[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2030-S2032]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here on the floor for my 202nd 
``Time to Wake Up'' speech. I would like to begin by thanking this body 
for the passing of the National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund as 
part of the measure that Republicans and Democrats agreed to before the 
recent recess. The Presiding Officer obviously represents an extremely 
coastal State. I represent Rhode Island, a very coastal State. This new 
program will provide resources for the communities along our shores to 
be able to deal with the threats they are seeing from sea level rise, 
fisheries moving about, worsening offshore storms, tides that now come 
ashore on bright sunny days, and the various hazards that they must 
undertake so that they are not left alone trying to address them.
  I often use these speeches to explore why it is that we get nothing 
done in Congress on climate. I point out that the major reason is the 
insidious fossil-fuel-funded web of climate change denial, with a 
parallel lobbying and electioneering effort.
  I point out that this network is funded by the fossil fuel industry 
in a deliberate and systematic effort to misdirect public discussion 
and to distort public understanding of climate change and climate 
science.
  I point out that it is actually working. It has been so effective at 
infiltrating our political system that the head of the U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency is a full-on fossil fuel flunky. I 
discuss the fossil fuel industry's parallel web that directs rivers of 
dark money into our political system and deploys related, but more 
clandestine, threats and promises to work the industry's will in 
Congress.
  Like I said, it is working. The web of denial and political 
enforcement organizations has so far achieved its purpose: to prevent 
Congress from carrying out its responsibility to rein in carbon 
pollution. We are, as a result, failing to protect the American people 
and our economy from the effects of that pollution, particularly our 
coastal economies. But now agriculture and other economies are feeling 
it too, and Congress is still doing nothing.
  So this secretive and insidious apparatus deserves our attention. 
Nowadays, this apparatus is dedicated to denying science, confusing the 
public, and holding a political whip hand over Congress on the issue of 
climate change. Nowadays, it does this to protect the fossil fuel 
industry from responsibility for its pollution. But it is actually not 
a new enterprise.
  We have never seen this machinery operating at this scale before. It 
is bigger and more multifaceted than ever, but we have seen its tricks 
before. The science denial playbook, commissioned by the Koch brothers, 
ExxonMobil, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to stymie climate action, 
is the same doubt-mongering playbook we have seen used by Big Tobacco, 
by chemical industries, and by other corporate polluters for decades.
  I am not the only one who has noticed. A lot of work has examined 
this denial apparatus--how it is funded, how it hides its funding, how 
it communicates, and how it propagates the denial message. This is 
valuable work because the better America understands the mechanisms of 
this deceitful operation, the better America can inoculate itself 
against that deceit.
  So I have brought some of this work with me to the Senate floor 
today. It is kind of a beginner's bibliography of this apparatus.
  I will start with a book called ``Deceit and Denial,'' and, on the 
cover, described by Bill Moyers as ``the best detective story I've read 
in years.'' This

[[Page S2031]]

book is written by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, who have been 
tracking the efforts of industry to hide scientific facts about 
pollution for a long time. They point out in their introduction here:

       Some industries . . . have reassured the public that their 
     products are benign by controlling research and manipulating 
     science. Throughout much of the twentieth century, most 
     scientific studies of the health effects of toxic substances 
     have been done by researchers in the employ of industry or in 
     universities with financial ties to members of that industry. 
     At times their results were subject to review by industry; if 
     the results indicated a problem, the information was 
     suppressed.

  This goes way back into the annals of denial.
  My next book is ``Poison Tea.'' It is a book written by Jeff Nesbit. 
It goes back into the tobacco documents that were protected in the 
tobacco settlement. The attorneys general demanded that the documents 
of the tobacco companies be set aside as a permanent reference. Jeff 
Nesbit was present at some of the efforts to create the tobacco 
industry version of climate denial. He saw it happening up close. He 
was in some of the meetings. In chapter 25, he opens up with this:

       If the 14 million internal tobacco industry memos and 
     documents show one thing clearly, it is this: political 
     campaign networks built to defend and promote large corporate 
     interests with integrated goals, messaging, targets, and 
     allies simply don't materialize overnight. The funding and 
     strategies behind them take years to develop before reaching 
     maturity. And they build on each other over time.

