[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.
[[Page S5017]]
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.
____________________