[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 14, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S186-S189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the publication Grist did an article 
recently about climate change with a bunch of images. I grabbed a few 
of those images, and I have added a few in this speech because they 
give a pretty good overview of the mess that we are in on climate 
change.
  Right now, the most devastating wildfires anyone can remember are 
ripping across Australia. Here, you see an iconic kangaroo going by a 
building up in flames. Those Australian fires have destroyed thousands 
of homes. They have killed an estimated 1 billion animals--get your 
head around 1 billion animals killed--and they have made a day of 
breathing the air in Sidney, Australia, the equivalent of smoking 37 
cigarettes. In fact, I read in the news that in a tennis championship 
in Australia today, one of the competitors withdrew because the air was 
so bad that she couldn't finish her match.
  Why is this going on? According to the Australia Bureau of 
Meteorology, Australia has warmed by about a full degree Celsius over 
the last century. That means a longer, hotter fire season, which loads 
the dice in favor of extreme winds and heat and bushfire, as they call 
it in Australia.
  Why did it warm in Australia? The cause could not be more clear. This 
is the measurement of carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, 
going back hundreds of thousands of years--100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 
600, 700, and 800,000 years. That is way back. There was no agriculture 
then, no wheel then, and, for sure, no Twitter--nothing.
  Over time, we have seen this steady range of atmospheric 
CO2 levels, running between about 180 and--here is the 
cresting out--just under 300 parts per million. So it is 800,000 years, 
all between 180 and 300 degrees. That is a 120-degree range.
  We are now out of that range by more than the entire range itself. We 
are out by more than 120. This chart goes up to 400 parts per million. 
We are literally off the chart right now at 410 parts per million. Of 
course, this is connected to heat. That is not news.
  The graphics here were compiled by Clayton Aldern and Emily 
Pontecorvo

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of Grist. So let me take this opportunity to thank them.
  This next chart shows the increase in carbon dioxide just in the last 
decade. This is from 2010 to 2019. If you took the previous graph, 
which is in here somewhere, this is just the tiniest little slice at 
the very edge of this--just 10 years out of 800,000. That is like one 
eighty-thousandths of that graph, that tiny little sliver.
  In that tiny little sliver, here is what has happened. It has gone 
from below 390 parts per million up to 410. We hit the magic 400 back 
in about 2013 for the first time right here with this dot. That was a 
big deal. The measurement came from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in 
Hawaii. Never, ever, ever before in human history, over those hundreds 
of thousands of years, had we seen 400 parts per million, and in just 
the last decade, it shot up by all this. In fact, in the last 7 years, 
it shot up more than 10 parts per million.
  We know something about what happens as these CO2 levels 
go up. We know that the planet warms. That is not news. We have known 
that since Abraham Lincoln was President. When Abraham Lincoln was 
riding around Washington in his top hat, scientists had already begun 
to write about and understand the link between greenhouse gases like 
carbon dioxide and global warming. Heck, even Exxon scientists knew 
about this decades ago, and their scientists warned the company about 
this in reports that we now have. Of course, Exxon did the wickedest 
possible thing with that information, which was to bury it, deny it, 
and try to convince the public that the opposite was true.

  There is nothing new in any of this information. The science is 
totally established, and that level is unprecedented in humankind's 
history. As a result--guess what--things have started to go haywire. 
This chart shows the cost of annual billion-dollar disasters in the 
United States, the disasters that cost us $1 billion each. There is a 
very clear trendline that draws through this, and it is climbing 
upward. If you don't believe me, ask an insurance company, ask a 
reinsurance company.
  Now, bear in mind that these costs, the cost of natural disasters, 
are just one of the big economic threats from climate change. We have 
warnings about coastal property values crashing. Those come from 
Freddie Mac, of all places. We have warnings about the carbon bubble 
crashing. Those come from the Bank of England and many other sovereign 
banks. We have warnings about insurance markets and about the bond 
safety of coastal communities.
  In fact, those numbers--the numbers of the cost of natural 
disasters--are actually pretty tiny so far compared to what is 
projected. What is projected is an estimated tens of trillions of 
dollars by 2100.
