[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.

                          ____________________