[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 14, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3871-S3874]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in a Chamber where the debate on
climate change has become woefully one-sided and in a Congress where
House Republicans just voted unanimously to oppose the only climate
solution Republicans have come to, I want to use my 140th climate
speech to remind us of a time when global warming concerns came from
both sides of the aisle.
Nearly 30 years ago this week, a Republican chair of the Senate
Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution,
who also served twice as Governor of my State and as Secretary of the
Navy, convened a 2-day, 5-panel hearing on ozone depletion, the
greenhouse effect, and climate change. It was June, 1986, and Senator
John Chafee, a Republican of Rhode Island, gave opening remarks warning
of ``the buildup of greenhouse gases, which threaten to warm the Earth
to unprecedented levels. Such a warming could, within the next 50 to 75
years, produce enormous changes in a climate that has remained fairly
stable for thousands of years.''
``[T]here is a very real possibility,'' Senator Chafee went on to
say, ``that man--through ignorance or indifference, or both--is
irreversibly altering the ability of our atmosphere to perform basic
life support functions for the planet.''
Last weekend, the Washington Post wrote an article recalling this
historic hearing, entitled ``30 years ago scientists warned Congress on
global warming. What they said sounds eerily familiar.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
that article at the conclusion of my remarks.
Imagine, by the way, a Republican-controlled Senate that would even
have a Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. How things have
changed. The present Republican Chairman of the Environment and Public
Works Committee is the author of ``The Greatest Hoax: How the Global
Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.'' The contrast is stark
between what Senate Republicans and their hearing witnesses were saying
30 years ago and what the polluter-funded GOP is saying today.
Thirty years ago, Senator Chafee declared:
This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky
is falling. The scientific evidence . . . is telling us we
have a problem; a serious problem.
According to our current EPW Committee chairman, ``Much of the debate
over global warming is predicated on fear rather than science.''
The depth and sophistication of climate science has done nothing but
increase since the Chafee hearings, and the damage from climate change
is not just a projection; it has started to occur. Scientists are now
able to connect the dots. Australian researchers, for example, have
determined that the ocean warming that led to widespread and
devastating coral bleaching, killing off a significant chunk of the
Great Barrier Reef in March, was made 175 times more likely by human-
caused climate change. As one researcher put it, ``this is the smoking
gun.''
Sadly, as the scientific consensus about the causes and consequences
of human-driven climate change has strengthened over 30 years, the
GOP's trust in science has eroded. They don't appear to even believe
the science in their home State universities. All you have to do is go
look at your own home State universities' positions on climate and how
they are presented. It is right there.
But when one looks at how that party is funded and how it has now
become virtually the political wing of the fossil fuel industry, one
can understand this sad state of affairs.
Three decades ago, Republican Senator Chafee said:
Scientists have characterized our treatment of the
greenhouse effect as a global experiment. It strikes me as a
form of planetary Russian roulette.
He went on to say:
By not making policy choices today, by sticking to a ``wait
and see'' approach, . . . [b]y allowing these gases to
continue to build in the atmosphere, this generation may be
committing all of us to severe economic and environmental
disruption without ever having decided that the value of
``business as usual'' is worth the risks.
Those who believe that these are problems to be dealt with
by future generations are misleading themselves. Man's
activities to date may have already committed us to some
level of temperature change.
Even with 30 more years of solid science buttressing it, many in the
present-day GOP deny that basic understanding and ignore even the home
State mainstream climate science that underpins it. A few--a very few--
Republicans in Congress are now so bold as to accept mainstream,
established science as it is taught in their home State universities,
as is accepted by all our national science agencies and laboratories,
and as it is warned of by our military and intelligence services, which
is a nice step. But none will yet act on that understanding. Even that
tiny cohort behaves in the face of this known risk--a risk the party
recognized 30 years ago--as if it is enough to accept the science and
do nothing. All 14 of the House Members who sponsored the House
Resolution on climate change--all 14 of them--just voted with
ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers against a carbon fee. When the whip
comes down.
