[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 62 (Thursday, April 21, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2379-S2381]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT SIGNING AND EARTH DAY
Mr. DURBIN. Some may know that there is a section of the Washington
Post called the Kids Post--a section of interesting stories written for
kids in the Washington area. The writers ask area grade schoolers about
their favorite books, tv shows, hobbies, and sports. Sometimes the kids
are asked what they think is one of the biggest problems in the world.
Last week, a fifth-grade class in Virginia was asked this question.
About half the class mentioned an environmental problem such as
global warming. In other recent editions when this question was asked,
climate change is something these young people consistently worry
about. It only makes sense.
Failure to do anything about climate change today, when we still have
a chance, will leave future generations--our grandchildren and their
children--with a changed world--and not for the better.
I know every time I look at my beautiful young grandchildren, I feel
a responsibility--a moral responsibility--
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to address this problem for them and future generations. It makes me
wonder why there are still so many here in this chamber and among the
leading Republican Presidential candidates who deny climate change even
exists, not to mention refuse to even do anything about it. How will
future generations look back upon such denial and obstinance in the
face of overwhelming evidence? Not kindly, I expect.
I know that science tells us that our human brains evolved to address
more immediate dangers, and slowly evolving dangers, especially ones
that may take decades or more to materialize, don't trigger the same
sense of importance. But that is not the only thing at work here.
For decades, the fossil fuel industry and those in their pocket have
tried to blur the debate--to blur the science--and create divisions
among us instead of looking for what we have in common to solve this
shared problem. Make no mistake. This is a deliberate campaign financed
by the fossil fuel industry, a campaign that peddles the pseudo-science
of manufactured doubt.
As we approach Earth Day, all you need to do is look at the daily
news to see the destructive impact of climate change. Scientists
recently gained an improved understanding of the complex climate
science of Antarctic ice, and they showed that, if carbon emissions
were to continue unabated over the next few decades, the oceans could
rise as much as 3 or 4 feet by 2100. The situation would then grow far
worse in the 22nd century and beyond, likely forcing people to abandon
many coastal cities. How can any member of the Senate ignore this
potentially catastrophic and costly disaster?
Just the other week, scientists announced troubling evidence in the
South Pacific that we are reaching a point where many coral reef
ecosystems may not be able to adapt to the relentless progression of
climate change. Whole ecosystems that affect all of us and our food
chain are being impacted.
And just recently, the New York Times reported that forest fires in
parts of the United States, from Alaska to New Mexico, were no longer
just happening in a single season, as was the case historically. They
have become year-around threats. New Mexico has had 140 such fires this
year alone, double the number over the same period last year. Such
fires have arrived earlier each year, are happening in winters, and in
some cases burning all year along. The culprit for the drier conditions
leading to these fires? Climate change.
Climate change also has significant national security implications,
ones we simply cannot ignore because they will impact our shores. The
crisis in Syria and the flow of refugees from unstable parts of the
world is an early warning of how humanitarian crises, particularly from
less stable parts of our shared planet, are likely to get worse if we
continue to let climate change go unaddressed. Back in 2011, when pro-
democracy protests began in Syria, many of those joining were displaced
farmers, who had suffered their fourth year of drought made worse by
the effects of climate change. The National Academy of Sciences
published findings earlier this year showing that extreme drought in
Syria between 2006 and 2009 was most likely due to climate change and
that the drought was a factor in the uprisings in 2011.
Just last week, Pulitzer Prize Winner New York Times columnist Tom
Friedman wrote about massive migration out of parts of West Africa,
through the Sahara Desert, to Libya hoping to eventually cross the
Mediterranean Sea into Europe. I ask unanimous consent that his April
13, 2016, column ``Out of Africa'' be printed in the Record following
my remarks.
He writes, ``Just as Syria's revolution was set off in part by the
worst four-year drought in the country's modern history--plus
overpopulation, climate stresses and the Internet--the same is true of
this African migration wave.''
Friedman further explains that a United Nations official in the
region showed him three maps of Africa with an outline around dots
clustered in the middle of the continent. The first map showed the most
vulnerable regions of desertification, made worse by recent droughts,
in Africa in 2008. The second map showed conflicts and food riots in
Africa during 2007 and 2008. And the third map showed terrorist attacks
in Africa in 2012. All three outlines cover the same territory.
Anyone serving in the U.S. Senate or running for President who claims
to be serious about national security simply isn't credible without
addressing the long-term threats posed by weak states and climate
change in the decades to come.