  I turn now to ``Doubt is Their Product.'' This is David Michaels' 
book. The subtitle is ``How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens 
Your Health.''
  The quotation I have selected moves from the general principle of 
science denial on behalf of industries into global warming as this 
scheme moved forward:

       Take global warming. The vast majority of climate 
     scientists believe there is adequate evidence of global 
     warming to justify immediate intervention to reduce the human 
     contribution.

  Now, this was written, just to be clear, in 2008, a decade ago--a 
decade ago:

       The vast majority of climate scientists believe there is 
     adequate evidence global warming to justify immediate 
     intervention to reduce the human contribution. They 
     understand that waiting for absolute certainty is far 
     riskier--and potentially far more expensive--than acting 
     responsibly now--

  That is, 10 years ago--

     to control the causes of climate change. Opponents of action, 
     led by the fossil fuels industry, delayed this policy 
     debate--

  And for another decade--

     by challenging the science with a classic uncertainty 
     campaign.

  He cites what he calls a cynical memo that Republican political 
consultant Frank Luntz delivered to his clients in early 2003, saying:

       The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet 
     closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge 
     the science.
       Luntz understood that his clients can oppose (and delay) 
     regulation . . . by simply manufacturing uncertainty. Doubt 
     is their product.

  The next book is by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, entitled 
``Merchants of Doubt,'' which was actually made into a film as well. 
They have done a lot of work in this area.
  Here is the conclusion:

       Doubt-mongering works because we think science is about 
     facts--cold, hard, definite facts.
       This is a mistake. There are always uncertainties in any 
     live science because science is a process of discovery.
       Doubt is crucial to science . . . but it also makes science 
     vulnerable to misrepresentation, because it is easy to take 
     uncertainties out of context and create the impression that 
     everything is unresolved. This was the tobacco industry's key 
     insight: That you could use normal scientific uncertainty to 
     undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge.
       ``Doubt is our product,'' ran the infamous memo written by 
     one tobacco industry executive in 1969.

  ``Merchants of Doubt'' goes on to describe how that exact same 
technique--and many of the same individuals and organizations--carried 
that over from tobacco smoke to global warming. Subtitle: ``How a 
Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke 
to Global Warming.''
  This is a book by Pulitzer Prize winning author Steve Coll. He is 
actually speaking tonight at the Library of Congress. This book is 
called ``Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.'' It describes 
the mischief that Exxon got up to in pursuing its political goals here 
in Washington. He describes the underlying structure of Washington 
policy debates. He calls it a ``kaleidoscope of overlapping and 
competing influence campaigns, some open, some conducted by front 
organizations, and some entirely clandestine.''
  Obviously, if you are ExxonMobil, you don't want your name on all of 
this stuff--hence, the ``kaleidoscope of overlapping and competing 
influence campaigns, some open, some conducted by front organizations, 
and some entirely clandestine.''
  He continues:

       Strategists created layers of disguise, subtlety, and 
     subterfuge--corporate-funded ``grassroots'' programs and 
     purpose-built think tanks, as fingerprint-free as possible. 
     In such an opaque and untrustworthy atmosphere, the ultimate 
     advantage lay with any lobbyist whose goal was to manufacture 
     confusion and perpetual controversy. On climate, this 
     happened to be the oil industry's position.

  In his book ``The War on Science,'' Shawn Otto goes in some detail 
through the scheming that backs up what he calls ``a steady stream of 
pseudoscience that can be used by foot soldiers to sway the public 
debate.''
  He goes through a number of steps that are the standard parts of this 
campaign, starting with phony science:

       Phony science . . . that creates ``uncertainties'' about 
     the accepted views of mainstream science.