Thirty years ago, the Chafee hearing witnesses included the long-time
director of NASA's Goddard Center, Dr. James Hansen; Dr. Michael
Oppenheimer of Princeton; Dr. Robert Watson; and then-Senator Al Gore
of Tennessee.
Dr. Hansen, now one of the leading advocates for immediate and
decisive climate action within the science community, educated the
subcommittee on the theory underpinning global climate models.
Dr. Oppenheimer, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, talked about the need for immediate--30 years ago--climate
action. Uncertainty, he told the Senators, was no excuse for inaction.
Dr. Watson, who would go on to chair the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change between 1997 and 2002
[[Page S3872]]
said: ``It is not wise to experiment on the planet Earth by allowing
the concentration of these trace gases to increase without full
understanding the consequences.''
Senator Gore agreed with these scientists, testifying that ``there is
no longer any significant difference of opinion within the scientific
community about the fact that the greenhouse effect is real and is
already occurring.''
The current GOP chair of our EPW Committee has mocked Dr. Hansen and
the IPCC and Vice President Gore, reserving a particular disdain for
Vice President Gore, who he says is ``drowning in a sea of his own
global warming illusions,'' and ``desperately trying to keep global
warming alarmism alive today.''
Thirty years ago, the tone of the GOP was much different. Where
Republicans today mock the prudential rule, Senator Chafee actually
advocated for prudence in environmental policy. He said this:
The path that society is following today is much like
driving a car toward the edge of a cliff. We have a choice.
We can go ahead, take no action and drive off the edge--
figuring that, since the car will not hit the bottom of the
canyon until our generation is already long gone, the problem
of coping with what we have made inevitable, is for future
generations to deal with. We can hope that they will learn
how to adapt. On the other hand, we can put the brakes on
now, before the car gets any closer to the edge of the cliff
and before we reach a point where momentum will take us over
the edge, with or without application of the brakes.
Present-day Republicans just want to turn up the radio to the tune of
``Drill, Baby, Drill'' and jam the accelerator to the floor. Our
current EPW chair has even said: ``CO2 does not cause
catastrophic disasters--actually it would be beneficial to our
environment and our economy.''
Thirty years ago, Senator Chafee knew there was much yet to learn
about climate change. Scientists will agree on the margins that there
still is more to learn. But Senator Chafee said then that we have to
face up to it anyway. I quote him again.
We don't have all the perfect scientific evidence. There
may be gaps here and there. . . . Nonetheless, I think we
have got to face up to it. We can't wait for every shred of
evidence to come in and be absolutely perfect; I think we
ought to start . . . to try and do something about
[greenhouse gases], and certainly, to increase the public's
awareness of the problem and the feeling, as you say, that it
is not hopeless. . . . We can do something.''
Six and one-half years ago, the United States was preparing to join
the gathering of nations in Copenhagen for the 2009 U.N. Climate Change
Conference. When that happened, business leaders took out a full-page
ad in the New York Times calling for passage of U.S. climate
legislation, for investment in the clean energy economy, and for
leadership to inspire the rest of the world to join the fight against
climate change. ``[W]e must embrace the challenge today to ensure that
future generations are left with a safe planet and a strong economy.''
``Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is
scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and
irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.''
Well, interestingly, one of the signatories of that advertisement was
none other than Donald J. Trump, Chairman and President of The Trump
Organization. It is also signed by Eric F. Trump and Ivanka Trump. Even
the 2009 version of the man who is now the Republican Party's
presumptive nominee understood and put his name to the need to act on
climate change.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of that
advertisement be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.
Mr. President, what does this individual, now the Republican Party's
presumptive nominee, want to do? He is proposing to roll back President
Obama's Clean Power Plan and cancel the landmark Paris climate
agreement. The same guy who signed this advertisement has since labeled
decades of research by thousands of honest and honorable climate
scientists as a ``hoax,'' a ``con job,'' and ``BS,'' to use a more
polite form of his expression, all the while on his business side he
wants a seawall to protect his golf resort from ``global warming and
its effects.''
