[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 166 (Monday, October 16, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6391-S6392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. President, now, if I may, I turn to my 182nd appearance to remind 
us of the global crisis of climate change, which has recently come so 
perilously close to our American shores.
  This recent graphic from NOAA shows above-average temperatures in our 
oceans. Anything that is pink is above average; if it is reddish, it is 
much warmer than average; and if it is really red, like here, that is a 
record. That is the warmest record.
  As one can see, from 2015, 2016, and 2017, the oceans have warmed 
significantly, and warmer oceans mean stronger storms. It is as simple 
as that. In this hurricane season, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria 
have all struck the United States. It is the first time ever that the 
United States has been hit by three category 4 Atlantic storms in 1 
year. Hurricane Ophelia, now out in the Atlantic, has become the 10th 
consecutive hurricane-strength storm. That ties a record that was set 
way back in the 1800s. We have gone more than a century without having 
this kind of storm activity. It is a rarity, but it is going to be less 
and less of a rarity because the oceans are warmer. That powers up 
those big storms, and those big storms bring damage to property and 
infrastructure. They destroy businesses and homes.
  Away from the coastline, other aspects of climate change bring an 
array of other harms, like longer and fiercer wildfire seasons, as 
California is experiencing; depleted fish stocks, as our Rhode Island 
fishermen are experiencing; decreased agricultural yields, as the 
Midwest is experiencing; acidifying seas, as the northwest coast is 
experiencing; and risks to human health from new disease vectors and 
hotter heat waves felt across our country. All of these harms carry 
costs. Together, these costs are known as the social cost of carbon 
pollution. It is the cost to people and to communities of carbon 
pollution and climate change.
  During the Obama administration, by scientists and economists from 
across the Federal Government who relied on scientific literature and 
well-vetted models, the social cost of carbon was put at around $50 per 
ton of carbon dioxide. There is a new book out by a number of 
conservative economists and scientists that looks at the climate change 
problem and recommends a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable carbon fee 
as a solution. In that book, the exemplar carbon price also runs at 
about $50 per ton of emitted carbon. It tracks from the Obama 
administration to conservative analysts as well.
  This social cost of carbon is well established. Over and over, courts 
have instructed Federal agencies to factor the social cost of carbon 
into their permits and regulations. States are using a social cost of 
carbon in their policymaking. Major American corporations--even 
ExxonMobil--factor a social cost of carbon into their planning and 
accounting, and the social cost of carbon is at the heart of the 
International Monetary Fund's calculation that the fossil fuel industry 
gets an annual subsidy in the United States of $700 billion--that is 
``billion'' with a ``b.''
  The point of this particular speech is that a new calculation has 
emerged, not just of the harm of carbon pollution, but of how 
individual fossil fuel companies have contributed to that harm. This 
was not just some op-ed, nor was it the phony hack science that the 
fossil fuel industry cranks out to propagate climate denial on the talk 
show circuit. This is a peer-reviewed study that was published in the 
scientific journal Climatic Change.
  The study tells us that major fossil fuel producers are responsible 
for as much as half of the recorded global surface temperature 
increase. Then it dives down into the data for individual companies and 
demonstrates a method for attributing the real, observable effects of 
climate change to the likes of Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, 
Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Devon Energy, among about 50 investor-
owned, carbon-producing companies.
  The history here is telling. More than half of all emissions that 
were traced to carbon producers from 1880 to 2010--across a span of 130 
years--were produced after 1986, which was just in the last 24 years. 
This was when the climate risks of fossil fuel combustion were well 
established. Those were the years in which we knew. Many of these 
companies knew the harm of their fossil fuel products; yet they carried 
out a decades-long campaign to deceive the public about the risks of 
fossil fuel energy production and to bring influence to bear on this 
institution.
  These companies knew that their products posed a threat to the global 
environment. They could have taken steps to reduce emissions. They 
could have invested in new technologies and emissions reduction 
technologies and renewable energy. They could have communicated 
honestly with their shareholders and with the public. They chose not 
to--an infamous decision that has kept carbon pollution dumping into 
the atmosphere, where it will affect the chemistry, the physics, and 
the biology of our planet for centuries to come. This is this 
generation's sad and sordid legacy.
