[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 188 (Thursday, November 29, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7208-S7209]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. President, I also want to take us back to 2006 for another 
reason. Back in 2006, we had many of our Republican Senate colleagues 
recognizing the dangers of doing nothing about the mounting costs of 
climate change. Back in 2006, there was a bill in the U.S. Senate by 
Senators McCain and Lieberman, a bipartisan group, designed to finally 
take action. Here we are so many years later from 2006 and, my 
goodness, have we regressed.
  We now have a President of the United States, in response to a report 
that came out from 300 scientists in the U.S. Government about the 
dangers of climate change, who says: Well, I don't believe it. They 
tried to bury this report, releasing it the day after Thanksgiving, but 
it backfired because it was a slow news day and people realized what 
was up. They realized this was a deliberate attempt by the 
administration to deep-six something that is important to all Americans 
and something all Americans can see with their own eyes, which is the 
escalating impact of doing nothing about climate change, whether it is 
forest fires or floods or rising sea levels.
  If you look at the report, if you live in the Chesapeake Bay area, 
you have to be really worried: increasing precipitation, increasing 
storm events. We already have flooding in Annapolis, the home of the 
U.S. Naval Academy. If you talk to the Superintendent there, he is 
already worried about the impact. This report makes clear that we are 
going to have rising sea levels, a rising Chesapeake Bay, and we are 
going to see islands in the Chesapeake Bay disappearing, all because 
this body refuses to take any action and decides to instead kowtow to 
the President of the United States.
  I would like to quote the President very quickly. When asked about 
this the other day, he said the following. When he was asked why he 
doesn't believe in climate change--this is the President of the United 
States: ``One of the problems that a lot of people like myself--we have 
very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such 
believers.''
  He goes on to say:

       And when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are 
     very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we 
     take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the 
     time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the 
     Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And 
     it takes many people to start off with.

  Then he goes on in this bizarre answer. This is the President of the 
United States responding to a question about the reality of climate 
change.
  I hope we will get back to where we were on climate change in this 
body in 2006 and work on a bipartisan basis to do something, because 
the cost of doing nothing is rising every day and hitting Americans and 
people across the world.
  Finally, when it comes to denying the facts, including the facts 
presented

[[Page S7209]]

by his own administration, we have a President of the United States who 
apparently doesn't believe his intelligence community. This is just 
another rewind-the-tape moment. We remember after Helsinki, when the 
President sided with President Putin and said: No, the Russians were 
not involved in the 2016 elections--despite the unanimous conclusions 
of all the U.S. intelligence agencies.
  Now we know from reports that the CIA has determined with a high 
level of confidence that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was involved 
and helped orchestrate the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in the 
Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Instead of accepting the conclusions of 
the CIA, the President instead has become the mouthpiece for the Saudi 
regime. Early on, he played into all their cover stories.
  Just yesterday, we had a briefing of the Senate. We had the Secretary 
of State and the Secretary of Defense. Guess who did not show up. The 
Director of the CIA. It is pretty clear that the administration did not 
want the Director of the CIA telling Senators from both parties what 
her findings are, but they have been reported in our newspapers.
  When you have the Secretary of State write in the Wall Street Journal 
complaining about what he calls ``caterwauling'' in the U.S. Congress 
about what happened, you bet people in the Senate are upset about the 
fact that an American resident--a writer for a major American 
newspaper--got murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and the 
President of the United States wants to not only just look the other 
way but is actually complicit in providing the cover story for the 
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. So there is a lot of caterwauling going 
on.
  The President made another bizarre statement that began with the 
sentence ``The world is a dangerous place'' and then went on to somehow 
justify ignoring Saudi's conduct and the murder. Yes, the world is a 
dangerous place, and it is made a lot more dangerous when the President 
of the United States looks the other way when one of our so-called 
allies--and they have been an important ally in some respects--is 
actually complicit in the murder of an American resident overseas. That 
makes the world much more dangerous for all Americans and all people 
around the world.
  It is important that the United States act to hold the Crown Prince 
accountable. It is also important that we stop giving Saudi Arabia a 
green light on all sorts of other conduct. This is a Crown Prince who 
kidnapped the Prime Minister of Lebanon. This is a Crown Prince who 
blockaded Qatar against our best interests. This is a Crown Prince who 
essentially threw out the Canadian Ambassador because she had the 
temerity to tweet about Saudi human rights abuses against women in 
Saudi Arabia. The reason the Crown Prince thought he could get away 
with killing an American resident in Istanbul is because this President 
has given him a blank check to do whatever he wants, and that includes 
Yemen.