[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 21, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3675-S3676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come weekly to the Senate whenever 
we are in session to give my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, talking about 
climate change and, quite often, talking about the climate denial 
campaign that prevents us from taking action and, quite often, talking 
about the campaign finance problems in our country that make climate 
denial effective. Here, in Congress, it is not hard to connect the dots 
from campaign finance to climate denial.
  The Supreme Court's Republican majority's disastrous Citizens United 
decision was requested by the fossil fuel industry, and the fossil fuel 
industry took instant advantage of it--almost like they saw it coming. 
The industry and its front groups instantly used their new power 
conferred by Citizens United to come after politicians--Republicans in 
particular. Ask Bob Inglis, who backed responsible climate policies. 
Citizens United created new American dark-money emperors, and--no 
surprise--the new emperors love their new political power.
  Their first payoff was that Republicans in Congress fled from any 
legislative action on climate change. Before Citizens United, there 
were multiple bipartisan climate bills. Year after year--when I was 
here in 2007, 2008, 2009--there were bipartisan climate bills to the 
left of you, bipartisan climate bills to the right of you, bipartisan 
climate bills cropping up all over. Today, we watch our Republican 
President trying to undo curbs on carbon emissions and, to the cheers 
of Republicans in Congress, withdrawing the United States from the 
historic Paris Agreement. We join Syria and Nicaragua as the only 
nations to reject this common cause. That, my friends, is the heavy 
hand of fossil fuel influence, driving us into isolation and abdication 
of American leadership.
  Of course, right now, no Republican can safely sponsor any bill to 
limit carbon dioxide emissions, and so none do. Very different than 
before the Citizens United decision in January of 2010. That changed 
everything. When those five Republican justices opened up unlimited 
political spending to the big Republican special interests, that 
unlimited political spending was inevitably going to find dark-money 
channels. Dark-money channels hide the identity of the political donor, 
so that big special interests can pollute our politics with their money 
with seemingly clean hands.
  The climate denial scheme of the fossil fuel cartel is powered 
politically by dark money. Whether through the lure of dark money 
coming in for you in a political race or the threat of dark money 
coming in against you in a political race, dark money powers climate 
denial. Well, we have just learned something new about dark money.
  Chairman Graham and I held hearings in our Judiciary Subcommittee on 
Crime and Terrorism to look at Russian interference in the recent 2016 
election and what it portends for elections to come. Our witnesses 
warned us that Russia has strategically manipulated politics in Europe 
for decades. They started working in the former Soviet Union countries, 
and they expanded to where they are manipulating politics in France, 
Germany, Holland, England, and all over Europe. The witnesses warned us 
that we in America must be prepared for that. They jumped the Atlantic 
to manipulate the 2016 elections, and they are not going away.
  One identified weakness of the United States against Russian 
influence was this dark money in our politics. Why is that? Well, it is 
obvious. Once you allow dark money in, dark is dark. Cash from Vladimir 
Putin is no more traceable than cash from Charles and David Koch. One 
witness, a former Republican national security official, told us: ``It 
is critical that we effectively enforce the campaign finance laws that 
would prevent this type of financial influence by foreign actors.''
  ``It is critical that we effectively enforce the campaign finance 
laws'' against foreign influence by foreign actors.
  The two best studies of Russian influence in Western Europe in their 
elections and in their politics are ``The Kremlin Playbook,'' by CSIS, 
or the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and ``The 
Kremlin's Trojan Horses,'' by the Atlantic Council. Both of them report 
that Russia takes advantage of nontransparency in campaign financing to 
build its shadowy webs of influence and control. If you leave dark-
money channels lying around, it is likely that Vladimir Putin and his 
oligarchs will find them.
  The ``Trojan Horses'' report warns this: ``The Kremlin's blatant 
attempts to influence and disrupt the U.S. presidential election should 
serve as an inspiration for a democratic push back.'' That is a lower 
case ``d'' for ``democratic push back,'' and it points to one key way 
we need to push back.
  I will quote them again.

       Electoral rules should be amended, so that publically 
     funded political groups, primarily political parties, should 
     at the very least be required to report their sources of 
     funding.

  That is, end dark money.
  Likewise, the ``Kremlin Playbook'' report warns:

       Enhancing transparency and the effectiveness of the Western 
     democratic tools, instruments, and institutions is critical 
     to resilience against Russian influence.

