[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 151 (Tuesday, September 19, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5849-S5850]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, each week that you see me standing 
here means another week in which the Senate of the United States has 
sat out doing anything to address climate change and another week of 
carbon pollution streaming into our atmosphere and oceans. Carbon 
dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing our atmosphere and our 
oceans. We see it everywhere. We see it in storm-damaged homes and 
flooded cities. We see it in drought-stricken farms and raging 
wildfires. We see it in fish disappearing from warming, acidifying 
waters. We see it in shifting habitats and migrating contagions.
  All these harms we see carry costs--real economic costs--to 
homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers. That cost to homeowners, 
business owners, and taxpayers is known as the social cost of carbon 
pollution. It is the damage that people and communities and States 
suffer from carbon pollution and climate change. The Office of 
Management and Budget last calculated the social cost of carbon to be 
around $49 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. If you just do some 
simple math, you can multiply the total measured U.S. emissions coming 
from energy production alone in 2016--that is emissions of over 5.7 
billion tons of CO2--by the $49 cost per ton. It is pretty 
simple math: $49 times 5.7 billion tons gives you about $280 billion. 
So $280 billion is the annual cost that the fossil fuel industry 
offloads onto the American public in harm from the carbon dioxide 
emissions. That is a big number and a big consequence--$280 billion per 
year.
  There was a more complex analysis than my simple math that was done 
by the International Monetary Fund. The International Monetary Fund has 
a lot of smart people. They don't have any conflict of interest that I 
am aware of in dealing with this issue. Their calculation puts the 
annual subsidy just in the United States of America for the fossil fuel 
industry at $700 billion per year.
  So is it my simple math where the social cost of carbon is $280 
billion per year or is it what the International Monetary Fund 
calculated at $700 billion per year? Whichever it is, it is a big 
enough harm to the American public that you would think we might do 
something about it here in the Senate. But of course, we don't because 
that huge social cost of carbon, that huge subsidy gives the fossil 
fuel industry the biggest incentive in the world to--instead of fixing 
up its situation and cleaning up its mess--come over here and instead 
mess with our politics so that our ability to deal with this issue is 
silenced by their political muscle and manipulations.
  One way in which they play this game is to populate the climate 
denial machinery with one-eyed accountants--accountants who can only 
see the pollutants' side of the ledger. Honestly, we hear their 
testimony. The only thing they see is the cost to polluters of reducing 
their pollution. They don't see the public harm side of the ledger. 
They pretend it is a liberal conspiracy cooked up by the Obama 
administration. Or say you are the Republican chairman of the House 
Science Committee and you say: The social cost of carbon is a ``flawed 
value . . . to justify the [EPA's] alarmist reasoning for support of 
the Clean Power Plan and other climate regulations.''
  Actually, if you take away the bad words ``flawed'' and ``alarmist'' 
and all of that stuff, the statement is actually true. There is a value 
to avoiding carbon pollution, and defending that public value from the 
polluters does justify the Clean Power Plan. This is the social cost of 
carbon. Let's go back for a minute to 2006, when the Bush 
administration's National Highway Transportation Safety Administration 
put out a rule for vehicle fuel economy standards. There was some 
dissatisfaction with that rule. States and other stakeholders 
complained that this rule failed to take into account the social cost 
of carbon emissions from cars--something that should matter for a rule 
that is looking to reduce emissions from cars. Well, that went up on 
appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and in 2007, 
the Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. The court acknowledged that there 
is a cost of carbon pollution, and that cost is ``certainly not zero.'' 
So it told the agency to go back, redo the rule and to come up with a 
real social cost of carbon. Thus was born the legal requirement that 
agencies consider a social cost of carbon in decisions.
  Because of this decision, the Bush administration produced a wide 
range of numbers up to $159 per ton of carbon emissions. The Obama 
administration continued the effort to calculate a social cost of 
carbon. An interagency working group, including scientists and 
economists from across the Federal Government, relied on existing 
scientific literature and on well vetted scientific models to produce a 
first standard in 2010, with additional updates in 2013, 2015, and 
2016.
  When Federal agencies didn't apply any social cost of carbon, courts 
corrected them. In 2014, a Federal judge in Colorado faulted the Bureau 
of Land Management for failing to account for greenhouse gas emissions 
when it approved an Arch Coal mine expansion in the Gunnison National 
Forest. The court suspended the approval until the Bureau of Land 
Management either used the social cost of carbon or gave a valid 
explanation as to why not. When agencies did use the social cost of 
carbon, their decisions were upheld. In 2016 the U.S. Court of Appeals 
for the Seventh Circuit upheld the Department of Energy's use of the 
social cost of carbon in the agency's standards for commercial 
refrigeration equipment. The industry objected, and on appeal, the 
Seventh Circuit said: No, they did the right thing putting that in 
there.
  Just last month, a three-judge panel from another U.S. circuit court 
of appeals--in this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of 
Columbia Circuit--ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
has to consider the effects of carbon emissions that would result from 
building three pipelines in the Southeast. Specifically, the ruling 
directed FERC to either better calculate the project's carbon 
emissions, using the social cost of carbon, or explain why it didn't 
use it.
  Also last month, another U.S. district court blocked another coal 
mine expansion in Montana, citing the agency's failure to assess the 
environmental effects of coal. Specifically, the judge referenced the 
agency's failure to include any social cost of carbon.
  Just last week a Federal appeals court in Denver told the Bureau of 
Land Management that its lack of analysis on the climate effects of 
four coal leases in the Powder River Basin was ``irrational'' and told 
them to start over.