  This study shows that we can trace those harms back to individual 
companies, to their boards of directors, and to their managers. We can 
use the emissions data from this study. In using those established 
social cost of carbon estimates, we can estimate individual corporate 
accountability. This is new.
  In using the study's emissions data and the social cost of carbon, we 
can calculate, for instance, the carbon pollution cost for which 
ExxonMobil is accountable. If one does this for 2010--just that 1-
year's worth--the cost to the rest of us was over $22 billion. For 
Chevron, in 2010, it was $14.5 billion. For BP, it was $18.8 billion 
just for the harm that they caused in 2010. What about some of the 
major coal companies, like Peabody and Arch? Pollution attributable to 
Peabody Energy had a cost of $17.8 billion just for 2010. For Arch 
Coal, it was $11.7 billion. For Devon Energy, it was $3 billion. Devon, 
one may remember, is the company whose lobbying letter EPA 
Administrator Scott Pruitt put on his official Oklahoma attorney 
general letterhead, in the masquerade of official duty on behalf of 
special interests, which is still his hallmark now that he is at the 
EPA. If we add up all of this, we are looking at $88 billion in 
attributable damages--attributable to ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Peabody, 
Arch, and Devon--just for 2010. That is a 1-year cost that we all bear 
for allowing these polluters to pollute our air and oceans for free. 
That is why the IMF said that the subsidy was $700 billion.
  As nature has so powerfully shown us this year, taxpayers, 
communities, and local businesses, especially those in vulnerable 
coastal areas, bear the cost of the irresponsible choices these big 
polluters have made. This is the cost these companies transferred to us 
by spending millions of dollars in deceiving the public about climate 
science and in using millions more in political spending in order to 
block sensible limits on carbon emissions. They spent millions to dodge 
billions, and we let them get away with it.
  Perhaps judges and juries will be less manipulable. After all, one of 
the reasons that the Founding Fathers set up an independent judiciary 
and independent juries is that, in their being experienced politicians, 
they had seen that the political branches of government could be 
captured by special interests--what the Founders would have called 
factions--just as we now are captured by the fossil fuel industry here 
in Congress.
  The average number of billion-dollar weather disasters is about five 
per year. That is the average in any given year, about five over the 
long term. Here we are, and it is only October, and 2017 has already 
seen 15 billion-dollar weather disasters--15 of them just this year, so 
far.
  But the real multibillion-dollar disaster is a captured Congress. We 
actually have a remedy right before us that ought to be a bipartisan 
remedy: a carbon fee like the one Senator Schatz and I introduced in 
our American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act. Virtually every Republican who 
has thought the climate change problem through to a solution comes to 
the same place. They all come to the same place: Put a price on carbon 
emissions, let the market work, avoid what is called the negative 
externality of the carbon polluters not having to pay for their harm, 
make the

[[Page S6392]]

economics correct by virtually everybody's economic principles, and 
take the revenue that is collected from that price on carbon and return 
it all to the American people. It is a border-adjustable, revenue-
neutral carbon fee. Former Republican Treasury Secretaries Baker, 
Schultz, and Paulson, and former Republican EPA Administrators 
Ruckelshaus, Thomas, Reilly, and Whitman and leading Republican 
conservative economists and former Republican Presidential advisers 
Arthur Laffer, Gregory Mankiw, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, among many, 
many others, support a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable carbon fee. 
It is the market approach of properly pricing this pollution to 
eliminate that negative externality and to put the cost into the price 
of the product in the way that Economics 101 suggests it should be to 
avoid giving this industry this massive subsidy. That is where the 
Republicans who thought this through want us to be.
  On my side, our answer is yes, but here in Congress, are we there 
yet? We just will not do it. We just will not do it because the shadow 
of the fossil fuel industry's millions of dollars in deception and 
political muscle power falls too darkly on this supposedly august 
institution.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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