber. The industry certainly is a big component of our gross domestic
product in my State.
When this happens, then not only do we have zones that are not good
environmental zones, but they are not good timber zones either. It is a
lose-lose situation. It happens, and it is spreading for one reason:
The winters are not as cold as they used to be, and the pine beetle is
very happy about that because it is not knocked back and largely wiped
out with cold snaps each winter, and it is easy to spread much more
quickly, and it is able to spread to much higher elevations.
Then these dead forests become a component in another huge problem,
which is forest fires.
This picture you will see in a moment is a picture of the Biscuit
Fire in 2002--a wall of flames.
The summer before last, I went down and flew about the State of
Oregon to look at the innumerable forest fires that were burning. One
of the reasons we had so many forest fires--10 years after this fire--
was because the floor of the forest was so dry. It is estimated

[[Page S1410]]

that a 2-by-4 that you see in a Home Depot has about a 6-percent
moisture content. The material on the floor of the forest was even
drier than that. Then you throw in far more lightning strikes due to
the pattern of the weather, and you have this magic combination, this
combination of tinderbox dryness, pine beetle devastation, and then
lightning strikes. What you have are some of the largest fires we have
ever seen. Indeed, the Biscuit Fire in 2002--500,000 acres. Half a
million acres. Fast-forward 10 years. In 2012, 750,000 acres burned in
my State. With the combination of the ongoing effects of carbon
pollution--that being pine beetle damage, more lighting strikes, and
far drier, drought-driven fire seasons--it is going to get worse and
worse.
The seven largest fire years since 1960 have all happened in the last
13 summers. It is pretty amazing to recognize how that transition is
occurring. If we think about projecting into the future, the National
Research Council predicts that for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit
temperature increase, the area burned in the western forests will
quadruple.
This led our Energy Secretary to tell me a few weeks ago about a
draft of a study that says the western forests will be dramatically
impacted, devastated in the course of this century due to these
factors.
We have a triple threat, that of drought and bark beetles, increased
temperatures, and the result is decimation of an incredibly important
world resource, our forests.
But carbon pollution is not only an attack on our forests, it is also
an attack on our farming. Indeed, drought across the U.S. is a huge and
growing threat to agriculture.
In the State of Oregon, we have had the three worst-ever droughts in
the Klamath Basin in a 13-year period. It was 2001, then the worst-ever
drought of 2010, then the worst-ever drought of 2013--and now we are
looking at the possibility of a drought even worse than any of those--
the worst-ever drought of 2014. Hopefully, we will have a lot of
precipitation and a lot of snow in the coming weeks and that won't be
the case, but if we are looking at the snowpack, it is possible that we
will have the fourth worst ever in a 14-year period. It is absolutely
devastating to our rural economy, absolutely devastating.
Let's look at the impact coming from smaller snowpacks. Snowpacks are
a significant piece of this puzzle. If we were to look at the Pacific
Northwest, we would basically draw a circle like this. What we see are
these zones where there is a huge percentage decrease in those
snowpacks. The snowpacks then provide far less irrigation and water
available, and therefore dry their foundation for the summer drought,
which then has a devastating impact on agriculture. This is not good
for our farming families, and it is certainly not good for our farm
economy.
Those snowpacks have another impact. I am going to skip forward to
the impact on our streams and our fish.
Folks who like to fish for trout and go to their summer streams know
that it is going to be better if the stream is large and cold than if
it is small and warm. But the last of those snowpacks means that the
summer streams are smaller and warmer, and they are very bad for trout.
That is what we are seeing in this particular picture: dead trout from
the Deschutes River. Last fall thousands of fish died in the river from
low flows attributed to drought.
Clearly, not only is it bad for trout, it is bad for salmon; it is
bad for steelhead. It is certainly bad for our fishing industries.
Let's turn to another part of our fishing industry, and this is an
impact that we see over on the coast of Oregon.
I specifically want to take a look at the impact that we see on our
oysters. Oysters have to fixate a shell at the beginning of their life.
They are called oyster seed, the baby oyster. We have hatcheries, and
those hatcheries have been having challenges. The Whiskey Creek oyster
hatchery in Oregon has had a big problem. Indeed, at one point it had a
huge impact.
I will read part of an article:

Peering into the microscope, Alan Barton thought the baby
oysters looked normal, except for one thing: They were dead.
Slide after slide, the results were the same. The entire
batch of 100 million larvae at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish
Hatchery had perished.
It took several years for the Oregon oyster breeder and a
team of scientists to find the culprit: a radical change in
ocean acidity.

