[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 72 (Thursday, April 27, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2624-S2627]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. MERKLEY (for himself, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Markey, and Mr. 
        Booker):
  S. 987. A bill to transition away from fossil fuel sources of energy 
to 100 percent clean and renewable energy by 2050, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, today I rise to address the important 
urgency of addressing climate change. Across the country, we are seeing 
the impacts of the warmer climate, and it is having devastating 
consequences on our forests, on our farming, on our fishing, and on our 
urban populations.
  Years ago, people talked about what we might see if we continued to 
burn fossil fuels and continued to put carbon dioxide into the air, but 
no longer do we have to talk about what we might see, because it is 
here. The facts are on the ground right now.
  We can look at my home State of Oregon. In Oregon, we have the 
challenge of forest fire seasons that are longer by several months than 
they were just decades ago. We have the challenge of warmer winters, 
resulting in pine beetles doing more damage to our trees. The fact that 
we have lower snowpacks in the Cascade Mountains means warmer trout 
streams and less water for irrigation. We have had the worst-ever 
droughts in the Klamath Basin in the past 15 years. Over on the coast, 
we have a big impact on oysters. Because we have burned so much in 
fossil fuels to create so much carbon dioxide that has been absorbed by 
the oceans and turned into carbonic acid, the oceans have acidified. 
They are 30 percent more acidic than they were 150 years ago, meaning 
our oysters are having trouble reaching out and pulling the molecules 
out of the water to form a shell. In fact, it takes so much energy to 
do so that they are dying.
  That is what is happening. That is just in Oregon. We can look across 
the United States and see impact after impact.
  If we were in Minnesota, we could talk about the tick populations 
that are killing the moose because it is not cold enough in the winter 
to kill the ticks. If we are in Maine, we can talk about the fact that 
the lobsters are migrating to Canada because that is where the colder 
waters can be found. If we are in Florida, we can talk about sunny day 
floods, because the ocean levels have risen and the ocean water--the 
saltwater--is contaminating the freshwater that cities depend on. If we 
are up the Atlantic coast, we can talk about Hurricane Sandy and how 
its devastating power was enhanced by an ocean that is much warmer than 
it was decades ago. If we are in Texas, we can talk about the spread of 
mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus affecting folks. So the list goes 
on and on. But it is not just in the United States of America. It is on 
the entire planet.
  As we are talking about oysters on the west coast of the United 
States, across the globe folks are talking about coral reefs. The Great 
Barrier Reef has virtually died over the last few years. Scientists say 
80 percent of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia has died in the last 
3 years. If we are looking at the mountainous regions of the world, you 
can trace the flow of glaciers and find that across the globe glaciers 
have diminished by an enormous amount. Some say that if you

[[Page S2625]]

want to see a glacier in Glacier National Park, you better get there 
soon. That is just in the United States.
  If we turn north to the upper reaches of Canada and the permafrost, 
you can visit what are called the drunken forests, because the 
permafrost is melting and the trees are starting to lean in every which 
direction. If you turn to Alaska, you are finding that Native 
populations are having to relocate because of changing circumstances of 
a warmer Alaska.
  Go to the Arctic Ocean and what you see is a massive amount of 
missing ice, and, because that ice is missing, the ocean is absorbing 
more energy from the sun, and it is creating a feedback loop that is 
having further devastating consequences. And so the list goes on and 
on.
  It is not just time to address climate change boldly. It is time to 
address it aggressively. It is time for 100 by 50. What that means is 
100 percent clean and renewable energy to power the economy by the year 
2050 and the steps to get there in between and to have 50 percent of 
our energy clean and renewable by the year 2030. That is not far away. 
That is just 13 years away, and for 2050, add another 20 years.
  We have to act quickly because right now human civilization is 
failing the test. Our responsibility is to stop burning fossil fuels 
and to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is why we 
have to rapidly transition from an energy economy based on fossil fuels 
to one based on clean and renewable energy.
  Why do I say we are failing the test at the moment? We are failing 
the test because if you look at the flow of carbon dioxide into the 
atmosphere from human civilization, the rate of carbon dioxide 
pollution has not leveled out. In fact, the speed of pollution and the 
amount of pollution per year is increasing. So we have a tremendous 
challenge ahead of us. We have to take and not only reduce the amount 
but reduce it enormously in a short period of time.
  Now some say this vision is too bold. Some say this vision is too 
difficult, that it is too hard. It makes me think of President 
Kennedy's call. He said decades ago:

       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.

