[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 81 (Wednesday, May 10, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2884-S2886]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is perhaps a providential 
happenstance that I should be giving this particular speech while the 
Senator from Louisiana is presiding because we are both from coastal 
States. I am sure he will find things that are familiar in my Rhode 
Island remarks, particularly given that his Governor has declared the 
Louisiana coast a state of emergency due to sea level rise.
  As the Presiding Officer knows, one place where the effects of 
climate change are most evident is in our oceans and along our coasts. 
Rhode Island is the Ocean State, and we have almost 400 miles of 
beautiful coastline. Everyone in Rhode Island lives less than a half 
hour from the shore. We count on a healthy ocean and vibrant coast. Our 
ocean economy, including fishing, tourism, and shipbuilding, amounts to 
nearly $2.5 billion every year--perhaps not what Louisiana's coastal 
economy is but pretty good for our small State.
  It employs over 42,000 Rhode Islanders. Warming, acidifying, and 
rising oceans are a clear and present danger to many aspects of our 
Rhode Island way of life. Sea level rise now threatens to remake our 
Rhode Island coast, swallowing low-lying land, widening existing 
inlets, eroding beaches, and stranding higher shorefronts as new 
islands.
  For my 166th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, I want to show the Senate 
what this new island chain, the new Rhode Island Archipelago, would 
look like. The latest modeling software allows us to visualize these 
projected changes, and the latest science shows that they may be coming 
sooner than we thought. How soon and how much? Well, the National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a new report in January 
updating global sea level rise estimates based on the latest peer-
reviewed scientific literature.
  Ice sheets, it turns out, and glaciers, are melting faster than 
expected, raising the so-called extreme scenario for average global sea 
level rise in this century, the ``we do nothing on climate change 
scenario,'' by around 20 inches.
  When NOAA and its partners applied these findings to America's 
coasts, taking into account things like regional variations in ocean 
circulation, in gravitational pull, and in landside conditions like 
erosion, settling, and depletion of groundwater, the news was 
particularly harsh for the northeast Atlantic coast--from Virginia 
through Maine, including Rhode Island.
  Our Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council is now telling 
us that for planning purposes we need to face the possibility of 9 to 
12 vertical feet of sea level rise along our shores by the end of the 
century. A little girl born today at Rhode Island's Women and Infants 
Hospital will likely actuarially live to see all of these changes. That 
invasion of our shores by the rising oceans will leave Rhode Island's 
map unrecognizable.
  Early explorers to Rhode Island found our coastline looking much like 
it does today. Before the 1600s, it had looked much the same for many 
centuries before that to the Narragansetts and the Wampanoags who lived 
here. In the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution, which began in 
America in Rhode Island, brought our Nation great wealth, but it also 
created manmade pollution which began changing our climate.
  Climate change causes sea levels to rise. As oceans warm, they 
expand. As the world warms, ice sheets melt and pour water into the 
oceans. We measure these things happening. This is not a guess or a 
projection.
  Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council has developed 
STORMTOOLS, which is an online simulation that models sea level rise 
and storm surge so we can see ahead what is coming at us. Once again, 
science gives us the headlights to look forward and see what is coming 
at us. This is what Rhode Island can expect.
  Here is the high water scenario. This is the upper part of 
Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, including Providence, up here, 
Warwick, and Warwick Neck and Greenwich Bay over here to the west. 
Bristol and Warren here, with Mount Hope Bay to the east.
  This graphic shows the same image overlaying that previous scenario 
with the scenario that Rhode Island's CRMC now predicts for our State. 
This bright blue color depicted is land that gets covered up with 10 
feet of sea level rise, and this teal color is what we get when the sea 
level rise hits 12 feet. Over here, Bristol gets two new islands, and 
Bristol and Warren become an island themselves.
  If you cross over the bay to Warwick Neck, which is now part of our 
new coastline, that becomes a new island, Warwick Neck Island. Much of 
Barrington, which is a well-developed and