What do actual climate scientists think of the energy policies of the
Republican nominee-to-be? Well, in reference to canceling the Paris
Agreement and undoing the Clean Power Plan, Dr. Paul Higgins, who is
the director of the American Meteorological Society's Policy Program
remarked:
Undoing these efforts would mean that future emissions of
carbon dioxide would be larger and future atmospheric
concentrations would be higher. Higher CO2
concentrations would mean larger changes in climate and
faster rates of change. Larger and faster changes in climate,
in turn, pose greater risk to society.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, said: ``[My] quick reaction is that [his]
comments show incredible ignorance with regard to the science and
global affairs.'' Incredible ignorance, that is the party standard.
Dr. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at
Pennsylvania State University--a State that has a GOP Member in the
Senate--put it bluntly when he said, ``[I]t is not an overstatement to
say that [these] climate change views''--of this man--``and policy
proposals constitute an existential threat to this planet.''
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas
Tech University--that famous liberal, leftwing university, Texas Tech
University--has spoken of the potential economic cost of inaction. She
said:
As the impacts grow ever more evident, severe, and costly,
what was obvious to the 195 nations who met in Paris will
become obvious to every human on this planet: doing something
about climate change is far cheaper than not.
A quick aside on Dr. Hayhoe's comment, when this becomes ``obvious to
every human on this planet,'' what will then be the legacy of the
Republican Party? Not a proud one. Indeed, it will be a legacy to run
from. The fossil fuel companies, their trade associations, front
groups, and many in the GOP have spent the 30 years since the Chafee
hearings obstructing responsible climate action despite better
scientific understanding and growing public support for climate action.
The fossil fuel industry has particular blame. They have erected a
multi-tentacled, climate-denial apparatus that has deliberately caused
that obstruction, and there are plenty of scientists looking at that
now.
Citizens United is what gave that industry the unprecedented
political weaponry that it has used to accomplish that end. The GOP-
Citizens United-fossil fuel industry nexus will earn history's
condemnation. Let's just hope it is not too late.
The Washington Post article asked Dr. Oppenheimer to reflect on the
intervening 30 years. Dr. Oppenheimer said: This hearing helped bring
the concern together, and essentially painted a picture that things are
kind of spinning out of control, that science is trying to tell us
something, that the world seems to be changing even faster than our
scientific understanding of the problem, and worst of all, our
political leaders are way behind the eight ball.
I knew Senator Chafee. He was a family friend. He may have been my
father's best friend. He was an optimist and a pragmatist. He used to
say: Given half a chance, nature will rebound and overcome tremendous
setbacks, but we must--at the very least--give it that half a chance.
He also knew nature's tolerance is not unlimited. At those
groundbreaking hearings, Senator Chafee warned:
It seems that the problems man creates for our planet are
never ending. But we have found solutions for prior
difficulties, and we will for these as well. What is required
is for all of us to do a better job of anticipating and
responding to today's new environmental warnings before they
become tomorrow's environmental tragedies.
With those words, I close and yield the floor.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, June 11, 2016]
30 Years Ago Scientists Warned Congress on Global Warming. What They
Said Sounds Eerily Familiar
(By Chris Mooney)
It was such a different time--and yet, the message was so
similar.
Thirty years ago, on June 10 and 11 of 1986, the U.S.
Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works
commenced two days of hearings, convened by Sen. John H.
Chafee (R-R.I.), on the subject of ``Ozone Depletion, the
Greenhouse Effect, and Climate Change.''
``This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky
is falling,'' Chafee said at
[[Page S3873]]
the hearing. ``The scientific evidence . . . is telling us we
have a problem, a serious problem.''
The hearings garnered considerable media coverage,
including on the front page of The Washington Post (see
below).
``There is no longer any significant difference of opinion
within the scientific community about the fact that the
greenhouse effect is real and already occurring,'' said newly
elected Sen. Al Gore, who, as a congressman, had already held
several House hearings on the matter. Gore cited the Villach
Conference, a scientific meeting held in Austria the previous
year (1985), which concluded that ``as a result of the
increasing greenhouse gases it is now believed that in the
first half of the next century (21st century) a rise of
global mean temperature could occur which is greater than in
any man's history.''