This is why, because when we have greater carbon pollution in the
air, that carbon then is absorbed by the ocean, a significant portion
of it. That dissolved carbon dioxide combines with water and becomes
H2CO3, otherwise known as carbonic acid.
That carbonic acid is preventing the baby oysters from forming their
shells. We can think of this as the canary in the coal mine for our
world's oceans because if baby oysters are having a challenge forming
their shells because of a 30-percent increase in acidity since the
start of the Industrial Revolution, what other impacts are there going
to be along in the shellfish world and the food chains that depend on
those shellfish, not to mention the impact on our shellfish farmers.
I was noting this in Washington State and I was told: You know, our
oyster farmers are experiencing a similar problem, and they are going
to Hawaii and to Asia. This is not only an Oregon problem.
The manager of the hatchery in Oregon, David Stick, said in an
article:

I do not think people understand the seriousness of the
problem. Ocean acidification is going to be a game-changer.
It has the potential to be a real catastrophe.

Let's recognize another part of the planet that is having a problem
with warmer waters and ocean acidification; that is, our coral reefs.
We have, in Oregon, a researcher at Oregon State university. His name
is Professor Hixon. Professor Hixon is recognizing that the coral reefs
around the world are in trouble. As he said in a presentation, he
studied dozens of reefs. They are his children. Then he said: My
children are dying. One of the key reasons is acidification, but
another is the oceans are getting warmer.
I have a chart showing the warming of the ocean. The oceans are
absorbing carbon dioxide, and they are also absorbing heat. As they
become warmer, they create a real problem for coral reefs. Coral is an
animal. We may think of it as a plant, but it actually is an animal,
and it lives in a symbiotic relationship with a type of algae.
They depend on each other. What happens when the water gets warmer
around a coral reef is that the algae start to multiply in a fashion
that overwhelms the coral.
The coral, in an effort to survive, ejects the algae, throws them out
of the host. Then the coral, having ejected the algae, dies. This is
called bleaching, and it is something we are seeing in coral reefs
around the world. That is why Professor Hixon noted: My children are
dying.
I will state something else about the warming that is occurring, and
this is more about warming that is occurring in terms of the
temperature of our planet. It is affecting our recreation industry and
our snow industry.
I am going to start by taking a look at what is driving that in terms
of a chart related to carbon dioxide. Specifically, this chart shows
the dramatic change that has gone on. We see the fluctuations in carbon
dioxide over hundreds of thousands of years, into the modern time and
then, boom, 400 parts per million of carbon pollution.
What does this come from? It comes from burning fossil fuels.
This carbon--carbon dioxide, as a component of the atmosphere, traps
heat. To summarize, our planet has a fever. The temperature is going
up. Let's take a look at how that carbon dioxide correlates with
temperatures.
We have, in this case, showing since 1880--basically, the start of
the Industrial Revolution--the increase in temperature on our planet,
the global surface mean temperature. We have seen a significant
increase.
If we want to find a way that this impacts our economy, let's take a
look at how it impacts our recreation industry. This is an article that
I grabbed from the New York Times. It is a lengthy article, but it is
the title and the picture that I really wanted to show. It is from the
Sunday Review and it is called ``The End Of Snow.''
This article basically documents how our ski resorts around our
planet are suffering because they don't have as much snow as they used
to have. There is a picture of artificial snow being created and put on
the slope. It notes how much energy this requires, how many dollars it
costs to provide that energy,

[[Page S1411]]

