[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 159 (Tuesday, September 15, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5599-S5601]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Madam President, I am here for the 271st time to call this Chamber's 
attention to climate change and to two of the reports on this defining 
issue of our generation.
  As I speak, wildfires are devouring the American West and consuming 
American lives: east of Salem, OR, two people dead in a scorched 
vehicle; in Butte County, CA, three dead, overrun by a fast-moving 
fire; in Ashland, a 1-year-old boy; in Malden, WA, almost the entire 
town burned down; half a million Oregonians evacuated due to fire. That 
is 1 out of 10 people in the entire State.
  Over the weekend, Oregon's emergency management director said they 
are preparing for a ``mass fatality event.''
  Paradise, CA, suffered apocalyptic destruction in the 2018 Camp Fire. 
It is, once again, under fire warnings, this time the North Complex 
fire, which has stunned firefighters with its rapid growth and 
ferocity.
  We cannot avoid it. Climate change is here. Plenty of factors 
contribute to individual wildfires, but climate change is now always 
among them.
  Last fall, I went out to the National Center for Atmospheric Research 
in Colorado and met leading wildfire researcher Daniel Swain. As Dr. 
Swain puts it:

       Climate change has not just made the extreme heat waves 
     that coincide with fires worse. The bigger effect is the more 
     subtle, long-term warming. That couple of degrees of 
     (average) warming over decades . . . it's lurking in the 
     background, sucking extra moisture out of the vegetation and 
     the soil.

  The new normal is smoke, ash, orange skies, and constant nerve-
fraying vigilance.
  Climate change's impacts through the West land crushing economic 
blows. The 2018 Camp Fire that burned Paradise cost $16.7 billion. NOAA 
says natural disasters--mostly hurricanes and wildfires, both highly 
climate-related--inflicted $91 billion worth of damage that year, 2018; 
and over the past 40 years, 241 climate- and weather-related disasters 
have cost Americans $1.6 trillion.
  The first report I want to talk about warns that it is not just what 
is lost in floods and flames. As climate risk worsens, the harder it is 
for communities to rebuild, for bankers to write mortgages, for owners 
to find insurers willing to continue to write policies and pay out 
claims. That risk spreads beyond burned or flooded land and runs 
through the rest of the economy.
  Climate risk becomes what economists call systemic risk. So one of 
our leading regulatory agencies, the Commodity Futures Trading 
Commission, has done a report on risk.

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  Think of the 2008 financial crisis. That home mortgage problem spread 
far beyond mortgage lenders into a brutal global recession. Millions of 
people who had no connection to a bad mortgage lost their jobs, lost 
their homes, or lost their retirement savings. Many are still 
recovering from that collapse.
  Now think even worse. The Stanford Business School's Corporations and 
Society Initiative believes ``the financial risks from climate change 
are systemic''--there is that economic word again--that these risks are 
``singular in nature''; and that ``[g]lobal economic losses from 
climate change could reach $23 trillion--three or four times the scale 
of the 2008 Financial Crisis.''
  Those of us who were here for the 2008 financial crisis don't want to 
see that happen again, and we certainly don't want to see it happen at 
a three- or four-times scale.
  Senator Schatz and I have been calling for financial regulators to do 
a better job accounting for these risks. In May, we wrote to the 
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Subcommittee on Climate-Related 
Market Risk. We had two simple requests: One, recommend a carbon price, 
and, two, urge our financial regulators to include climate risks in 
their core market risk assessments and supervisory practices.
  The CFTC Subcommittee report is out, and I am happy to report that 
they did both. They write: ``Financial markets will only be able to 
channel resources efficiently to activities that reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions if an economy-wide price on carbon is in place at a level 
that reflects the true social cost of those emissions.'' That is 
actually kind of economics 101, but it is good to hear them say it.
  They went on to say:

       Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the 
     U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the 
     American economy. . . . U.S. financial regulators must 
     recognize that climate change poses serious emerging risks to 
     the U.S. financial system, and they should move urgently and 
     decisively to measure, understand, and address these risks.

