[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 181 (Wednesday, November 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6541-S6543]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. President, the oceans send a clear and consistent signal about 
climate change, and it is a signal that has been untainted by fossil 
fuel industry propaganda attacks that have been problematic in other 
areas. The signals are untainted for good reason, because it is hard to 
dispute sea level rise measured with tide gauges all around the 
country. It is hard to dispute acidification that is measured with the 
kind of pH test kit that a middle school science classroom has, and it 
is hard to dispute rising ocean temperatures that are measured with 
that complex, analytical device--the thermometer. Even the fossil fuel 
industry has trouble fouling the climate signals from our oceans.
  The recent ``Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing 
Climate'' confirms through grim data that the health of our oceans is 
in rapid decline, and it confirms that these changes are caused not by 
nature but by man. Headlines extracted from the report are pretty 
alarming.
  These are quotes: ``The global ocean . . . has taken up more than 90 
percent of the excess heat in the climate system.''
  `` . . . the rate of ocean warming has more than doubled.''
  ``Marine heatwaves . . . are increasing in intensity.''
  `` . . . the ocean has undergone increasing ocean acidification.''
  `` . . . mean sea level is rising. . . . ''
  ``Increases in tropical cyclone winds and rainfall . . . increases in 
extreme waves . . . extreme sea level events and coastal hazards.''
  `` . . . multiple climate-related hazards. . . . ''
  As if that is not enough, ``the ocean is projected to transition to 
unprecedented conditions.''
  It is a grim warning.
  Look at acidification. Ocean acidification is a chemical phenomenon. 
It is not deniable. You can replicate it in a middle school science 
lab. You can demonstrate it with your breath and a

[[Page S6542]]

glass of water and an aquarium bubbler and a pH strip, as I have done 
from this desk.
  The oceans absorb around 30 percent of our excess CO2 
emissions in a chemical interaction that takes up the CO2 
but acidifies the seawater. Off our west coast, the humble pteropod is 
a building block in the oceanic food chain. Studies show the pteropod 
suffering ``severe shell damage,'' worsened by acidification. It is 
hard to make and maintain a shell in acidifying seas. Coral reefs are 
dying from acidification. The great ocean die-offs in geologic eras 
before humans existed were signaled by ocean acidification. So that is 
serious.
  Look at heat. The oceans absorb over 90 percent of the excess 
atmospheric heat--not 30 percent like the CO2--that we have 
trapped in our atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions.
  So think about it. All the terrestrial effects that we are already 
seeing from climate change come from less than one-tenth of the excess 
heat that we have trapped. The heat going into the oceans is sparing us 
humans a real catastrophe, but all that heat is changing the oceans. It 
is four Hiroshima-size bombs' worth of heat energy added to our oceans 
every second--four Hiroshima explosions worth of heat energy per second 
is the rate of ocean heating. The rate of this ocean heating has 
already doubled, and the ocean is projected to absorb from five to 
seven times more heat by 2100. So it is heating at the rate at which 
its heating is accelerating.
  What does that mean? Well, warming seas expand--that is a basic law 
of physics--and along with melting glaciers and ice sheets, that means 
seas rise: so far, about 6 inches globally; on Rhode Island shores, 
already nearly a foot. On our current trajectory, that is more than 3 
feet globally by 2100 and more than 6 feet along our shores in Rhode 
Island.
  This is northern Rhode Island. This is Narragansett Bay, and all of 
these areas that you see that are blue are land now. They are peoples' 
homes. They are peoples' businesses. There are roads and 
infrastructure--all projected to disappear, all projected to be 
swallowed by rising seas by the end of the century if we keep fiddling 
around here and not paying attention.
  The First Street Foundation calculates that coastal communities like 
these along our east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico States have 
already lost more than $15 billion in relative property values as the 
insurance and mortgage markets start to look at sea level rise and 
flooding, and it affects housing prices.
  In Rhode Island alone, they estimate about $45 million in relative 
property value lost. Predicted ahead is a coastal property values 
crash. That is not coming from an environmental organization. That is 
coming from Freddie Mac, the great American mortgage corporation.
  And it is global. The New York Times recently reported new research 
``that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be 
below the high-tide line by mid-century''--150 million people.
  A UK study warns global sea level rise could cost $14 trillion 
annually by 2100.
  This is what Freddie Mac has to say about this coastal property 
values crash: ``The economic losses and social disruption of the 
coastal property values crash may happen gradually, but they are likely 
to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and 
Great Recession.'' For those of us who lived through the 2008 meltdown, 
we don't want to go there again. Freddie Mac is forecasting that it is 
going to happen because of coastal property values.
  Look here to the Pacific. A new Climate Central study shows that 
``chronic coastal flooding or permanent inundation threatens areas 
occupied by more than 10 percent of the current population of nations 
including Bangladesh, Vietnam, and many small island developing 
states.''
  Here is the southern part of Vietnam, swallowed up by high tide in 
2050. That was the projection just a few years ago with the flooding 
that was going to come into the Vietnam delta area, up here, in Ho Chi 
Minh City, or Saigon. This is the new projection for 2050--all of it 
under water, including a good part of Saigon City.
  As one of the authors of the report said, ``most sea level rise here 
between now and 2050 is already baked in.'' Decades more of sea level 
rise means the fate of many coastal communities here and around the 
world is already sealed, which may explain the 2013 warning by the 
commander of our U.S. forces in the Pacific that upheaval related to 
climate change ``is probably the most likely thing that is going to 
happen . . . that will cripple the security environment.'' He said:

       You have the real potential here in the not-too-distant 
     future of nations displaced by rising sea level. . . . If it 
     goes bad, you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of 
     people displaced and then security will start to crumble 
     pretty quickly.

