[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 120 (Wednesday, July 17, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4916-S4918]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, for a long time, people opposed to 
climate action said that tackling climate change would be too costly, 
would harm economic growth, would be bad for American businesses, and 
would kill jobs. It turns out these were phony arguments peddled by 
fossil fuel interests. It turns out they are flat wrong. It turns out 
that actually the true economic hazard is not climate action but 
climate inaction.
  We have recently seen an explosion of warnings from economic 
regulators, central banks, insurers, investment firms, and risk 
analysts that we face economic peril if we fail to address climate 
change. These are not green groups; these are neutral business and 
economic experts--the people whose job it is to protect us from risks 
to financial stability and the people who make a business calculation 
about what we stand to lose from unabated climate change.
  Their warnings are many, and their warnings are serious. One example: 
Just last month, Moody's warned that climate change will increasingly 
disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property and will hurt 
worker health and productivity across the globe. Moody's, the credit 
rating giant, estimated--hang on--$69 trillion. We talk about millions 
around here pretty readily. We talk about billions when we are talking 
about really big money. Moody's estimated $69 trillion of economic 
damage globally by 2100, even if we limit global warming to only 2 
degrees Celsius. The Presiding Officer and I are probably not going to 
pay a lot of that. The pages will. We are not currently on track for 
only 2 degrees Celsius; we are currently on track for around 3 degrees 
of warming, which Moody's said would put us at further risk of hitting 
tipping points beyond which lurk far larger, more lasting, and more 
ominous dangers.
  Here is another example: In May, the European Central Bank warned 
that climate change presents significant economic risks to the economy, 
to asset values, and to financial stability.
  The longer we wait, the longer we fiddle around in this Chamber not 
doing anything, the more it will cost to protect ourselves in the 
future. That old saying about a stitch in time saving nine applies here 
as well.
  The ECB said that these risks could cause what they called ``systemic 
issues,'' especially where markets do not price climate-related risks 
correctly. ``Systemic issues'' is a bland term. It is central banker-
speak. What it means is something pretty serious. Systemic issues means 
this is so bad that it could take down the entire economy. The European 
Central Bank is not alone. The Bank of England has been warning of 
systemic risk from climate change or from not doing anything about 
climate change for some time now. I think there are now over 30 
sovereign banks that have made or adopted such warnings.
  Just last week, Senator Schatz asked Federal Chairman Powell whether 
severe weather is increasing due to climate change. Powell did not 
equivocate. He said simply: ``I believe it is, yes.'' That is the 
leader of the most influential bank in the world accepting without 
hesitation a major threat to our financial system, echoed also by a 
Federal Reserve report out of California. Climate change, they point 
out, is a major threat to our financial system, to everything from 
coastal real estate values, which Freddie Mac predicts will crash, to 
stock market share prices, about which there are numerous adverse 
predictions if this goes unchecked.
  America's biggest financial institutions see what is coming. In the 
House Financial Services Committee hearing in April, CEOs from six of 
America's biggest banks agreed that climate change is a serious risk to 
the financial system, and they said they are trying to take action to 
address that risk.
  There is an unfortunate sidebar, however. Big American banks that 
claim to support climate action include four of our biggest banks: 
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America. These 
banks all supported the Paris Agreement. In 2017, the CEOs of JPMorgan 
Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America even signed a letter urging 
President Trump not to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

