[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 70 (Tuesday, April 30, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2506-S2508]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, I am joined on the floor by my 
colleague Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who has recently visited coastal 
Louisiana and will share his observations following my remarks. He will 
speak objectively about that which we in Louisiana see not only 
objectively but emotionally.
  We see our coastline melting away, and with the loss of that 
coastline, increasing vulnerability to hurricanes coming off the gulf, 
as well as a loss of villages, beautiful oak trees as salinity kills 
their roots, whole communities, and ways of life. I shall elaborate 
because Louisiana's coastal erosion impacts local businesses, 
communities, and I would say even our entire Nation.
  Some of the Nation's most important trade, energy, and commercial 
fishing assets are associated with South Louisiana. Now, every Senator 
gets up and is proud of his or her State, and they will make statements 
such as that, but these statements are objectively true.
  By tonnage, 5 of the 25 largest ports in the country are located in 
South Louisiana and along the Mississippi River. Twenty percent of the 
Nation's waterborne commerce moves through Louisiana. Approximately, 
11,000 vessels use the lower Mississippi annually. If you think of a 
map of our country, from Wyoming to Pennsylvania, that is the territory 
of our country drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries. If you 
are shipping goods from Ohio to South America, most likely you are 
sending it down the Mississippi. The prosperity of the farmer along the 
Missouri River can depend upon the navigation of the lower Mississippi. 
It is truly a nation-impacting resource, but coastal erosion threatens 
the flow of commerce that is essential and vital to all of these areas.
  Approximately, 20 percent of the Nation's oil supply originates off 
the coast of Louisiana, and countless oilfield service companies are 
located in South Louisiana to process that energy. Companies like 
Cheniere, Tellurian, Sempra, and others are investing billions in 
liquefied natural gas facilities, demonstrating the value of the United 
States but of Louisiana, in particular, in the global LNG market.
  By the way, the workers who work in these rigs or work in these 
industries may live in Louisiana, but sometimes they will live far 
inland. I saw a map where somebody commuted from Montana, coming down 
by airplane, working for a month, and then going back to Montana. So 
the folks who work in our energy industry may come from any part of our 
country. Coastal erosion puts this energy infrastructure in jeopardy, 
threatening our Nation's energy security.
  Louisiana has the largest commercial fishing industry in the lower 
48, harvesting and selling shrimp, crawfish, crabs, and oysters to 
restaurants and grocery stores around the country. Coastal erosion puts 
this industry and the livelihoods of the workers who depend upon it in 
jeopardy.
  For these reasons, among many more, I fight in Congress to protect 
the Louisiana coastline. Senator Whitehouse frequently has a floor 
chart when speaking on the environmental issues and says: ``Time to 
wake up.'' Everyone in Louisiana is very awakened to this crisis.
  Our State has developed its Coastal Master Plan to help restore and 
maintain our coast. I think Senator Whitehouse will refer to that. We 
may not be able to save every parcel of land, but it is imperative that 
we work to protect the vulnerable marshland, as we can, and, in turn, 
the businesses and communities from the effects that we see today.
  By the way, oftentimes we only hear about industry and environmental 
organizations attacking one another, but in Louisiana, we found that 
without one, the other cannot survive. We have found that the 
environmentalists and the energy industry have a way to coexist and to 
work for the betterment of the other. One example is that the State 
receives revenues from offshore energy production and other grant 
programs to protect and restore our coastline. Louisiana's constitution 
mandates that these dollars go to coastal restoration, creating a 
unique partnership where the royalty payments from the energy industry 
fund the environmental restoration upon which my State's future 
depends.
  Projects funded with this revenue include the Mid-Barataria and Mid-
Breton diversion projects, designed to direct more sediment from the 
Mississippi River to rebuild marshland lost due to coastal erosion, in 
part because the Mississippi River was previously leveed. Other 
projects seek to protect vulnerable marshland from further losses by 
controlling saltwater intrusion in the Houma Navigation Canal or the 
Calcasieu River ship channel. However, more needs to be done to protect 
Louisiana's coastline and the impact upon the United States' economic 
and energy security.
  In a previous Congress, I introduced legislation in the House and now 
in the Senate to amend the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act to 
provide more offshore energy revenue to energy-producing States in the 
gulf to fund coastal restoration and other environmental protection 
projects. Most recently, in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act bill and in 
another bill, there was an increase to the current cap on GOMESA 
dollars for fiscal years 2020 and 2021. I am currently working on 
another version of revenue-sharing legislation for the Gulf States, 
which I plan to introduce later this spring.
  As part of that effort, working with Senator Whitehouse's staff, we 
have been working on legislation to create a revenue-sharing program 
with the Federal and State governments for offshore wind to fund 
coastal resiliency efforts, an issue important to us and probably about 
80 percent of America's population that I roughly judge lives within 
100 miles of the coastline.
  I look forward to working with Senator Whitehouse and other 
colleagues to ensure that the coastal restoration needs important to 
Louisiana and to the United States are met. Again, I so appreciate 
Senator Whitehouse's coming to visit and learn more about coastal 
Louisiana. I look forward to working with him on our mutual interests 
to protect our environment and our communities.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am very grateful to be joined by 
the senior Senator from Louisiana on the floor today. I think this is 
about 240 in my series of ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, and this is the 
first time we have a bipartisan presentation on the floor, which is 
significant to me.
  I had the great pleasure of visiting Louisiana last month to see 
firsthand how a combination of decreased sedimentation, erosion, 
subsidence, habitat degradation, and rising seas are threatening 
Louisiana's coastline. I was joined by Congressman Garret Graves, 
former Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority chairman, 
and I thank the Congressman for sharing his time and expertise of 
Louisiana's coastal issues. I have also enjoyed working with 
Louisiana's junior Senator on coastal resiliency efforts, and I look 
forward to continuing that work.

