[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 144 (Thursday, September 22, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5984-S5987]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I rise to address an issue vital to
the future of our country and to the future of our planet: climate
change.
When President Kennedy told the Nation that we would land a man on
the Moon by the end of the 1960s, he said:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other
things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard
. . . because that challenge is one that we are willing to
accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we
intend to win.
It was an ambitious goal--one that many believed was beyond reach.
The technology was not all in place. But on July 20, 1969, America and
the entire world watched Neil Armstrong take one giant leap for mankind
and become the first human to walk on the Moon. It was a powerful
moment. We achieved President Kennedy's vision. We accomplished the
improbable. We accomplished what many people thought was impossible
because America and the American people are known for overcoming great
challenges and achieving the impossible and because we set an ambitious
goal that inspired us to push past the limits of what we had previously
thought achievable. Now we have to do it again.
But whether we are looking out to the Moon or out to the stars, we
have to focus here on spaceship Earth and save our planet from
catastrophic climate change. We have to move quickly because to save
our planet--our beautiful, blue-green planet--we have to keep it from
warming more than 2 degrees Celsius, which is 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
The planet has already warmed nearly 1 degree Celsius since we started
burning fossil fuels, and we are running out of time.
Moreover, despite growing attention and growing concern around the
world, humankind's production of global warming gas is still increasing
rather than decreasing. We are in a race against time, and at this
moment, we are losing that race.
We need immediate, bold action. That is why in the upcoming months I
will introduce a plan that challenges our Nation to transition to 100
percent clean and renewable energy by the year 2050--a plan referred to
as 100 by 50. The 100 by 50 plan will set a goal of having no more than
50 percent of our country's energy come from fossil fuels by 2030 and a
complete phaseout of energy from fossil fuels by the year 2050.
There will be those who, as with President Kennedy's challenge, will
say that is beyond reach, but we already have in hand the vast majority
of the technology needed to meet this challenge. We need market
incentives that will dramatically accelerate the introduction and
deployment of these technologies. We need a continued effort to improve
the affordability and efficiency of these technologies. Like going to
the Moon, this has to be a challenge that our generation is willing to
accept, unwilling to postpone, and that we intend to win.
Climate change is here, and it is already having devastating impacts
on our world. We can observe climate change in many different ways,
through temperature readings of the planet, through the measuring of
carbon dioxide which drives temperature increases, and we can see it
through the changing, damaging facts on the ground, from glaciers to
fire seasons, to droughts, to rising sea levels.
Consider this. Since May of 2015, each and every month has set a new
temperature record--the hottest May of 2015, hotter than any May ever
recorded; June of 2015, hotter than any June ever recorded; July of
2015, hotter than any July ever recorded and so forth, 16 months in a
row. As NASA has recently announced, August of this year, 2016, has
tied July of this year, 2016, as the hottest month ever recorded, not
just the hottest July, not
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just the hottest August, not just the hottest months of the year but
the two hottest months ever recorded on our planet. To put that into
context, global temperatures in August were almost a full degree
Celsius above the 20th century average, well on the way to reaching
that 2-degree threshold that scientists refer to as a threshold for
catastrophic consequences. It isn't that catastrophic consequences
start just when we reach 2 degrees. We can already see the facts on the
ground, and we can already see the carbon dioxide that is driving
temperature is continuing to rise steadily.
We know carbon dioxide pollution that is spewing into the air from
burning fossil fuels is driving those temperatures. That is because, as
we burn more fossil fuel and emit more carbon dioxide, the carbon
dioxide traps the heat on our planet's surface and global temperatures
rise higher and higher. You can see that pattern going back hundreds
and thousands of years. You can also see it just looking at the time
from 1959 until now.
We have increased substantially the amount of carbon dioxide from 320
parts per million to now we have broken 400 parts per million. During
that time, temperatures have risen steadily just copying that carbon
dioxide level, just as it has over hundreds of thousands of years
before.