And now, insurance companies are tuning in because they understand
the threat is real and that business assets are at stake. Lloyd's of
London, the world's oldest and biggest insurance market, has recognized
the threat climate change represents to business assets, risks ranging
from property damage to forced displacement to food insecurity. Lloyd's
has issued a call for the insurance industry to take into account the
effects of climate change in their insurance modeling.
The London School of Economics studied the economic impacts of
climate change and put out a new report earlier this month. What they
found is that, on a global scale, climate change could cost the world
as little as $2.5 trillion--or, within the range of possibilities, as
much as $25 trillion.
This is not only a problem in the Arctic or Africa or in remote
corners of the world. This is a problem close to home for us, right
here and right now. In the past 6 years, Illinois has experienced
historic storms, floods, and droughts that have caused millions of
dollars in damage. The city of Chicago has been hit by four historic
storms in the last 7 years, meaning that the flooding of basements and
overflowing of wastewater systems has become an annual event.
Because of climate change, U.S. growing seasons have shifted so
drastically that crops which previously could survive only in the
southern half of the country can now be successfully grown in northern
Illinois. If current global warming trends continue, climate models
estimate that Illinois will have a climate similar to that of the Texas
Gulf coast by 2100. For Illinois farmers, these changes to the
environment have a direct effect on their livelihood.
The need to act is urgent. We are reaching the tipping point. The
science is clear; the debate is settled. The destructiveness of climate
change is clear and growing. Climate change is a dire threat to the
global economy and global stability. It will cause catastrophic
consequences for global health, food security, and habitats on land and
in the ocean. If we don't act in time, there is no backup plan.
No one nation can do this alone. The good news is that, together, the
nations of the world can act to avoid irreversible disaster. President
Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and climate envoy Todd Stern have
helped lead the way. The Paris climate agreement is a historic step in
that direction. Never before have so many nations come together to
tackle this threat. The draft Paris climate treaty was negotiated and
adopted by consensus by 195 countries, unprecedented international
cooperation in the face of the crisis.
I want to congratulate President Obama for his leadership in this
complex but crucial task. He and his team lead the way for an
ambitious, balanced, and fair agreement. And I would like to thank Todd
Stern for his contributions, steadily working over several years to
build up to the success of the Paris negotiations. I wish him and his
family well as he retires from the climate envoy position.
Getting 195 countries to consent on the treaty is no small feat, and
he achieved all this in the face of so much opposition at home.
The agreement opens for signatures on April 22, Earth Day. The United
States and China made a joint announcement that we will be signing the
agreement on that day, the earliest possible time. I encourage other
nations to follow our lead.
Our generation has a moral obligation to leave the world in at least
as good a shape as we inherited from our parents and grandparents. We
cannot run away from our responsibility.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
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[Apr. 13, 2016]
Out of Africa
(By Thomas L. Friedman)
Agadez, Niger.--It's Monday and that means it's moving day
in Agadez, the northern Niger desert crossroad that is the
main launching pad for migrants out of West Africa. Fleeing
devastated agriculture, overpopulation and unemployment,
migrants from a dozen countries gather here in caravans every
Monday night and make a mad dash through the Sahara to Libya,
hoping to eventually hop across the Mediterranean to Europe.
This caravan's assembly is quite a scene to witness.
Although it is evening, it's still 105 degrees, and there is
little more than a crescent moon to illuminate the night.
Then, all of a sudden, the desert comes alive.
Using the WhatsApp messaging service on their cellphones,
the local smugglers, who are tied in with networks of
traffickers extending across West Africa, start coordinating
the surreptitious loading of migrants from safe houses and
basements across the city. They've been gathering all week
from Senegal, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia,
Chad, Guinea, Cameroon, Mali and other towns in Niger.
With 15 to 20 men--no women--crammed together into the back
of each Toyota pickup, their arms and legs spilling over the
sides, the vehicles pop out of alleyways and follow scout
cars that have zoomed ahead to make sure there are no pesky
police officers or border guards lurking who have not been
paid off.
It's like watching a symphony, but you have no idea where
the conductor is. Eventually, they all converge at a
gathering point north of the city, forming a giant caravan of
100 to 200 vehicles--the strength in numbers needed to ward
off deserts bandits.
Poor Niger. Agadez, with its warrens of ornate mud-walled
buildings, is a remarkable Unesco World Heritage site, but
the city has been abandoned by tourists after attacks nearby
by Boko Haram and other jihadists. So, as one smuggler
explains to me, the cars and buses of the tourist industry
have now been repurposed into a migration industry. There are
now wildcat recruiters, linked to smugglers, all across West
Africa who appeal to the mothers of boys to put up the $400
to $500 to send them to seek out jobs in Libya or Europe. Few
make it, but others keep coming.