[[Page S2507]]

  Senator Cassidy and I share home States that are lively, diverse, 
coastal, proud, and a little bit eccentric and that have great food. 
There is a lot in common between Louisiana and Rhode Island. Like Rhode 
Island, Louisiana's coast drives the State's economy and has shaped the 
State's history and culture. Coastal Louisiana is home to around 2 
million people and is responsible for over a quarter of the continental 
United States' fisheries landings. According to the U.S. Geological 
Survey, Louisiana's wetlands today represent about 40 percent of the 
wetlands of the continental United States and about 80 percent of the 
losses.
  Coastal wetlands are critical habitat and nurseries for commercially 
important fisheries and other wildlife. They also improve coastal water 
quality and buffer against storm surge, flooding, and other storm 
effects. Across the United States, we have lost ground. About half of 
our original wetlands in the past 200 years are gone. That is 
significant, and the scale and speed of wetland loss in coastal 
Louisiana is almost impossible to comprehend. From 1932 until 2010, the 
State lost nearly 1,900 square miles, or 25 percent, of its coastal 
land. All the red is land lost from 1932 to 2010. Between 1985 and 
2010, the State was losing ground, about a football field's worth, 
every hour. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike caused the loss 
of more than 300 square miles of wetlands.
  I saw firsthand what Louisiana's shredded coastline looks like from 
the air. The Mississippi River is one of the most heavily managed 
rivers in the world and is certainly one of the most important rivers 
in the world. A combination of flood prevention and irrigation 
interventions upriver have cut off the tap of sediment that used to 
flow naturally to Louisiana's wetlands. Now erosion outpaces natural 
rebuilding.
  Though erosion is a natural phenomenon, oil and gas development 
exacerbates the problem. The dredged tracks left in the marsh by 
exploration and pipelines accelerate erosion, and here you see photos 
we took from our little airplane of some of those dredged channels. 
Strong storms, ratcheting up in strength on warmer ocean waters, thanks 
to climate change, also take a heavy toll on these vulnerable marshes, 
and you can see how these have been just washed out by the sea down 
here as well, again, looking out from our little aircraft.
  Thank you, by the way, to SouthWings for sharing their aircraft with 
us so we could fly and see this.
  On top of sediment loss, the Louisiana coastline is also sinking at 
around one-third of an inch each year due to the natural movement of 
the Earth's surface, and oil and gas development probably accelerates 
that process.
  Then, there is sea level rise. Louisiana's Coastal Planning and 
Restoration Authority estimates as much as 2.7 feet of sea level rise 
by 2050. Tulane University researchers concluded that current sea level 
rise estimates for Louisiana are actually probably too conservative, as 
the tide gauges used to track sea level rise don't accurately account 
for the fact that coastal marshes are sinking at the same time. So 
these current sea level rise projections don't fully express what the 
relative sea level rise is expected to be.
  Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana undertook the 
daunting task of assembling a Coastal Master Plan. This 50-year, $50 
billion plan identifies 124 projects aimed at maintaining 800 square 
miles of land over time. Experts there hope to reduce over $150 billion 
in damage by 2067 through a combination of hard infrastructure, 
restoring shoreline and barrier islands, diverting sediment, and 
protecting structures by doing things like flood-proofing and elevating 
them.
  The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which led the 
development of this master plan, looked at three potential scenarios 
for the next 50 years. It considered changes in precipitation, sea 
level rise, subsidence, and storm frequency and intensity.
