[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 51 (Monday, March 25, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1946-S1947]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I understand that this week it is the
intention of the majority leader to put on the floor of this Chamber a
resolution that is related to taking on the enormous challenge of
climate chaos. If I just heard that announced, I would say ``well
done'' because it is way past time for us to wrestle with this calamity
affecting all of our States and all countries around the globe.
Temperatures across the planet are going up. All kinds of impacts are
being felt. So if the majority leader said, ``Yes, we are going to rise
to our responsibilities and have a serious debate on the floor; we are
going to take a bill to committee; we are going to wrestle with how we
in America cannot only take on carbon pollution here but show the type
of leadership that mobilizes countries around the world and mobilizes
leadership around the world,'' well, then, I would say ``well done.''
But, unfortunately, that is not what is about to happen. The majority
leader says he doesn't want to talk about climate. So he wants to put a
resolution on the floor with no debate in the committee, no serious
effort to develop a series of policies to take on this calamity, and
just to create a farce out of this Chamber. This Chamber, which I love,
is being used in this horrific fashion, taking very serious issues that
threaten our economy and threaten our natural resources and making fun
of them and choosing to do nothing.
It was Henry David Thoreau who said: ``What is the use of a house if
you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'' But I am sure that
when Henry David Thoreau spoke he had no inkling of the challenges we
would be facing here in the year 2019.
The challenge in this year of 2019 is that in a single human lifetime
the carbon dioxide in the air has gone up 30 percent--trapping enormous
quantities of heat, raising the temperature of our oceans, where 90
percent of the heat is trapped, changing the weather that we experience
in all kinds of ways, and driving a huge increase in forest fires in
our country. If that alone were the impact, that would be enough to
take action. In fact, if we just look at that one issue of forest
fires, looking at the Fourth National Climate Assessment, it is
estimated that the change in climate has doubled the acres burned by
forest fires--just that one issue.
In my home State of Oregon, we really see this. In the Northwest
there is a beautiful forest. The landscape, particularly west of the
Cascades, has the most incredible old-growth forest and timber stands
you would ever see, and it is burning at an unprecedented rate.
Why is that? Well, for one, we have summers that are hotter and dryer
than before. That hot, dry period extends for about 2 months longer
than before. Then, we have storms that are more likely to have
lightning strikes than before. Combine this very dry forest with
lightning strikes, and you have a huge problem on your hands. It isn't
just some remote forest that is burning. It is our natural resources,
our ecosystems, and our timber stands. It is also having an impact on
the commerce of our cities and the recreational industry.
That is not the only impact that we see in my home State of Oregon.
We also see that the acidification of the Pacific Ocean from carbon
dioxide is starting to make it hard for shellfish to make shells. Most
significantly, 10 years ago we discovered that the acidity of the
Pacific Ocean was killing the newly born oysters as they tried to
create a shell and to do so in more acidic water. We have to change the
chemistry of the ocean water now. We have to buffer it in order to
enable the oyster industry to survive. What kind of canary in the coal
mine is that? What kind of warning is it that the shellfish is in
trouble because the ocean is becoming too acidic?
You may say: Why does that have anything to do with carbon in the
atmosphere? It has everything to do with carbon in the atmosphere,
because the ocean waves absorb the carbon dioxide, it becomes carbonic
acid, and that acid makes the ocean more acidic.
I stand on the beach in Oregon and look out at the Pacific Ocean. Of
course, you can only look out at about 20 miles of the sea, but all you
see is water. It is hard to imagine that you would have to go thousands
of miles to hit another continent. Yet, that ocean, as vast as it is,
has changed its chemistry in our lifetime, not just becoming more
acidic but becoming warmer. In fact, we have a calamity ongoing right
now off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. The kelp is
disappearing. With the kelp disappearing, that is a concern for every
fisherman. The kelp forests provide a lot of shelter and food for a lot
of species. How do we know what impact that will have on our fisheries,
which are so important to our coastal economy?
We have the fact that the change in snowpack is affecting our winter
sports. The lowered average snowpack just means warmer, smaller trout
and salmon streams in the summer. People want to fish. They want
healthy streams, not streams that are too tiny and too hot for the
salmon and the trout. You see the impact we are having on forests,
farming, fishing, and on the cities from smoke and on human health as
people inhale that smoke. It is not just an impact on the economy. It
is an impact on our health and our children's health. That is just in
my State.
So I would ask my colleagues across the aisle, every one of them, to
say: Do you know what? We have a responsibility to take on issues that
are doing great damage.
That damage isn't just wildfires. We are seeing more intense weather
events across the country. This is in all kinds of places--severe
weather storms, droughts, hail, tornadoes, and, probably most
significantly, more powerful hurricanes, like Hurricane Michael and
Hurricane Florence just last year in 2018. Of course we saw the trio of
hurricanes in 2017.
