[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 112 (Tuesday, July 12, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5011-S5017]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, it is summer. It is supposed to be hot, 
but if last month felt hotter than past summers, you are right. Last 
week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, or NOAA, said the 
United States experienced its warmest June on record ever. Already this 
year there have been eight weather-related and climate-related 
disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage. Globally, it 
was found that 2015 was the hottest year on record, and so far this 
year is on track to beat last year. We can't even hold the record for a 
year--2016 has been as hot as Pokemon GO--and anyone watching the 
Senate floor tonight who is younger than 31 has never experienced in 
their life a month where the temperature was below the 20th century 
average.
  That last happened in February of 1985. Ronald Reagan was starting 
his second term as President, and ``Beverly Hills Cop'' was the No. 1 
film at the box office. If you went to the movies that month, you 
probably saw a trailer for what would be that summer's blockbuster, 
``Back to the Future.''
  Well, that future is here. Temperatures are increasing, sea levels 
are rising, rainfall is more extreme, and the oceans are more acidic. 
Why is that? It is mostly because of carbon dioxide pollution that is 
released from the extraction and burning of fossil fuel. Virtually all 
climate scientists agree that the climate is changing and that human 
interference with the climate is now the driving force of that change. 
Thanks to excellent investigative reporting at Inside Climate News and 
other news outlets, we now know that as far back as the 1970s, Exxon 
and the other oil companies were following the latest developments in 
climate science and Exxon was undertaking its own research on the 
impact of carbon pollution on the climate.
  The top leadership of Exxon was warned in July of 1977 by its senior 
scientist James Black: ``In the first place there is general scientific 
agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing 
the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning 
of fossil fuels.''
  That is from 1977 to Exxon from its own scientists. A year later in 
1978, that same scientist once again told senior management: ``Present 
thinking holds that man has a time window of 5 to 10 years before the 
need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies that 
might become critical.''
  Ten years later in 1988, a memo laid out Exxon's position, which 
included these three points: No. 1, emphasize the uncertainty in 
scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced greenhouse gas 
effect; No. 2, urge a balanced scientific approach; and No. 3, resist 
the overstatement and sensationalization of potential greenhouse 
effects which could lead to economic development of nonfossil fuel 
resources.
  Exxon knew full well back then the impact of carbon dioxide on the 
climate and what that could mean to their businesses. Exxon, the Koch 
brothers, Peabody Energy, and other individuals and businesses whose 
profits might suffer under rules to reduce

[[Page S5012]]

carbon pollution have had a vested interest in stopping climate action 
for decades.
  That is why Congress still hasn't sent comprehensive climate 
legislation to the President. More than 50 years ago, in a special 
message to Congress on pollution, President Lyndon Johnson noted that 
``the increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels has 
altered the composition of the global atmosphere.'' Since then, the 
scientific evidence and observation of climate changes already underway 
have continued to mount.
  But even as the science has become overwhelming, climate policies 
have gotten trapped in a web of denial. During the last 2 days, we have 
heard many of my colleagues talk about the many strands of this web of 
denial. Like a real spiderweb, it is hard to see this web unless the 
light catches it in just the right way. So this evening I am going to 
shine a light on a few threads of this web.
  At the heart of this web is denial. That is where you find the George 
C. Marshall Institute, whose attacks on the science of the so-called 
nuclear winter consequence of nuclear war and its opposition to the 
nuclear freeze movement expanded over the years to include anti-climate 
change efforts. The institute was named after the U.S. Army Chief of 
Staff during World War II who then became Secretary of State. He helped 
to rebuild Europe and won the Nobel Peace Prize for what is now called 
the Marshall Plan. Given Marshall's view of the need to address hunger, 
poverty, desperation, and chaos, it seems likely that if he were alive 
today, he would agree that national security experts see that climate 
change is a security threat to the United States. Marshall himself 
would likely support efforts like the Green Climate Fund to ensure that 
the poorest countries in the world have the resources necessary to 
overcome the challenges climate change pose to their economic 
development. He would likely support American leadership of global 
climate efforts to ensure that all countries are taking action to 
address climate change.
  But the institute that carries the George Marshall name has countered 
international climate science and action every step of the way. When 
the Marshall Institute first expanded into environmental policy in the 
1980s, the environment and climate change had bipartisan support. In 
the 1988 election, George Herbert Walker Bush pledged to meet the 
``greenhouse effect with the White House effect.'' Increasingly, world 
scientists were raising concerns about carbon pollution. In 1990, the 
first assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change, or IPCC, detailed what the fossil fuel companies already knew--
that carbon pollution released from burning fossil fuels was causing 
the Earth to warm. The very business model of the fossil fuel industry 
was altering the planet. So while the scientific community was sounding 
the alarm, it has now been revealed that Big Oil and fossil fuel 
companies conspired to mute that alarm, and the Marshall Institute soon 
became a critical part of their climate denial web.
  Mind you, we are not talking about the original George C. Marshall. 
He would have had no part of this. This is just the absconding of his 
name and having it placed above an institute--the Marshall Institute--
which is now disseminating this bad science. That is what has happened.
  In 1989, this Marshall Institute published a report on climate change 
casting doubt on the impact of carbon pollution and spinning a core 
component of the web of denial. As Washington insiders, the institute's 
report was read by the White House, shared by media outlets, and became 
a so-called side of a new public debate on climate change. The Marshall 
Institute turned debating climate change into a game, and the science 
became a political football. It was exactly what they wanted. By 
dividing climate science into sides, pitting each one against the 
other, they had found a foothold for doubt and a reason to delay 
climate action.
  Still, the first Bush administration signed and the Senate ratified 
the historic United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 
1992. The goal of the treaty was to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas 
emissions and prevent ``dangerous anthropogenic interference with 
Earth's climate system.'' But it took another 23 years, until 2015, for 
the countries of the world to agree on a global solution in Paris last 
December.
  That 1989 Marshall Institute report, funded by the fossil fuel 
industry, was an especially sticky strand of this web of denial. Since 
then, the tactic of casting doubt on climate science has been used time 
and again by the Marshall Institute and other organizations to delay 
policies that could hurt the profits of oil, coal, and petro-polluters 
like the Kochs. This is what Senator Whitehouse has led all of us in 
trying to bring out here to the Senate floor--that there is a web, and 
the web goes back to money, and that money is the profits that are made 
by the coal, the gas, and the oil industries. Those millions of dollars 
that the Marshall Institute has received from Exxon and the Koch-
connected foundation over the years have allowed the web of denial to 
grow.
  The Marshall Institute misinformation campaign doesn't just come in 
the form of reports. Their chairman, William Happer, has testified in 
front of Congress multiple times espousing climate denialism and 
perpetuating the self-serving interests of the fossil fuel industry and 
the Kochs. He may be an accomplished physicist, but Dr. Happer's views 
on climate science have been routinely debunked.
  When I was chairman on the Select Committee on Energy Independence 
and Global Warming, in the House of Representatives, I heard Dr. Happer 
use the theatrics of a CO2 meter as proof that climate 
change doesn't exist. He advocated for the government to support an 
``alternative hypothesis'' and to support his alternative hypothesis, 
which was nothing more than the denial of climate change. Just last 
year, while the climate talks in Paris were underway, Dr. Happer 
testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, continuing to spread 
doubt. But this past May, William Happer was a signatory on a 
misleading, full-page ad in the New York Times. The ad, placed by 
another thread in the web of deceit, the Competitive Enterprise 
Institute, attacked the reasonable efforts of New York attorney general 
Eric Schneiderman and a coalition of other attorneys general united for 
clean power who are investigating more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, 
and private individuals to see if they misled the public about climate 
change.