  Enhancing transparency means ending dark money.
  Our hearing and these reports reveal another political influence tool 
used by the Kremlin: fake news. As we shore up our democracy to defend 
against Russia's fake news information warfare, we must remember this: 
Climate denial was the original fake news.
  To give an example, here is a story that may sound familiar. An 
unknown hacker illegally breaks into and steals an organization's 
emails. The organization's emails are held until they can be released 
at a politically strategic moment. At the strategic moment, emails are 
leaked to a website with shady ties. The leaks are then amplified and 
spun by fake news, driven into the regular media, and have their 
desired political effect. Does any of that sound familiar? Of course, 
it is the methodology of the Russians' hack of the Democratic National 
Committee, right? Unknown hacker, stolen emails, strategic release, 
caching them until they can be used, shady website, fake news spin-up, 
regular media takes the bait, political damage.
  If you step back and look at just the methodology, we have seen this 
pattern before--so-called climategate, the

[[Page S3676]]

fake scandal years ago cooked up by the climate denial machine. It was 
2009, not 2017. The organization hacked was not the DNC but the Climate 
Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. 
The release was timed to the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, not 
the Presidential election. The documents went to climate skeptic 
blogs--with, interestingly, the first upload in Russia--instead of to 
WikiLeaks, but the mainstream media took the bait, and the political 
damage was done.
  At the time, the New York Times wrote:

       The[se] revelations are bound to inflame the public debate 
     as hundreds of negotiators prepare to negotiate an 
     international climate accord at meetings in Copenhagen next 
     month.

  This climategate scheme worked so well that in November 2011, the 
climategate operation did it again just before the U.N. climate 
conference in Durban in what was dubbed climategate 2.0. Of course, the 
whipped-up climategate hysteria was all fake news.
  As the Guardian wrote in February 2010:

       Almost all the media and political discussion about the 
     hacked climate emails has been based on soundbites publicised 
     by professional [climate] sceptics and their blogs. In many 
     cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to 
     mean something they were never intended to.

  Eight times, everyone from the inspector general of the U.S. 
Department of Commerce, to the National Science Foundation, to the 
British Parliament found no evidence of any misconduct by the 
scientists, but for the climate denier groups, the truth was never the 
point.
  This climategate stunt was the product of a fake news infrastructure 
built by the fossil fuel industry to attack and undermine real climate 
science--disinformation campaigns, false-front organizations, stables 
of paid-for scientists, and propaganda honed by public relations 
experts. This denial operation aspires to mimic and rival real science, 
and it is an industrial-strength adversary with big advantages. It does 
not need to win its disputes with real science; it just needs to create 
the public illusion of a real dispute. It doesn't have to waste time in 
peer review, and it doesn't have to be true; it just has to sound like 
it might be. This industrial fake news operation isn't going anywhere. 
It is too valuable to the big polluters.
  As we prepare to face down Russia's campaign of election 
interference, we will have to face up to these two hard facts:
  If the Kremlin wants to deploy fake news information warfare in our 
country, the climate denial fake news infrastructure already exists. 
Remember, climate denial was the original fake news.
  If the Kremlin wants to deploy a surreptitious financial influence 
campaign, the dark money infrastructure already exists. The fossil fuel 
industry's dark money election manipulation machinery is ready to go. 
Putin doesn't have to build a thing. The fossil fuel dark money and 
fake news infrastructure stands ready to go.
  Unfortunately, we know it works because it has worked for years for 
the fossil fuel cartel, particularly since Citizens United allowed the 
fossil fuel industry to enforce silence on the Republican Party.
  The dangers of fake news, dark money, climate denial, and foreign 
interference in our elections are all intermixed. They have brought us 
to the point where the President of the United States will leave the 
Paris Agreement, betraying the country's interests, in the service of 
the fossil fuel industry, the Koch brothers' climate denial operation, 
and Breitbart fake news.
  This calls for an American response. Dark money and fake news are a 
sinister combination, whoever is behind them. America must address the 
twin threats of fake news and dark money. It is bad enough when these 
are the tools of the fossil fuel industry's climate denial operation, 
but we are on notice now. We are on notice from these reports and from 
multiple witnesses that the Kremlin can borrow these tools too.
  I will close by asking that we clean up this mess. It may take 
citizen action, given the stranglehold dark money and fake news have on 
Congress, but this is a fight worth having. There is no good that comes 
out of dark money and fake news, whoever is behind them. We should rid 
ourselves of this sinister combination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.