  So you start off with phony science that creates phony uncertainties 
about the accepted views of mainstream science.

       Step two follows with slanted press materials spoon-fed to 
     journalists by industry-affiliated nonprofits and bloggers.

  A third step of this PR battle is what he calls ``building and 
financing industry-aligned front groups (fake public-interest 
organizations) and astroturf groups (fake grassroots organizations).''
  And we sure do see those fake public interest organizations and fake 
grassroots organizations whipped up by the fossil fuel industry today.
  Step 4 is outlier scientists--the ones who can cook up the 
pseudoscience that can be used by foot soldiers:

       Outlier scientists are recruited to publish in phony 
     journals and speak at conferences of physicians, lawyers, and 
     other professionals, emphasizing the controversy and sowing 
     ``uncertainties'' and denial, thus using peer-pressure to 
     create true believers among the influential opinion leaders.

  You then shove out into ``industry-aligned, or otherwise sympathetic 
talk-radio and cable-news purveyors, who reference these mainstream 
sources, react with outrage, and call for policy action.'' This 
provides political cover for legislative or other ``policy action by 
partisan allies in government.''

       Industry representatives can step safely out from behind 
     the curtain for the main act of the culture-war drama and 
     plead their case to policymakers. . . . The strategy is 
     designed to neutralize the primacy of objective knowledge--

  We wouldn't want to make decisions around here based on objective 
knowledge--

     and slowly move public opinion toward accepting the 
     industry's position as the only truly reasonable one, 
     subverting the democratic process.

  From my experience, that is a pretty good description as to how this 
game is played.
  Thank you, Shawn Otto.
  Two of the people who do some of the best work looking at this 
climate denial apparatus and tracking its funding are academic writers 
Riley Dunlap and Robert Brulle. Their book, ``Climate Change and 
Society,'' drills into this pretty well. Here is the description.

       Over time, manufacturing uncertainty has evolved into 
     ``manufacturing controversy,'' creating the impression that 
     there is major debate and dissent within the scientific 
     community over the reality of anthropogenic climate change. 
     To accomplish this, corporations and especially CTTs have 
     supported a small number of contrarian scientists (many with 
     no formal training in climate science) and other self-styled 
     ``experts'' (often social scientists affiliated with CTTs) to 
     produce non-peer-reviewed reports and books, publish in a 
     handful of marginal journals, hold ``scientific'' 
     conferences, compile dubious lists of supposed scientists who 
     question climate change, and in general mimic the workings of 
     conventional science . . . fashioning a ``parallel scientific 
     universe'' that serves to generate confusion among the public 
     and policymakers.

  Thank you, Riley Dunlap and Robert Brulle for your years of research.

[[Page S2032]]

  Recently Jane Mayer's book, ``Dark Money,'' has gotten a lot of 
attention. It focuses on the extent to which the Koch brothers 
specifically use the caverns for subterranean dark money to mess around 
in our politics. Following up on the use of conservative think tanks, 
we have an early--I guess you would say ``strategizer'' of this effort 
quoted as saying:

       It would be necessary to use ambiguous and misleading 
     names, obscure the true agenda, and conceal the means of 
     control.

  That is the background. This whole development of the think tank is 
described here this way:

       In the 1970s, with funding from a handful of hugely wealthy 
     donors . . . as well as some major corporate support, a whole 
     new form of ``think tank'' emerged that was more engaged in 
     selling predetermined ideology to politicians and the public 
     than undertaking scholarly research.