  Well, here it is, as predicted by our Navy in 2013.
  Thankfully, countries around the globe are awakening to the problems 
in our oceans. In 2015, I fought to protect a mention--a mention--of 
oceans in the Paris climate agreement. This year's original host, 
Chile, christened the entire upcoming climate meeting a ``Blue COP'' 
with a blue vision of repairing ocean health.
  I attended, as a U.S. congressional delegation of one, this year's 
international Our Ocean conference in Oslo, where advocates, 
corporations, and governments from around the world, even the helpless 
Trump administration, made national and corporate and regional ocean 
commitments.
  Norway leads a panel of 14 nations--14 heads of state and the United 
Nations Special Envoy for the Ocean, advised by people like our own 
former NOAA Administrator, Jane Lubchenko. A recent panel report 
outlined five major ocean initiatives that could reduce 20 percent of 
global emissions by 2050.
  The United Nations also declared the 2020s the ``Decade of Ocean 
Science for Sustainable Development.'' The world has turned toward 
action on oceans.
  Now, usually, in confronting threats of this magnitude, the United 
States sets an example of leadership. We are abandoning that tradition. 
In conversations about climate change and ocean challenges, the United 
States is, at best, absent. At worst, we are the obstruction. That is a 
mistake. The United States should not lose its place as an 
international leader, not if we care about our vaunted role as the 
indispensable Nation and not if we care about the security and 
prosperity of our democracy.
  It doesn't have to be this way. Other ocean threats have prompted 
Congress to do what is right. We passed international fisheries 
treaties and the Port States Measures enforcement law. We did it 
unanimously here in the Senate, and now satellites are seeking out and 
tracking pirate fishing ships to bring them to justice.
  We passed our first marine plastics legislation unanimously, and a 
bigger, better marine plastics bill is moving in the Senate right.
  Now Senator Murkowski and I are moving the biggest ocean data bill 
since NOAA was founded through our bipartisan Oceans Caucus.
  So, yes, we can do better, and we must.
  Henry Kissinger once told me that the great revolutions of the world 
have come about from what he called a confluence of resentments. Well, 
the poorest--those who depend most closely on the oceans, those who 
lead subsistence lives--will suffer most the brunt of the coming 
crisis, and they will resent it.
  Look at fisheries. The poorest starve when their fisheries collapse. 
Others are distressed when fisheries collapse but have the resources to 
migrate or find alternative food sources. For wealthy nations, like 
ours, the fish in our air-conditioned supermarkets may cost a bit more, 
but our lives aren't seriously affected. But when the poor and 
distressed are hurt like that, they will resent it. That is human 
nature, and if you turn the pain up high enough, well, good luck 
defending to them the systems of parliamentary democracy and market 
capitalism that countenanced their suffering.

  Years ago, Daniel Webster described the work of our Founders as 
having set the world an example. He went on to say that ``the last 
hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us.'' From Jonathan Winthrop to 
Ronald Reagan, we have called America ``a city on a hill,'' set high 
for the world to witness. President Clinton argued that ``people . . . 
have always been more impressed by

[[Page S6543]]

the power of our example than the example of our power.''
  We still tout our system of democracy and capitalism as a beacon of 
success and progress, but we have aided and abetted the failure of our 
system to address the climate and oceans crisis. Worst of all is the 
reason for it--the fossil fuel industry's menacing climate denial 
apparatus. That apparatus may have won the day influencing Congress for 
now, but it will surely fail the test of time. History will judge 
harshly an American generation that let its democracy be corrupted by 
this industry.
  The voice of the oceans is more lasting than the greed and folly of 
man, and it warns of consequences driven by laws of chemistry, physics, 
and biology. These stern natural laws cannot be repealed or vetoed. 
Propaganda can manipulate people, passions, and politics, but 
propaganda cannot change the immutable laws of nature. The data are the 
voice of the oceans, and if data could scream, the oceans would now be 
screaming.
  So to paraphrase a poem, let us be the ``voice the sea would have if 
it had not a better one: as it lifts . . . its rumbling, deep-
structured roar.'' Let us wake up and get to our duty.
  ``Slap Nature,'' Pope Francis said, ``and she will slap you back.'' 
We have a hell of a slap coming if we don't get ahead of this, and we 
better wake up to it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.