  I tell you today that we must, as a Nation, be willing to accept the 
challenge of transforming our energy economy. We must be unwilling to 
postpone tackling this challenge of transforming our energy economy, 
and this challenge is one where we must be committed to winning. It is 
not just time. It is way past time.
  I came to the Senate floor last September to lay out the concept of 
100 by 50--100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2050. I come today to 
the Senate floor to say that today a group of Senators are introducing 
a bill to lay out a roadmap to get there.
  Just as President Kennedy laid out the vision of putting an American 
on the moon, NASA went to work and laid out a plan on how we would get 
there. They didn't know at first how it would be done. They hadn't 
proceeded to invent the staged rocket that would enable someone to 
escape the gravity of Earth in a fashion to get us to the moon. They 
didn't know how to create a lunar landing operation to put people 
safely on the planet surface. They weren't even sure of the composition 
of the surface of the moon, but they figured it out. They put forward a 
draft. They reworked that draft.
  Today we are putting forth a roadmap. I thank my colleagues who are 
standing with me today to be the original cosponsors: Senator Bernie 
Sanders of Vermont, Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Senator 
Cory Booker of New Jersey. I know other colleagues will join us as time 
progresses, but it is important not to wait until we have, if you will, 
a large population to begin the conversation--a large set of sponsors 
to begin the conversation of laying out a roadmap. It is important to 
lay it out now. It is important to lay it out now because it is a 
statement of values. It is important to lay it out now so that there is 
a vision that can be discussed--a detailed vision of how to take on 
different sectors of the energy economy that can be discussed and 
debated.
  So we are focused not on whether to get to 100 by 50, but on how we 
are going to get to 100 by 50. I invite and encourage that debate 
because each of us can envision a roadmap that is slightly different. 
So let's have that conversation, but let's not forget the importance of 
getting to this destination--100 percent clean, renewable energy--and 
getting thereby the year 2050.
  Yes, it is audacious when you think about how we use energy today, to 
think about how we can transform it in just a few decades, but we have 
many of the tools we need right now. With focused research and 
development, we can add the other tools that we need.
  Let us not fail to accept this challenge, because our planet is 
crying out in anguish. In addition to the facts on the ground that I 
have been mentioning, we can simply take the temperature of the planet. 
Month after month after month, year after year, in the past 2 years we 
have been setting new records for having the hottest month--not the 
hottest month in Washington, DC, not the hottest month in the United 
States of America but the hottest March in the history of the planet, 
the hottest April since we have been measuring the temperature of the 
planet--May, June, and so on and so forth.
  So the time for conversing about whether we have a problem is over. 
Now is the time to say how we will achieve this vision.
  One important element of achieving this vision is greening the grid. 
That means that we need to phase out electricity that is generated by 
fossil fuels. We need to invest in clean and renewable energy that puts 
green electrons in the grid instead, and we need to advance and develop 
the deployment of technologies that contribute to this, including high-
voltage transmission lines that will move energy between different 
parts of the United States. We certainly need to develop the ability to 
store electricity and to use automated demand management and automated 
supply management so we can match the supply of green energy to the 
demand at different times of the day or just the demand of different 
times of the day to make renewable energy fit to the operation of the 
economy.
  Now, we have some specific powerful gifts in this effort. One is that 
we have a dramatically declining cost of solar energy. A second is that 
we have a dramatically declining cost in wind energy. A third is that 
we have a dramatically declining cost of battery storage. This isn't an 
accident. This has happened because of the innovation economy where 
these ideas were developed and promoted and researched and advanced 
right here in the United States of America. But it really helps change 
the conversation. There have been many who are deeply invested in the 
fossil fuel world who would like to say that advancing to a clean and 
renewable energy economy will hurt the economy. But now we are coming 
to the point that it is less expensive to generate renewable energy 
than to generate fossil fuel energy. The fact is that we can create a 
tremendous number of jobs as we rebuild this energy economy.
  If we turn specifically to the issue of a Federal emissions vehicle 
standard--because that is one of the pieces of this puzzle--it means 
that we have to make national investments in electrical recharging 
stations along our roads and highways to support these vehicles. There 
are already half a million plug-in electric vehicles on our roads 
today, and these vehicles--these cars--are becoming cheaper as the 
numbers continue to grow.
  One of the factors that is enabling the car to become cheaper is the 
dropping cost of lithium in the batteries that power them. They are 
getting smaller, lighter, and cheaper. So in the same space you can put 
more energy with less weight to drive cars further. Since 2008, the 
cost of these batteries per kilowatt hour has fallen fourfold. They 
will continuously grow. Having more of these cars on our roads and our 
highways as the costs keep falling, it is vital that we have an 
infrastructure in place to support them.
  We need to ensure that everyone is part of this clean and renewable 
energy resolution, including low-income and disadvantaged communities. 
We addressed that in the 100 by 50 legislation. To do this, we 
established grants

