[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 17 (Wednesday, January 24, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S494-S495]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I begin today by adding a Rhode Island 
voice to the chorus of coastal communities around the country standing 
against President Trump's reckless and unwelcome choice to try to allow 
oil and gas drilling off of nearly all U.S. coasts.
  The Rhode Island ocean economy is worth over $2 billion and employs 
more than 40,000 people. For whatever potential gain of fossil fuel 
corporations, offshore drilling introduces all sorts of hazards to our 
fishing industry and people who work in tourism and recreation along 
Narragansett Bay.
  Remember how devastating the 2010 BP oilspill was in the Gulf of 
Mexico? This graphic depicts what a spill that size would look like off 
of New England.
  The administration has tossed aside a 5-year plan that underwent 
multiple revisions and involved multiple agencies over multiple years 
taking into account the input of stakeholders and literally millions of 
comments from the public.
  The final plan that had been developed after all that effort allowed 
for only 10 lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and one sale in the Cook 
Inlet program area off the Alaska coast. There were no lease sales 
allowed in the Pacific or Atlantic. Why? Because everybody hates it.
  In ruling out drilling off our Atlantic coast, the Bureau of Ocean 
Energy Management cited ``strong local opposition, conflicts with other 
ocean uses, . . . current market dynamics, . . . [and] careful 
consideration of the comments received from Governors of affected 
states.''
  None of that has changed, and the Trump administration ought to 
listen to those coastal voices, not just the occasional Republican 
Governor of a coastal State seeking a political boost.
  Rhode Island, the Ocean State, has come out strongly opposed to this 
proposal. Our Governor, Gina Raimondo, said the administration's plan 
is ``endangering the health of nearly all coastal waters in our 
country, including our 400 miles of coastline in Rhode Island, so that 
rich oil companies can get richer.''
  Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin vowed to ``continue to 
fight this latest move by the Trump administration to give the oil and 
gas industry carte blanche to destroy our environment.''
  Rhode Island is a leader in offshore wind development. It was the 
first in the Nation to have steel in the water, first in the Nation to 
have electrons flowing to the grid. We also have vibrant fisheries and 
a longstanding fishing economy. We depend on our coastal economy for 
that, for tourism, and for many other things. Also, we are especially 
susceptible to sea level rise and other consequences of climate change. 
We are not about to go back in time and endanger our coast with the 
extraction of more dirty fuels.
  Here in Washington, I led a bipartisan group of New England Senators 
seeking legislation to bar offshore drilling along our New England 
coast. My Rhode Island colleague, Representative David Cicilline, 
introduced the companion legislation in the House of Representatives. 
The Trump administration will not be following through on its rash plan 
if New England's bipartisan Members of Congress have anything to say 
about it. The value of healthy oceans and coasts is tangible and 
immediate for us.
  The larger backdrop to this conversation about offshore drilling is 
that our oceans are steadily getting sicker, even without the threat of 
additional oilspills. The oceans have absorbed approximately 30 percent 
of the excess carbon dioxide that we have added to the atmosphere since 
the industrial revolution began. That is changing the ocean's chemistry 
dramatically. The oceans have already absorbed roughly 90 percent of 
the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by those greenhouse gases. We 
would not be living the way we have gotten used to through our 
development as a species if it weren't for the ocean absorbing so much 
of that excess heat. We owe the oceans a lot, but as a result of that 
excess carbon dioxide and excess heat, our oceans are warming, and 
because they are warming, they are rising and, as well, of course, they 
are growing more acidic, putting marine life, coastal communities, and 
ocean economies all in jeopardy.
  Oceans face another emerging problem, which is deoxygenation. Oceans 
need oxygen, and fish and other creatures that live in the ocean need 
oxygen, and we are finding that there is less and less. Low-oxygen 
zones in the ocean are nothing new. Dead zones or areas where oxygen 
levels drop too low for marine life to survive occur naturally, but 
dead zones are worsening. They are worsening near the coasts where 
agricultural runoff spurs rapid blooms of phytoplankton. When the 
phytoplankton die, their decomposition consumes large amounts of oxygen 
from the water, and fish and other marine animals suffocate. We saw 
this just a few years ago in Narragansett Bay's Greenwich Bay area.
  Now, the Gulf of Mexico routinely sees dead zones as nitrogen-rich 
waters

