[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 136 (Thursday, August 16, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5676-S5678]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               WILDFIRES

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse not just for 
today, as we talk about wildfires, but because, year after year, he has 
been on this floor, prosecuting the consequences--playing out the 
consequences of the failure of dealing with climate change. Certainly, 
it is hotter and dryer in the West. What I am going to do is to spend 
some of this short period we have together in describing these 
wildfires.

[[Page S5677]]

They are not your grandfather's wildfires. They are bigger, they are 
hotter, and they are more powerful.
  In my home State last summer, we saw a fire leap the Columbia River. 
The Columbia River has always been a break in terms of fire, and the 
fire just leaped over it. We are seeing that around the country. It is 
getting worse. The fires are so bad today and the smoke is so thick 
that people in my home State are fleeing their communities to find 
pockets of breathable air. In Portland, residents are being warned 
against spending time outside and are being advised to wear respirators 
if they must. Those without homes to provide safe air are being told to 
seek shelter from the smoke in public places, like libraries and 
government buildings.
  So I would say to my friend and to the Presiding Officer, who is also 
a westerner and a friend, that this is not the stuff of fiction. This 
is real life--right now--for communities across the West that are just 
getting clobbered by fire. This is climate change at work.
  As Senator Whitehouse and I speak today, there are more than 100 
large wildfires that are destroying homes and businesses across Oregon 
and the West, burning almost 1.8 million acres. Farmers have watched as 
crops have burned to the ground. Families who are located in evacuation 
zones have fled their homes. Choking smoke throughout my State has left 
children and seniors afraid to go outside, and schools have canceled 
sporting events because of the unhealthy air quality.
  I remember when I began in public service that westerners would 
prepare for individual fire seasons and that some would be a bit worse 
than others. Yet now we are basically in a situation in which we have 
infernos raging throughout the year. In California, for example, the 
Thomas fire set the all-time record--wouldn't want to have it--as the 
State's largest recorded wildfire in December. It was not exactly a 
Christmas gift. The record didn't stand long, as my colleague just 
mentioned last week's fire in Mendocino.
  In Oregon, the Taylor Creek fire and the Garner Complex fire led 
agencies to issue evacuation notices to more than 1,000 people. This is 
the second year in a row that the air quality in southern Oregon has 
ranked among the worst in the Nation. When I was driving to southern 
Oregon recently in order to get a briefing from fire officials, the 
smoke, in effect, was going north, drifting 100 miles north of Medford. 
In my hometown of Portland, now--this week--air is at unhealthy levels.
  Fires have gotten so big that the plumes of thick, choking smoke have 
shown up on NASA's satellite images from space. My colleague and I 
served on the Intelligence Committee together, and I think, 
increasingly, we are going to see folks at the Forest Service and at 
weather agencies who will be interested in a lot of those kinds of 
satellite opportunities in order to get a better handle on the 
dimensions of the problem. A huge portion of my State is blanketed with 
smoke, and this is taking place when hikers, fishermen, rafters, and 
guides, along with countless tourists from around the country, ought to 
be enjoying the outdoors. Talking about economic consequences, 
recreation has become a big economic engine in the West.
  I am very pleased to have been the sponsor of a bill with Chairman  
Rob Bishop, who I think would be pleased if I called him one of the 
most conservative Members of the other body. Our bill is called the RNR 
bill, Recreation Not Red-Tape. It is just sensible suggestions for 
putting permitting information online--those sorts of things.
  It is pretty hard to recreate in the West, Senator Sullivan, if 
everything is burning up. It is pretty hard to really cap the potential 
of this extraordinary new recreation engine, but right now dangerous 
fires and unhealthy smoke are blocking recreation opportunities for 
folks in the West to get outside. It is an economic nightmare, in 
addition to being a danger to life and property.
  We don't remember wildfires this catastrophic happening 30 years ago, 
and people want to know why. My view is it is not a coincidence that 
the megafires now happen routinely and are getting bigger, and a 
significant factor in this is climate change.
  According to research by Oregon State University, our average 
temperature has increased by more than 2 degrees over the past century. 
Last week, the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat 
warning for the Willamette Valley, advising that the heat could touch 
100 degrees. This is not Death Valley. The Presiding Officer knows our 
area. We don't get roasted by triple-digit heat--or we didn't used to. 
But we are today.
  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that 
the contiguous United States experienced the warmest July in recorded 
history. The temperature hikes bake forests and landscapes. They dry 
out materials, and they are magnets--magnets--for fuel for the 
infernos. Yet the Trump administration, as Senator Whitehouse has 
talked about, seems to be working overtime to say that this isn't a 
problem.
  For starters, the President pulled the United States out of the Paris 
climate agreement, which would make us the only country to reject it. 
Senator Whitehouse knows more about this than any other Senator. What I 
was particularly troubled about is that the arguments they made weren't 
tethered to the facts. They kept saying that there were all kinds of 
mandates in the agreement. As my colleague knows, there really aren't. 
It is voluntary. There is a wide berth for countries to pursue 
strategies that make sense for them.
  It is not just pulling out of the international agreement. At the 
Department of the Interior, Secretary Zinke is doing everything he can 
to roll back environmental protections.
  I say to my colleague: I was one who voted for Secretary Zinke. He 
said that he was going to be a Roosevelt Republican. The Presiding 
Officer would be interested in this. He said that nine times in his 
hearing in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I thought, he is 
a Duck; he said he was a football player. I was a basketball player. I 
would give it a shot. I now consider that one of the worst votes I have 
cast in my time in public service because he is doing everything he can 
to roll back environmental protections, giving oil and gas executives 
free rein to exploit public lands, and he is putting an end to 
commonsense regulations to curb emissions of methane, a dangerous 
greenhouse gas.
  The story doesn't get better at the Energy Department. They are there 
wrapping themselves into a legal pretzel to figure out how to waste 
taxpayer money to prop up the coal industry, an energy source whose 
costs are too great for the market to bear.
  Over at the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, they are 
rolling back fuel standards for cars. That is a double loser. It is bad 
for the environment and bad for the consumers who are going to have to 
pony up $1 trillion more at the pump. While the Federal Government is 
abandoning leadership, they are also browbeating the States to do the 
same thing.
  The Trump administration now threatens California's ability to set 
its own air quality standards under the Clean Air Act, which affects 12 
other States, including Oregon. How many times, colleagues, have we 
heard Senators come to the floor of the Senate and virtually pound on 
their chests and say that the States are the laboratories of democracy?
  Basically, on climate change, Senator Whitehouse, what the Trump 
administration is saying is that they are for State's rights if they 
think the State is right. That is their position on climate change. It 
is clear that we are not seeing any real movement from the Trump 
administration.
  Two weeks ago, the President tweeted several times that water from 
Northern California is being diverted to the Pacific Ocean rather than 
being used for firefighting. State officials and Republicans--
California veteran Republicans--essentially said that this was 
nonsense. When the President's press office was asked about the tweet, 
really, they went completely silent.
  The megafires are the new normal, so westerners are going to have to 
embrace new, cooperative, and collaborative ways of dealing with the 
effects of climate change. Our priority ought to be to work with the 
States. Government at all levels should continue to develop more 
efficient, low-carbon energy technologies, renewables, and energy 
storage. It is a winner all around for Oregon, the West, and our 
country.