  One way this plays out is in my home State. This is northern 
Narragansett Bay. Here is Providence, our capital city. Here is 
Warwick. Over here is Bristol. Everything that is blue on this map is 
land today. On these blue parts people have homes; people have 
businesses; the State has infrastructure; there is economic activity; 
and, my God, there are memories. Well, the blue disappears. The blue 
disappears. The blue disappears at 10 feet of sea level rise. That is 
what this measures. This comes off a program called STORMTOOLS run by 
the Coastal Resources Management Council, our Rhode Island CZMA agency.
  Our State officials, based on the latest information from NOAA and 
from our University of Rhode Island and from the Coastal Resources 
Management Council, are preparing for scenarios up to 9 feet of sea 
level rise in Rhode Island by the end of the century--not storm surge, 
just bathtub-level sea level rise. Add in storm surge, and you not only 
get over 9 feet; you get over the 10 feet that is displayed here in 
this graph. The damage to my State is going to be very serious. The 
very map of Rhode Island will change because of this. Now, some of my 
colleagues think this is all funny, that this is something we can just 
yuck it up about and mock the science and call people alarmists when 
they take this seriously.
  It is deadly serious. In fact, a 2017 report from the real estate 
database company Zillow identified over 4,800 homes in Rhode Island 
with a collective value at over $3 billion that would be underwater by 
2100 using only a 6-foot bathtub sea level rise figure--$3 billion just 
in my small State. That doesn't count the value of the memories. If you 
have a house near the shore, you very likely have family memories. Some 
of these places in Rhode Island go back generations--even small, small 
houses. People have had them. Their grandfather had them. They have 
memories. All of that is at risk to be lost. So don't think I am not 
going to fight about this just because somebody else thinks this is 
funny.
  The reason that is happening is the oceans are warming. When you warm 
water, it expands, so it rises--in addition, of course, to all the 
trillions of gallons pouring off of Greenland and other land-based 
icecaps. Look at how the ocean has warmed. The red is the 3-month 
average. It has more variation in it. The black is the annual average. 
The blue is the 5-year average that smooths it out a little bit more.
  The ocean is absorbing intense amounts of heat. I will tell you how 
much heat the ocean is absorbing. If you took the Hiroshima atom bomb 
and you captured all of its energy as heat--it produced light; it 
produced a variety of other things--the rate at which the ocean is 
warming is the equivalent--I usually use--of between three and four 
Hiroshima-sized nuclear detonations per second in the ocean--per 
second. So, in the time of this speech, there will be dozens, probably 
100, Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions' worth of heat that the oceans 
have to absorb.
  Today a new report came out that says that the number is actually 
five Hiroshima-sized explosions per second. As they measure it better, 
as they see it increase more, we are seeing that number. It is not just 
that they are warming. That would be bad enough. They are becoming 
more acid. They are becoming more acid because they absorb carbon 
dioxide at the surface. This is a chemical interface. This took away 90 
percent of the extra heat that our fossil fuel emissions have caused, 
the absorption of the heat by the oceans. At the same time, while it 
was absorbing 90 percent of the heat, it was also absorbing 30 percent 
of the carbon dioxide.

  Imagine for a second if we were not an ocean planet. Imagine if we 
were a fully terrestrial planet and we didn't have the oceans to buffer 
this. You would have to add back that extra third of CO2, 
which would be a 50-percent increase on the lower base, and you would 
have to multiply by 10 the increase from heat. You put those two 
factors together--this is a very rough number, and the scientists on my 
staff would be mad at me for saying this, but maybe 15 times the result 
that we are seeing right now. We are experiencing a fraction of what we 
would face without the cooling and buffering oceans. Without our 
oceans, Australia wouldn't just be one location on fire; the whole 
planet would be a catastrophe.
  Those are the chances that we are taking. Why are we taking these 
chances? We are taking these chances because politicians don't dare say 
no to the crooked fossil fuel industry that profits from this mess. 
That is just the sickening political fact that we have to deal with 
here.
