[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 200 (Wednesday, December 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7879-S7881]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased to come to the floor with my 
colleagues from Massachusetts and Delaware to address the grave threat 
to America and to our planet from carbon pollution and climate chaos.
  Over the last 2 weeks, representatives from nearly 200 countries have 
gathered together in Poland to continue the fight against climate 
chaos. They know that in each and every country we are seeing the 
impacts across this planet. There are more powerful hurricanes, like we 
have seen here in the United States, more destructive wildfires, like 
those we see in the Northwest of the United States, record breaking 
heat waves, air quality deterioration, loss of glaciers, loss of global 
ice, Arctic ice, insect-borne diseases that spread, and coral reefs 
dying. We are in trouble.
  The scientists tell us we are now driving the sixth great extinction 
on planet Earth. It is being driven by human conduct, and a big factor 
in that is our burning of fossil fuels. We are, in fact, facing the 
greatest threat humankind has known on the planet. When you begin to 
damage your own home, you really are in a situation that needs to be 
immediately addressed.
  It was back in 1959 that Edward Teller, a famed scientist, gave a 
speech to the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry. He said: 
This energy that you have unleashed has done amazing things on the 
planet. It has given so much ability for humankind to magnify their 
efforts.
  There was a lot of positive in that, but then the scientist, Edward 
Teller, went on to say: But there are a couple of challenges here, one 
of which is that there are only so many fossil fuels in the ground and 
so, at some point, we will run out.
  Of course, we know that there are a lot more fossil fuels in the 
ground now than we knew about in 1959.
  He said that there is a second problem. When you burn this stuff, it 
creates an invisible, odorless gas. So it doesn't really sound like a 
challenge, but it traps heat. He said that because it traps heat, it 
will melt the poles, it will raise the oceans, and that will be a 
problem for humankind because humankind lives along the waterways.
  He didn't go into more details than that, but it was one of the first 
direct commentaries--in 1959--about how the age of fossil fuels was 
going to produce significant problems for human kind.
  Now, that speech he gave in 1959. That was 59 years ago, and what 
have we seen in the ensuing period? We have seen a roughly 100-point 
increase in carbon pollution on the planet. Or to take my lifetime, for 
example, in 1956, when I was born, we had about 312 parts per million 
of carbon.
  I will just put this chart up. What we see here on the red is the 
rising line of carbon, going back to roughly when I was born. About in 
here, 1956 until now, we see that it is accelerating, but essentially 
there is a 100 parts-per-million increase. We started at about 312 when 
I was born. We are at about almost 412 now at the very peak. That is a 
30-percent increase in my single lifetime, just a little flash of time 
in terms of the life of this planet--a 32-percent increase in carbon in 
the atmosphere, and it is having a significant impact.
  The most obvious way to look at this impact is the global temperature 
year after year. So here we see the 10 hottest years on record. We see 
that only one of those years, 1998, was before the turn of the century. 
The rest of them have all been since the turn of the century. In fact, 
17 of the 18 hottest years on record have occurred since the year 2000. 
Not only that, but look at the dramatic, dramatic change for 2014, and 
2015, and 2016, and 2017--these last four years--and how much hotter 
the planet is than it was just a few years before. That should trouble 
all of us.
  We have seen all of this when global leaders came together in 2015 in 
Paris--the largest gathering of world leaders in human history. They 
said we have to put limits on what we are doing. We all have to apply a 
strategy of each reducing our carbon dioxide production. I would like 
to say that they have been successful, but they have not. Total global 
carbon production is still going up and, because of that, we are still 
in deep trouble.
  If we didn't have the information just from these bars of the hottest 
years on record, we could turn to a more complicated analysis, or 
several of them, that have come out just recently. Just back in 
October, we had the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, bringing 
the work of scientists across

[[Page S7880]]

the planet together, and it painted a very stark picture of where we 
are right now and how this will only get a lot worse in the years 
ahead.