  But the Marshall Institute's efforts alone were not enough. So they 
helped form the cynically named Global Climate Coalition in 1989, 
shortly after the formation of the IPCC at the U.N. to fight climate 
change.
  The Marshall Institute CEO, William O'Keefe, a former lobbyist for 
Exxon, chaired the coalition that included members of manufacturing, 
automotive, oil and gas, mining and chemical industries, and the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce. They invested in denial and delay to allow 
business as usual to continue. But climate science and international 
climate efforts continued to advance after the UN Framework Convention 
on Climate Change came into force.
  Of course, the fossil fuel coalition's concern continued to increase. 
As the IPCC worked on its second report in the early 1990s, it decided 
to include a chapter entitled Detection of Climate Change and 
Attribution of Causes. It became clear that the world's climate 
scientists were examining the considerable collection of climate 
observations and research to see what they could say about human 
influence on the climate.
  So the Global Climate Coalition sprang into action to influence what 
the IPCC might say about the human influence on climate.
  At a November 1995 session to finalize the text of the IPCC report, 
alongside Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti representatives, the Global Climate 
Coalition weighed in heavily against the chapter focused on the 
detection and causes of climate change. After a flurry of negotiations 
and additional objections, the IPCC agreed that the amassed climate 
observations ``now point toward a discernable human influence on global 
climate.''
  The world's climate scientists, the government representatives had 
now acknowledged that humans were altering the climate. So the calls 
for climate action got louder, and the effort

[[Page S5013]]

to extend the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate 
Change and draft what would become the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 
increased. But in an effort to silence the calls to action, the 
investment in the web of denial grew.
  The Global Climate Coalition spent more than $13 million opposing the 
Kyoto Protocol. Between 1994 and 1997, they spent $1 million every year 
downplaying the threat of climate change.
  Ultimately, this broad coalition collapsed as their business 
interests and the impact of climate change on their profits changed. 
The Global Climate Coalition closed its doors in 2002, but the web of 
denial was already stretching to find new places to grow. Those threads 
have since expanded with the careful cultivation and collusion by the 
fossil fuel industry and the petrol polluters.
  We know that the Koch brothers, Exxon, and other major donors have 
invested millions of dollars into organizations that actively work to 
discredit climate change and oppose climate legislation. Those 
organizations pressure elected officials to take increasingly extreme 
stances with specific reference and focus on the members of the 
Republican Party.
  During President George W. Bush's first campaign in 2000, he promised 
to fight climate change by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. But in 
2001, he pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol. In 2005, 
his Vice President, Dick Cheney, helped pass an energy bill that 
included massive subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry.
  As recently as 2008, the Republican Presidential nominee, Senator 
John McCain, recognized the science of climate change and supported 
action. This was an era that has now passed. The web of denial has 
firmly trapped this issue in the Republican Party in such a way that no 
action is possible at all. But even in the face of the millions of 
dollars pumped into the denial machine, the House of Representatives 
was able to overcome it in 2009.
  The Waxman-Markey bill passed the House just over 7 years ago. It was 
the only comprehensive climate change legislation ever to pass a 
Chamber of Congress. It has been reported that the oil and gas 
industry, including the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil, spent $175 
million and hired more than 800 lobbyists in 2009 to kill the Waxman-
Markey bill. Let me give those numbers again: $175 million and 800 
lobbyists to kill a bill that would have put a clamp on the increase in 
greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

