[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 188 (Thursday, November 29, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7214-S7216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. President, the second reason I am here is to talk about the 
urgency of

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addressing climate change. This does fit into the farm bill because I 
am glad the farm bill is a source of so many of our conservation 
programs for our country. Also, the farm bill is part of economic 
development across our country.
  Climate change is going to be a challenge for everyone. Certainly, 
from the last report we just received on the Friday of the holiday 
weekend--and I have a feeling some people thought that was a good day 
to bury it. Well, it didn't exactly work. Given that it was a slow news 
day, and it ended up on the front page of every major newspaper and 
leading every major newscast, people noticed. They noticed because this 
report wasn't just about numbers and percentages and all those kinds of 
things that our scientists have long agreed on when it comes to global 
warming; this was about the impact.
  The reason it is good to talk about the farm bill and then this is, 
one of the major impacts contained in that report was the impact on 
farmers in the Midwest where--as predicted in this report, issued by 
this administration with Agencies across the board--you would see acres 
and acres and acres of land, with billions of dollars in losses, that 
wouldn't be able to be farmed for corn and for other important crops in 
America unless we act.
  This was yet another dire warning about the cost of inaction on 
climate change, and it was in the form, of course, of the fourth 
National Climate Assessment. This report is simply the latest in a line 
of recent studies, including the U.N. report--what was released last 
October. The administration released this new report, as I noted, the 
day after Thanksgiving, just hoping Americans were too busy with their 
families out shopping, but no one could not notice this report--1,700 
pages produced by 13 Federal Agencies. It was the product of 1,000 
people, including 300 leading scientists, including officials from 
Federal, State, and local government, Tribes, national laboratories, 
universities, and the private sector.
  These 300 scientists concluded that, consistent with previous 
reports--and by the way, I remember hearing NASA telling us what would 
happen. I remember our military leaders telling us what would happen--
predicting to us that we would see rampant wildfires in the West. That 
is what we are seeing. Predicting to us 10 years ago that we would see 
a warming of the ocean that would result in tougher and bigger and more 
damaging hurricanes--exactly what we are seeing.
  These scientists concluded that, consistent with all of these 
predictions over the last decades, that we must drastically reduce our 
greenhouse gas emissions to ensure the health of the American public, 
the livelihood of our farmers and ranchers, and the strength of our 
economy.
  The report states that climate change will have serious health 
consequences for the American people.
  Remember, this report is not something that came out of some think 
tank. It is not a report that came out of some congressional committee. 
It is not a report that came out of some university. No, no. This is a 
report that came out of the Trump administration. All 11 Agencies were 
involved in this report.
  The Midwest alone in this report by the Trump administration is 
predicted to have the largest increase in extreme temperature, will see 
an additional 2,000 premature deaths per year by the year 2090, 
mosquito and tickborne diseases--which was already seen in my State--
will spread, and food and water safety will be affected.
  As I noted, we should also be expecting worsening disasters. Anyone 
who watched that horrific tape of those parents trying to get their 
kids out of that wildfire in Northern California, when it suddenly came 
up faster than could be expected, trying to calm--a dad trying to calm 
his child down as he drove through a raging fire--watch that tape. Go 
home and watch that tape because that tape will remind you of what we 
are dealing with: wildfires, flooding, hurricanes.
  Wildfire seasons, already longer and more destructive than before, 
could burn up to six times more forest area annually by 2050 in parts 
of the United States. These wildfires will have a drastic effect on air 
quality and health, particularly on the elderly, pregnant women, 
children, and those already suffering from heart and lung diseases.
  The report also makes it clear that our farmers will face extremely 
tough times. Crops will decline across the country due to higher 
temperatures, drought, and flooding. Agricultural yields could fall to 
1980 levels within a few decades. That is despite all the science and 
work we have done to increase those yields.
  In parts of the Midwest, farms will be able to produce less than 75 
percent of the corn they produce today, and the southern part of the 
Midwestern region could lose more than 25 percent of its soybean yield.