how this is making many of our resorts not feasible, and how many of
them will go out of the business. This is just another angle on the
impact that carbon dioxide is having, in this case, on our recreation
industry.
Of course, it is having other impact on our recreation industry. When
we think of those smaller streams, we can think of fewer kayaks, for
example, and rafting companies operating.
Let's turn from these multitudinous impacts. First, before we return
to recognizing that we have the power to take on carbon pollution,
let's recognize when folks say isn't that global warming issue about
some computer programmer using some assumption and some model. Isn't
there some dispute about it; is it real.
Put all of that aside. We don't need a computer model to show us the
impact from the pine beetle. We don't need a computer model to show us
the impact on our trout streams. We don't need a computer model to show
us the impact today on droughts. We don't need a computer model to show
us impact on forest burning. We don't need a computer model to show us
the impact on our coral. We don't need a computer model to show us the
impact on the oyster industry, and we don't need a computer model to
show us the impact on our snow-based recreational activities and the
industries that are associated with it.
In other words, carbon pollution is here and now. Global warming is
here and now. It is making an impact wherever we look. We can feel it,
we can touch it, we can see it, and we can smell it. It is here, and it
is our responsibility, our responsibility as American citizens, our
responsibility as policy leaders in this esteemed Chamber of the Senate
to take on this issue.
There is so much we can do because it boils down to this. We have to
replace our appetite for fossil fuels with renewable fuels, renewable
energy. We can do that. We can do that in a host of ways.
I will start. Let me start by noting a little bit about the growth of
solar energy. When one realizes this chart is just from 2001 to 2013,
it is phenomenal the deployed amount of installed capacity in megawatts
in solar energy. From 2012 to 2013, we have more than 3,000 additional
megawatts of energy, solar energy, solar potential, deployed.
A similar explosion of renewable energy is happening in the source of
wind. Let's take a look at that.
We have deployed capacity in wind energy. If we were to recognize
that, again, from 2001 to 2013 there was a huge growth in the
industry--and I want to point out a particular factor here going from
2011 to 2012. This large bump on the chart was 13,000 megawatts of
installed capacity and wind energy in 1 year. The next year there was
only 1,000.
The difference, as pointed out by one of my colleagues earlier on
this floor, is the difference in tax credits, of consistently available
production tax credits that the wind industry can depend on.
We give all kinds of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Why can't
we create a steady, reliable source to promote renewable energy to help
replace those fossil fuels. We have this policy potential in our hands,
and we need to exercise it. There are many other forms of renewable
energy. There is offshore wind, there is geothermal energy, and there
is wave energy. Oregon has some of the best winds for offshore wind
energy and waves for wave energy, but we already have the ability
through the technologies we have today to dramatically reduce our
consumption of fossil fuels.

What this chart shows is that in different parts of the country the
mix between biomass and geothermal and wind onshore, wind offshore,
wave energy and solar energy, concentrated solar power energy would be
different in different parts of the country, but everywhere around the
country there is the potential to essentially replace our appetite for
fossil fuels.
Then there is the conservation side. We can certainly do a tremendous
amount in our fuel standards for cars, a tremendous amount in our fuel
standards for trucks, and a significant amount in terms of energy-
saving retrofits to our buildings.
In the farm bill we just passed, we have a program for low-cost loans
for energy-saving retrofits, and that program--the Rural Energy Savings
Program--will help retrofits occur in commercial buildings and
residential buildings, and it will allow people to pay back the loan on
their electric bill. Often, they will be able to pay back that loan
simply with the savings in energy--electricity consumption--from the
changes they make to their building. So it is a win-win--creating jobs,
saving energy, yet being paid for without much additional expense for
the consumer.
All of these possibilities exist and more. It is our challenge as
policymakers to take on this issue, to work on how we can generate
electricity with far fewer fossil fuels, how we can conserve
electricity in transportation. How do we conserve electricity and other
fuels? In fact, in both cases--transportation and heating our homes,
energy consumed in our buildings--how do we do this with far fewer
fossil fuels and do it with renewable energy?
I applaud my colleagues for coming here tonight to raise this issue
and say we must come together and take on these challenges. My
colleague from Delaware is about to speak and share some stories from
his experiences that bear on this, but every Senator in this Chamber
can talk about issues from their home State and where they see the
impact of carbon pollution and call upon us, call upon our moral
responsibility to tackle this issue.
With that, I yield the floor to my colleague.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Heinrich). The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from
Oregon, Senator Merkley, who has done a tremendous job laying out the
scientific case, the compelling economic case, the cultural case, and
the global case for why we here in the Senate need to wake up, need to
listen to the indisputable evidence of what climate change is doing in
our home States, to our country, and around the world.
Mr. President, even now as we speak in this Chamber, my own three
children--Maggie, Michael, and Jack--are asleep at home. And as I
reflected on this past summer, I was struck by something--an experience
we had--that was a simple and telling reminder of the steady changes
wrought by climate change in our Nation.
Last summer we took a family vacation--a trip--to Glacier National
Park. For those who have had the opportunity to hike in this majestic
national park in Montana, it is the site of many striking and beautiful
scenes, but there was one hike we took in particular that stayed with
me. It was a hike to historic Grinnell Glacier--a glacier that is by
many photographs over decades documented in its steady receding. In
fact, since 1966 it has lost nearly half of its total acreage. We took
a long and winding hike up the trail that takes you to Grinnell
Glacier. You can't quite see until you come up over the last rise that
most of what is left of Grinnell Glacier in the summers today is a
chilly pool of water.
For my daughter Maggie and for my sons Mike and Jack, as I look ahead
to the long-term future, I think we all have to ask ourselves this
question: How many more changes are we willing to accept being wrought
on creation, on this Nation, and on the world by the steady advance of
climate change?
I know we can't simply take the examples of things such as Grinnell
Glacier or what to me seemed a striking change in the cap of Mount
Kilimanjaro. I first climbed it in 1984 and visited it again last year.
There is a striking change, a visually powerful change. These aren't
scientific.
There are lots of other arguments, perhaps, as to why these two
particular glaciers have retreated, but I still remember hearing a
presentation at the University of Delaware by Dr. Lonnie Thompson of
Ohio State University, a glaciologist who presented a very broad and I
thought very compelling case based on ice cores for the actual advance
of climate change over many decades.
In fact, I see my colleague from Rhode Island has a photographic
history of Grinnell Glacier in Montana's Glacier National Park, so the
point I was just making in passing he is able to illustrate here. That
is as of 10 years ago. The glacier has retreated even further from
that. But this striking glacier from 1940 is now almost completely gone
in just one generation.