  To use her phrase, it was ``the think tank as disguised political 
weapon.''
  That is part of what we are up against.
  ``Democracy in Chains,'' a book by Nancy MacLean, looks back at some 
of the early history through which the Koch brothers and others funded 
this operation. It points out that ``the Koch team's most important 
stealth move, and the one that proved most critical to success, was to 
wrest control over the machinery of the Republican Party, beginning in 
the late 1990s and with sharply escalating determination after 2008.''
  What made them want to do this? I will read. The Koch cadre 
identified the public's embrace of environmentalism as a problem early 
on. They then pulled together--

     a circle of less-known Koch-funded libertarian think tanks 
     driving what two science scholars describe as systematic 
     environmental ``misinformation campaigns.'' They spread junk 
     pseudoscience to make the public believe that there is still 
     doubt about the peril of climate change, a tactic they 
     learned from the tobacco companies that for years sowed doubt 
     about science to keep the public from connecting smoking and 
     illness.
       The Koch team by then could count on its Club for Growth to 
     fund primary challenges to ensure that the party line on 
     environmentalism would be maintained by Republican members of 
     Congress. . . . ``We're looking at a party,'' the economist 
     and columnist Paul Krugman rightly points out, ``that has 
     turned its back on science at a time when doing so puts the 
     very future of civilization at risk.''
       Backing up that chokehold on federal action is what one 
     reporter called a ``secretive alliance'' between red-state 
     attorneys general and fossil fuel corporations.

  Again, we link back to my earlier remarks. One of the red States' 
attorneys general who link up with the fossil fuel corporations is none 
other than our EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt.
  She concludes it this way:

       To put all this another way: if the Koch-network-funded 
     academics and institutions were not in the conversation, the 
     public would have little doubt that the evidence of science 
     is overwhelming and government action to prevent further 
     global warming is urgent.

  I will close with a return to Jane Mayer, whose research on this 
whole dark money problem that bedevils our democracy has been nothing 
less than heroic, in my view. She wrote recently:

       If there was any lingering doubt that a tiny clique of 
     fossil-fuel barons has captured America's energy and 
     environmental policies, it was dispelled . . . when the Trump 
     Administration withdrew from the Paris climate accord. . . . 
     [A] majority of Americans in literally every state wanted to 
     remain within the agreement, and . . . the heads of many of 
     the country's most successful and iconic Fortune 100 
     companies, from Disney to General Electric, did, too. . . . 
     Yet . . . a tiny--and until recently, almost faceless--
     minority somehow prevailed.
       How this happened is no longer a secret. The answer . . . 
     is ``a story of big political money.'' It is, perhaps, the 
     most astounding example of influence-buying in modern 
     American political history.

  It is focused now on climate change because climate change is--and I 
quote her again here--`` `a direct challenge to the most powerful 
industry that has ever existed on the face of the Earth. There's no 
depth to which they are unwilling to sink to challenge anything 
threatening their interests.' ''
  That is a pretty good description by a lot of very well-regarded, and 
some in cases, Pulitzer Prize winning and award-winning writers and 
researchers about where we are. The result of all that is the gridlock 
that these interests have bought and paid for in Congress on this 
critical issue and an administration that is driven by fossil fuel 
interests to roll back all regulations that impinge on fossil fuel 
profits. Using that screen these authors have talked about--and that I 
have talked about--of think tanks and foundations and public relations 
firms and trade associations and, of course, those rivers of dark money 
flowing through subterranean political caverns, this industry--the 
fossil fuel industry--has taken control of and disabled our American 
political system. That is a very inconvenient truth for those in our 
political system, but its inconvenience takes away nothing from its 
truth.
  Thanks to these authors and researchers and many others like them--
many others like them--the truth of what has happened is plain. It is 
not just plain in these books. It will be plain before the reckoning 
gaze of history. There will be a reckoning. History always looks back, 
ultimately. If you look at these books and you look at others and you 
look at the record of what has taken place and the reporting, there is 
no doubt that this is the biggest influence-buying operation of all 
time. Do we in Congress really want to be found on the side of this 
crooked apparatus when that reckoning comes? God, I hope not. It is 
time to wake up.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill 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.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask 
unanimous consent that at 12:20 p.m. on Wednesday, April 11, the Senate 
vote on confirmation of the Ring nomination and that if confirmed, the 
motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the 
President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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