  This is not a report that came out of my looking at some books. No, 
no, no. This is a report that came out of 1,000 people who work for the 
Trump administration. This is an administration report.
  The report also emphasizes that our economy could lose hundreds of 
billions of dollars--or more than 10 percent of our GDP--by the turn of 
the next century. That is more than double the loss of the great 
recession a decade ago.
  Everyone knows someone who lost their job during that recession. 
Everyone knows someone who lost their house or went into debt, right? 
Well, think about that doubled--more than 10 percent of our GDP. Again, 
not a report by a liberal think tank, not a report by a congressional 
subcommittee; this is the report and prediction of the Trump 
administration.
  We cannot ignore the dire warnings of the report, and I appreciate 
that the administration put out this report. I wish they had not done 
it on a Friday afternoon, but it kind of backfired on them.
  We cannot ignore the climate changes already happening around us or 
that devastating consequences for our country exist, and we are going 
to see more of them in the years ahead. We must seize this opportunity 
to ensure the health of the American public, to support our businesses 
and farmers, and to make our economy more resilient.
  We must act. The American people know that. I hear about climate 
wherever I go in my State, from hunters who are concerned about 
tickborne illnesses, who are concerned with what we are seeing with 
things we have never seen go into our deer population, to business 
leaders at the Port of Duluth, to students at the University of 
Minnesota.
  Increasingly warmer temperatures are having effects in Minnesota. 
Lyme disease has spread farther north. I bet everyone in my State knows 
someone who got Lyme disease. Sometimes they catch it right away, and 
it goes away; sometimes it causes a lifetime of troubles. Lyme disease 
has been spreading farther north. Aspen forests are shrinking. Moose 
range in my State is declining. Thirty-seven percent more rain falls as 
a result of mega-rainstorms than we had ever seen just 50 years ago. 
The ragweed pollen season has extended 3 weeks in the Twin Cities in 
just the past 20 years, making people who suffer from allergies notice 
it first.
  This is in stark contrast to comments made by some who still have 
suggested that climate change should be debated.
  Well, even in this Chamber, 98 to 1 or 97 to 1, we voted a few years 
ago that, in fact, climate change is occurring. We even acknowledged it 
finally, but guess what. We are a little behind the people who already 
notice it happening.
  Over the past week, unfortunately, the President has repeatedly cast 
doubt on his own administration's report on climate change. These are 
people who work for him. These are Agencies headed up by his own 
Commissioners who issued this report.
  I am a former prosecutor, and I believe in evidence. As this report 
shows us, the facts and the science can't be more clear. This report, 
put out by the President's Agencies, notes that the United States is 
already 1.8 degrees warmer than it was 100 years ago and that the 
seas--the oceans that surround the country--are an average 9 inches 
higher and climbing. The recent U.N. report warned that the atmosphere 
will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees by 2040 and describes a world we 
already see of worsening wildfires and natural disasters.
  As the NASA website has said, most of the warming occurred in the 
past 35

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years, with the 5 warmest years on record taking place since 2010.
  Every week brings fresh evidence of the damage. My State of Minnesota 
may be miles away from rising oceans, but the impacts in my State and 
in the Midwest are not less of a real threat. Climate change isn't just 
about melting glaciers and rising ocean levels, and we have certainly 
seen that with the hurricanes, but we have also seen flooding like we 
have never seen before in Duluth and places across Minnesota.
  So we know it is happening. The question is, What do we do about it? 
Now that the President's own Agencies have said it is happening, what 
do we do about it?
  Well, what I would like to hear, acknowledging this new report about 
the impacts of climate change, not just the nerdy numbers of climate 
change--now that we know the impacts, let's do something about it.
