[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 17 (Wednesday, February 1, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S605-S607]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         STREAM PROTECTION RULE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are gathered here this evening to 
seek to defend against the Congressional Review Act effort to overturn 
the clean stream protection rule. It is interesting that this first 
Congressional Review Act measure that we are taking up should be one 
that puts money into the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and lifts 
their obligation to clean up public streams that they have ruined with 
their pollution.
  As I have been in the Senate, I am in my second term, and I am more 
than halfway through it. By Senate standards, I don't expect that is 
very senior, but it is enough that I have seen some patterns develop.
  One of the patterns I have seen develop is that my friends on the 
other side of the aisle talk a really good game on deregulation, on 
regulatory reform. They give speeches on the burden of undue 
regulation. They give speeches about the cost of regulation. Over and 
over they seek deregulation. But when it comes time to actually do 
something, every single time that I can remember, the deregulatory 
effort goes to the benefit of two groups. One is Wall Street and the 
other is polluters. The rest is just talk.
  Sure enough, here we are with the first Congressional Review Act 
effort, and the choices are money in the fossil fuel company's pockets 
versus our natural heritage of clean streams for ourselves and our 
children. And which way do we go? Put the money in the fossil fuel 
pockets--to heck with the clean streams. This would be 0.3 percent of 
coal industry revenues to clean up after the mess they have made.
  I grew up and I was taught that if you spill something, you clean it 
up. If you make a mess, you clean it up. But in this building, if it is 
the fossil fuel industry, if you make a mess, too bad, we will take 
care of you. You are our guys. We don't care about the stream. We don't 
care about the people who live downstream. We don't care about people 
who might fish in it. We don't care about the fact that this is God's 
creation. We care about making the coal companies happy.
  It happens over and over. If it is not polluters, it is Wall Street. 
If it is not Wall Street, it is polluters. As to all this talk about 
deregulation, watch where it goes--Wall Street and polluters. Here we 
are with the archetypical challenge between private benefit and public 
harm. The very purpose of government--even conservative commentators 
say--is to protect the public from being harmed by those who cause them 
harm as they pursue their private benefit. What could be more the case 
than coal waste polluting public streams? We don't care; we are going 
to go to bat for the coal companies. I tell you, there are special 
rules around here for the fossil fuel industry.
  We heard President Trump's promises to drain the swamp of the outside 
influence of corporate special interests and lobbyists in our 
government. Well, particularly when it comes to fossil fuel interests, 
that oft-repeated promise seems to have evaporated in the murky haze of 
his transition. From the very outset, operatives of the Koch brothers 
and other fossil fuel interests have infiltrated his team.
  Some of the biggest swamp alligators have floated up as his nominees 
to run federal agencies that protect our public health, that enforce 
our laws, that maintain our natural resources, and even those who carry 
out our international diplomacy. With all these nominations, the 
President isn't draining the swamp. He is filling it with exactly the 
kind of big special interests that most Americans voted to keep out.
  Our Republican colleagues are jamming and stacking the confirmation 
hearings in a rush to fill in this swamp Cabinet before the American 
people can get a good look at the nominees. By the way, the byproduct 
of all of this is the swamp gas of climate denial.
  A strong majority of voters polled since the election called on 
President Trump to do more to address global warming. So let us look at 
the record of this fossil fuel swamp Cabinet.
  Today, we voted on ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be our Secretary 
of State. Like President Trump, Tillerson and ExxonMobil have been 
talking out of two sides of their mouths about climate change. 
Sometimes Tillerson acknowledges climate change exists, pointing to a 
revenue-neutral carbon fee like the one I have introduced as the best 
way to address it. At other times, he plays up imagined scientific 
uncertainty and overestimates the costs of action. In 2012, Tillerson 
said:

       I'm not disputing that increasing CO2 emissions 
     in the atmosphere is going to have an impact. It will have a 
     warming impact.