[[Page S2626]]

to bring affordable clean energy and energy efficiency to individuals' 
homes and communities. We invest in zero emission public transportation 
that is affordable and accessible. We also want to ensure that no 
workers are left behind in this transformation, especially the workers 
in the fossil fuel industry. That is why we need to provide a just 
transition for those workers and job training programs. We need to have 
a strategy to ensure that there are opportunities to move from jobs in 
the fossil fuel world to positions in the clean and renewable energy 
industry. Those industries are, in fact, booming, with jobs in solar 
and wind growing 12 times faster than the rest of the U.S. economy. 
Already, the number of clean and renewable industry jobs has surpassed 
those in the fossil fuel industry by a margin of 5 to 1.

  We want to enable everyone to have the skills they need to succeed in 
these emerging industries, but to move to this future, we must come to 
a point at which we stop investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure. 
We cannot proceed to make this pivot quickly to a cleaner, brighter, 
renewable future if we continue to tie ourselves and our government to 
a fossil fuel-powered past. To achieve this clean break, the 100 by 50 
Act ends future fossil fuel investments at the Federal level. That 
would affect projects similar to the Keystone XL Pipeline and the 
Dakota Access Pipeline, and we would end the tax subsidies for the 
fossil fuel industry.
  This burning of fossil fuels is destroying our planet. We must stop 
subsidizing the destruction of our planet. This burning of fossil fuels 
is destroying our forests, which our rural communities depend on. We 
must stop subsidizing the destruction of our forests. The burning of 
these fossil fuels is driving droughts, reducing irrigation water, and 
hurting our farmers. We must quit subsidizing the destruction of 
agriculture in America. The burning of fossil fuels is also impacting 
our fishing--from warmer, smaller trout streams to a fishing industry 
that depends on the critical ecosystem in the ocean. We must stop 
subsidizing the destruction of our fishing industry.
  It is also important to make sure that America remains a leader in 
the energy economy and leads in the effort to make sure that we do not 
have a disadvantage with regard to manufacturing in other countries. 
What that means is that, with regard to countries that are not pursuing 
this on the same aggressive level, we need to have an effort to drive 
this transaction. We need to make sure that if there are additional 
costs, those are offset with a border tax so that we do not encourage 
the movement of production out of our economy here at home. We have 
done so with trade policy--in a massively destructive way--to the 
middle class of America. If we do not make things in America, we will 
not have a middle class in America, and we need to make sure that we do 
not do that in the transition of our energy economy.
  To fund this plan, we propose a new source of revenue. When I say a 
``new source of revenue,'' that is a little misleading because we are 
taking a cue from history, specifically World War II, and modeling 
bonds--climate bonds--on the war bonds that helped fund our fight 
against totalitarianism--to fund our fight against Germany and the 
Soviet Union. Auctioning off climate bonds is a way to raise the funds 
to drive the grants to power this transformation--to accelerate this 
transformation--and make sure that we do not leave out disadvantaged 
communities but, rather, bring them fully into this transition. The 100 
by 50 Act is ambitious, but the circumstances require no less.
  Furthermore, we cannot, simply, propose a Federal Government strategy 
because we live in the United States of America, where important things 
are done at many different levels. Here in this Chamber--right now in 
the U.S. Senate--we do not have a committee chair who is going to say 
that we need to have committee hearings in order to take on this issue. 
We do not have a committee chair on the House side who is going to 
drive this conversation. We do not have a President who understands the 
damage that is being done to our forests and our fishing and our 
farming and to our planet and who is going to lead the battle.
  We have to turn to the wisdom of the American people. We have to turn 
to the wisdom of the States and the wisdom of the counties and the 
wisdom of the cities and the wisdom of individuals across America who 
are willing to go to the leadership of their mosques or the leadership 
of their temples or the leadership of their churches, who are willing 
to go to the leadership of nonprofits that they are a part of, who are 
willing to go to their city councils or their county commissions, who 
are willing to go to their State legislators.
  They are going to say that we need to have a 100 by 50 resolution for 
our nonprofits, for our religious organizations, for our cities, for 
our counties, for our States because we need to own this issue. We 
Americans at every level need to own this issue. This is an issue that 
depends upon citizens across the globe taking hold of this in a 
powerful way that cannot be blocked by the dark money of the fossil 
fuel industry.
  In so doing, by passing that 100 by 50 resolution for the city or the 
nonprofit or the church or the mosque or the synagogue or the temple, 
we will also adopt an action plan that involves the specific steps that 
local organizations are going to take over the next 2 to 3 years. This 
year, maybe they are going to convert their hot water heaters to 
electrons rather than burning natural gas. Maybe they are going to sign 
up for green electrons from their local utilities, which is an option 
that is offered in many places across America. The following year, 
maybe they are going to invest in energy-saving retrofits of their 
buildings. The year after that, maybe they are going to say that we 
have to revamp our fleet of vehicles and start using rechargeable 
vehicles, like the Volt or the Bolt or the LEAF or a whole set of cars 
that has been appearing in the economy over the last few years. One can 
charge them up and, thereby, run them off green electrons rather than 
off fossil fuels.
  These are things that can be owned and done. In fact, it is already 
happening. It is happening with local organizations across this country 
that are committing themselves to 100 percent clean and renewable 
energy. More than 25 cities across the country have already adopted 
this vision--from Madison, WI, to Abita Springs, LA; from San Diego, 
CA, to Salt Lake City, UT; from Georgetown, TX, to Greensburg, KS--
cities that are working toward a 100 percent clean and renewable 
future. There are 88 major businesses that are getting in on the action 
as well--Walmart, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Nike, Coca-Cola, 
General Motors, and Apple. These are only a few of the major companies 
that have committed to powering themselves with 100 percent clean and 
renewable energy.
  What is driving this move toward clean and renewable energy? It is 
that Americans everywhere are seeing the effects on the ground. They 
are calling for action, and community leaders and business leaders are 
responding. We need to respond here in the U.S. Senate. We should be 
holding hearings on how to put this plan into action. We should be 
taking the best ideas from the city actions and the business actions 
and the nonprofit actions from across the country and from the ideas 
generated on the right side of the aisle and the left side of the aisle 
because the destruction we face--the threat we face--is not a blue 
issue or a red issue; it is a human civilization issue.
  America has been a driver of the technology that can transform our 
economy and also the technology that we can sell to the world. In 
adopting this vision and in fighting for this vision, America can be a 
leader with other nations around the world. It has been beyond strange 
to have other countries lecture us over the last few months to maintain 
our commitment as a Federal Government to this vision. Other countries 
are saying: America, you have to be part of the solution. You have 
benefited enormously from the burning of fossil fuels, perhaps more 
than any other economy in the world. You have one of the highest per 
capita footprints for carbon. You must be part of this effort because 
every country in the world is affected.
  More than 40 countries have now adopted the vision of clean and 
renewable energy, so there is no time for America to step out and not 
be part of the solution, not be part of the leadership, not be part of 
the driving force, not benefit from being on the cutting edge of this 
transformation of the energy economy.