  Or we can turn to the Trump administration's report that came out the 
day after Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, we give thanks for a lot of 
things. The day after, the administration informed us that we here on 
the planet have a big problem. What did they say in that report? Again, 
this is the Trump administration speaking: ``Earth's climate is now 
changing faster than at any point in the history of modern 
civilization, primarily as a result of human activities.''
  Or we could turn to a third report that just came out called the 
``Global Carbon Project,'' and it says that after plateauing for 
several years, in 2018, global carbon emissions rose 2.7 percent. So we 
are back on an upward trajectory. We hit a recordbreaking 37 billion 
metric tons.
  How did the United States do? Well, similarly, our carbon emissions 
here in the United States went up about 2.5 percent.
  Over the last 2 years, the Trump administration has tried to do 
everything it can to make the situation worse. There were rules in 
place to cut methane leaks because methane is much more of a potent 
global warming gas than is carbon dioxide. So you never want to let it 
out of the pipe. But they worked to weaken those rules. They worked to 
weaken vehicle emission standards so we get more pollution for each 
mile, rather than less pollution.
  I did find one thing of interest; that is, when Judith Garber, the 
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International 
Environmental and Scientific Affairs, went over to Poland to give a 
report for the United States. She bragged about our carbon capture 
utilization and storage technology, and how one powerplant in Texas is 
capturing more than 90 percent of the emissions from its blue gas 
stream. So she was holding this up as a vision of what the United 
States is doing to contribute to the technology in the world and to 
help things be better.
  What she didn't say is, the previous week, on December 6, the Trump 
administration issued a draft rule exempting new powerplants from 
carbon capture. That would have been a much more complete story about 
the record of this administration.
  Of the 20 nations represented at the recent G20 summit in Argentina, 
only the United States refused to sign a nonbinding statement saying 
countries were committed to fighting climate chaos. All we had to do is 
say, yes, we are aware it is a problem, and we are committed to 
fighting it, but the United States turned that down. Over in Poland, we 
joined with Russia and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait--three oil-rich 
nations--to weaken a statement recognizing the international report 
about the challenges we face.
  We need global leadership. Without our help, countries still came 
together in Poland to write a rule book to try to go forward without 
the involvement and leadership of the United States. They worked very 
hard on that rule book, and it addressed things like transparency and 
accountability; it addressed issues related to carbon credits; it 
addressed issues that were designed to develop a strategy for technical 
experts and exactly how you count carbon in your country. It wasn't a 
perfect rule book, but we now have one, and we can make improvements on 
it in the future.
  Think about how much faster we would go forward in tackling this 
problem if we had American leadership. We need this leadership. The 
world needs this leadership to tackle climate chaos. It is not 
something you can do just as good a job 10 years or 20 years from now 
as you can now because you can't get this carbon out of the atmosphere 
easily once it is in there. It stays for hundreds of years. It keeps 
adding to the trapping of heat for hundreds of years. We need to act 
now.
  We are facing the big challenge of feedback loops. What do I mean? Up 
in the Arctic, when you have less ice, you have blue ocean, the 
sunshine goes into the water, and it heats it up more than if it were 
reflecting off ice. So it gets warmer and warmer and warmer.
  How about this? Just a couple weeks ago, a picture was published of a 
lake in Alaska that was boiling--not with heat, but with methane; 
methane bubbling up out of the permafrost underneath the lake at such a 
rapid pace, it was a heavy boiling motion on the top of the water. That 
is a feedback loop that should scare us all because of the enormous 
heat-trapping properties of methane. All across the planet, as it gets 
warmer, permafrost and heat start off-gassing this methane.
  So there we are. We have to move fast. We need American leadership to 
be fully engaged in the vision of Mission 100, going to 100 percent 
clean and renewable energy in the fastest possible time. We have to 
quit subsidizing fossil fuels and start subsidizing renewable energy or 
at least put them on a level playing field with each other. We need a 
green new deal to completely rebuild our energy economy in the United 
States of America and create all kinds of jobs--all kinds of working 
American jobs: sheet metal jobs, electrician jobs, pipefitting jobs, 
jobs of every kind--as we rework the energy economy to build that 
vision of 100 percent renewable energy. Think how many jobs you would 
create if you just proceeded to renovate your house. Now think of the 
tens of millions of jobs if you renovate the entire energy economy of 
the United States of America.