[[Page S1412]]

This and so many other glaciers that were monuments in our national
parks are today receded or altogether gone.
Well, I think we have to ask ourselves fundamentally, what is our
path forward? We have heard from other Senators. Tim Kaine of Virginia
spoke about the importance of innovation, and Angus King, the Senator
from Maine, spoke about the importance of markets and of making sure
our inventions and innovations in trying to solve these problems are
also shared internationally. I think these are great and important
insights.
One of the things I wanted to bring to the floor today first was
insights from my own home State of Delaware, where our Governor, Jack
Markell, impaneled a sea level rise advisory committee starting in 2010
that looked hard at how climate change might affect my home State.
At just 60 feet, Delaware has the lowest mean elevation of any State
in the country, and that already makes it more susceptible to sea level
rise than almost any State in the country. In my State of Delaware, we
have seen and will continue to see the impact of climate change on our
businesses, our communities, and our local environment. As the sea
level rises, we are seeing the effects more and more.
Sea level rises essentially for two reasons. First, as the planet's
ice sheets melt--the much larger sheets than Grinnell Glacier--they add
to the amount of water in the ocean. Second, saltwater actually expands
as it warms as well. So as the planet's average temperature has
steadily risen, so too has the level of its saltwater seas.
The fact that the Earth's oceans are rising each year isn't new
information. It has been rising as long as we have been keeping track.
But what is really jarring is that rate of rise is increasing and
increasing significantly. When the data was tracked from 1870 to 1930,
the sea level was rising at a rate of 4 inches per 100 years. Over the
next 60 years it rose at a rate of 8 inches per 100 years--more than
double. In just the last 20 years the sea level has been rising at a
strikingly more rapid rate of 12.5 inches per 100 years. The water is
rising, and in Delaware it is rising fast.
The land itself in my State is also actually sinking. There is
actually a documented vertical movement of the Earth's crust under the
mid-Atlantic coast. It is called subsidence. It has been happening in
Delaware slowly but gradually since the ice age at a pace of just 2
millimeters of elevation every year. I know that doesn't sound like a
lot, but it adds up to another 4 inches over the century.
So we have the water rising and the land sinking, making climate
change and sea level rise--specifically for my home State--a very real
issue.
A wide array of scientists have studied this and its impact on
Delaware, and they have developed three models for a future scenario.
In the conservative model, by the year 2100 the sea level in Delaware
will have risen about 1.5 feet. In another model, the water off
Delaware rises another full meter. In another and the most
disconcerting model, it is 1.5 meters or about 5 feet. Unfortunately,
at present, this broad group of scientists--inside and outside of
government--are estimating that is the most likely scenario.
Let's make this real. Here is a projection of these three different
scenarios in one area of Delaware. This is Bowers Beach. This shows how
now this is a well-established beach community. The most conservative
model, we still have something of the land; in the middle, it is
completely cut off here from the mainland; and then in the most likely,
sadly, given the most current evidence, there is literally nothing left
except a little sandbar out by itself in the Delaware Bay. That gives
one example of why the difference between these three scenarios matters
so much. Unfortunately, there is no scenario in which Bowers Beach is
still a viable beachfront community by the end of this century. This
beach community of Bowers Beach is very close to Dover Air Force Base
and ends up underwater.
Now let's take a look at South Wilmington. The city in which I live
is Wilmington, DE, and South Wilmington is a neighborhood in the
largest city in our State. As the water rises in the Atlantic Ocean, it
also rises up the Delaware Bay, the Delaware River, and the Christina
River, which runs right through most of my home county, Newcastle
County, and rises in the Peterson Wildlife Refuge too.
The impacts here are potentially devastating. We are talking about
water 1.5 feet higher than what Delaware experienced during Superstorm