  They saw any action on climate, especially legislation, as a threat 
to their bottom line. But Members of the House knew better. They saw 
that Waxman-Markey was good for our environment, good for our economy, 
good for America. A Congressional budget analysis found that Waxman-
Markey would have reduced the Federal deficit and cost the average 
American household less than 50 cents per day. An analysis of the 
American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy found that Americans 
would save about as much as CBO's cost estimates from energy efficiency 
policies in the bill that CBO did not take into account.
  With an outstretched arm to lift them into the clean energy future, 
the bill included more than $200 million for the coal industry, $200 
billion to capture carbon and to sequester it. Seven years ago, we gave 
the fossil fuel industry a choice: legislation or regulation.
  But Exxon opposed the bill. The Koch brothers opposed the bill. 
Peabody coal opposed the bill, except for the parts that helped the 
coal industry. Rather than change their current business model, 
centered on pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, they 
fought attempts to change the law. Now, 7 years later, Peabody coal has 
filed for bankruptcy. We are continuing to untangle the Koch brothers' 
web of denial.
  The Koch brothers have lied to the American people for decades about 
climate change. They have also lied to their own employees. When 
Waxman-Markey was being debated, the Koch Industries newsletter 
published an article attacking the climate change legislation and 
encouraging employees to check out specific Web sites for more 
information. The listed Web sites were funded by the Koch brothers. 
They sent their employees to other parts of the web of denial. When a 
Republican tries to stand up and publicly support climate action, the 
Koch brothers' ``spidy sense'' goes off and their web of denial springs 
into action. They mobilize, they target, they attack every Republican 
who stands against their business plan. Koch money floods primary 
campaigns to ensure that their self-serving lies trump in every 
election.
  The oil and coal industry will not stop their efforts because now the 
presumptive nominee of the Republican Party is a climate denier. But 
their obstruction and climate denial tactics are as bogus as a degree 
from Trump University. Trump says he wants an ``all of the above'' 
energy agenda, but we know he is really running on an ``oil above all'' 
platform. But the Koch brothers are now bigger than the Republican 
Party.
  The Kochs have built upon the tactics practiced by the tobacco 
industry generations ago in its campaign to discredit the science 
linking smoking with increased risks of lung cancer. The Kochs' goal is 
to discredit the science itself. How successful are they? Donald Trump 
has said that if he is President, he is going to abolish the 
Environmental Protection Agency of the United States--abolish it. I 
guess he assumes that Americans think that the air is too clean, the 
water is too clean, the soil is too clean, the rivers are too clean in 
the United States, and that we can afford to abolish the Environmental 
Protection Agency of our country.
  This is the world that the Koch brothers have forgotten. Their 
mission has always been to create doubt across America on climate 
science. They fund attempts to counter the fact that climate change is 
a threat to our national security and to our public health. Their 
funding attempts to counter the fact that action to combat climate 
change is feasible and necessary and will create American jobs. They 
fund the web of denial to serve their own interests to make billions in 
profits at the expense of America's health, America's safety.
  But for someone who is focused on protecting the poor and the 
vulnerable of this world--that person understands the threat presented 
by climate change. I have in my hand Pope Francis's encyclical on 
climate change, ``Laudato si','' subtitled ``On the Care for our Common 
Home.'' The Pope is a chemistry teacher. That is what he did before he 
became Pope. When he came to Washington, DC, last year, he spoke to 
Congress and delivered his sermon on the Hill. He said that the planet 
is dangerously warming and that the science is settled. He said that 
human beings are a significant contributor to the dangerous warming of 
the planet. He said that since humans are contributing to the problem, 
we have a moral obligation to do something about it.
  When the rest of the world looked up, they saw red, white, and blue 
CO2. Since the United States has historically been the 
largest contributor of carbon pollution, we must be the leader in 
working to reduce our own pollution.
  As soon as the Pope spoke out urging action on climate change, the 
well-oiled climate denial machine shifted into high gear. The Acton 
Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is another strand of 
the web of denial. Between 1990 and 2014, the Acton Institute received 
millions from Donors Trust or Donors Capital Fund, the Koch-funded dark 
money ATM, as well as money from the Koch families and from Exxon.
  Reverend Sirico, the founder and president of the Acton Institute, 
testified in front of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee 
just last year. Reverend Sirico claims that the Catholic Church does 
not have expertise in science and should stick to matters of faith and 
morals. Well, here is the irony. A lack of expertise surely has not 
stopped Senate Republicans from blocking any and all climate change 
legislation.
  Informed by the scientific evidence, the Pope made a clear moral case 
to act on climate and to act now. The Pope's comments came from the 
heart and from his belief in our ability to act collectively. It is 
just common sense that when you learn something is dangerous for you, 
for your health and for our Earth--and especially, as the Pope said to 
us, its impact on the poorest people on our planet, those who will be 
most severely harmed by climate