  We need American leadership to work in partnership with other nations 
so every nation holds each other accountable to this vision of 
transitioning to renewable energy.
  We need American leadership to say to Germany: Yes, you have done 
some things very well on solar, but why are you building a Nord Stream 
2 pipeline to bring massive amounts of natural gas from Russia for the 
next-generation dependence on fossil fuel?
  We need to say to Japan: You are putting your entire energy economy 
onto liquid natural gas. How can you meet your Paris obligations? How 
can you be a partner with the rest of the world if you are not willing 
to pursue renewable energy?
  We need leadership in America that says to Australia: You are 
doubling down on coal while your outback is burning in the middle of 
your winter, and your Great Barrier Reef is half dead over the last 
couple of years from water that is too warm and too acidic due to 
climate chaos.
  We need American leadership to tell China: Yes, you are investing in 
renewable energy at home. Great. Speed it up, but why are you financing 
200 coal-powered plants around the world? That is not acceptable. Shut 
that down.
  We have to have American leadership. This is not a question between 
economic development and the environment. Quite the contrary. In this 
case, renovating our energy economy creates a strong environment. It 
allows us to go to the cheapest form of energy on the planet, solar and 
wind.
  Why is it the cheapest? Because there is no fuel. The fuel for solar 
is the Sun. We don't have to pay for that. The fuel for wind are the 
breezes that blow. We don't have to pay for that. In fact, just a few 
months ago Xcel Energy did a request for proposals for new electric 
generating capacity, and it came out at 2 cents per kilowatt hour for 
solar and 3 cents for wind. That is less than burning coal in an 
existing fossil fuel plant.
  If you believe nothing about the damage to our planet because it is 
just too terrifying, and you don't want to hear that bad news, then at 
least turn to the economic opportunity of taking America forward to the 
cheapest, cleanest energy we can possibly have.
  Wells Griffith, the administration's top adviser cop, said: ``We 
strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic 
prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental 
sustainability.'' That is the big lie. That is the big Koch brothers 
lie to the planet; that somehow we must sacrifice our economy in order 
to pursue cleaner energy, when in fact the opposite is true.
  American leadership has helped take the world forward in all kinds of 
technology. Some of those famous moments was our leadership in 
splitting the atom and creating atomic energy, putting a man on the 
Moon, creating the internet, taking on significant diseases, and 
leading the world in wiping them out--diseases like polio. We need that 
kind of leadership today, leadership to work in partnership with the 
world to save our planet.
  I yield to my colleague from Florida.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I have been listening to our colleagues 
with

[[Page S7881]]

rapt attention at the excellence of their presentations and the depth 
of their understanding of this problem.
  I couldn't help but notice on the charts of the Senator from Oregon, 
often the source was NOAA or NASA, two Agencies where we have had to 
worry, in the last 2 years, about the attempted muzzling of science, of 
scientists, and the seeming putdown of science--not by the Agencies 
themselves because they are such great experts. As matter of fact, when 
I have held several hearings at ground zero, which is South Florida, 
where we are seeing the effects of climate change in the rising of the 
seas and now are seeing a mean high tide and the water sloshing over 
the curbs of South Florida cities--having these hearings there, it is 
often NASA scientists and NOAA scientists who testify.
  So I want the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from Delaware who 
preceded him, several others, and the Senator from Massachusetts to 
know how much I appreciate their taking up the banner and keeping on 
this matter.
  I also want to say that if we do not change our processes of putting 
a lot of carbon into the air--and, as the Senator said, it is often 
methane, it is often carbon dioxide--the Earth will continue to heat 
up. If it gets heated up to something over 4 degrees Fahrenheit more 
than the average annual global temperature, that is the point of no 
return. At that point, you can't stop the heating up.