[[Page S2885]]

prosperous bedroom community, just disappears under the water. As I 
said, Warren and Bristol become their own island.
  Now we move down the bay to historic Newport, RI, and the historic 
waterfront area completely floods, the historic Point section here 
floods, down here the western part of Newport becomes a new island. 
Again, all of this is now land that we lose to rising seas.
  Not only does Western Newport become Western Newport Island, but it 
gains its own Castle Hill Island off to the side of it. Up here, the 
existing Goat Island virtually disappears.
  This story is repeated all along Rhode Island's coast. The tip of 
Little Compton breaks off to become its own tiny little archipelago of 
new islands. This is Tiverton, which is just north of Little Compton. 
On the other side, here, is the shore of Portsmouth on Aquidneck 
Island. What you see is that the sea level rise turns Nonquit Pond into 
ocean and makes an island of this section of Tiverton here near Fogland 
Point, another new island.
  Here we see the point on the other side of the opening into 
Narragansett Bay from Little Compton. You have Little Compton here, 
Aquidneck Island comes down in the middle, and on the other side you 
have Point Judith. Point Judith also begins to break up into little 
islands.
  If you go up here, Galilee is our fishing port. It is where most of 
the fishing trawlers have their home port and the entrance runs right 
up here into the protected harbor area. As you can see, Galilee is now 
pretty much underwater.
  So for folks who like to go to Champlin's Seafood, you will probably 
have to row there, and it might not even be there. For those who like 
Aunt Carrie's better, it is here, and it is not in great shape for 
surviving storms.
  So we can go offshore to Block Island, which has been designated by 
The Nature Conservancy as one of the world's last 10 great places. 
Well, it is no longer one of the world's last 10 great places, it is 
now two of the world's last--I guess it would have to be 11 great 
places because it breaks into two separate islands. Block Island 
becomes Block Islands.
  The beautiful town of Jamestown, which is its own island between 
Aquidneck Island and our mainland shore, breaks up into three separate 
islands. It is now one. Jamestown goes up a little bit further, that 
part stays intact, but the upper part breaks away from downtown 
Jamestown, here, and the Beaver Tail area breaks off into, I guess it 
would become Beaver Tail Island.
  Now let's go up to our capital city. We started with the first map 
showing Providence. This series of images will show what happens to 
Providence as sea levels rise. Just to orient people who are seeing 
this, this is the Providence River coming in. This is the 
Woonasquatucket River. This is the circle at Waterplace Park and the 
Woonasquatucket River goes out over the Providence Place Mall, and it 
goes on from there.
  This is Providence's downtown business district. That is 3 feet of 
sea level rise--not much change. Now you get to 7 feet of sea level 
rise, and you see the encroachment of the ocean into our business 
center. Seven feet used to be our worst-case scenario, but as the 
evidence comes in and we are seeing things happening faster and the sea 
level rise occurring greater than had been expected, we have been 
raising our expectations.
  So here is the new worst-case scenario--10 feet of sea level rise. As 
you can see, the business section of downtown Providence is entirely 
overwhelmed. Twelve feet of sea level rise is a natural consequence 
once you get to 10 feet of sea level rise because if you have 10 feet 
of sea level rise, then what you get is a regular and recurring, what 
people call astronomic tides or king tides, when celestial bodies line 
up so you have a higher than usual tide. For sure people from Florida 
know about it because those are the days when the street in front of 
their house on a sunny day is filled with saltwater because the tide 
has washed in over it. If you go at king high tide time along the 
Boston wharf, you see parking areas and walking areas already flooded. 
So it is not unreasonable to look at 12 feet of sea level rise if you 
are expecting a baseline, what they call bathtub level of 10 feet.
  As you can see, downtown Providence, our business district is more or 
less completely inundated. So this is Climate Central. Climate Central 
has allowed us to get these images of what downtown Providence looks 
like up close, with various levels of sea level rise, and this is 
something they run off of Google Earth. This, again, is downtown 
Providence.
  This is Providence City Hall. This is Kennedy Plaza, you will be 
pleased to know, Senator. It is named after another John Kennedy 
because he gave his last speech in his campaign for President before he 
went home to take in the election results and find out that he had been 
elected--his last speech was right here to a huge crowd that had come 
out to see him in downtown Providence.
  This is our famous Biltmore Hotel. This used to be the train station. 
Now the offices of the Rhode Island Foundation are there. As you can 
see, most of these historic buildings are up to their second floor. If 
you look at old pictures from the hurricane in 1954 and the hurricane 
in 1938, you see buildings where the water got that high, but that was 
at a peak of a hurricane surge. This becomes the baseline. This is what 
it looks like every day.
  Here is a closeup of Providence City Hall. Instead of coming along 
the sidewalk and walking up the steps, you would have to come over in 
one of our gondolas in order to get in the front entrance, and the 
first floor of City Hall is lost.
  If you look at all of this, it represents a loss of billions of 
dollars in property value to Rhode Islanders.
  Let me grab the original. All of these areas are occupied right now--
people's homes, people's businesses are there, and if they disappear 
below rising seas, all that value is lost. It is actually worse than 
that because if this is the new coastline, then behind that coastline 
is going to be a new set of flood zones and a new set of velocity 
zones. For those who are not familiar with what a velocity zone is, 
that is the part of the flood zone in which it is deep enough and 
exposed enough that you actually get wave action against structures. So 
you get the physical force of waves damaging structures rather than 
just tides rising. Between the V-zones and flood zones, there is a much 
larger area in which structures become uninsurable, they become 
unmortgageable, and as a result they become unsellable. So the economic 
harm from this potential sea level rise inundation of Rhode Island is 
virtually incalculable, and we are not the only ones who are looking at 
this.
  Looking ahead at this coastal threat also is the massive government-
backed home loan mortgage corporation Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac has 
predicted ``the economic losses and social disruption may happen 
gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those 
experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.''
  Think about that. Think about the economic damage that this country 
sustained and the pain the families experienced after the 2008 Wall 
Street meltdown in that housing crisis, the great recession. Here is 
Freddie Mac saying this problem is going to be greater in total than 
the harm from the housing crisis and great recession. Some people would 
say you can't trust the government about this stuff. You have to trust 
the private sector. The government doesn't know what it is talking 
about.
  Here is a quote from a recent article in the trade publication Risk & 
Insurance, an insurance trade publication. The editor of that 
publication wrote that this was what he called ``a growing and alarming 
threat.'' He went on to say: ``Continually rising seas will damage 
coastal residential and commercial property values to the point that 
property owners will flee those markets in droves, thus precipitating a 
mortgage value collapse that could equal or exceed the mortgage crisis 
that rocked the global economy in 2008.''