What we also see is that in this black line, which are the carbon
dioxide levels, we see the slope is going upward, meaning that the rate
of humankind pollution is increasing, not decreasing. Not so long ago,
scientists said we must curtail the pollution of the planet at 350
parts per million. That is down here, 350 parts. We are no longer
there. We passed that level quite a while ago in the late 1980s, and
here we are at 400, steadily going up.
So we see it in the temperatures, the hottest months ever on record
for 16 months in a row, we see it in the carbon dioxide, but we can see
it wherever we travel in this country through the facts on the ground.
Take my home State of Oregon. Our fire season is now 60 days longer
than it was 40 years ago, with ever greater acreage being burned. Just
this summer, we saw two wildfires--the Cherry Road and Rail Fires--burn
more than 100 square miles of land. Another example, warmer winter
months failing to kill the pine beetles, magnifying their destructive
infestations. On the coast of Oregon, we see the rising acidity of the
Pacific Ocean, the level 30 percent higher than it was before we
started burning coal, gas, and oil 150 years ago. That was before the
industrial revolution. It is making it much harder for the oyster to be
able to reproduce and to form shells in those first few days of life.
Now, we may wonder, what does ocean acidity have to do with global
warming? Here is the situation. The carbon dioxide we are putting into
the air--much of it is being absorbed by the ocean. The amount that is
left is the amount you saw on the chart just a moment ago, but the
amount the ocean absorbs becomes carbonic acid. The ocean is so vast,
it is almost unimaginable that there could be enough carbon dioxide
that we are putting into the air to be absorbed by the ocean to create
carbonic acid to create this acidity level, but that is exactly what
has happened. If the shells of our oysters are being affected, what
else is being affected in the food chain? For example, what about the
impact on coral reefs?
Obviously, it is not just Oregon that is feeling the impact. Every
State we go to, we can find an impact of facts on the ground. We see
communities all along the East Coast, from Key West and Miami to
Wilmington, NC, Annapolis, New York, experiencing sunny-day flooding
because of rising sea levels. We have watched the glaciers of Glacier
National Park dwindle from 150 in 1910 to just 25 today.
As with the pine beetles, warmer weather is great for ticks, and out-
of-control tick populations are killing moose in Minnesota and New
Hampshire. The lobsters of Maine are moving north. That is not all. It
is like the 10 plagues in ancient Egypt--more devastating droughts,
more powerful floods, fiercer storms. It is a direct assault on rural
America, a direct assault on our fishing, forestry, and farming, and
that matters. It matters for rural America and it matters for urban
America.
Our Earth is changing at lightning speed right before our eyes. We
can evaluate this change through temperature records. We can evaluate
it through the recording of carbon dioxide levels. We can evaluate it
through the facts on the ground, and it is all going to get much worse,
year by year.
So there is no time to wait. To save our planet, we must move
quickly. We must move forward to end the burning of fossil fuels and to
do so in a short period of time. We must completely transform our
energy system.
In the first half of 2016, roughly 60 percent of our Nation's total
energy output came from burning fossil fuel. The good news there is, we
already have made a significant reduction, if you will, of the total
energy picture. There is a lot of clean and renewable energy we are
producing, but we have so much further to go.
On these bar charts, what we are seeing in red is the amount of
energy in different sectors: residential, commercial, industrial, and
transportation in the generation of electricity. The red is what is
being produced by fossil fuels, and the green represents what is being
produced by clean or renewable energy. These red bars have to go. We
need to transform them completely and do so to the green bar, renewable
and clean energy, by 2050.
This goal is achievable, but it is going to take enormous political
courage. Those vested deeply in the fossil fuel economy will--for their
personal profit, their company's profit--try to hold on to the fossil
fuel energy economy. It will not matter to them that they are
destroying the planet, but it should certainly matter to every single
Senator who serves in the U.S. Senate and every Member of the House. We
are responsible. We are responsible to take on this challenge.