[[Page S5014]]

change--we have a moral obligation to stop that harm.
  There is no doubt that fossil fuels forever changed our society, but 
pointing to the benefits from them does not take away the harm they 
cause or the urgency to transition to clean energy now. Many of those 
who oppose action on climate invoke the importance of preserving the 
free market.
  As an example, consider the Lexington Institute, an organization 
funded by ExxonMobil and those pushing so-called free market solutions. 
The Lexington Institute--and may I add, the Lexington Institute is in 
Virginia; it is not in Lexington, MA, where the shot heard round the 
world was fired. No, this is just, again, absconding with a name and 
placing it upon an institution to try to give it the veneer of 
credibility. Of course, beneath the veneer is just more veneer. There 
is nothing. There is no science. There is nothing that backs up the 
arguments which they are making.

  So the Lexington Institute claims that renewables need to be able to 
compete with fossil fuels without Federal subsidies, but the real truth 
is, the fossil fuel industry has never succeeded in the free market 
alone. Its success is built on more than a century's worth of tax 
breaks and subsidies.
  The Lexington Institute sheds these crocodile tears about how much 
they care about the free market, but for 100 years they missed the fact 
that the oil, the coal, the gas, and the nuclear industries were all 
subsidized by the Federal Government. It is only when wind and solar 
show up that all of a sudden they become greatly concerned about the 
fact the free market is being distorted. Well, by giving tax breaks to 
wind and solar, of course, we are just making it a level playing field 
so they get the same kind of breaks all of these other industries have 
received for 100 or more years.
  The subsidies for the fossil fuel industry top more than $7.5 billion 
annually. You got that? It is $7.5 billion per year. These tax breaks 
go back 100 years. Multiply that by 100, and then the crocodile tears 
start getting shed over something we do for wind or solar or fuel 
cells, biomass, geothermal?
  There is no need for fossil fuel CEOs to come to Congress to justify 
the support for long-established subsidies, which they have always been 
getting. They do not even come up to defend it. They get it 
automatically--the extension of their tax breaks. The oil and gas 
industry have the Federal subsidies, coal has Federal subsidies, 
nuclear has Federal subsidies. What has happened every year, when we 
try to extend subsidies for renewable energy--for wind and solar--for 
even just 1 year, it is the end of the world as we know it in the 
capitalist system.
  Just last year, the Koch brothers wrote a letter to every single 
Member of Congress urging them to oppose the tax breaks for wind and 
solar, and of course they cited ``the free market.'' Because even 
though billions of dollars in Federal subsidies have benefited their 
companies for years and years, they have never come up here to say: Oh, 
take them away. It makes my company feel unclean. Oh no, they took 
those billions every single year. It is only when wind and solar step 
up and say: Well, how about us? We are clean. We don't pollute. We are 
what the younger generation wants to see us investing in as the 
technologies of the 21st century. Then they get morally offended. Then 
their free market principles start to get offended.
  So the Lexington Institute, citing the free market, has fought the 
extension of renewable tax credits for wind and solar, but unlike the 
battle of Lexington that started the American Revolution, this 
Lexington is trying to stop a renewables revolution. Economic growth 
and climate action go together. We can have a country with clean air 
and water and clean energy and a strong economy. History continues to 
prove that the benefits of environmental regulation are enormous and 
beyond just financial.
  Recently, we have seen global economic growth hand in hand with no 
increase in energy-related carbon pollution. We are seeing GDP go up 
but not carbon pollution. And in Massachusetts, since the Regional 
Greenhouse Gas Initiative started in 2009--the real Lexington 
revolution, the one in Massachusetts--we have seen powerplant 
greenhouse gas emissions go down 34 percent while Massachusetts' gross 
domestic product increased 25 percent.
  So we are left with a really simple question: Why do fossil fuel 
companies continue to get Federal subsidies, but we do not extend them 
to clean energy? The answer is this: Koch, Exxon, the Marshall 
Institute, the Global Climate Coalition, the Acton Institute, the 
Lexington Institute, and their partners in the web of denial. Millions 
of dollars are spent to deceive and to mislead all in the name of self-
interest and profit.
  The Global Climate Coalition collapsed more than a decade ago. The 
Marshall Institute broke up last year, and its climate denial arm 
morphed into the CO2 Coalition. Exxon is now publicizing 
their support for a carbon tax that they began espousing in 2009. The 
American Petroleum Institute is reportedly rethinking its messaging on 
climate. The threads of the web of denial are breaking and weakening, 
and the more light we shine on it--especially light fueled by the power 
of the Sun--the sooner it will fall apart.
  We are in the midst of a clean energy revolution. The United States 
has a massive reserve of untapped renewable energy. Our reserves are so 
massive that just a small fraction could power our entire country. The 
question is no longer if we can power our country with renewable 
energy, it is when and it is how. We will make the transition to 100 
percent renewable energy before the year 2050 if we keep the right 
policies on the books, and I believe we are going to meet that goal.
  In the last 10 years, we have seen a dramatic expansion of renewable 
energy in our country. Just as the Pilgrims harnessed the wind to sail 
across the ocean to Plymouth Rock, we too can power our economy. Our 
current capacity is 74,000 megawatts of wind, and we have 14,000 more 
megawatts of wind waiting now to be deployed in our country. U.S. solar 
capacity is now more than 27,000 megawatts. Over 25 percent of this 
capacity was added in 2015 alone. We are projected to double that 
capacity by the end of this year.
  Megawatts are hard to understand. Simply put, by the end of this 
year, we should have enough wind and solar energy to power over 25 
million homes. That is one-fifth of all American homes.
  We must continue to untangle ourselves from the Koch brothers' web of 
denial sewn by lies and doubt. The science is overwhelming. Climate 
change is real. Carbon pollution is accelerating the warming, and right 
now American cities and towns are preparing for an uncertain future in 
a world with a changing climate and rising seas. While the Senate has 
yet to knock out all of these old cobwebs of climate denial that are 
holding back action, we know, if we focus on the future, we cannot 
continue to have these decisions of today be borne by generations yet 
to come.
  We must focus on resiliency and clean energy and what we are going to 
do to leave the world better off for future generations. No matter what 
lies and information the climate deniers try to peddle, the facts are 
with us, the moral authority is with us, the economic opportunities are 
with us.
  We have a chance to create a clean energy revolution that increases 
jobs as it cuts pollution. This is job creation that is good for all of 
creation. We must take the climate deniers and their fossil fuel 
funders to task for their obstinate, obdurate, oblivious opposition to 
the clean energy to battle climate change.
  Here is where we are. By the end of 2016, there will be 400,000 
people employed in the United States in the wind and solar industries 
and 65,000--65,000--coal miners. By the year 2020, at the current pace, 
there will be 600,000 people employed in the wind and solar industry.
  Half of all new electricity on the planet last year came from 
renewable electricity. This is a revolution, and it is a revolution we 
cannot allow to be derailed because we will be employing people, giving 
them the jobs they want, which will make it possible for us to save 
this planet.
  I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for organizing all of the 
Members over the last 2 days to come out on the floor to make this case 
about this web of denial, which is at the core of what has been 
blocking this Senate from taking the actions necessary to deploy the 
technologies, to create the jobs which can save the planet by deploying