  As far back as 2009, he backed a revenue-neutral carbon fee like the 
one I introduced as the best way to address the problem. But in 2013, 
he questioned whether we should do anything at all to slow climate 
change, asking: ``What good is it to save the planet if humanity 
suffers?''
  That is the climate deniers' false premise--that humanity will suffer 
from our solving a problem that they face.
  In 2015, Tillerson told an ExxonMobil shareholder meeting that he 
thought the world should wait for science to improve before solving the 
problem of climate change. He couldn't find one State university in 
this country that would agree with him. He says that because it is the 
fossil fuel industry stall strategy. It is so ironic coming from the 
longtime head of ExxonMobil to say we should wait because it has been 
well documented by the Los Angeles Times, by Inside Climate News, and 
by others that ExxonMobil--despite conducting some of the leading 
climate science for decades--has played a devious role in undermining 
public understanding of these dangers.
  For years, Exxon has underwritten a shadowy network of denial 
organizations--we have called it here on the Senate floor the web of 
denial--with the purpose of delaying any steps to reduce the use of 
fossil fuel. Between 1988 and 2005, ExxonMobil contributed over $16 
million to a network of phony-baloney think tanks and pseudo-science 
groups that spread misleading and false claims about climate science. 
In response to public outrage about ExxonMobil's role in funding 
climate denial--it knew it had been caught--it claimed that it would 
stop and that it had stopped. But in 2015, ExxonMobil was still 
funneling millions to groups pedaling climate denial. According to its 
own publically available ``2015 Worldwide Global Giving'' report, over 
$1.6 million, or one-fifth of ExxonMobil's public information and 
policy research contributions went to organizations active in deceiving 
the public about climate change--groups like the American Legislative 
Exchange Council, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, the Hudson 
Institute, and the Manhattan Institute.
  Under Tillerson's leadership, Exxon spent untold millions of dollars 
obstructing climate action and burying real science in a cloud of 
nonsense. The nonprofit research organization Influence Map found that 
ExxonMobil spent

[[Page S606]]