``They were the breakthrough hearings,'' remembers Rafe
Pomerance, then a staffer with the World Resources Institute,
who helped suggest witnesses. ``You never saw front-page
coverage of this stuff.''
The scientists assembled included some of the voices that
would be unmistakable and constant in coming decades. They
included NASA's James Hansen, who would go on to become the
most visible scientist in the world on the topic, and Robert
Watson, who would go on to chair the soon-to-be formed United
Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And what they said was clear: Human greenhouse gas
emissions would cause a major warming trend, and sea level
rise to boot.
Here's how the hearings were covered on the front page of
The Post:
The New York Times also covered the hearings, writing that
``The rise in carbon dioxide and other gases in the earth's
atmosphere will have an earlier and more pronounced impact on
global temperature and climate than previously expected,
according to evidence presented to a Senate subcommittee
today.''
Two years later, still more famously, Hansen would testify
in another series of hearings that had an even greater public
impact when it came to consciousness-raising--in part because
at that point, he said that the warming of the globe caused
by humans was already detectable. ``It is time to stop
waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong
that the greenhouse effect is here,'' he said then. In 1986,
by contrast, scientists were still mostly predicting the
future, rather than saying they had measured and documented a
clear warming trend--one that could be clearly distinguished
from natural climate variability--and that it was already
having demonstrable consequences.
``The 1986 testimony is interesting because it was so
similar to my 1988 testimony,'' Hansen recalls. ``I already
had, and showed, some of the climate modeling results that
formed the basis for my 1988 testimony.''
Granted, in some cases the future temperature projections
made in the 1986 hearings--based on assumptions about the
rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a high
sensitivity of the climate to them--suggested temperatures
might rise even more, or even faster, than scientists now
believe they will. By email, Hansen clarified that we now
know the world is closer to one scenario he presented in
1986--called Scenario B--than to Scenario A, which assumed a
much more rapid rate of greenhouse gas growth, and
accordingly, much faster warming.
Still, the theoretical understanding was in place for why
temperatures would rise as greenhouse gases filled the
atmosphere--simply because scientists knew enough physics to
know that that's what greenhouse gases do.
``We knew in the '70s what the problem was,'' said George
Woodwell, founding director of the Woods Hole Research
Center, who also testified in 1986. ``We knew there was a
problem with sea level rise, all disruptions of climate. And
the disruptions of climate are fundamental in that they
undermine all the life on the Earth.''
Much of the formal understanding had been affirmed by a
1979 report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, led by
the celebrated atmospheric physicist Jule Charney of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That group famously
assessed that if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were
to double, the ``most probable global warming'' would amount
to 3 degrees Celsius, with a range between 1.5 degrees and
4.5 degrees, a number quite similar to modern estimates.
``We have tried but have been unable to find any overlooked
or underestimated physical effects that could reduce the
currently estimated global warmings due to a doubling of
atmospheric CO2 to negligible proportions or
reverse them altogether,'' the scientists behind the report
wrote.
Indeed, the fundamental understanding of the greenhouse
effect, and that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas because
of its particular properties, dates back to the 19th century,
when the Irish scientist John Tyndall conducted experiments
to determine the radiative properties of gases.
No wonder, then, that there was so much that scientists
could say about it in 1986. And indeed, if you look at global
temperature trends, it turns out they were speaking at a time
when the planet's temperatures were beginning a steady
upswing, one that, despite various yearly deviations, would
continue inexorably to the present:
``This hearing helped bring the concern together, and
essentially painted a picture that things are kind of
spinning out of control, that science is trying to tell us
something, that the world seems to be changing even faster
than our scientific understanding of the problem, and worst
of all, our political leaders are way behind the eight
ball,'' said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton climate
scientist who testified that day, and argued that action was
warranted on climate change even though not everything was
known about its consequences.
``I have to say, reading my own testimony . . . you know,
I'd stick by everything in that today, even though it's 30
years later,'' Oppenheimer said.