[[Page S5015]]

these technologies all across the planet.
  I thank the Senator from Rhode Island once again for his incredibly 
great and historic leadership, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Flake). The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is an honor for me to follow 
Senator Markey, who has battled so long and so effectively in this 
struggle against such odds, and I think we both feel the tide has 
turned, things are going our way, but we have to hurry because nature 
is unforgiving. As the Pope said: God forgives, mankind forgives 
sometimes, but nature never forgives. You slap her and she will slap 
you back. And we have given nature one hell of a slap with climate 
change.
  When I was here yesterday, I was pointing to the web of denial and 
pointing out that the web of denial has to mislead to be effective. 
That is what it is--a tool to mislead. I pointed out what a Koch 
brothers operative described as its goal when this whole web was being 
developed. This was the quote: ``It would be necessary [to] use 
ambiguous and misleading names, obscure the true agenda, and conceal 
the means of control.''
  Well, if you are looking for ambiguous and misleading names that can 
obscure the true agenda and conceal the means of control, one tactic 
would be to exploit our Founding Fathers--to seize their names and use 
them to lend authority and gravitas to the deception, in the same way 
that using the names of Lord Acton, the famous historian, or George C. 
Marshall, the hero of World War II, accomplished that task. In this 
case, the names are Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson, and they are 
joined by the philosopher John Locke.
  Let's start with the so-called Franklin Center for Government and 
Public Integrity, which has a nice little silhouette of Ben Franklin on 
its logo. It was established in 2009. It says it ``supports and trains 
investigative journalists to advance transparency, accountability, and 
fiscal responsibility in local government, and to spotlight free-
market, pro-liberty solutions to difficult policy challenges.''
  According to ``DeSmogBlog,'' the Franklin Center was launched and 
funded by a conservative think tank that encouraged grassroots 
activism, which is the now defunct Sam Adams Alliance.
  Oh no, another bogus organization exploiting the name of yet another 
Founding Father. There is a little pattern here.
  Jeff Nesbitt, whom I spoke about yesterday, wrote this about the 
Franklin Center in his book ``Poison Tea: How Big Oil and Big Tobacco 
Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP.''

       At the start of 2008, the Franklin Center for Government 
     and Public Integrity had a budget of zero dollars. Its legal 
     home was a taffy shop in Medora, North Dakota. By 2009, the 
     Franklin Center's budget had jumped to $2.4 million, 
     according to IRS tax records. That is a spectacular leap for 
     a nonprofit, especially in Medora, North Dakota. It was 
     almost as if someone wished to utilize the charter concept of 
     the Franklin Center, developing individual but interlinked 
     news centers across the United States that would all promote 
     the same messages--for other purposes and therefore infused 
     it with a mountain of funding and network support.