Sandy--not for a brief storm surge but each and every day. Again, take
a look at today the conservative, the middle, and the most likely, most
aggressive scenario in which virtually all of South Wilmington is
underwater by the end of this century. The calculation of whether we
are hit with a half a meter, a full meter, or 1.5 meters of sea rise
comes down to the rate of acceleration of climate change globally, and
it leaves for us a central and so far unanswered question: whether we
try to slow the rate at which climate change is affecting our planet
and maybe somehow turn the tide. This is the part of climate change
policy called mitigation.
Priority one in this strategy is cutting the emissions we are pumping
into our atmosphere. To do that, we can and must diversify our energy
sources and reduce our dependence on polluting fossil fuels. Clean
energy technology, energy efficiency programs, public transportation,
and more will help cut down on these emissions, but it will require a
global effort in order to avoid or minimize local impacts.
The second part of climate change policy is adaptation based on an
acceptance of the reality that our climate is changing and will have
real effects on our planet and all of our communities. The truth is
that even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today--if we shut
down powerplants, stopped driving cars, stopped using gas-powered farm
equipment, trains, and ships, and all the rest--the amount of
greenhouse gases, of CO2 and others already in the
atmosphere would still take many years to dissipate. Changes in the
world's climate are at this point inevitable. It is already happening
and affecting communities, and we can expect these impacts to intensify
as the rate of climate change continues to accelerate. We can modify
our behavior to prevent those effects from being catastrophic. We can
and should make better choices now to prevent disaster later.
In Delaware, for example, we have had two laws on the books for now
40 years that have helped us adapt. The first was championed in the
1970s by a Republican Governor, Russ Peterson, a hero of mine and of
our Governor's and others. It is called the Coastal Zone Act, and
passing it cost him his career in politics. It prohibited future
industrial development on a long strip of coastal land, allowing the
State and Federal government to preserve it and reduce the impacts of
flooding and coastal erosion. Ultimately, in the long run, Governor
Peterson has been proven a visionary in preserving this vital barrier
all along Delaware's coast.
The second law empowered the State to protect and replenish the
State's beaches, including the beaches on Delaware Bay, which are often
overlooked. This has allowed our State to build a berm and dune system
that protects infrastructure and protects property from being washed
away.
More important than these significant landmark laws of 40 years ago,
today, instead of running away from the science, Delaware's leaders
have embraced it. The State agency that manages environmental issues
for Delaware--known as DNREC and ably led by secretary Collin O'Mara--
has taken the lead on a governmentwide project to assess the State's
vulnerability to sea level rise and, as I mentioned, recommend options
for adaptation.
Delaware's Sea Level Rise Committee spent 18 months looking at 79
different statewide resources--roads, bridges, schools, fire stations,
railroads, wetlands, people and their homes and businesses--and layered
all of this onto maps to show just how far the water would reach at
different models for sea level rise.
If the sea level does get to 1.5 meters, we lose more than 10 percent
of our State. The water claims 20,000 residential properties,
significant percentages of wetlands, farms, highways, and industrial
sites. We would lose 21 miles of our Northeast corridor rail lines to
flooding, shutting down the vital Northeast corridor that transports so
many millions every year.

[[Page S1413]]

The Port of Wilmington would be rendered useless, nearly all the
State's acreage of protected wetlands could be inundated, nearly three-
quarters of our dams, dikes, and levees flooded out. In short, this
scenario for our lowest-lying State would be devastating.
As Secretary O'Mara said:

We're looking at big risks for human health and safety, and
not just at the Delaware Bay beaches. We have big concerns
about [communities in Delaware]. It's much more complex than
just the bay beaches or a community here or there.