  For anybody who wonders why I come and give these speeches every 
week, for anybody who wonders why I am up to No. 166, it is about 
seeing the coastline of my home State of Rhode Island being whittled 
away into this chain of islands--this new Rhode Island archipelago. If 
this were your State, you would be up here too.

[[Page S2886]]

  We have a responsibility here in Congress to all Americans to face up 
to what is happening. This is not just a Rhode Island circumstance. It 
is going to be Louisiana. It is going to be North and South Carolina. 
It is going to be Massachusetts and Maine and California. It is going 
to be the gulf coast. We are all going to have to face up to this and 
help communities prepare.
  The carbon dioxide that we have already pumped into the atmosphere 
will make some of this sea level rise inevitable. It is baked in now, 
and we just have to wait for it to happen. We can still avoid these 
worst case scenarios if we act promptly and if we will, for one minute, 
say to the fossil fuel industry: You have had enough. You have fed 
enough at this trough. You have silenced Congress enough. Your power 
and your greed will no longer prevail here. We are going to solve this 
problem for the people of our States.
  We can still do that, but we do have to act promptly.
  With regard to the stuff that we cannot avoid, we also have an 
obligation to help our coastal communities prepare for this, to make 
this transition. All of these islands are going to need bridges to get 
to them where there are now roads. Where things are falling into the 
ocean and you can shore them up and protect them with hard protection, 
you need to do that. Where not, you need to go back and adjust zoning 
and planning so that nature can defend herself a little bit better 
through dunes and through marshes and so forth. There is a lot of work 
we need to do with this coming at us.
  This is not funny. Nature will not wait for our politics to sort 
themselves out. The laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, the laws of 
biology do not give a hoot about the laws in the Senate. They are going 
to do their thing, and we need to get ahead of them. When this happens, 
that big, old fossil fuel industry, with all of its lies and its long, 
dishonorable campaign of calculated disinformation and phony front 
groups--so that you do not see its hands--and deliberate political 
mischief to prevent us from acting, is not going to be around to help 
us. It will be no help when this flooding comes, so it is up to us. 
That is why we have to wake up.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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