  We will look at the medium scenario. Under the medium scenario, the 
Coastal Authority expects more precipitation, over 2 feet of sea level 
rise, stronger though less frequent storms, and a continued slowing of 
subsidence. The agency then modeled what the coastline would look like 
50 years out under these medium conditions with and without this $50 
billion investment. Without the $50 billion investment, all that is red 
is lost to the sea. With the investment, there is still a lot of red 
lost, but these green areas show areas that are saved, and if you live 
in one of these green areas, hunt in one of these green areas, and have 
a business in one of these green areas, it is pretty darn important to 
you to see that they are saved.
  Louisiana is at a point of no return, where the forward march of sea 
level rise and stronger storms will continue to erode the State's 
shore. Although Louisianians are faced with this discouraging future, I 
was very impressed by the optimism of the Louisianians I met. I spoke 
with Governor John Bel Edwards, with CPRA Chairman Chip Kline, CPRA 
Director Bren Haase, and Deputy for Coastal Activities Megan Terrell 
and had dinner together with many of them and Senator Cassidy to 
discuss implementation of this Coastal Master Plan.
  The Governor, who has said that ``climate change is real; I do not 
deny it,'' is committed to implementing the Coastal Master Plan. The 
price tag is hefty, but the potential losses to Louisiana are much 
greater. I also went to Baton Rouge and met with Mayor-President Sharon 
Weston Broome. While I was there in Baton Rouge, the Mississippi was 
steadily climbing the levees that protect the city. These are the 
handrails for the steps down to the Mississippi River, and, as you can 
see, it was high enough that it was not only over the steps but over 
the handrails.
  By March 21 of this year, the number of days at or above flood stage 
in Baton Rouge was on track to set new records. The mayor pointed out 
that getting the help communities need to prepare for severe but 
unnamed storms can be difficult, which is why I so appreciate working 
with Senator Cassidy on ways to improve our response to coastal 
resilience, both of ours being Coastal States.
  Following the release of the fifth National Climate Assessment back 
in November, Mayor-President Broome said:

       After the 1,000-year rain event of 2016 in my city, I have 
     been paying close attention to credible projections for 
     future events. . . . the combined impacts of sea level rise 
     and storm surge in the southeast have the potential to cost 
     up to $60 billion each year in 2050 and up to $99 billion in 
     2090; that level of impact cannot be dismissed or put off for 
     the next generation to deal with.

  Baton Rouge is home to Louisiana State University, the LSU Tigers, 
and the impressive Center for River Studies. This is the main room at 
the Center for River Studies. This is an enormous physical model of the 
Mississippi River through which actual water runs and through which 
they can put small, sort of simulated sediment to model sediment flow, 
and these projectors on the roof can project down onto the surface to 
show various models and to provide all this color. So that is actually 
like a flat movie screen with projectors on the surface, which is 
three-dimensional in the sense that they built a model of the 
Mississippi River through it. It is an amazing educational tool, and it 
lets researchers at LSU and at the Army Corps of Engineers and others 
better understand the sediment dynamics in the Mississippi River.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a terrific 
article by the legendary Louisiana Pulitzer prize-winning outdoor 
columnist Bob Marshall.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                             [Apr. 7, 2019]

    Our Coast Isn't Disappearing or Vanishing; It's Being Violently 
                               Destroyed

                           (By Bob Marshall)