The first thing we should do, because it is a fabulously effective
tool, is put a fee on carbon. A fee on carbon drives our economy to
eliminate carbon in the most cost-effective ways, unleashing a torrent
of technology, the development of technology in the best possible,
cost-effective way to turn these red bars into green bars.
We have seen this work before. We applied this strategy to sulfur
dioxide, and the result was that with less expense and less time than
anyone imagined, we were able to tackle that problem, and what works
for sulfur dioxide works for carbon dioxide. The impact on the price of
carbon will be immediate and substantial. One of the reasons is, we
already have significant, powerful technologies that will be mobilized
by such a carbon fee.
Let's examine some of the major energy sectors, starting with
electricity. The potential electricity we could generate in the United
States from just wind and solar is over 120 times the amount of
electricity currently generated from fossil fuels. This is the amount
of energy currently generated in electricity from fossil fuels. This
large green sphere is the potential energy--the theoretical potential
energy--from solar and wind. So we have a lot to work with.
Here is more good news. Solar and wind energy has grown increasingly
affordable in recent years. For instance, photovoltaic solar panels
produced electricity at 39 cents per kilowatt hour in 2009. That is up
here. In 2014, it was 8 cents per kilowatt hour, an almost fivefold
reduction. We see in communities and cities all across the country,
businesses and homes with solar panels on their rooftops. We start to
see businesses putting up arrays, not just on rooftops but sometimes in
their yards. Those declining costs matter. If you put a carbon fee on
top of it, you drive that deployment.
Over the same period, the cost of wind was cut by more than half,
from 14 cents per kilowatt hour to 6 cents per kilowatt hour. In the 2
years since the 2014 numbers, the story has continued to be one of
declining costs. Those declining costs, together with Federal tax
credits, have resulted in a rapid growth in wind and solar energy
deployment.
Let's take a look at the solar side. We have on the red line the
declining cost per kilowatt hour of solar energy and on the blue bars
the increasing deployment of solar energy. That is pretty dramatic,
rapid drops in costs, rapid increase in deployment.
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We see the same thing in wind. On wind power, we see declining costs
occurring here, and we see increased deployment since the year 2000. In
the early 2000s, I was traveling the State, talking to folks interested
in running for the Oregon State Legislature. In the very first trip I
took, I was traveling in the area and saw the first big wind turbines
being deployed on the plateau east of the Cascades. Then 6 months
later, 1 year later, 2 years later, there was a huge increase in
deployment of wind turbines, mimicking what we see on this chart right
here.
Here is a fascinating number. In the first quarter--this is the first
3 months of this year--96 percent of the new electricity-generating
capacity has come from wind and solar. That is a stunning number. Most
people think the new generation capacity is coming from natural gas
because it has dropped so much in cost, but 96 percent in the first 3
months of this year came from wind and solar.
If we make a national commitment to these and other clean, renewable
sources, such as geothermal and wave energy, we can absolutely achieve
100 percent green electrons--clean, renewable electrons by 2050,
eliminating fossil fuels in the generation of electricity.
This decision is not without challenges, just as the journey to the
Moon was not without challenges. Most significantly, we have to match
the supply of the variable solar and wind energy to the demand for
electricity. As we know, for solar and wind to generate electricity,
the Sun has to shine and the wind has to blow, but there are a number
of ways we can tackle this challenge.
One answer is to shift demand through peak load pricing, encouraging
consumers, for example, to shift flexible consumption, such as drying
your clothes, to match the supply. We change the time of day we use our
dryer. Another possibility is to increase the grid of electricity from
one region where there is excess supply to another region where there
is excess demand. A third answer is to store electricity, which can be
accomplished through quite a variety of technologies. To name a few,
you can store energy in a liquid salt solution at high-temperature
solar projects. You can use pump storage, where you pump water up a
hill and then you run it back down through turbines. You can use
battery storage. By investing in these strategies, the elimination of
fossil fuels in the generation of electricity is within our grasp.