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  Just as President Kennedy laid out the vision for going to the Moon, 
Americans from every walk are coming together to lay out the vision for 
a 100 percent clean and renewable energy economy. They are adopting a 
framework--a time, a goal--as to where we are going and when we are 
getting there; 100 by 50 sums it up.
  After President Kennedy laid out the vision, America went to work to 
make it happen, and we landed American citizens on the Moon. Now it is 
time for all of America to get to work and implement this vision and 
ensure that we succeed in transforming our energy economy within the 
next few decades by taking important steps every single year--driving 
ourselves forward, understanding the urgency, applying the technology, 
accelerating the implementation--to achieve 100 percent clean and 
renewable energy by 2050.
  If there were an asteroid coming toward the Earth, we would not be 
talking politics or political advantage. We would all be working 
together to take it on--destroy it before it destroyed us. We have the 
equivalent of an asteroid that is coming at the Earth in global 
warming. The time to play politics has passed. The time to play 
partisanship has passed. It is time for every citizen and every 
organization at every level--every chair representing every Senator 
from every State in the Union--to come together to take on this 
challenge together.
  I call upon my fellow Senators to be part of, perhaps, the most 
important effort we have to solve the biggest challenge to the health 
of America and the health of the planet--global warming. Step forward 
and be part of the effort.
  Thank you, Mr. President.

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