He is right. So once again, remember, we have two basic approaches to
climate change policy: adaptation and mitigation.
Once Delaware compiled its 200-page vulnerability assessment on sea
level rise, the committee got to work on an adaptation strategy to
protect our State and came up with slightly more than 60 options and
hosted a whole series of public meetings and townhalls to discuss it.
We are now working on a broader vulnerability assessment to examine the
full range of impacts from climate change, even beyond sea level rise--
changing temperatures, extreme weather, changes in precipitation--
impacts which will affect us and our neighbors.
Climate change will affect the distribution, abundance, and behavior
of wildlife, as well as the diversity, structure, and function of our
ecosystem. We are already seeing changes in natural patterns. As
Senator Markey of Massachusetts commented earlier this evening, many
commercial and recreational fish stocks along our east coast have moved
northward by 20 to 200 miles over the past 40 years as ocean
temperatures have increased. Scientists expect migratory species to be
strongly affected by climate change, since animal migration is closely
connected to climate factors, and migratory species use multiple
habitats and resources during their migrations. These changes are
impacting our own multimillion bird watching and waterfowl hunting, an
important economic driver for us and critical parts of our heritage.
According to the draft National Climate Assessment released in 2013,
our farmers are expected to initially adapt relatively well to the
changing climate over the next 25 years. But later, as temperature
increases and precipitation extremes get more intense, crop yields and
production of poultry and livestock are expected to decline. More
extreme weather events--drought and heavy downpours--will further
reduce yields, damage soil, stress irrigation water supplies, and
increase production costs. All in all, this is a fairly grim long-term
outlook in the absence of decisive action.
I am proud of my State. Delaware was the first State to thoroughly
assess the vulnerability of specific resources in as comprehensive a
way as they have, and we are determined to confront these changes to
our planet head on and to protect our communities and the way of life
we have built.
I will briefly review. There is so much we can and should do here in
Congress in a bipartisan way to lay the groundwork for the actions we
have to take. We can improve our energy efficiency. We could take up
and pass the bipartisan bill recently reintroduced by Senators Shaheen
and Portman to increase the use of energy-efficient technology across
all sectors in our society. The new version of the bill has 12
cosponsors--six Democrats and six Republicans--and includes 10 new
commonsense amendments which would save consumers electricity and
money, a small but meaningful start on a journey toward changing our
direction on climate change. Or we could level the playing field and
help new clean energy technologies get off the ground by giving them
the same tax advantages currently utilized by fossil fuel projects. The
bipartisan Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act--which I am proud to
cosponsor with my colleagues Senators Moran, Stabenow, Murkowski,
Landrieu, and Collins, Democrats and Republicans working together--
would level the playing field for renewables and give them and other
new technologies a fighting chance in our energy market.
There are so many other steps we could do in combination, if we would
but get past this endless, pointless debate which has long been
resolved in the halls of science, and move forward in a way which
better serves our country and our world.
The bottom line is that our climate is changing. We know this. With
this knowledge comes the responsibility to reduce our emissions, to
mitigate the impacts, and prepare for and take action to deal with the
coming changes.
As I reflect on our own responsibilities as Senators, I am in part
moved to respond to the challenge of climate change--not just because
it is an environmental issue, an economic issue, a regional issue or
global issue, but it is also for me and for many others a faith issue.
It is a question of how we carry out our responsibility to be good
stewards of God's creation, to be those Senators we are called to be
each from our own traditions who stand up and do what is right, not
just for the short term, not just for the concerns of the day, but for
the long term.
As I move toward my close, I will share with those in the Chamber and
watching one of the things most encouraging to me as I have reflected
on the change in the climate change movement over recent years is it
has begun to draw support from all across the theological spectrum.
There was last year, July of 2013, a letter sent to Speaker Boehner,
Majority Leader Reid, and all Members of Congress by 200 self-
identified Christian evangelical scientists from both religious and
secular universities all across the United States, a powerful and
incisive letter which says:

As evangelical scientists and academics, we understand
climate change is real and action is urgently needed. All of
God's Creation--human and our environment--is groaning under
the weight of our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, bringing
on a warming planet, melting ice, and rising seas.