Let's turn to transportation. Fossil fuels have dominated the
transportation sector for a century, but that is changing. One change
is the greater deployment and use of mass transit, light rail,
streetcars, bicycles, and pedestrian transit. These investments get
people out of fossil fuel cars. That trend continues, and we should
encourage it.
Another strategy is electrify the cars themselves. We have seen
tremendous progress in the electric car market thanks to falling prices
and growing consumer demand. Today there are approximately 500,000
plug-in vehicles driving on our roads. You can see how that really
started in 2010, and here we are 6 years later at half a million cars,
with a steady upward growth. Electric vehicles are far more viable
today than they were in 2010 because the most expensive component of an
electric vehicle is the battery, and the price of batteries--lithium
ion batteries--has been plunging, dropping fourfold since 2008 to less
than $300 per kilowatt hour.
We have also seen other parts of the transportation industry adopt
electricity into their fleets. Mack Trucks, for example, has developed
an electric hybrid garbage truck. Proterra, an innovator in heavy-duty
electric transport, recently unveiled an electric bus that can travel
350 miles on a single charge. They are developing a recharging capacity
that can recharge a bus faster than you can put diesel into a diesel
bus tank.
What about aviation? How do we transition our airlines from fossil
fuels? Well, biofuels are a piece of the puzzle. United Airlines has
started using a mixture of 30 percent biofuel and 70 percent
traditional jet fuel for flights from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
JetBlue just announced a 10-year contract to buy 350 million gallons of
renewable biofuels to mix into its fuel supply. That will account for
about 20 percent of its annual fuel use at Kennedy International
Airport. Other airlines, including Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic, are
embracing biofuels.
Let's think a little bit about long-haul trucking, which currently
runs virtually universally on diesel. It is a big challenge. Biodiesel
can play a role here, as it does in aviation. A few years ago, Poland
Springs switched to a 5-percent biodiesel blend for its fleet of
tractor trailers and tanker trucks. The company estimates that not only
did it reduce its annual carbon emissions by 1.8 million pounds in the
first 2 years, but it saved about $70,000 in fuel costs. That is a
pretty substantial incentive.
As more and more firms seek to replace fossil diesel with biodiesel,
production has surged, increasing from 343 million gallons in 2010 to
1.2 billion gallons in 2014. But while the production and use of
biodiesel is growing, we don't anticipate that it will be a complete
answer. The production of biofuel has challenges of its own, including
a potential disruption of food agriculture.
We have to keep developing and looking at a variety of technologies,
possibly including, for example, the development of hydrogen fuel
cells. Nikola Motor, an electric truck startup in Salt Lake City,
announced plans at the end of last month for its upcoming Nikola One
big rigs to run on custom-made hydrogen electric fuel cells. These
trucks are going to be designed to travel 1,200 miles between hydrogen
fill-ups.
If hydrogen does become viable along established routes for trucking,
we will need to generate a lot of hydrogen, and we can do that from
electricity, putting the green electrons to work in this challenge and
establishing a fuel deployment infrastructure.
What about residential and commercial heating? About one-fifth of all
natural gas is used to heat homes and water in residences. Both of
these objectives can be accomplished through electrification. The good
news here is that heat pumps, powered by green electrons, can be cost-
competitive with gas heating in most climates, even at today's very low
natural gas prices.
Replacing the use of natural gas in the commercial and industrial
sectors will be more challenging, especially industrial manufacturing.
Electrification will help. Conservation will help. They will be part of
the solution. In some cases, there may not be a solution. There may not
be a viable answer. We will need to employ carbon offsets to reach net
zero generation of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
So there are pieces of this puzzle we will have to figure out. Just
as our predecessors in the space program did not have all of the
answers when they set out on a mission to put a man on the Moon, we
don't have all of the answers now, but we have a lot. With the
diligence and determination that has characterized the American spirit,
we will find more answers and we can reach these goals.