  These banks are all trying to reduce their own emissions, and all 
have commitments to get to 100 percent renewable electricity--all good 
steps. But the biggest direct impact these banks have on climate is not 
through the promises they make but through the investments they make. 
On that score, these four banks are steering us to climate calamity.
  A group of environmental organizations released a report in March 
adding up fossil fuel financing by 33 large, private sector banks from 
around the world. These four American banks--JPMorgan Chase, Wells 
Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America, which all support the Paris 
Agreement and are all reducing their own carbon emissions--they are the 
four largest funders of fossil fuel projects. Combined, they invested 
over $580 billion in new fossil fuel projects over the past 3 years. 
JPMorgan was the worst, with $196 billion of fossil fuel funding in 3 
years. JPMorgan was also the top U.S. funder of tar sands, Arctic oil 
and gas, and coal mining--the most emissions-intensive fuels.
  The big American banks accounted for over a third of the surveyed 
global fossil fuel financing since the Paris Agreement was signed in 
2015. Worse, their investment in fossil fuel projects actually 
increased after the Paris Agreement. Wells Fargo nearly doubled its 
fossil fuel financing from 2016 to 2018. Obviously, these investments 
in new fossil fuel projects do not align with the banks' stated support 
of the Paris Agreement. The math doesn't work. The Paris Agreement aims 
to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to try to limit 
warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
  A study just published by Nature shows that the world's existing 
fossil fuel infrastructure will emit enough carbon pollution to blow us 
past 1.5 degrees of warming. The authors wrote that little or no 
additional CO2-emitting infrastructure can be commissioned. 
Little or no additional CO2-emitting infrastructure can be 
commissioned if we are to meet the Paris Agreement climate goals.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the article titled ``How Much 
Global Warming Is Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Locking In?'' from Inside 
Climate News be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.
  That is the math. If the banks are true to their stated support of 
the Paris Agreement, they should not finance any new fossil fuel 
projects--unless, of course, they also finance capturing all the carbon 
emissions, and they are not doing that.
  It is true that these banks have announced goals to increase their 
financing of clean and sustainable projects, but they are only goals, 
and combined, even their goals only amount to around $100 billion per 
year, which is about half of what they have actually invested in fossil 
fuel projects each year since Paris.
  Citi even released a report finding that maintaining our current 
fossil fuel-heavy economy would cost more than moving to clean, low-
carbon economy--cost more to stay in the fossil fuel economy than to 
move to a clean energy economy--and they said that is not including 
factoring in the economic damage from climate change, which Citi 
reckons could total $72 trillion--$72 trillion under business as usual. 
Citi projects that transitioning away from the projects they are 
investing in to a low-carbon economy will save money on its own and it 
will help avoid tens of trillions of dollars in further economic 
damages. Yet they aren't investing consistent with their principles.
  According to the International Monetary Fund, fossil fuels are 
subsidized to the tune of $650 billion per year in the United States. 
So there is no question that this massive subsidy--probably the biggest 
subsidy in the history of the planet--makes investing in fossil fuels 
profitable. But the contradiction remains. These banks all say they 
support the Paris Agreement. They all recognize that it is economically 
vital to

[[Page S4917]]

reach the goals of the Paris Agreement. Yet their investments would 
ensure that the Paris Agreement fails.
  It would help banks change their ways if companies had to disclose 
their climate risks better. I just joined Senator Warren in a bill we 
have done to require publicly traded companies to reveal their exposure 
to climate-related risks.
  But we have a proposal--Senator Schatz, Senator Heinrich, and I--to 
help resolve the very root of the banks' contradiction: that Congress 
put a price on carbon emissions and an end to fossil fuel subsidies. 
Indeed, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recommended this in the House 
Financial Services Committee hearing in April. When asked whether his 
bank will phase out fossil fuel funding and align its investments with 
the goals of the Paris Agreement, he said: ``If you want to fix this 
problem, you are going to have to do something like a carbon tax.''
  So, bankers, help us do that. If these bankers think climate is a 
serious problem--and they say they do--and that putting a price on 
carbon pollution is the solution, which virtually every economist 
agrees with--hello, you need to come here and fight to make it 
happen. Banks have political influence. Lord knows, they never stop 
throwing their influence around here when it comes to financial 
regulations or tax giveaways. Where are they in Congress on climate? It 
is a long pause waiting for them to show up. So, guys, talk is cheap. 
Come on. Put a little effort into this. Pretend it is a financial 
regulation.