There was an additional context, though, that we're now
less conversant with: The hearings were also about the issue
of the depletion of the Earth's protective ozone layer by
chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Scientists had recently
discovered an ``ozone hole'' over Antarctica that frightened
the public, and seemed a definitive indicator of just how
much human activities could change the atmosphere.
Even today, some still confuse the issue of climate change
with that of the depletion of the ozone layer. They are not
the same, but they are closely related in that both showed
how seemingly small actions by individual humans, or by human
industry, could add up to planetary consequences.
However, the ozone problem would prove far easier to fix.
In 1987, just a year later, the nations of the world adopted
the Montreal Protocol, which is today regarded as a major
success in environmental protection. Under the treaty, a
flexible and adaptable approach was taken to reductions--and
regular scientific assessments allowed for course adaptation
based on the latest information about how well progress was
proceeding. Thus, by 2007, the U.N. Environment Program could
declare of the treaty that ``to date, the results of this
effort have been nothing less than spectacular.''
The contrast with climate change is stark Despite having
been alerted by scientists not only in 1986, but also in 1979
and, frankly, even earlier, what happened was not policy
action, but rather the beginnings of a long political battle.
Even as the formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change in 1988, and the global adoption of the
Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, signaled
steps toward action in the scientific and diplomatic
communities, skeptical scientists emerged to challenges the
views expressed by Hansen and others, supported by
conservative think tanks and sometimes linked to fossil fuel
interests. Meanwhile, U.S. politics shifted, as over the
1990s and especially the 2000s the climate change issue
became polarized and it became rarer to see Republicans, such
as Chafee, who were also strong environmentalists and
advocates for climate action.
``Thirty years ago we had a Republican senator who was
leading the charge on addressing what he said then was a real
and serious threat of climate change from the emission of
gases from fossil fuel burning,'' says Sen. Sheldon
Whitehouse (D-R.I.), recalling the 1986 hearings. ``You can
read through all the things that Senator Chafee said back
then, and it has all been proven true. It's very
disappointing that thirty years later, there is no such voice
anywhere in the Republican Senate, and if you look for a
micron of daylight between what the fossil fuel industry
wants, and what the Republican Party in the Senate does, you
won't find it.''
It was only in late 2015, in Paris, that the United States
helped to negotiate a global agreement to address climate
change, one in which each country sets its own pace on
reducing emissions. But scientists widely agree that this
accord isn't strong enough, on its own terms, to ensure that
warming remains below a 2-degree Celsius danger zone.
Thirty years after the 1986 hearings, meanwhile,
presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said
that if elected, he would attempt ``renegotiating'' that
agreement.
``Those agreements are one-sided agreements, and they are
bad for the United States,'' Trump said.
____
[From New York Times advertisement, Dec. 6, 2009]
Dear President Obama and the United States Congress:
Tomorrow leaders from 192 countries will gather at The UN
Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to determine the fate
of our planet.
As business leaders we are optimistic that President Obama
is attending Copenhagen with emissions targets. Additionally,
we urge you, our government, to strengthen and pass United
States legislation, and lead the world by example. We support
your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to
control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the
United States and the world today. Please don't postpone the
earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically
irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible
consequences for humanity and our planet.
We recognize the key role that American innovation and
leadership play in stimulating the worldwide economy.
Investing in a Clean Energy Economy will drive state-of-the-
art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new
energy jobs, and increase our energy security all while
reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at
risk. We have the ability and the know-
[[Page S3874]]
how to lead the world in clean energy technology to thrive in
a global market and economy. But we must embrace the
challenge today to ensure that future generations are left
with a safe planet and a strong economy.
Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in
modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our
planet.
In partnership,
Chris Anderson, Curator, TED; Richard Baker, Chairman, Lord
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Jeffrey Hollender, CEO, Seventh Generation, Kate Hudson,
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Donald J. Trump, Chairman and President, Donald J. Trump Jr.,
EVP, Eric F. Trump, EVP, Ivanka M. Trump, EVP, The Trump
Organization; Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Executive Chef &
Owner, Jean-Georges Management LLC.
If you want to quickly, go along. If you want to go far, go
together. [African Proverb]
____________________