       Today's tip for Louisiana's coastal survival: Ban the terms 
     ``vanishing'' and ``disappearing'' from being used in 
     connection with the words ``Louisiana coast.''
       You see, in the world of addiction recovery, practitioners 
     know words are important. Until the addict admits to having a 
     problem, they will never find a cure.
       For example, the abuser who says, ``I just get a little 
     high now and then'' will never kick the habit until he says, 
     ``I am an addict.''
       So it has occurred to me one of the reasons for the 
     inability of Louisiana residents and politicians to take some 
     necessary steps to save what's left of our coast is that 
     we've been taught to use gentle euphemisms for a major cause 
     of our demise: We say our wetlands and coast have been 
     ``vanishing'' or ``disappearing.''
       Nothing could be further from the truth.

[[Page S2508]]

       Those descriptions evoke a gentle passage, a slow, almost 
     comforting process of fading into history. And the term 
     ``lost coast'' is equally off target. It's like saying we 
     misplaced a treasured item, or it was taken by an act of God.
       None of those gentle things caused 2,000 square miles of 
     marsh, swamp and uplands to become open water since the 
     1930s.
       They were destroyed. By us.
       And anyone who has spent time on the wet side of our 
     levees--or has driven across the wetlands on elevated 
     roadways--could see it wasn't a gentle act.
       This was a brutal assault, a battery, a vicious mugging. We 
     used machines to dig up and toss aside marshes and cypress 
     tupelo swamps to turn more than 10,000 miles (at last count) 
     of our coastal zone into canals for barges to float drilling 
     rigs, to lay tens of thousands of miles of pipelines for oil 
     and gas, and to carve out shipping channels to make it easier 
     and faster for boats to assist in the destruction. This was 
     no gentle, whispering vanishing act; it was a noisy, diesel-
     fumed mauling of a pristine ecosystem we claim to love.
       It was as violent and ugly to our homeland as the way 
     companies eviscerated Western desert landscapes to strip mine 
     for copper, or the way others dynamited entire Appalachian 
     mountaintops--throwing their waste into adjacent streams--to 
     make it easiest to harvest coal profits.
       No one in Nevada or West Virginia says those deserts and 
     mountains ``disappeared'' or ``vanished.'' They admit they 
     were willfully destroyed.
       Our ongoing embrace of these misleading euphemisms for what 
     we did hides an even uglier aspect of this disaster: our 
     silence. In many ways, this has been the Kitty Genovese of 
     environmental crimes--because most of us stood by and did 
     nothing even as the crime was being committed in front of us, 
     then just walked silently away. We chose not to get involved 
     because we were told it could cost us money.
       Yes, levees on the rivers presaged the crimes, but those 
     were unavoidable if we intended to live here. And 36 to 60 
     percent of what was destroyed--the portion researchers tie to 
     oil and gas work--might still be here today if we had chosen 
     another way.
       Maybe we didn't truly understand the systemic damage we 
     were doing until the 1960s. But even then--even when the 
     crime reports came out and the perpetrators were identified--
     we chose to look the other way.
       Worse, we have taught the rest of the nation to join us in 
     that deception. Google ``Louisiana coast and disappearing,'' 
     and you'll get 3.1 million hits. We have been so successful 
     in this dissembling that our denial is now repeated regularly 
     by journalists. The latest example is an in-depth New Yorker 
     piece entitled ``Louisiana's Disappearing Coast''--which gave 
     one sentence to the impact of those 10,000 miles of canals.
       Indeed, our penchant for avoiding responsibility for our 
     self-destruction extends to other another crime against our 
     landscape and our children's futures. Many of our politicians 
     and residents now are ignoring or denying the mugging of the 
     atmosphere by the emissions many of us help produce, 
     emissions that are pushing the sea level rise acceleration 
     that will send us to even earlier watery grave.
       The only way to kick this deadly habit is to finally admit 
     we have a problem.
       So, let's take the first step. Let's look in the mirror and 
     say to the people we see staring back that our coast isn't 
     disappearing or vanishing. It has been, and continues to be, 
     willfully destroyed by our inaction--and we have no future 
     here unless we kick that habit.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, after Baton Rouge, I went to the 
legendary city of New Orleans where I met with Mayor LaToya Cantrell. 