at least $27 million obstructing climate action in 2015 alone. This was 
after they had said publically that they would knock it off. Tillerson 
even fought his own shareholders. The Institute for Policy Studies 
reports shareholders of ExxonMobil have introduced 62 climate-related 
resolutions over the past 25 years. Under his guidance, management has 
opposed every one of them.
  Rex Tillerson once openly mocked a shareholder who asked about 
investing in renewables. Tillerson responded that renewable energy only 
survives on the backs of enormous government mandates that are not 
sustainable. ``We on purpose choose not to lose money,'' he said. Well, 
one of the ways they choose not to lose money is by spending huge 
amounts on a big, complex PR machine to churn out doubt about the real 
science and to protect the enormous market failure that forces the rest 
of us to pay for the cost of Exxon's carbon pollution. To say that 
renewable energy only survives on the backs of government mandates and 
subsidies is a bitter irony from the CEO of a company in an industry 
that has been calculated by the International Monetary Fund to get 
subsidies of $700 billion a year in the United States alone from not 
having to pay for the damage that its product causes.
  Now, $700 billion a year is quite the subsidy. We heard this special 
brand of fossil fuel doublespeak in his confirmation hearing. ``The 
increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are having 
an effect,'' he said. ``Our ability to predict that effect,'' he 
continued, ``is very limited.''
  Wrong. Our ability to predict that effect is clearly established. The 
scientists who study our planet's climate system know that is the case. 
They understand that our carbon pollution has already driven 
unprecedented changes in the climate, and they know that rising 
concentrations of greenhouse gases will bring rising temperatures, 
higher sea levels along our coast, a warmer and more acidic ocean, and 
changes in weather patterns.
  None of this is subject to serious doubt in the scientific community. 
When asked whether he sees climate change as a national security issue, 
Tillerson replied, ``I don't see it as the imminent national security 
threat that perhaps others do.''
  Well, let's talk about those ``others'' for a minute. They are the 
``others'' who are in charge of defending our country and its 
interests, the people whose job it is to monitor global trends and 
prepare for future threats. They are intelligence and security experts 
like the former Director of the CIA, the Chair of President George W. 
Bush's National Intelligence Council, the former commander of the U.S. 
Pacific Command.
  The ``others'' include the top brass at the U.S. Department of 
Defense, which has in its Quadrennial Defense Reviews for years 
described climate change as a ``global threat multiplier.'' These 
``others'' might just know what they are talking about, and they are 
not burdened with the conflict of interest of being the CEO of a 
company that is sponging a $700-billion subsidy off the American 
taxpayers every year. Perhaps the problem is that Mr. Tillerson is too 
steeped in the fossil fuel industry to hear the ``others'' who have 
dedicated their careers to defending the American people.
  The United States ought to represent to the world a model of 
democratic leadership and honesty. That is how we get away with saying 
that we are a city on a hill. That is how we explain to the world that 
we hold up a lamp in its darkness. The telling responses from Mr. 
Tillerson's hearing matter because he will be the one to direct or 
abdicate America's global leadership on this critical issue.
  We may be blind in this Chamber to the fact that the fossil fuel 
industry is calling the shots, pulling the strings, has control over 
our democracy, and is going around breaking our democratic checks and 
balances in order to seize control. But the rest of the world knows. 
You don't think the rest of the world can see why this body will do 
anything on climate change when every American State university knows 
that it is coming on, when every American scientific society knows that 
it is coming on, when our defense professionals know that it is coming 
on and warn us about it, when NASA and NOAA know that it is coming on 
and warn us about it?
  You don't think that the people of Russia and China and Germany know 
that we are the ones who have a craft driving around on the surface of 
Mars? You don't think they know how good our scientists are, and you 
don't think they know that the NASA scientists are telling us climate 
change is serious, it is coming at us, it is going to be catastrophic 
if we don't act--we have to do something? They know that.
  Everybody sees it. It is in plain view. What is missing is that 
Congress will not act because the tentacles of the fossil fuel industry 
swarm through this place. The world sees it and knows it and history 
will judge us for it.
  Tillerson has spent his career leading an international oil company 
that has been consistently and fundamentally dishonest with the world 
as to what ExxonMobil knew about climate change. His professional life 
has been centered on extracting--extracting fossil fuels from the 
earth, extracting drilling concessions from corrupt regimes, extracting 
special tax favors from Congress, and extracting profits for his 
shareholders.
  Well, American leadership in a dangerous world is about more than 
that. That is why I could not support his nomination. He is just one of 
several individuals nominated by President Trump who cannot accept the 
science of climate change or who harbors close ties to the fossil fuel 
industry or both--usually.
  Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt is Trump's nominee for 
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the bureau most 
directly responsible for leading the U.S. effort to stave off the 
effects of climate change. Mr. Pruitt has such deep political and 
financial ties to fossil fuel companies and front groups that it is 
hard to tell where they give off and he begins. He has served as the 
industry's mouthpiece and attack dog for years.
  When he was asked during his Environment and Public Works Committee 
confirmation hearing to explain his dealings with the fossil fuel 
industry through secretive, dark money groups that he operated, which 
have been tied to specific companies he would be charged with 
regulating should he be confirmed, he provided misleading, incomplete, 
and evasive answers.
  So we submitted substantive followup questions, asking him to set the 
record straight. Once again, he chose to provide evasive and empty 
responses. Right now, his record is a black hole of special interest 
secrecy about his dark money links to the fossil fuel industry. That 
ought not to be acceptable to anybody in the Senate.
  We have a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on 
administration nominations. Any Senator who believes that Congress 
should have a role in overseeing this administration should take note 
of this. In response to questions following up on Pruitt's hearing, 
rather than providing information sought by the committee, he 
instructed the Senate to file open records act requests for the 
information with the State of Oklahoma.

  If Pruitt is willing to tell Senators who are poised to vote on his 
nomination to go to the back of a very long, first-come, never-served 
line to learn more about his conflicts of interest, I can hardly 
imagine how unresponsive he will be when Congress asks for information 
about changes he wants to make to the renewable fuel standard, changes 
he wants to make to clean air protections, changes he wants to make to 
our clean water protections or to toxic regulations.
  By the way, he has stonewalled for more than 2 years, producing 3,000 
emails between him and his office and identified fossil fuel companies 
and front groups--stonewalled an open records request for 2 years. His 
office admits there are at least 3,000 of them. Of the 3,000 emails 
between him and the fossil fuel industry that his office has admitted 
exist, how many do you suppose he has produced for the Environment and 
Public Works Committee--out of 3,000? Pick a number. I will tell you 
what the number is: zero; not one.
  The party that for a long time had a really determined interest in 
emails suddenly has no interest in these emails at all. Emails? What 
emails? If it is fossil fuel companies on the other end of the emails, 
suddenly it does not matter. Pruitt does not want the Senate and the 
American people to know