We have so much of the technology in hand to propel ourselves into
the 100-by-50 vision, but we need political courage. We need commitment
as a nation. We need to take responsibility because we are the first
generation feeling the impact of the disruptive ravages of climate
change, and we are the last generation that can do something about it.
And we do so, driving a rapid transition from a fossil fuel-based
energy economy to a clean renewable one.
One thing is certain: It is going to mean a lot of new jobs. That is
pretty exciting. There is going to be a lot of innovation. That is
pretty exciting. Already more than 2.5 million Americans go off to work
every day in the clean and renewable energy industry. Some 414,000 are
employed in renewable generation, such as solar and wind. In just the
past 6 years, the solar industry alone has added 115,000 jobs. Another
170,000 are employed in advanced vehicles, working to move the
automotive industry further toward hybrid and electric vehicle
technology. Imagine how many more jobs we will create if we truly
commit and invest in clean and renewable technologies. Imagine what a
boon it will be to our economy to be the leader in these industries,
selling and exporting the technology and the products that we develop
around the world.
As we head into this exciting frontier, we have an obligation to do
right
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by all the American workers, the men and women who rely on jobs in
fossil fuel industries to provide for their families. We need to make
sure they have the support and the training and the help to transition
to work in the new industries. We need to make sure no worker in the
fossil fuel world is left behind.
These are the basic elements of the 100-by-50 plan I will be
introducing to move our country from fossil fuel to clean renewable
energy:
One. Adopt a price on carbon to put our markets to work on this
mission.
Two. Utilize energy conservation--virtually always the most cost-
effective strategy.
Three. Convert all electricity generation from fossil fuel electrons
to green electrons.
Four. Shift as many uses as possible from the fossil fuel energy
world to the electric energy world, including various applications in
transportation and home and business heating.
Five. Sustain substantial investments in research and development to
improve current technologies and develop new ones.
Finally, for the most difficult challenges, we may consider utilizing
carefully constructed carbon offsets to reach net zero fossil fuels.
Fellow citizens, colleagues here in the Chamber, we need a bold plan
to save our beautiful, blue-green planet from the ravages of global
warming. This 100-by-50 is that plan--completely overhauling our energy
system over the next three and a half decades, eliminating carbon
dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels by 2050.
By leading this fight, America will benefit from all of the
technological innovation it generates. By leading this fight, America
will generate good-paying jobs. By leading this fight, America will
have the moral standing to pull together the nations of the world onto
a parallel path. America must lead this charge. We are the only Nation
that can. We have the best scientific and technical minds in the world.
The American people have the courage to take on big challenges. By
leading this fight, America will bring together the nations of the
world. Working together, we will save our planet. The world needs to
act, and to act now, to tackle the devastating impacts of climate
change. It cannot wait. But they will need our example--a national
commitment to revolutionizing our energy sector to spur them to action,
to set an example, to work in cooperation.
Daniel Burnham, the great American architect, once said:
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's
blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big
plans; aim high in hope and work.
We need to stir our blood and our hearts and our minds and our souls
to this great challenge. We need to do everything in our power,
utilizing every tool at our disposal. We are in a very real race
against time, and it is a race in which we are behind but a race we
must not lose. That is our responsibility. That is our moral obligation
to our children and their children and their children's children.
Some will say this can't be done, but I say to them and I say to you:
Do not bet against America. We conquered the electron and harnessed
electricity. We beat gravity to soar above the clouds. We cured
diseases, invented the telephone, the television, and the Internet.
When President Kennedy called us into action, we, America, traveled to
the Moon. When we commit ourselves, there is nothing American ingenuity
cannot accomplish. We will find the answers. We will achieve the
impossible. At this moment, let's embrace the urgency of this mission
and determine to act immediately and to act boldly.
Fellow Americans, colleagues, let's join together and set ourselves
and our Nation and, through our leadership, the world's community of
nations on a course to make this giant leap for mankind.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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