I am standing at the Agadez highway control station
watching this parade. As the Toyotas whisk by me, kicking up
dust, they paint the desert road with stunning moonlit
silhouettes of young men, silently standing in the back of
each vehicle. The thought that their Promised Land is war-
ravaged Libya tells you how desperate are the conditions
they're leaving. Between 9,000 and 10,000 men make this
journey every month.
A few agree to talk--nervously. One group of very young men
from elsewhere in Niger tell me they're actually joining the
rush to pan for gold in Djado in the far north of Niger. More
typical are five young men who, in Senegalese-accented
French, tell a familiar tale: no work in the village, went to
the town, no work in the town, heading north.
What's crazy is that as you go north of here, closer to the
Libya border, to Dirkou, you run into streams of migrants
coming back from Libya, which they found ungoverned, abusive
and lacking in any kind of decent work. One of them, Mati
Almaniq, from Niger, tells me he had left his three wives and
17 children back in his village to search for work in Libya
or Europe and returned deeply disillusioned. In Libya, say
migrants, you can get beaten at any moment--or arbitrarily
arrested and have the police use your cellphone to call your
family in Niger and demand a ransom for your release.
Just as Syria's revolution was set off in part by the worst
four-year drought in the country's modern history--plus
overpopulation, climate stresses and the Internet--the same
is true of this African migration wave. That's why I'm here
filming an episode for the ``Years of Living Dangerously''
series on climate change across the planet, which will appear
on National Geographic Channel next fall. I'm traveling with
Monique Barbut, who heads the U.N. Convention to Combat
Desertification, and Adamou Chaifou, Niger's minister of
environment.
Chaifou explains that West Africa has experienced two
decades of on-again-off-again drought. The dry periods prompt
desperate people to deforest hillsides for wood for cooking
or to sell, but they are now followed by increasingly violent
rains, which then easily wash away the topsoil barren of
trees. Meanwhile, the population explodes--mothers in Niger
average seven children--as parents continue to have lots of
kids for social security, and each year more fertile land
gets eaten by desertification. ``We now lose 100,000 hectares
of arable land every year to desertification,'' says Chaifou.
``And we lose between 60,000 and 80,000 hectares of forest
every year.''
As long as anyone could remember, he says, the rainy season
``started in June and lasted until October. Now we get more
big rains in April, and you need to plant right after it
rains.'' But then it becomes dry again for a month or two,
and then the rains come back, much more intense than before,
and cause floods that wash away the crops, ``and that is a
consequence of climate change''--caused, he adds, primarily
by emissions from the industrial North, not from Niger or its
neighbors.
Says the U.N.'s Barbut, ``Desertification acts as the
trigger, and climate change acts as an amplifier of the
political challenges we are witnessing today: economic
migrants, interethnic conflicts and extremism.'' She shows me
three maps of Africa with an oblong outline around a bunch of
dots clustered in the middle of the continent. Map No. 1: the
most vulnerable regions of desertification in Africa in 2008.
Map No. 2: conflicts and food riots in Africa 2007-2008. Map
No. 3: terrorist attacks in Africa in 2012.
All three outlines cover the same territory.
The European Union recently struck a deal with Turkey to
vastly increase E.U. aid to Ankara for dealing with refugees
and migrants who have reached Turkey, in return for Turkey
restricting their flow into Europe.
``If we would invest a fraction of that amount helping
African nations combat deforestation, improve health and
education and sustain small-scale farming, which is the
livelihood of 80 percent of the people in Africa, so people
here could stay on the land,'' says Barbut, ``it would be so
much better for them and for the planet.''
Everyone wants to build walls these days, she notes, but
the wall we need most is a ``green wall'' of reforestation
that would hold back the desert and stretch from Mali in the
west to Ethiopia in the east. ``It's an idea that the
Africans themselves have come up with,'' she adds. It makes
enormous sense.
Because, in the end, no wall will hold back this surging
migrant tide. Everything you see here screams that unless a
way can be found to stabilize Africa's small-scale
agriculture, one way or another they will try to get to
Europe. Some who can't will surely gravitate toward any
extremist group that pays them. Too many are now aware
through mass media of the better life in Europe, and too many
see their governments as too frail to help them advance
themselves.
I interviewed 20 men from at least 10 African countries at
the International Organization for Migration aid center in
Agadez--all had gone to Libya, tried and failed to get to
Europe, and returned, but were penniless and unable to get
back to their home villages. I asked them, ``How many of you
and your friends would leave Africa and go to Europe if you
could get in legally?''
``Tout le monde,'' they practically shouted, while they all
raised their hands.
I don't know much French, but I think that means
``everybody.''
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