[[Page S607]]

about his dealings with his polluter patrons. But we should know. It is 
our job to know. The public should know--but not when it is fossil 
fuels.
  President Trump also nominated Senator Sessions of Alabama as 
Attorney General, the position responsible for enforcing Federal 
environmental laws, like the Clean Air Act. He has invented the notion 
that the sky is not right in Alabama for solar power, saying, ``In my 
home State of Alabama, one would think we have a good bit of sunshine, 
but in truth, we have a lot of clouds, and solar is not effective in 
our area.''
  In a 2015 interview with the Family Research Council, Senator 
Sessions said he was not even sure that global warming exists. That 
same year in a hearing with the EPA Administrator, Senator Sessions 
claimed that ``carbon pollution is CO2, and that's not 
really a pollutant; that's a plant food, and it doesn't harm anybody 
except that it might include temperature increases.''
  This is the man who wants to be Attorney General of the United 
States, who says he is going to follow the law. There is a Supreme 
Court case on point that says carbon is a pollutant. What does he say? 
Carbon pollution is CO2, and it is not really a pollutant. 
That is just plain not the law.
  By the way, try telling my Rhode Island fishermen, whose stocks are 
disappearing from the warming waters off our coast, that CO2 
does not harm anybody. Trying telling it to Senator Merkley's shell 
fishermen in Oregon who have had shellfish hatcheries wiped out by 
acidified seas coming in.
  I asked Senator Sessions at the confirmation hearing whether, as 
Attorney General, he would make decisions in environmental cases based 
on scientifically accepted facts. Senator Sessions, to his credit, 
responded that he would and said that the ``theory'' of global warming 
``always struck me as plausible.''
  Well, if he is confirmed, he will have to hold a lot of these fossil 
fuel companies accountable under our environmental laws, and I hope he 
will familiarize himself with the science that he committed to follow 
because I intend to hold him to his pledge.
  Last, over at the Department of Energy, Trump chose former Governor 
Rick Perry of Texas, a one-time Presidential candidate who campaigned 
on eliminating altogether the Department he now hopes to lead. Perry 
also does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change.
  He has said:

       Historically in Texas we've always had substantial periods 
     of drought. World temperatures have also been changing for 
     millennia. I truly believe the science is not settled on the 
     issue of man-made global warming.

  Well, he had not checked with Texas universities when he said that. 
He was the Governor of Texas. He has not even checked with his own 
universities.
  I went down to Texas. I had a hearing with climate scientists from 
the major Texas universities. They came in and said what they knew: It 
is real. It is coming. We are already seeing it. It is important. We 
have to get ahead of it. It is caused by CO2. We can solve 
that. Let's get to work.
  It is not a complicated message. It is coming from his home-State 
universities.
  Why would a Governor not follow the message of science developed and 
propagated by his own home-State universities? Why? Because the fossil 
fuel industry is so powerful that it will not let people recognize the 
truth. In the confirmation, Perry continued to hedge his bets. He said:

       I believe the climate is changing. I believe some of it is 
     naturally occurring, but some of it is also caused by man-
     made activity. The question is how do we address it in a 
     thoughtful way that does not compromise economic growth, the 
     affordability of energy or American jobs.

  Well, if Governor Perry were actually being thoughtful about it, he 
would heed economic analyses like the Risky Business Project that show 
if we don't address climate change in a serious way, worsening storms, 
rising seas, warmer temperatures, and other extreme weather events will 
cost the United States billions of dollars. Just ask the insurance 
industry. In fact, ask our own CBO who testified today that these are 
concerns we need to look at.
  President Trump's Cabinet nominees should be working for the American 
people. But their public records show that they are more likely to 
listen to the Koch brothers, to ExxonMobil, to Devon Energy, to Murray 
Energy, to the special interests and the fossil fuel industry, and that 
they will not listen to our military, they will not listen to our 
national labs, they will not listen to NASA, even though they have that 
rover driving around on Mars and presumably know a little something 
about science. They are more likely to protect the profits of polluters 
than protect the health of Americans.

  Mr. President, there is too much at stake here to let Washington sink 
into the polluters' swamp. This whole scenario is an embarrassment to 
our country. It is going to be a lasting stain on our national 
reputation.
  Bringing us back to this Congressional Review Act, here we go again. 
The Congressional Review Act action was brought to benefit coal company 
polluters at the expense of our natural heritage, our children, and our 
common good, just so they don't have to clean up the mess they left 
behind, just so they don't have to clean up ruined public streams. It 
is just the latest demonstration that in this Congress, fossil fuel is 
king, doesn't care for our future, doesn't care for anything but what 
goes into its own pockets, and it is a disgrace.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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