  That is steadily moving because the public is beginning to understand 
this. Notwithstanding a long and very, very expensive campaign of 
misleading propaganda by the fossil fuel industry, people are starting 
to catch on. These are the numbers--from 60 up to 72 percent--of people 
who believe that warming is happening. The number of people who are 
denying went from 20 percent down to 12 percent. Understanding is up. 
Denial is down. Ditto for that it is caused by us: 46 up to 59 percent, 
and 35 down to 30 percent denying. Understanding is up. Denial is down.
  So the other thing that is good that is happening behind these 
numbers is that Americans of a whole variety of persuasions actually 
favor the solutions that scientists and economists recommend to solve 
the climate change problem. Now, the fossil fuel industry, in its 
portfolio of lies, tells you that the remedies to solve climate change 
will be painful. That is just another fossil fuel lie, and Americans 
are catching on to that one too. An October 2019 Pew poll found that 
two-thirds

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of Americans want the Federal Government to do more to combat climate 
change.
  One thing that we are getting rid of in a hurry is coal. This 
represents the cumulative retirements of coal plants. Coal plants are 
phasing out, with 546 coal plants having closed in the United States 
since 2010, just in this last decade. In late 2019, Murray Energy 
became the eighth U.S. coal company in a year to file for bankruptcy. 
Coal plants anywhere are virtually unfinanceable. We have even seen 
operating, depreciated coal plants close because just operating that 
coal plant costs more than financing, building, and operating renewable 
energy facilities. That is good news for our safety and for our well-
being.
  Here is our overall energy portfolio and where it has increased. Look 
at solar go. Ho, ho. Oh, my gosh. It is up about 1,000 percent. It is 
really, really rocking. The second biggest increase: wind. More are 
coming on as we begin to develop offshore wind.
  Fossil fuels still dominate. You can see this little inlay here--the 
transportation sector--but Americans are starting to buy more and more 
electric vehicles. Some really stunning new models are coming to the 
market. We are, of course, not doing anywhere near enough to encourage 
their adoption, which means we are likely to lose out, and we are doing 
this because rogue fossil fuel companies like Marathon Petroleum use 
political mischief to poke sticks in the wheels of vehicle fuel 
efficiency standards.
  What the fossil fuel industry likes to do is to blame China: Oh, we 
are not going to do anything because China has to go first. What they 
omit telling you is that, at the end of 2017, 40 percent of all the 
electric cars in the world were in China. In 2018, China manufactured 
nearly half of all electric vehicles worldwide. China dominates global 
markets for electric buses and for electric two-wheelers--scooters and 
so forth.
  You may recall that Exxon Corporation fabulously predicted to its 
shareholders--a prediction they have not yet corrected--that there 
would be zero electric buses by 2040. China is already operating 
400,000. We are going to get run away from by China if we don't smarten 
up and compete.
  Here is more good news. The price of digging out and transporting and 
burning dirty fuels is high: nearly $110 for a megawatt hour of coal-
fueled power. If you look, the most expensive are nuclear power plants; 
the next most expensive, coal; the next most expensive, solar thermal, 
which generates heat; the next most expensive, natural gas; and down 
here, the two cheapest by far are solar photovoltaic and wind.
  So we know where these markets are going, with just $40 per megawatt 
hour for solar photovoltaic compared to $110 for coal. Over the last 
decade, the average cost of solar dropped from $200 per megawatt hour 
to less than a quarter of that. The cost of wind power is down, and 
offshore wind is emerging. Battery storage now competes on price with 
gas-fired, peak-demand plants in many areas. Even with the massive 
subsidy that we all have to pay to prop up fossil fuel, renewables are 
starting to win on price anyway.
  If the price of wind, solar, battery storage, and other renewable 
technologies continues to drop, we could reach 100 percent renewable 
energy by the middle of the century, and we will need to if we are 
going to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe zone. In fact, here 
is what you see. The power sector's emissions are declining.
  There is a lot of work left to do in transportation--what you might 
call room for improvement there. There is a lot of room for improvement 
in industry and a lot of room for improvement in buildings and other. 
So there is work to be done here.