[[Page S495]]

flow from farms in the heartland, down the Mississippi River, and into 
the gulf. Last year's gulf dead zone reached record levels. NOAA, which 
measures these things, estimated the dead zone to be the size of New 
Jersey--the largest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA assessed 
that the cause was unusually heavy rains in the Midwest associated with 
climate change that washed large amounts of fertilizer into the river 
and down to the gulf.
  NOAA is not alone. Last year's Climate Science Special Report, the 
scientific backbone for the Federal Government's Fourth National 
Climate Assessment, discussed the growing issue of climate change-
driven ocean deoxygenation. The report did not mince words. ``Global 
ocean deoxygenation is a direct effect of warming.'' As water warms, it 
loses its capacity to absorb gases like oxygen, and warmer water 
circulates less, meaning there is less mixing of water and oxygen 
between the surface and deeper waters. The report attributes 85 percent 
of global oxygen loss to this stratification, as it is known, of the 
water.
  Worldwide, ocean oxygen levels have declined. According to the 
Climate Science Special Report, the North Pacific, North Atlantic, 
Southern Ocean, subtropical South Pacific, and South Indian Oceans are 
all expected to experience further deoxygenation. Oxygen may drop off 
as much as 17 percent in the North Pacific by 2100 if we don't rein in 
carbon emissions.
  Not surprisingly, fish and other marine wildlife try to steer clear 
of dead zones. If they are not able to breathe in these low-oxygen 
waters, they can die. Dr. Callum Roberts, a researcher at the 
University of York, has also warned that large and fast-moving fish 
that use more oxygen, like tunas, billfish, sharks, and fish like this 
unbelievably beautiful marlin, are being relegated to shrinking high-
oxygen areas causing them to change how they hunt. A 2010 paper in 
Deep-Sea Research estimated that from 1960 to 2008, the areas in the 
ocean where oxygen levels are too low to support fish and other big 
ocean organisms have grown by over 1.7 million square miles--an added 
1.7 million square miles with oxygen levels too low for God's beautiful 
creatures like this one.

  One example of this phenomenon comes to us from former NOAA 
researcher Dr. Eric Prince, who noticed that blue marlin, a fish which 
is actually well known for its diving capabilities, would not leave the 
top hundred feet of ocean off of Costa Rica and Guatemala. Elsewhere, 
in the ocean, marlin regularly go half a mile down to hunt. The reason 
for constraining themselves to that top 100 feet of ocean? ``A deep, 
gigantic and expanding swath of water that contained too little 
oxygen.'' A 2011 study in Nature Climate Change estimated that over 50 
years the surface ocean habitat in the tropical Northeast Atlantic used 
by tunas and billfish, like the blue marlin, has shrunk by 15 percent 
due to deoxygenation.
  A study published earlier this month in the prestigious journal 
Science warned that though there may be a short-term fishing surge due 
to the crowding of fishing species into surface waters--they are easier 
to find because there is less oxygenated water that they are in--``[i]n 
the longer term, these conditions are unsustainable and may result in 
ecosystem collapses, which ultimately will cause societal and economic 
harm.''
  This portends devastating effects. The World Health Organization says 
around 1 billion people rely on fish as their main source of protein. 
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 10 to 12 percent 
of the world's population base their livelihoods on fisheries or 
aquaculture. Bringing it closer to home, commercial fish landings for 
Rhode Island for 2016 totaled 82.5 million pounds and were valued at 
nearly $94 million. In 2014, the New England ocean economy was valued 
at over $17 billion and employed nearly a quarter of a million people. 
All of that is at risk as we pull out the cornerstones of our ocean 
ecosystem.
  Here is where it actually gets a little weird. Oxygen depletion could 
actually spur a boom in nitrogen-breathing microorganisms--tiny 
microbes that breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen. They might then 
demand enough valuable nitrogen that they crowd out other ocean species 
that also need nitrogen, and these nitrogen species exhale nitrous 
oxide, which is a greenhouse gas which creates another possible climate 
change feedback loop.
  As a recent Washington Post story put it, our growing understanding 
of ocean deoxygenation ``underscores once again that some of the most 
profound consequences of climate change are occurring in the oceans, 
rather than on land.''
  As Dr. Denise Breitburg, the lead author of the recent Science paper 
said, ``Of course, declining oxygen isn't happening in isolation. . . . 
Warming itself threatens marine food webs, as does acidification caused 
by increased carbon dioxide in the water. But the threats are worse 
when combined.''
  That is what we are seeing--deoxygenation, warming, acidification 
combined.
  We recklessly ignore the warnings that the oceans are screaming at 
us. Scientists are seeing numbers and conditions in the oceans they 
have never seen before. We ignore also the high tides that now 
regularly flood downtowns of major cities as sea levels rise. We ignore 
fish species moving northward and offshore in search of cooler waters 
away from traditional fisheries. We ignore the oyster spat dissolving 
in acidic seawater before they can grow to maturity. We ignore coral 
reefs turning white and dying in warm, acidic seas. We ignore the 
record strength of warm-water-fueled 2017 hurricanes that killed 
people, destroyed homes, and caused billions of dollars in damage.
  I wonder how long can we ignore the cries from our oceans? Truly, it 
is time to wake up.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, 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.