  Let's dig into the Franklin Center's connections to groups and 
funders in this web of denial.
  According to ``DeSmogBlog,'' the Franklin Center's director of donor 
development comes out of the Charles G. Koch Foundation--wow. Its 
senior vice president in charge of strategic initiatives comes out of 
the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity. The founding board member 
who set it up helped run, oh, Americans for Prosperity in North Dakota. 
According to Media Matters for America, the Franklin Center's 
coalitions coordinator and its chief of staff also came out of, oh, 
Americans for Prosperity. Not surprisingly, the Pew Research Center's 
Project for Excellence in Journalism ranked the Franklin Center 
Watchdog.org group as ``highly ideological.'' It is clear they have a 
bias at the Franklin Center to sow doubt regarding human-caused climate 
change. It is no surprise, considering where their staff and money 
comes from.
  Here is the stuff they say. In 2015, a vice president for research 
and resident scholar at the John Locke Foundation--more on them 
shortly--wrote in the Franklin Center-affiliated Carolina Journal that 
``global warming is not about data points'' so much as it has been ``a 
trick pulled by global warming alarmists over the last decade.'' There 
is a responsible view.
  In 2014, a staff reporter for the Franklin Center's Watchdog.org, 
wrote: ``I continue to contend that `climate change' is a meaningless 
phrase because the climate obviously changes . . . [but] is useful for 
political activism. . . . ''
  In 2011, its outlet, the Hawaii Reporter, wrote: ``Hard-nosed 
physical evidence of man-made global warming has yet to be provided by 
the promoters of warming, even after a nominal $80 billion have been 
spent in the attempt to do so.''
  The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard has looked at the 
Franklin Center and describes it as ``at the forefront of an effort to 
blur the distinction between statehouse reporting and political 
advocacy.'' A former Reuters chief White House correspondent describes 
the Franklin Center's state Watchdog.org as ``delivering political 
propaganda dressed up as journalism.''
  Let's follow the money. The Franklin Center's top donor in 2011, as 
reported by the nonprofit Media Matters for America and the Center for 
Public Integrity, was, guess what, the rightwing's ``dark money ATM,'' 
DonorsTrust. It was set up by whom? Oh, right, the Koch brothers. Over 
$6 million, or roughly 95 percent of the Franklin Center's revenue that 
year came through this organization, whose sole purpose is to hide the 
identity of the real donors. That is why it exists. According to data 
collected by the Conservative Transparency Project, between 2009 and 
2014, the Franklin Center received over $31 million from DonorsTrust 
and its related Donors Capital Fund. We don't know who the hidden 
donors are because that is why they set up the DonorsTrust thing, but a 
clue of who they might be comes from the reported donors--like the 
rightwing Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, founded, according to the 
Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch, by ``one of the original 
charter members of the far rightwing John Birch Society.'' Another John 
Birch Society board member was Fred Koch, the father of Charles and 
David Koch. Dr. Brulle's research indicates that the Bradley Foundation 
between 2003 and 2010 gave almost $30 million to these organizations 
that he tracks in this web of denial--$30 million.
  Then there is the Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right 
Thinking, a Florida-based grant-making foundation that Dr. Brulle's 
research again shows between 2003 and 2010 gave $13.7 million into this 
web of denial organizations.
  Then there is the Searle Freedom Trust, which, according to the 
Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch, has also funded Americans 
for Prosperity--guess what; the Koch group--the American Enterprise 
Institute, ALEC--the front group--the Heartland Institute--those 
classics who compared climate change believers to the Unabomber--and 
the State Policy Network. Dr. Brulle's research, again, indicates that 
Searle gave $21.7 million to this web of denial groups that he tracks.
  Another donor, of course, to the Franklin Institute is the Charles G. 
Koch Charitable Foundation. That one is self-explanatory. So if we look 
at what is going on at the Franklin Center, we will see Koch people, 
Koch money, and Koch buddies.
  Then there is the so-called James Madison Institute, a libertarian 
think tank with a long history of trying to undermine climate science 
and renewable energy policy. Yale Professor Justin Farrell lists the 
James Madison Institute among the organizations he tracks contributing 
to the polarization of climate change debate. The Heartland 
Institute's--yes, that wonderful Unabomber group--senior fellow for 
environmental policy is on the James Madison Institute's research 
advisory council. It is such a web of connections.
  According to research by the American Bridge Project, the Madison 
Institute received over $1.4 million in direct donations from Koch-
affiliated groups. Between 2003 and 2013, they received funding from 
the John Templeton

[[Page S5016]]