Around half of that city lives below sea level. Strong partnerships 
between the public and private sectors help make the city a national 
leader in resiliency planning.
  In 2017, the city's ``Climate Action for a Resilient New Orleans'' 
plan pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030. In 
March, New Orleans sued 11 oil, gas, and pipeline companies for damage 
to the wetlands that protect the city from storm surge and flooding.
  Mayor Cantrell spoke to me about ``learning to live with water'' in 
the post-Katrina city. I visited community leaders in the recovering 
Lower Ninth Ward who are turning wetlands restoration projects in the 
area into education, community engagement, tourism, and other 
opportunities to rebuild a healthy connection between the city and the 
water that surrounds it.
  I also met with a number of community leaders to discuss how 
businesses, nonprofits, researchers, and government agencies work 
together to save Louisiana's working coastline. I heard from a business 
owner about a property he was having difficulty insuring due to 
anticipated flood risks.
  I learned about the changes fishermen see in the gulf and how some of 
them have switched to nontraditional fisheries or changed careers 
completely. Hunters and recreational fishermen also notice worrying 
changes in their sportsmen's paradise.
  Though the evidence of climate change is everywhere in Louisiana and 
is reshaping the lives of Louisianans, the phrase ``climate change'' 
still brings apprehension in some circles.
  Let me go back. This is us in the Ninth Ward, and here we are with 
some of the boats down at the fishing pier off of the Mississippi. I 
will describe a little bit more. This is the inlet that flows to Davis 
Pond, and it has brought water and sediment to the Davis Pond area.
  You can't see this very clearly, but these are white pelicans. I had 
never seen so many together in my life. It is rare for a Rhode Islander 
to see a white pelican. Here they pile in thick because the fish get 
drawn in coming off the river, and it makes a wonderful chow line. So 
there is a big population of white pelicans that have learned to show 
up this time of year and enjoy the chow line at this particular entry 
point.
  I do want to say that although there is some hesitancy in talking 
about climate change in some quarters, some people are not hesitant, 
and I refer to the legendary Bob Marshall, who has described this as 
the ``mugging of the atmosphere'' by our emissions.
  Having spoken with resiliency experts and seen Louisiana by both sky 
and in that terrific LSU model, I then took to the water to visit this 
restoration work in action. This is Davis Pond here, and it was 
conceived as a freshwater diversion to push back saltwater intrusion 
into the marshes with counterpressure from added saltwater, but it 
turned out that it grew marshland, and it is now teaming with coastal 
wildlife and dozens of different bird species.
  Here we are. We traveled in an airboat to get down there. I also 
visited hunter and fisherman Ryan Lambert at his lodge in Buras. He 
showed me some of his personal efforts to restore the delta and its 
wetlands. I am out here on his boat driving around the area that he has 
been working, pointing out how quickly, if you give nature a chance, 
she can rebound. A scientist with the National Wildlife Federation 
counted over 30 species of birds just while we were waiting to board 
the boat, and he spotted over 40 species while we were out on the 
water.
  The sights and sounds of a healthy marsh were encouraging and a 
reminder of nature's God-blessed ability to find a way to not only 
survive but flourish, given the chance.
  Louisiana faces challenges ahead, but Louisianans are united in a 
David versus Goliath-scale battle to protect their State. To achieve 
that goal, I believe Louisiana must urge its fossil fuel tenants to 
accept responsibility for the climate crisis and commit to being part 
of the solution. Louisiana can be the crucible of compromise between 
the environment and the industry.
  So thank you to all the wonderful advocates, researchers and 
community and State leaders I met in my visit to Louisiana. Thank you 
to Senator Cassidy for his hospitality to me while I was down there. 
The dedication of the Louisianans I met to their coast is admirable and 
inspiring, and Louisiana's coastal plan is a model for other coastal 
States.
  I would also like to thank the senior Senator from Louisiana for 
welcoming me the way he did and for joining me here today. This is a 
big moment for me to have this be the first bipartisan ``Time to Wake 
Up.'' We share a commitment to giving our coast the respect, attention, 
and support they are due. I look forward to working together with 
Senator Cassidy to find opportunities for our government to play its 
role in supporting our coastal resiliency and restoration.
  Thank you, my friend.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.