  If we know the disaster now that we see in the sea level rising, the 
greater cost to government with the additional infrastructure, the 
moving of water wells further inland to keep away from the encroaching 
sea water and saltwater intrusion--if we know that, why in the world 
would we not contemplate the ultimate destruction of the planet if it 
gets too hot? I would love to get the Senator's comments.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate so much the comments of my colleague from 
Florida.
  I had the chance to go down to Florida at the end of October at a 
rally to address the challenge of red tide, algae that was growing in 
the ocean that produces a toxin. The toxin is so powerful that it was 
causing a lot of respiratory problems for people who live along the 
gulf coast, and it was killing a lot of animals. People were talking 
about manatees, dolphins, turtles, and fish washing up on the beach. 
Not only did they have the toxins from the red algae, but they had the 
stench from the dying sea life.
  The sense of people who gathered to talk about this was that dramatic 
action is needed; that this was completely compromising the quality of 
life, the health of the oceans, and the ability to harvest food out of 
the ocean. People were saying they were actually taking inland 
vacations; that is, leaving the coast until the air would get better. 
They said that, unfortunately, the circumstances had been in that bad 
condition for 10 months of the last 12 months--meaning they might not 
actually want to go back, at least not keep a home there.
  I thought of the parallel from your State in Florida to my State in 
Oregon because we have an area in Southern Oregon that has been deeply 
afflicted by fire smoke the last two summers. The smoke has tainted 
furniture being sold. It has shut down outdoor events. It has stopped 
people from hiking the Cascade Trail. It is affecting the economy. 
House prices are changing. People are thinking twice about booking 
for--there is a different set of economic impacts. These are only the 
indirect impacts.
  There is the direct impact on the Panhandle of Florida. I just saw 
the pictures of complete devastation when the hurricane came across 
earlier this year. Of course, we saw the pictures of complete 
devastation for some of the communities that the forest fires on the 
West Coast burned to a crisp.
  So our two States and our citizens know there is a problem. Not 
everyone wants to face the underlying cause of methane and carbon 
pollution driving it, but everybody knows there is a problem.
  We are fortunate to have your scientists--your NOAA scientists, your 
NASA scientists--and all the satellite information they are feeding us 
so we can study it and stand on the floor of the Senate and say: We do 
know the cause, and it is our responsibility as leaders of this Nation, 
leaders in the Senate, to proceed to make sure we act aggressively in 
partnership with the world.
  I just want to say I thank you so much for your service in this 
Chamber and your knowledge about the scientific facts and willingness 
to never look away from them and to confront what those facts mean for 
the policies we need to adopt.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I will conclude my remarks by just 
bringing you back to the vision that I had in the window of a 
spacecraft orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes. An hour of that was in 
the daylight of the sun and about a half-hour of that in the shadow of 
the Earth, which is the nighttime, looking at how beautiful the Earth 
was, and yet it looked so fragile. You could look at the rim of the 
Earth, that bright blue band, but right underneath it you could see 
that very thin atmosphere that supports all of our life. With the naked 
eye, from that altitude in the spacecraft orbiting the planet, you 
could actually see how we are messing it up.
  You could see this in flight 34 years ago. As a matter of fact, our 
first launch attempt, 34 years today, took us five tries to get off the 
ground, but once we did, we could see with the naked eye how we are 
messing it up. Coming across Madagascar, the island nation off the 
southeast coast of the continent of Africa, you could see they had cut 
down all the trees. You could immediately see the effects because when 
the rains came, there was no vegetation to hold the topsoil, and the 
topsoil was all running down. From that altitude, looking down, you 
could see that silt going out into the bright blue waters of the Indian 
Ocean. With the naked eye, you can see that. It is such a beautiful 
planet. We best take care of it.
  Indeed, that was the effect upon me of having gone into space. I 
decided I wanted to be a better steward when I came back to Earth. Here 
we are, 34 years later, still fighting--fighting and fighting--to try 
to get people to understand what we are doing to ourselves. I thank 
this Senator, and I thank all the Senators who have spoken here, and I 
want your voices to keep strong and keep consistent and keep at it 
because sooner or later--hopefully, not after a catastrophe--the 
world's population is going to come around and understand that we have 
to be better stewards of our home.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.

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