Foundation, which ``tries to encourage the integration of religious 
beliefs and free-market principles into the classroom,'' according to 
the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch. Mother Jones reported 
in 2011 that Charles Koch recognized the Templeton Foundation for 
having donated over $1 million to Koch-related causes, and Dr. Brulle's 
research shows that Templeton gave more than $20 million to this web of 
denial organization he tracks.
  Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking turns up 
again--Franklin, now Madison. The same foundation that gave $13.7 
million to these climate change countermovement organizations also gave 
to the Madison one.
  Of course, again, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation gave to the 
Franklin Center and gave to the Madison Center to the tune of almost 
$30 million into the climate denial web.
  The James Madison Institute is also a member of the State Policy 
Network. The State Policy Network, according to the Center for Media 
and Democracy's SourceWatch, is an ``$83 million right-wing empire'' 
that has received money from a Koch family foundation, and, of course, 
the identity-scrubbing DonorsTrust and Donors Capital--which, by the 
way, are the big green diamond here at the center of this web.
  According to the ``DeSmogBlog'' examination of the Madison Institute, 
it opposed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation, and in 2009 
issued a plea to policymakers in Florida--the State that is going 
fastest under water because of sea level rise--to stop any action on 
climate change following the so-called Climategate scandal. After six 
thorough investigations looked at Climategate, true, there was no 
scandal at all, but it would appear that the Institute neither 
rescinded its plea nor set the record straight.
  This institute actively fights renewable energy policies in Florida. 
An institute report co-written by a senior fellow at the Heartland 
Institute--again, the connection, Madison Institute to Heartland 
Institute and Heartland Institute to the billboard that compared 
climate scientists to the Unabomber--opposed a proposed solar 
constitutional amendment. Well, they weren't alone. According to news 
reports, Florida's power companies were contributing big money to a 
political committee fighting that solar amendment, including over $1 
million from Florida Power and Light, $1 million from Duke Energy, over 
$800,000 from Tampa Electric Company, and $640,000 from Gulf Power. 
Well, guess what. The president and CEO of Gulf Power was then on the 
board of, oh, the James Madison Institute.

  Then we move on to John Locke, who gives us a twofer. First, there is 
the Locke Institute. It is named for the philosopher John Locke, who, 
with Montesquieu, are the two major philosophical influences of the 
Founding Fathers. It is listed as one of Dr. Justin Farrell's 
organizations contributing to the polarization of climate change debate 
and ``overtly producing and promoting skepticism and doubt about 
scientific consensus on climate change.''
  The institute has been involved in defending the tobacco industry and 
has on its academic advisory council a political scientist from the 
Global Warming Policy Foundation, a high-profile UK climate denier 
group.
  There is also a John Locke Foundation, which describes itself as ``an 
independent, non-profit think tank that would work for truth, for 
freedom, and for the future of North Carolina.'' It is one of the blue 
dots here on Professor Brulle's denial web diagram. Dr. Farrell, too, 
has the foundation on his list of climate change denier and 
countermovement organizations. Yes, it is a member of the Koch-funded 
State Policy Network, of course, and it is funded significantly by a 
North Carolina billionaire by the name of Art Pope, who, according to 
Indy Week, is ``one of the most trusted members of the Koch's elite 
circle: He has been a regular invitee to the Koch's secretive, 
semiannual gathering of the major right-wing donors and activists,'' 
and he is a ``valuable junior partner in many key Koch operations.''
  The foundation center database shows that between 2003 and 2013, the 
John Locke Foundation received over $21 million from the John William 
Pope Foundation--which is named after Art Pope's father--and over 
$60,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation. It gets so cozy between 
everyone here. According to a 2014 Washington Post profile of Art Pope, 
he has poured over $30 million through his family's foundation into the 
Koch front group Americans for Prosperity--all of whose members, you 
remember, went over to the Franklin Institute. Professor Brulle has put 
the John William Pope Foundation at over $20 million of total 
foundation funding to this climate change denial web. Dr. Brulle cites 
the John Locke Foundation as having received 3 percent of the total 
income distributed within the climate change countermovement between 
2003 and 2010.
  An article in Facing South calls the John Locke Foundation ``one of 
the most outspoken voices of climate denial in North Carolina, claiming 
that global warming is a `pseudoscientific fraud.''' According to 
research done by Greenpeace, the foundation stated in a 2005 policy 
brief that ``a greenhouse gas reduction policy would have only costs 
and no benefits.'' In 2005, the foundation released a public policy 
statement entitled ``Global Warming Policy: NC Should Do Nothing,'' 
whose author wrote similar climate denial pieces in the Franklin 
Center-affiliated Carolina Journal. It is hard to keep track of all 
these crisscrossings.
  In 2007, the foundation released a policy report entitled ``A North 
Carolina Citizen's Guide to Global Warming,'' whose author, according 
to Facing South, was a visiting scholar at the, yes, Koch-backed 
American Enterprise Institute. This report falsely declared that 
consensus on climate change does not exist, and declared: ``The 
greatest threat we face from climate change is the danger of rushing 
into foolish and costly policies driven by ill-founded climate change 
hysteria.''
  Art Pope figures in Jane Mayer's book ``Dark Money'' as ``a charter 
member of the Koch network'' and a ``longtime friend and ally, [who] 
shared Charles [Koch's] passion for free-market philosophy.'' Mayer 
writes that Pope was a regular at the Kochs' secret planning summits 
and ``served on the board of the Koch's main public advocacy group''--
wait for it--``Americans for Prosperity, as he had on its predecessor, 
Citizens for a Sound Economy.'' Mayer adds: ``Pope's role in his home 
state of North Carolina was in many respects a state-sized version of 
the Kochs' role nationally.''
  Other Locke Foundation funders identified by Conservative 
Transparency Project between 1995 and 2014 include the Searle Freedom 
Trust, which, according to Center for Media and Democracy's 
SourceWatch, has also funded, yes, Americans for Prosperity, and the 
American Enterprise Institute, and ALEC--which we have talked about and 
sponsors the State Policy Network--and, of course, we can't go without 
the Heartland Institute, with their wonderful Unabomber billboard.
  Dr. Brulle's research indicates that the Searle Trust gave over $20 
million to these groups between 2003 and 2010. Donors Capital Fund--
this big spider at the center of the web here--is a donor to the John 
Locke Foundation, and, of course, the Charles G. Koch Charitable 
Foundation. The John Locke Foundation is a member of the State Policy 
Network, that ``$83 million right-wing empire'' funded by a Koch family 
foundation and the identity-launderers Donors Trust and Donors Capital.
  That brings us to the so-called Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public 
Policy. By the way, it is fair to say that yet again when we move from 
Franklin to Madison, these foundations end up showing Koch people, Koch 
money, and Koch buddies. The Thomas Jefferson Institute is a public 
policy foundation and, yes, another member of the State Policy Network, 
the $83 million rightwing empire.
  By the way, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth 
investigation of the State Policy Network shows how the network and its 
member think tanks are all interconnected to ALEC and to the Koch 
brothers. But that is for another speech.
  According to ``DeSmogBlog,'' many of the Jefferson Institute studies 
are authored by an operative of the Heritage Foundation, the group that 
Senator Franken spoke about earlier this evening, and the Energy and 
Environment Legal Institute--two groups that are both on this web.

