[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 131 (Monday, September 15, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5576-S5578]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today for the 78th time in my 
``Time to Wake Up'' series to urge my Republican colleagues that it is 
long past time to wake up to the growing threat of global climate 
change.
  For those who still deny the science--and believe it or not, that is 
where some of our colleagues still are--I remind them that virtually 
every credible scientific authority--and, no, the ones funded by the 
big carbon polluters don't count--virtually every credible scientific 
authority has moved beyond the question of whether our climate is 
changing or whether human carbon pollution drives these changes to now 
how it is happening and where it is happening.
  Climate change is no longer a forecast; it is happening before our 
eyes, all around us. The latest reports from the Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change--made up of the world's top climate 
scientists--call the fact that our Earth is warming ``unequivocal.'' 
Just last week the Secretary General of the World Meteorological 
Organization said: ``We know without any doubt that our climate is 
changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human 
activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.'' I repeat--he said 
``without any doubt.''
  It is actually evident to our own eyes now from observations and 
measurements--not projections or predictions--of increases in global 
warming air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, 
and a rising global average sea level--a phenomenon that means a lot to 
my coastal State of Rhode Island and to the Presiding Officer's State 
of Maine. Back home our constituents, our neighbors, get it. On our 
coasts they brace against the unrelenting rise of the seas and watch 
mystifying changes in fisheries they have been familiar with for 
generations. On the Plains they toil to raise crops under unprecedented 
drought. In the mountains they watch as ancient acres of forest are 
killed by the spread of invasive pests. Yet here in Washington we do 
nothing.
  In Rhode Island the waters of Narragansett Bay are getting warmer--3 
to 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the winter just since the 1960s. 
Long-term data from the tide gauges in Newport, RI, just off Naval 
Station Newport, show an increase in average sea level of nearly 10 
inches since 1930 and accelerating. Sea level rise is contributing to 
erosion and brings storm surges and waves farther inland.
  While Washington fiddles, Rhode Islanders act. Early this month more 
than 200 Rhode Islanders came together in Providence for my annual 
Rhode Island Energy and Environmental Leaders Day. The event brings 
together Rhode Islanders in renewable energy and sustainable 
development businesses, in community development nonprofits; it brings 
together State and local officials, advocates, and academics to share 
ideas with each other and with national leaders and Federal agencies on 
promoting green energy, improving resiliency, and combating climate 
change.
  The innovation taking place in my Ocean State was on full display 
this year. Rhode Islanders are leading the effort to improve our 
environment and develop clean technology and energy and prepare for the 
changes carbon pollution has looming over us. Sheila Dormody, the 
director of sustainability of Providence was there to discuss the 
recently released Sustainable Providence plan for making our comparable 
city cleaner and greener. The plan covers everything from reducing food 
waste to improving energy efficiency to increasing alternative 
transportation options. These actions benefit public health and the 
environment, and they create economic opportunity. These aren't job 
killers. These are job builders. You cannot send efficiency upgrades or 
solar panel installation jobs overseas. Those are Rhode Island jobs, 
American jobs.

  Grover Fugate, executive director of Rhode Island's Coastal Resources 
Management Council, was there to discuss the collaboration they have 
with the Rhode Island Realtors Association to create a Rhode Island 
coastal property guide. We need a Rhode Island coastal

[[Page S5577]]

property guide because climate change loads the dice for more frequent 
and more severe storms and hurricanes that put businesses and 
homeowners along the shore at risk from flooding, erosion, and wind 
damage.
  Superstorm Sandy was a harsh warning. This property guide helps 
residents and business owners understand the risks and the costs they 
now face both today and in the future because of the carbon pollution 
we are doing nothing about. Extreme precipitation, rain bursts, heavy 
rains or snows have increased 74 percent in the Northeast between 1958 
and 2010.
  Rhode Islanders have always cared a lot about our Narragansett Bay. 
We love our bay. We want to protect it. These heavy rains, these sudden 
rains, these rain bursts, what they do is they drive polluted and 
nutrient-rich runoff that might otherwise be filtered or captured 
straight into the bay where it can close beaches and harm the bay's 
marine life.
  Climate change and the carbon pollution mean we will have to work 
harder in Rhode Island and invest more dollars in a storm water and 
wastewater infrastructure, and it is not cheap. Our Rhode Island 
Narragansett Bay Commission, our wastewater utility, is overhauling its 
sewer and storm water collection to address that overflow during big 
storms. When big storms hit now, the underground storage tunnel that 
was completed in 2008 stores up the sewer and storm water until the 
extra water can be processed and until the capacity in the treatment 
plant is there to pump it out and process it.
  As a result of the first phase of what is called the combined sewer 
overflow project, the commission estimates that through 2012, 4.6 
billion gallons of mixed storm and wastewater that would have been 
dumped directly into Narragansett Bay untreated were instead processed 
at the Field's Point Wastewater Treatment Facility at one of our small 
towns. The town of Tiverton, RI, received funding through the USDA to 
help pay for upgrades to the town's water system, connecting thousands 
of residents on inefficient old septic tank systems to a town sewer. 
Leroy Kendricks, the chair of the Tiverton Wastewater District, told 
our group that these improvements will protect the Sakonnet River and 
Mount Hope Bay from mounting levels of pollution.
  Julia Gold is the climate change program manager at the Rhode Island 
Department of Health. Julia explained how the department of health has 
teamed up with the division of elderly affairs to focus on the effects 
of climate change on the elderly, collaborating with the departments of 
environmental management and transportation to pilot a Lyme disease 
prevention training program for outdoor workers--those ticks spread 
more widely in warmer weather--and partnered with the Brown School of 
Public Health to examine correlations between rising temperatures and 
rising hospital admissions.
  You may have seen a segment in the documentary series ``Years Of 
Living Dangerously'' on the deaths in Los Angeles from heat-related 
conditions worsened by climate change. This work with Brown University 
is similar and showing similar results.
  These were just a few of the many stories told in Rhode Island at the 
Energy and Environmental Leaders Day. Not only do Rhode Islanders 
connect with one another there, but we also have the chance to share 
our important work with national leaders and hear their perspective on 
regional and national leaders, as well as get their perspective on 
regional and national trends.
  The first of three keynote addresses came from renowned marine 
scientist and National Geographic Explorer-in-residence Sylvia Earle. 
Sylvia is truly a remarkable woman and a legend in oceanography 
circles. Her passion for our living oceans is just about as deep as 
those oceans. She reminded us that the oceans are the cornerstone of 
our human life support system, that indeed the oceans are the life 
support system for all creatures on our planet, not just the aquatic 
ones, and that our oceans bear witness to the unprecedented changes 
carbon pollution is causing. Her bad news was that these threats are 
grave. Her good news was that never before have we, as humans, been as 
well equipped with knowledge about our earth and our climate. The 
oceans indeed are sick but we have the power simply by changing our 
behavior to help them heal.
  In a happy coincidence Sylvia's new documentary called ``Mission 
Blue,'' which lays out the perilous condition of earth's oceans, was 
playing the night before at the Newport Film Festival. Sylvia went 
there and said:

       Think of a film about oceans 50 years from now. It will be 
     based on what we do now.

  Our possibilities are terrific. Here is another thing that she said. 
I will quote her.

       The good news sounds like bad news but the good news is 
     that we know that it is happening. We are the only creatures 
     on earth with the capacity to dive back into time, put 
     ourselves into perspective and plan a future based on 
     evidence, based on knowledge.

  So what are we doing now? While Congress snoozes in the snug embrace 
of the big polluted interests, President Obama has stepped into the 
vacuum. His chief lieutenant in this effort is EPA Administrator Gina 
McCarthy. She delivered our second keynote.

  Climate change, she told our assembled group, is perhaps the most 
difficult, complex, and necessary issue for us to face. She reminded us 
that EPA is at its heart a public health agency. So when it comes to 
the carbon pollution that increases smog and asthma or increases the 
storms and floods that batter our communities, she says this: ``EPA's 
job is to protect those that are most vulnerable from this pollution, 
so it is our job to take action on climate. Period. Full stop.''
  Administrator McCarthy led an extraordinary effort to put out the 
EPA's proposed rule, for the first time limiting carbon pollution from 
our country's largest source--our powerplants. The rule is 
revolutionary in many ways, particularly in its adaptability, allowing 
States and regions to reach their own goals their own way. It is the 
product of an intensely collaborative process and an enormous amount of 
give and take. The rollout has been viewed by those outside fossil fuel 
board rooms as a real achievement.
  I commend Administrator McCarthy on moving that rule forward with so 
much energy. I wish her and that rule Godspeed.
  The road ahead offers many obstacles as our third and final keynote 
speaker reminded us. Jeff Goodell has reported on the energy industry 
and the changing climate for Rolling Stone magazine, where he is a 
contributing editor. His many books have explored the inner workings of 
the fossil fuel industry and the most far-reaching proposals for 
avoiding catastrophic global warming, among other topics.
  Jeff has firsthand knowledge of the complex apparatus of denial 
supported by the big polluters. The fossil fuel producers are 
bankrolling entire political campaigns and phony front organizations 
peddling scientific misinformation.
  As Jeff pointed out, these misinformation efforts even involve not 
just the same strategies but the very same scientists who were involved 
working for the tobacco industry--the scientists-for-hire who worked 
for the tobacco industry in its decades-long venture to hide the 
dangers of tobacco from regulators and the public. They are still at 
it, but now it is denying climate change, not denying that tobacco is 
harmful.
  Not only do these polluters stall tactics stand in the way of 
responsible action to cure climate change, Jeff reported they also hold 
back progress in our energy sector and in our economy, particularly in 
States and regions that have long relied on fossil fuel jobs. He called 
on us--he called on his home country--to finally take steps to move 
these communities into the 21st century economy.
  The environmental and energy challenges facing our Nation can seem 
daunting. When we join together to share ideas and experiences, as we 
do each year in the Rhode Island Energy and Environment Leaders Day, it 
is clear that there is a path forward.
  Rhode Islanders understand this. They see the challenge, and we are 
up to it. We are all up to it as Americans. One thing Rhode Islanders 
will be doing is later this month hundreds of us will board buses and 
head down to New York City for what will be known as the People's 
Climate March. Organizers expect as many as a half million people will 
take part in the historic

[[Page S5578]]

citizen action to call attention to the global crisis of climate 
change. Marchers from Rhode Island, from California, from all across 
our country, from different organizations, from different industries--a 
patchwork of America--will be there to demand responsible leadership in 
the fight against carbon pollution. I will be among them.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, what is the current business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is in a period of morning business.

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