I urge any watching to consider reading it. It is posted on line. It
goes on to quote Christian Scripture at length in making the case we
have an obligation, if we are concerned about our neighbors and about
the least of these in this world, to take on the challenge of making
sure we are good stewards.
Those of the Roman Catholic faith might be inspired by Pope Francis,
who has taken the name of the patron saint of animals and the
environment, and recently issued a call for all people to be protectors
of creation.
Last, I might read from a letter issued by the president of the
National Association of Evangelicals, a group not commonly known for
their close alignment with my party. Leith Anderson wrote in a letter
in 2011:

While others debate the science and politics of climate
change, my thoughts go to the poor people who are neither
scientists nor politicians. They will never study carbon
dioxide in the air or acidification of the ocean. But they
will suffer from dry wells in the Sahel of Africa and floods
along the coasts of Bangladesh. Their crops will fail while
our supermarkets remain full. They will suffer while we
study.

This couldn't be more true. I urge all of us in this Chamber to
reflect on whatever traditions sustain and bring us here that we have
an obligation to those who sleep soundly in our homes now, to those
from our home States around the country, to stand up and take action,
to look clearly at the challenge which lies in front of us and to act
in the best traditions of this body and of this Nation, to be good
stewards of creation and to stand up to the challenges of this time.
Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I thank all of my friends who are
speaking on the floor tonight for their continued commitment to not
just bring attention to climate change, but to push for decisive action
on the issue.
As experts from around the world show us beyond a reasonable doubt
that we, as a global community, are contributing to rising
temperatures, there are those that would deny that human actions can
have any effect on our climate and environment. Too often, lawmakers
try to legislate their own ``science'' rather than properly utilizing
the conclusions and recommendations made by skilled experts--yet nature
does not conform to our laws. That is why the United States must be an
innovator in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and a leading light
in the clean energy sector.
My own home State of New Jersey has shown strong leadership in moving
our country towards a sustainable energy future. We have developed and
implemented an aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard that requires
over