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  The Thomas Jefferson Institute prominently displays a statue of 
Jefferson on its Web page and claims to be a nonpartisan supporter of 
``environmental stewardship,'' but the institute is an outspoken critic 
of the President's Clean Power Plan and renewable sources of energy and 
actively sows doubt about climate science. The institute is right here 
on Professor Brulle's web of climate change countermovement 
organizations.
  According to data compiled by the Conservative Transparency project 
between 1998 and 2014, the Jefferson Institute received funding from 
the following entities in the denial web: first, of course, is the 
identity-laundering Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. Then there is 
the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which, as we recall, also 
supported the Franklin Center and the Madison Institute and links to 
the Koch brothers through the far-rightwing John Birch Society. 
Remember, they were at almost $30 million into climate denial 
organizations in those years between 2003 and 2010. And then there is 
the William E. Simon Foundation, whose current president is also a 
senior fellow at the rightwing Manhattan Institute, a member of the 
Grant Advisory Committee of the Searle Freedom Trust, and a past member 
of the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution. It is quite a web 
indeed.
  The Jefferson Institute's director was quoted in 2007 as saying: 
``When it comes to global warming, I'm a skeptic because the 
conclusions about the cause of the apparent warming stand on the 
shoulders of incredibly uncertain data and models.'' Tell that to NOAA 
and NASA and every single one of our National Labs and see how far you 
get. Tell that to your home State university and see how far you get.
  In 2008, he wrote about climate change for the Jefferson Journal, a 
commentary forum of the Jefferson Institute, that ``greenhouse gas 
reduction goals . . . are both unachievable and irrelevant'' and 
assured ``there will be no climate catastrophe due to CO2 
because either the science is wrong or we will use geoengineering.''
  In 2011, he wrote two pieces for the Jefferson Journal opposing wind 
power, contending that--you are not going to believe this, but here is 
the quote--``wind is not affordable and it is not clean'' and that wind 
power ``has no sensible place in a 21st century civilization.'' Tell 
that to our friend Senator Grassley, whose State gets a third of its 
power from wind energy.
  Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Locke--these are great names put on the 
front of very shady Koch-funded front groups in the web of denial, and 
the organizations share several common features: First, they all 
propagate what by any reasonable standard is preposterous nonsense and 
masquerade it as science and independent opinion. Second, they all get 
massive funding from fossil fuel interests and always line up 
obediently with those interests. Third, they interlock. The 
interlocking is almost too complicated to track--in staff, in board 
members, in funding sources--but it all traces back to fossil fuel 
money. And, of course, they all mask themselves behind the names of 
great men from history who would recoil to discover their names and 
reputations being put to such discreditable use. Who needs to hide 
behind names like that? I submit it is people who are up to no good and 
don't want to be caught out for who they really are.
  Let me conclude by thanking the many Senators who have participated 
in this effort to put a little bit of a spotlight on a very phony web 
of denial that is operating actively in our democracy to distort and 
disturb its proper operation and to sabotage America's ability to 
respond in a responsible way to the climate crisis. They include our 
leader Harry Reid, Ben Cardin, Chris Coons, Tim Kaine, Elizabeth 
Warren, Chuck Schumer, Tom Udall, Jeff Merkley, Barbara Boxer, Dick 
Durbin, Brian Schatz, Al Franken, Martin Heinrich, my senior Senator 
Jack Reed, Jeanne Shaheen, Gary Peters, Dick Blumenthal, and Ed Markey. 
I am honored to participate in this effort with them.
  With that, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________