  Of course, these other sectors don't have much of an incentive to 
solve their emissions problem because it is still free to pollute. We 
continue to violate the most basic market theory about externalities, 
and we let these fossil fuel polluters pollute for free. When we let 
them pollute for free, it takes away any incentive in these other 
sectors to fix that problem--and, of course, that is goal 1 for the 
fossil-fuel industry. With a $650 billion-per-year subsidy, they are 
throwing everything they have politically at trying to protect that 
phony, non-market-based, unfair subsidy. And even with it, they are 
still losing.
  We could be doing better in all these sectors if we put a proper 
market-based price on carbon. So far they have won, if you can call not 
preparing for a looming calamity to be winning.
  Here is a quick summary of the lessons of the 2010s.
  One, the science is clear--we have blown by 400 parts per million. We 
are now in unchartered territory for the human species.
  Two, climate change is a massive threat to our economy, particularly 
with the danger of crashes coming soon in coastal property values and 
carbon assets.
  I just read the letter from BlackRock to CEOs and investors. 
BlackRock is one of the biggest investment companies in the world. They 
have warned of what they called capital reallocation. That means things 
are going to shift--happening as markets anticipate climate hazard--
things like facing the danger of coastal property value crashes or 
carbon asset value crashes. Those crashes create capital reallocation.
  I love the way economists talk. All the agony behind that, and they 
call it capital reallocation. Wrecking the world economy, they call 
systemic risk.
  Three, Americans are getting that climate change is a big problem. It 
is a big change. It is a big change particularly with young 
Republicans, who totally get it.
  Here is my challenge to my Republican colleagues in the Senate: Sit 
down with your own young staffers. Sit down with the young staffers in 
your own office and hear them out about climate change. You will see 
that there is a big generational divide.
  Four, coal is on the ropes. Experts predict huge stranded assets in 
gas and oil. Solar and other renewables are booming as they outcompete 
fossil fuel on costs alone. That is a genie even the crooked fossil 
fuel machine can't put back in the bottle.
  Of course, the fossil fuel industry is still up to no good, with its 
vast array of phony front groups so it does not look like it is them. 
They have names like the George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive 
Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute--a bunch of phony front 
groups filled with stables of paid liars emitting slimy rivers of dark 
money, polluting our politics as badly as their emissions pollute our 
planet. That hasn't stopped, and they should be held accountable.
  The 2020s are going to be tough, for sure. Australia is seeing the 
opening episode.
  I have an analogy that I will use as I close. I have spent time 
running rivers. I like running rivers. I like running rivers in 
inflatables. I like running rivers in kayaks. I have run rivers from 
the placid Rappahannock in Virginia to the mighty Colorado through our 
massive Grand Canyon and lots in between. One of the things about 
running a river that has big rapids is that the first thing you do is 
you look at the map and you learn where the big rapids are so you can 
stop, get safely to shore, and figure out whether you can navigate the 
rapids or whether you need to portage around them.
  Well, we had a map for where the rapids are on this. The scientists 
showed us. They told us. They warned us. But we ignored them. But not 
paying attention to what you are told on the science map is not your 
last chance. Going down the river, when you get closer, you can 
actually start to hear the falls, the rapids roaring up ahead of you.
  The wildfires, the flooding, the rising seas, the species relocating 
around the planet--if that is not a roaring for us to hear now from the 
planet about the dangers ahead, shame on us. It is enough for us to 
know that we are actually getting close to big trouble, and we still do 
nothing.
  Then there is a point on the river where it is your last chance. You 
have no choice as to whether you are going to miss the rapids or the 
falls ahead. You have ignored all the warnings. You have ignored the 
map. You haven't listened to the roar, and now you are close. Now you 
will have to paddle very hard to avoid the roaring rapids ahead. 
Nature's forces are pulling you inexorably toward the cataract. You 
will have to paddle for your life to avoid it.
  That is where I believe we are right now. I believe that as human 
kind, as a

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country, we have to paddle for our lives right now to avoid being 
sucked over the climate falls and into dangers that we don't want to 
see and that we don't want our children to have to see.
  Let's wake up here. Let's shake off the shackles of this crooked 
fossil fuel industry, and let's get paddling for our lives.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. McSally). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam 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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