  The carbon fee bill of Senators Schatz, Heinrich, and Gillibrand 
would help these banks align their investments with their stated goals. 
Our bill meets the key standards of being effective on carbon 
emissions, driving far more reductions than the Clean Power Plan, 
revenue neutral in the economy, and border adjustable for trade. It 
meets all three. Plus, it will help avoid the dreadful economic 
warnings now so frequently heard from very responsible sources about 
doing nothing--warnings of coastal property values collapsing, warning 
of a carbon asset bubble crash, even warnings of big storms breaking 
the bank of the insurance system.
  To Citi's credit, it is a member of the newly formed CEO climate 
dialogue group which will, I hope, become a strong advocate for a 
Federal price on carbon pollution. That is the place where essentially 
every economist--huge numbers of Nobel Prize winning economists, many 
Republicans, former economic advisers to Presidents, former Treasury 
Secretaries, former EPA Administrators, former Members of Congress--
have all come down.
  It is pretty clear what the solution is: It is a price on carbon that 
is revenue neutral and border adjustable and will reduce emissions 
enough to keep us under 1.5 degrees. That is not hard to figure out. It 
is getting there that is hard because, so far, the net pressure of 
corporate America in Congress remains hostile to climate action, 
whether from indifference by companies themselves or, worse, from the 
hostile presence of corporate trade associations like the U.S. Chamber 
of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, two leading 
business lobby groups recently outed as the two worst climate 
obstructors in Congress.
  The last I checked, a clean and green economy involved a lot of 
commerce. And building a new clean grid and new clean technologies, 
whether wind or solar or batteries or storage or distributed 
generation, was a lot of manufacturing.
  We still await the explanation from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 
the National Association of Manufacturers why they are 100 percent 
aligned with the denial and obstruction of the fossil fuel industry and 
0 percent aligned with their membership who, in many cases, are leaning 
in to climate action.
  There is a separate flotilla of front groups doing the dirty work of 
the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry doesn't want to show 
up and identify itself as the fossil fuel industry; then the game is 
too obvious. So they put up all these front groups with ridiculous 
names about Heartlands and Heritages and famous figures, and they are 
front groups for fossil fuel. All those groups add to the corporate 
pressure against climate action from the Chamber and from NAM.
  So for banks like these, who claim to take climate change very 
seriously, it would really make a difference if they would take an 
interest in climate change, not just on their websites, not just in 
their talking points, but in their investments in the market and 
steered away from fossil fuel and into clean energy and in their 
influence here in Congress.
  We have to crack this nut here in Congress. There is no pathway to 
avoiding climate calamity that does not require Congress to act. 
Congress must act if we are going to get ahead of this problem. It is 
not optional. You can't shrug as a business leader who cares about 
climate and say: No, we are just going to do our thing; we don't need 
to worry about what happens in Congress.
  There is no pathway to avoiding the climate crisis without action in 
Congress. The fossil fuel industry knows that. That is why they are 
here, red in tooth and claw. The sensible, honorable parts of the 
business community that want to do something about climate change need 
to show up and push back because, otherwise, the hydraulics are against 
us.
  At this point, the science is clear. The economics are clear. The 
warnings are serious--systemic risks--and they are many. Neither our 
planet nor our economy can afford massive investments in new fossil 
fuel projects, not by them, not by anyone. Time is short. We can no 
longer afford corporate America to be AWOL on climate in Congress.
  It is time for these banks and the rest of corporate America who want 
to see progress and avoid what all those warnings are telling us to 
wake up and to show up.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From Inside Climate News, July 1, 2019]

   How Much Global Warming Is Fossil Fuel Infrastructure Locking In?

                           (By Phil McKenna)