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20 percent of New Jersey's electricity to come from renewable sources
by 2021. We have put in place strong incentives for energy customers of
all sizes, from single families to the many businesses that call New
Jersey home, to become energy efficient and even clean energy
producers, by installing solar panels on their homes and buildings. New
Jersey is also beginning to realize some of its extraordinary potential
to harness wind power off our coast, with multiple offshore wind
projects currently in development. I am encouraged by some of the
progress that I have seen in the renewable energy sector in New Jersey
and other leading States, and hope that others will follow suit.
New Jersey's many exemplary institutions of higher learning have also
been at the forefront of the vital research that has helped us to
understand the causes and consequences of global climate change.
Important work is being done at the Institute of Marine and Coastal
Sciences at Rutgers University into how climatic changes in the Arctic
impact weather in the U.S., and Princeton University's Cooperative
Institute for Climate Science is at the forefront of climate change
mitigation options and response strategies.
Some of my Senate colleagues from fossil fuel producing States have
been hesitant to act, they say, because oil and coal production are
home State issues for them. Well, for me, climate change is a home
State issue. Not just because of the excellent work being done in New
Jersey, but because my State has seen firsthand the devastating effects
of a warmer climate that brings with it powerful storms, rising seas,
and destructive flooding.
Not 18 months ago, New Jersey and much of the eastern seaboard was
battered by an unprecedented superstorm that washed away much of the
New Jersey coastline. Superstorm Sandy caused an estimated $65 billion
in economic losses. 159 people lost their lives, 650,000 homes were
damaged or destroyed, and 8.5 million households and businesses lost
power, many of them for weeks. Power outages caused severe gas
shortages, with traffic backed up for miles, and people waiting for
hours to obtain fuel to feed the generators that were keeping their
families warm and their food from spoiling.
Now, New Jersey has persevered. We worked together and helped each
other rebuild lives, businesses, homes, and our famous beaches and
boardwalks. Efforts have been undertaken to make our coastal
communities and critical infrastructure more resilient to future storms
of this magnitude. But unless we act to implement responsible energy
policies that cut our greenhouse gas emissions and incentivize
investment in renewable energy infrastructure, these damaging
superstorms will only become more powerful and frequent. Those who deny
the reality of climate change tend to emphasize the economic costs of
regulating carbon emissions, but these costs pale next to the economic
and social costs of doing nothing.
I am proud to join my colleagues tonight, and for the duration of my
time serving the people of New Jersey in the Senate, to call for real
solutions to our climate challenges. The decisions that we make in this
body now will shape the future for our children and grandchildren.
Years from now, I hope to humbly reflect on my time in the Senate, and
be able to say I was a part of the Congress that finally reigned in big
oil and coal, and put the United States on a path towards
sustainability and environmental responsibility. Future generations of
Americans deserve no less, and our planet demands it.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, nearly 30 years ago, I joined a good
friend, the late Hub Vogelmann, along with a Republican Congressman, a
Democratic Governor, and President Reagan's EPA Administrator, on a
hike to the summit of Vermont's iconic peak, Camel's Hump. We had a
goal in mind. We wanted to observe first-hand the effects of acid raid.
When we arrived at the summit, we saw the evidence we feared. You did
not have to be a scientist to see it: a scar burned across the peak of
Camel's Hump and across all of the peaks of the Green Mountains and the
Adirondacks. Due to human action, weather patterns had changed,
altering the very chemistry of rainfall on a grand scale. As a result,
we caused profound and large-scale damage to life sustaining
ecosystems.
There were Democrats and Republicans, scientists and bureaucrats on
that mountain. We returned to Washington, united and eager to address
the problem. It was not easy. We had to overcome strong objections from
industry and develop an entirely new cap-and-trade regulatory
framework. In the end, a Democratic majority in Congress passed, and
Republican President George H.W. Bush signed into law, the Clean Air
Act amendments.
Once again, we are confronted with irrefutable evidence that humans
have altered not just the weather of a region, but the climate of the
entire planet. This time, we do not need to climb mountains to see the
damage. We see it in New England's flood ravaged river valleys,
California's scorched farmland, Alaska's retreating glaciers, Wyoming's
burnt forests, and super-storm ravaged coastlines.
Before we even get to the accumulated--and accumulating--scientific
evidence for climate change and the carbonization of our fragile
envelope of atmosphere, we only need to apply common sense. As we look
around us, anywhere, everywhere, and at any time, doesn't it just stand
to reason that human activity is contributing to documented changes in
our atmosphere, and to climate change? I certainly have seen it in my
lifetime. But I have also seen people try to deny all reason and the
evidence all around us.
The scientists have done their work. We now better understand the
human causes of climate change and we understand its profound and
accelerating impact. Unfortunately, too many policy makers deny the
evidence, or refuse to cross political lines to solve the problem. I
say it is time we wake up and act on climate change.
We have taken some steps in the right direction. This past summer,
President Obama announced his Climate Action Plan to cut carbon
pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency has begun creating new
carbon emission standards for future power plants. The Department of
Energy is working on ground-breaking energy technologies, and the
Department of Transportation is studying transportation planning to
address future risks and vulnerabilities from extreme weather and
climate change. The Transportation Department is also addressing
vehicle fuel efficiency which is saving vehicle owners and operators
billions of dollars a year. These are all positive changes, but before
we rest on our laurels, we have to understand that there are not nearly
enough to address the problem at hand. Congress needs to cast aside
partisan blinders by enacting legislation that prioritizes renewable
energy development, supports energy efficient technologies, and taxes
carbon pollution.
It is time to take a stand against misguided policies and projects
that put future generations at risk, and in my State, we believe that
includes the Keystone XL pipeline. The State Department recently
released its long-awaited environmental impact statement on the
Keystone XL pipeline. I am deeply troubled that the State Department's
analysis did not take into account the overwhelming evidence that this
project will further accelerate the release of greenhouse gas
pollution, which will intensify climate change. There is a mountain of
evidence that the carbon pollution, drinking water threats, public
health threats, and safety threats from this pipeline are so great that
it is not in our national interest, and its permit should be denied. I
realize this goes against some public opinion polls, but I believe we
must stamp out our addiction to fossil fuels and fight back against
these threats to our land, water, air, and healthy communities around
the world.
We have to understand that climate change is not simply an
environmental challenge. Creating a green energy sector is not just
about cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It is about providing jobs for
Americans in the renewable energy and energy efficiency fields. It is
about strengthening national security in America by having greater
control over our energy sources and breaking the stranglehold of oil on
the transportation system. What should unite all of us, Republicans and
Democrats alike, is assuring that our children and grandchildren have
clean air to breathe.
We have come together before. We did it back in the time of President

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George H.W. Bush. We joined hands across the aisle and across regions
of this great country to solve problems. Why can't we do it again?
Isn't that the least we owe to our planet? Isn't that the least we owe
to our children and grandchildren?
Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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