[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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