  No. 1, the clean power rules. When those were first put out a few 
years ago, I think the business community at first thought they were 
going to be worse than they were. They were a reasonable path forward, 
giving some exceptions and more time to small power companies. I know 
in my State, Minnesota Power, Xcel Energy--in our State, our major 
power companies were ready to work with those rules. While our small 
power companies were concerned, we were working with them to make sure 
there were exceptions and that they had a path forward to make sure 
they could meet the goals by working with the big power companies.
  We already had businesses in my State, like Cargill, that were out 
front on this, that saw the risk to their consumers and their business 
if we do nothing about climate change internationally. So we were ready 
to roll with those clean power rules, but they got reversed by this 
administration. I call on them to go back at it and put those rules out 
again. Let's get them done.
  Secondly, gas mileage standards. That is something else we should be 
going back to. We had an agreement with the auto companies just a few 
years ago to get that done, but instead, once again, they went 
backward.
  Third, the international climate change agreement. Every other 
country in the world has pledged to be in that agreement. We had 
pledged to be in the agreement, and then the administration said we 
were going out of that agreement. At the time they did that, the only 
two countries that weren't in the agreement were Nicaragua and Syria, 
and now they have joined the agreement.
  I remember a time when the United States was a leader in innovation 
and a leader in responding to the challenges, not just in our country 
but our world. We should be leading because otherwise other countries 
are going to get ahead of us when it gets to innovative technology to 
meet these climate change and energy challenges of our time.
  That is what this is about, and that is what we need to do to move 
forward.
  My State has been a leader on this. With a Republican Governor, a few 
years back, and a Democratic legislature, we were able to pass a 
renewable electricity standard that was ahead of its time. Already 
today, 7 years ahead of schedule, 25 percent of Minnesota's electricity 
generation comes from renewable sources. That is clearly part of our 
way forward but not the only way forward.
  Guess what. We did it in conjunction with our farming communities 
with an agreement, as well, on biofuel, and we did it across the aisle 
on a bipartisan basis. We can do that in this Chamber right now if we 
have the will to get it done.
  As last week's report makes clear, inaction is not an option--not for 
our economy, not for our farmers, not for our environment and our 
country, and certainly not for the American people. Military and 
security experts have reminded us that climate change is a threat to 
our national security, increasing the risk of conflict, humanitarian 
crisis, and damage to critical infrastructure.
  As you look at some of the refugees that have been moving in places 
such as Europe and the people coming up from Africa, a lot of that is 
because they used to engage in subsistence farming and they can't do it 
anymore.
  Yes, we need to adapt with science, and we need to adapt with 
cutting-edge speeds in farming, but we also need to adapt by putting 
into place policies that bring down our greenhouse gas numbers so we 
have a fighting chance of leaving this Earth to our kids and our 
grandkids in a way that they can live a life like we have enjoyed.
  Despite more severe weather, heat waves that can reduce our water 
supply, and extreme rainfall that can damage critical infrastructure, 
this country has always gotten ahead of challenges. I ask my friends on 
the other side of the aisle to remember the Republican Party of Teddy 
Roosevelt, the Republican Party of conservation, the Republican Party 
that sought to conserve our resources and not use them all ourselves so 
that they can leave something to other people. That is what we have to 
find to get this done.
  I will end by quoting Pope Francis. His visit to this Congress and to 
Washington was something that I will never forget. One of the things he 
said is this: ``What kind of world do we want to leave to those who 
come after us, to children who are now growing up?''
  That is a pretty good standard. Think in your life of those kids whom 
you love or your neighbor's kids or your grandkids, and ask yourself 
what kind of world you want to leave them. This is no longer just some 
hypothetical thing. It is right there in the report by the Trump 
administration. It is right before our eyes in the videos we see online 
of that dad driving his kid through a wildfire in Northern California. 
It is right there as we see the damage the hurricanes are doing to the 
east coast. It is right there in the Midwest, when we see rampant 
flooding, ticks, Lyme disease, and things that we never used to see in 
Minnesota. The evidence is right before our eyes. Let's believe it and 
do something about it.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.