[[Page S5678]]

Not only are solar and wind cleaner, they are also cheaper than a 
number of the plants that burn fossil fuels.
  What we said in our tax reform bill is that there are more than 40 
separate breaks in energy, many of them just monuments to yesteryear. 
We proposed throwing them in the trash can. Out they go, $40 billion 
worth over a few years, substituting the $40 billion for clean energy, 
clean transportation fuel, and energy efficiency. That is going to be 
in line with what Senator Whitehouse has said, which is that America 
can get more green for less green, or fewer taxpayer dollars.
  I very much appreciate my colleague coming to the floor today. I want 
to close with just one point. More than any other factor of my time in 
public service--I think I have discussed this with both the Presiding 
Officer and Senator Whitehouse--what I have been interested in finding 
is what I call principled bipartisanship. Bipartisanship is not about 
Republicans and Democrats taking each other's dumb ideas. Anybody can 
do that. Then you can pat yourself on the back and say: Oh, my 
goodness, we are being bipartisan. What it is all about is finding good 
ideas.
  What Senator Whitehouse has done--and, boy, do the fires in the West 
right now convey the urgency; in effect, he has tried to take markets, 
marketplace forces, and fuse them together with the best environmental 
practices we know of. Both sides ought to find that pretty attractive. 
Conservatives can say: Senator Whitehouse is talking about using 
marketplace forces--and he has attracted some pretty prominent 
Republicans to his ideas, as well--and Democrats can say: We are not 
going to dawdle in terms of trying to improve the environment, and we 
are not going to turn back the clock on environmental practices.
  I very much appreciate Senator Whitehouse's leadership. I am going to 
have to run off to another meeting. I will just say that I appreciate 
his including me.
  I say to my colleagues: It might not be that wildfires are happening 
in your State this morning, but climate change affects every single 
American in one way or another, and we have to find a way to create a 
bipartisan path to address this growing harm.
  With thanks to Senator Whitehouse, I yield the floor.

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