  It is not just Federal courts. Agencies at the State level are also 
using the social cost of carbon pollution in their activities. The New 
York Public Service Commission affirmed the importance of the social 
cost of carbon in its zero-emissions credit program. The Illinois State 
legislature also incorporated a social cost of carbon into its zero-
emissions credit program, and prevailed in a challenge in the courts. 
These State zero-emissions programs were the programs that were rolled 
out to help existing nuclear energy providers against competition by 
natural gas plants. The carbon price allowed carbon-free nuclear 
generation to better compete in the wholesale markets.
  Up in Minnesota, since 1993, the Minnesota Public Utilities 
Commission has required utilities to consider the estimated cost of 
carbon emissions in planning for new infrastructure projects. This 
year, the commission voted to raise its social cost of carbon to $43 
per ton.
  The Colorado Public Utilities Commission recently ordered the local 
utility Xcel to use the social cost of carbon in its resource planning 
documents. Colorado told its utilities to use $43 per ton starting in 
2022 and to ramp up to nearly $70 per ton by 2050.
  It is not just Federal courts and State agencies. Private companies 
in the United States and around the globe are incorporating the social 
cost of carbon into their own operations and accounting. Investors are 
beginning to demand that corporations perform this kind of analysis in 
order to qualify for investment. Big investors like Black Rock have 
taken on big companies like Exxon in order to break through the denial.
  Just last week, the Washington Post reported that 1,200 global 
businesses either have adopted or are adopting a carbon price in some 
form. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions found that companies 
like Microsoft,

[[Page S5850]]

Disney, the insurance giant Swiss Re, Unilever, Shell, BP, the mining 
corporation Rio Tinto, and General Motors have all taken steps to put a 
price on their own use of carbon.
  Courts have made it the law for agencies to use the social cost of 
carbon. States are deploying the social cost of carbon. The business 
community recognizes and is incorporating into its financial planning 
the social cost of carbon. Yet here in Congress and down at the Trump 
White House, the leaders of the Republican Party continue to ignore 
climate change, pretend it doesn't exist, and ignore the very real 
costs that society bears from carbon pollution.
  It goes without saying that the storm that has just ravaged Florida 
was spun up by warmer ocean waters, carried more rain because of warmer 
air, dumped more rain, and pushed storm surge further into Florida 
because of risen seas and those other characteristics.
  Are we seeing any action? No. The President in March issued a 
sweeping Executive order rolling back Federal energy and environmental 
standards. It disbanded the interagency working group, and it asserted 
that the social cost of carbon was ``no longer representative of 
governmental policy.'' Nice try with that, given where the courts are.
  Of course, the House and the Senate Republicans followed suit by 
introducing a pair of bills by Congressman Evan Jenkins on the House 
side and our colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Lankford, on our side 
that purport to prohibit the Federal Government from using the social 
cost of carbon in rulemaking and in regulatory processes. Of course, 
you can't do that, and those laws aren't going anywhere. Why? Because 
they violate a very basic principle both in courts and in 
administrative agencies. That very basic principle is at the heart of 
the rule of law, and it is that facts have to be factual and that 
conclusions have to be logical. Any decision that fails this standard--
that is, to use the administrative law terms ``arbitrary and 
capricious'' or ``not based on substantial evidence''--fails as a 
matter of law. Although Congress, of course, is bound and gagged by the 
polluters and their front groups, it is going to be hard for those 
polluters to try to stop the social cost of carbon in courts and 
administrative agencies. Despite the efforts of ExxonMobil and the Koch 
brothers to make America their fossil fuel banana republic, we still 
are a rule-of-law country and those rule-of-law principles that facts 
must be factual and that conclusions must be logical are too basic for 
our courts and administrative agencies to ignore.
  In our courts and administrative agencies, lying and misleading can 
be exposed on cross-examination, for instance, and lying and misleading 
gets you punished, unlike in Congress where lying and misleading have 
been fossil fuel tactics for decades and sickeningly successful ones 
backed up by huge political muscle.
  The failure in Congress and the remedy in the courts is one reason 
the Founding Fathers designed our government that way so that even 
where political branches of government were captured by special 
interests, there would still be a path for the truth, and there would 
still be a means for justice to have its way.
  If the courts and the States and so many major businesses are all 
behind recognizing the social cost of carbon, who is behind the 
President and our Republican colleagues in denying that it is real? In 
my experience, it is powerful trade associations like the American 
Petroleum Institute, the American Chemistry Council, the National 
Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and others 
that have a distaste for any honest assessment of the social cost of 
carbon.
  Right now, since the costs of those industries' pollution is 
offloaded onto the rest of us for free, why not? Why would they want to 
start paying for the harm they cause right now?
  Think tanks and front groups funded by the Koch brothers and other 
polluters have vigorously fought against recognizing the fact of the 
social cost of carbon for years. These groups have neutral sounding 
names--maybe even friendly sounding names--like the Competitive 
Enterprise Institute, the American Energy Alliance, the Heritage 
Foundation, FreedomWorks--my personal favorite--the Heartland 
Institute, a group so good that it put up billboards comparing climate 
scientists to the Unabomber. It is really a classy contribution to the 
debate.
  One thing this crowd of bad actors does know is how to throw its 
weight around, especially since the Citizens United decision threw open 
the floodgates of special interest money into our politics. That is 
what has put Congress in the thrall of the polluters. It is an indecent 
and wrong place for us to be, but with any luck, the adherence of 
courts and administrative agencies to the rule of law--the principles 
that facts must be factual and conclusions must be logical--will help 
us get out of the political trap that the fossil fuel industry has 
constructed.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kennedy). The Senator from Florida.