       All the power plants, vehicles and other fossil fuel-
     burning infrastructure operating today will lock the world 
     into 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, exceeding the 
     Paris climate agreement goals, unless the biggest polluters 
     are shut down early or are retrofitted to capture their 
     carbon emissions, a new study shows.
       And that's just the infrastructure already built. When the 
     researchers factored in the future emissions of coal- and 
     gas-fired power plants that are currently planned or under 
     construction, they found the total lifetime emissions would 
     shoot past l.5  deg.C (2.7  deg.F) warming and put the world 
     on pace to burn about two-thirds of the remaining carbon 
     budget for staying under 2  deg.C (3.6  deg.F) warming 
     compared to pre-industrial times.
       The findings imply profound changes for the planet and many 
     of its inhabitants in this century. As global temperatures 
     rise, heat waves continue to intensify, extreme precipitation 
     increases, and an additional 10 million people face greater 
     risks from sea level rise in just the half degree between 1.5 
      deg.C and 2  deg.C, among other threats, the 
     Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote last 
     fall.
       We have already built enough to take us over 1.5,'' said 
     Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie 
     Institution for Science and a co-author of the study. ``For 
     these 1.5 scenarios you would either need to retire CO2 
     emitting infrastructure early or have carbon dioxide removal 
     strategies which are generally thought to be expensive.''
       Nine years ago, Caldeira co-authored a similar study that 
     found the planet had already locked in about 496 gigatonnes 
     of carbon dioxide with existing infrastructure, emissions 
     that would result in about 1.3  deg.C of warming above pre-
     industrial levels.
       Since then, China and India have been on power plant 
     construction sprees. The average age of their coal-fired 
     power plants are 11 and 12 years, respectively, compared to 
     nearly 40 years in the United States, according to the new 
     study. The historical average lifespan of a power plant, and 
     the age used for calculations in the study, is about 40 
     years.
       ``What we see now is a lot more carbon-emitting 
     infrastructure than we saw a decade ago,'' Caldeira said. 
     ``The trajectory is not going to where we would like it to go 
     to.''


               Future Emissions Likely to Be Even Higher

       The new study found that existing energy infrastructure 
     would emit about 658 gigatons of carbon dioxide over the rest 
     of its expected lifetime, and that the future fossil fuel 
     power plants that are currently planned would boost that to 
     about 846 gigatons. The IPCC has determined that to have a 50 
     percent chance of keeping surface air temperature warming 
     under 1.5  deg.C, the world would need to limit emissions 
     from all human activities to about 580 gigatons of carbon 
     dioxide.
       The future emissions are likely even higher than the study 
     estimates. It does not take

[[Page S4918]]

     into account future emissions from other sectors including 
     shipping, aviation and heavy industry that will be hard to 
     wean off of fossil fuels. Nor does it account for emissions 
     related to fossil fuels extraction and pipelines or non-
     energy emissions such as from agriculture.
       Emissions from yet-to-be-built ships, planes, factories and 
     other fossil fuel-powered infrastructure will likely outweigh 
     emissions saved from the early retirement of existing fossil 
     fuel power plants, said Gunnar Luderer, head of the Energy 
     Systems Group at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact 
     Research in Germany, who reviewed the study.
       For the new study, the researchers used detailed datasets 
     of fossil fuel-burning energy infrastructure operating in 
     2018 or planned. They found some progress, including 
     ``substantial'' cancellations of proposed fossil fuel power 
     plants in the past two years, which cut the expected 
     emissions from future power plants by as much as half from 
     studies conducted just a few years earlier.
       In the U.S., utilities have been announcing plans to shut 
     down coal-fired power plants and add more renewable energy as 
     the costs of solar and wind power generation fall, but other 
     types of fossil fuel infrastructure have been expanding--
     particularly natural gas drilling and pipelines to carry oil 
     and gas, both for domestic use and for export to other 
     countries. On June 20, for example, Energy Transfer LP 
     announced it planned nearly double the capacity the Dakota 
     Access oil pipeline, a project that was highly contested over 
     both climate and environmental concerns when it was approved 
     in 2017.


                      No Time for Debate or Delay

       Other studies have used different methods to estimate 
     emissions growth.
       One study, published in Nature Communications in January, 
     determined there was a 64 percent chance that existing energy 
     infrastructure wouldn't commit the planet to passing l.5 
     deg.C warming, provided construction of additional fossil 
     fuel energy infrastructure stopped immediately and other 
     measures were taken to dramatically reduce emissions from all 
     other sectors of the economy.
       Such measures would have to happen in the immediate future, 
     said Joeri Rogelj, a lecturer at the Grantham Institute at 
     Imperial College London and a co-author of the January study.
       ``Both studies are really clear,'' Rogelj said. ``If we 
     wait another 5 to 10 years with being serious about emissions 
     reductions and addressing climate change then indeed we will 
     have no discussion anymore whether we can still make it to 
     1.5. It will be very clear and obvious that we will run past 
     it.''
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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