You say: Are hurricanes connected to all of this? How can that be?
Hurricanes take their energy from the ocean. When the ocean is
warmer, it creates a fiercer hurricane. It takes that energy, and it
becomes winds that are moving faster and a hurricane that is larger and
endures longer when it hits land.
It is estimated that extreme weather events cost Americans nearly a
half trillion dollars over the last 3 years. In 2017 alone, between the
fires and the hurricanes, damages were estimated at $300 billion. That
is real damage. That is real economic damage happening here in the
United States of America. When talking about $1 billion of damage, that
is talking about a lot of families being set back a long way. We are
talking about a lot of infrastructure being ripped up, and we are
talking about lives lost.
Despite this enormous damage and despite lives lost, the majority
leader wants to create a farce over an issue threatening our country
and our planet? That is just wrong. It is way beyond wrong--to see the
face of a calamity and to do nothing. Well, it could go with all kinds
of adjectives--none of them complimentary, not a one.
We should be the opposite here, taking on the responsibility of
addressing these issues that are having an impact--having an impact in
the heartland, having an impact on our soy and corn crops, having an
impact on the coasts, having an impact in the Southeast, with
hurricanes, and the Northeast, with Lyme disease and spreading tick
infestations, the loss of the moose, and the lobsters heading north
along the ocean into Canada.
So we must not bury our heads in the tar sands. We cannot allow the
political donations that are present now in our corrupted governmental
system to deter us from doing the work we need to do. Yet that appears
to be exactly what is happening. We have a broader responsibility
here--a responsibility to our sons and daughters. We have a
responsibility to our grandchildren and their sons and daughters and
their grandchildren.
[[Page S1947]]
This contamination of our atmosphere cannot be easily undone. Carbon
dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. So we have to
prevent it from being put there in the first place. There is so much we
can do together. There is so much we can do to say this challenge is
real, to say we will work together as Americans to take this on and to
help lead the world in ending this horrific damage that will persist
for hundreds of years.
There is so much to do. We can create millions of good-paying jobs
together for America and export products to the world instead of buying
products from the world. We can make sure that as we do that and as we
invest in an energy transformation, not only do we create millions of
good-paying jobs, but we also make sure that rural America is not left
behind, that our former fossil fuel communities are not left behind,
and that our frontline urban communities that have so often been left
behind are not left behind. We can make an economic renaissance that
goes into every corner of our Nation where often economic improvements
have not gone before.
These elements are the core elements of the Green New Deal. One is to
face reality and together say: Yes, we have a big challenge in front of
us of devastating consequences and growing consequences. Maybe it was a
theory 20 years ago, but today it is a reality in every town across
this country. It is a big calamity. We should say we will work together
to take it on. That is the second basic principle, coming together, and
then there is a surge of activity to develop alternatives and deploy
alternatives to the use of fossil fuels.
The third piece of this puzzle is that in so doing, we will create
millions of good-paying jobs. Isn't that what so many leaders run on? I
certainly love the idea of good-paying jobs.
My dad, a union mechanic, was able to raise a family and be part of
the great middle class of America and be part of the American dream:
buy a house, take the family camping on vacations, participate in
having a 40-hour workweek, and get paid overtime if you had to work
more. Yet that dream is further and further out of reach. Don't we want
to create those better paying jobs in the process of renovating our
energy economy?
Years ago, I undertook tearing the insides out of a house in the
1980s and then rebuilt that house. When you rebuild a house, there is
plumbing, wiring, framing, sheetrock, windows, and roofing. I would buy
a lot of stuff to renovate that house. That type of construction
renovation puts a lot of people to work. If construction renovation
puts people to work, think about how renovating our entire energy
economy puts people to work. That is the third core principle.
The fourth is to make sure those economic gains go to those who have
previously been left behind. That is an important message for rural
America. That is an important message for urban frontline communities
previously left behind. There is so much work to do and so many ways we
can make sure these communities participate.
When I go out to Oregon, I do a townhall in every county every year--
36 counties. Twenty-two of them are rural. In political terms, you
would describe them as deep red. People are frustrated by the very low
wages and the very low number of jobs in those rural communities. Now
we have an opportunity to say we have to go to work in an intensive
way--a way that can create jobs all across this Nation and all across
rural America. Instead, we have the majority leader bringing the issue
to the floor as a farce. That is profoundly disturbing.
I encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let us not
miss this opportunity before us--an opportunity for America to lead, an
opportunity for America to build its economy, an opportunity for
America to lead the world. We cannot afford to miss that opportunity.
America cannot afford for us to miss that opportunity, and the world
cannot afford for us to fail.
Thank you.
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