  And what if we don't? Well, the CFTC report goes on: Failing to act 
would lead to what they called ``disorderly repricing of assets''--that 
is commonly known as a crash--``with cascading effects'' through the 
economy. Put simply, do nothing and trigger financial chaos far and 
wide, just like 2008, except probably worse.
  The CFTC report calls for corporate America to tell the truth about 
climate-related risks to their business models. Investors need to know 
the truth for the free market to operate. The subcommittee writes that 
we must require ``disclosure by corporations of information on 
material, climate-related financial risks . . . to ensure that climate 
risks are measured and managed effectively.''
  That is a key point. We have seen Exxon, for instance, downplay 
climate risks to investors, shareholders, and the general public. That 
mischief will stop if financial regulators require an honest accounting 
of climate-related risks.
  The CFTC report is a big deal, but it requires Congress to act. 
America is among the few industrialized nations worst prepared for 
wide-ranging reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Regulators will 
not be enough; Congress must act.

  That is where another report comes in, the Senate Democrats' Special 
Report on the Climate Crisis. Under Chairman Schatz's leadership, we 
recently released a roadmap for fixing that problem. We propose a plan 
to cut emissions across our economy, to get on course to limit warming 
to 1.5 degrees Celsius, to create a host of well-paying jobs in clean 
energy and other emerging technologies, and to remedy the burdens of 
pollution across all sectors of the economy, including those usually 
overlooked.
  We know we have a battle ahead. The fossil fuel industry runs a 
covert operation that has blocked progress in Congress. This covert op 
is extremely well funded and has reached its roots deeply into our 
politics. We need to tear up those roots. This is how.
  First, our report tells the dark story of that covert op: the story 
of the fossil fuel industry apparatus built to obscure the industry's 
hands behind phony front groups, the story of capture and control of 
corporate trade associations, the story of lives marketed by flashy PR 
firms, and the story of brute-force political spending and threats to 
blockade climate progress.
  Those tactics were a test run for the fossil fuel industry by Big 
Tobacco: Manufacture false doubt in science and flex your political 
muscle against anyone who dares to challenge you. That bullying worked 
pretty well, and then when the Supreme Court handed down Citizens 
United, the fossil fuel industry supercharged its covert campaign with 
dark money, almost immediately turning the ability to spend unlimited 
money in politics into spending unlimited dark money in politics. Then 
the bullying worked really well.
  Citizens United was a climate watershed. After that decision 
unleashed its fearful weaponry, not one Republican in this body joined 
any comprehensive bill to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Senate 
heartbeat of bipartisan climate activity before Citizens United, which 
I remember and experienced in 2007, 2008, and 2009, all flat-lined 
under the supercharged political pressure unleashed by fossil fuel 
interests with Citizens United behind them.
  Our Senate report tells the full rotten story because that is step 1 
in fighting covert influence. Follow the money. Show the American 
people how corporate interests pay to block progress on climate. Show 
the co-opted trade associations and the phony front groups. Let the 
American people see the scheme, and they are less likely to fall for 
it.
  Second is cleaning it up. Fully exposing and ending Citizens United 
dark money and the fossil fuel scheme will take reform. Bold 
transparency measures like the DISCLOSE Act are needed, and our report 
calls for that.
  Then, we need to wake up the so-called good guys in corporate 
America. They need to see the mischief a few bad actors have 
perpetrated right under their noses. They need to see how the fossil 
fuel industry commandeered their corporate trade associations, like the 
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is one of the two most obstructive 
organizations against climate action. Why would the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, with its wide corporate membership, be one of the two most 
obstructive organizations against climate action unless the fossil fuel 
industry had co-opted it right under their noses?
  The so-called good guys need to examine how their own lobbyists and 
their own trade associations and their own political operatives are 
doing on climate because with very few and very rare exceptions, the 
answer is that they are doing nothing on climate, not lifting a finger 
in Congress.
  Just last week, the giant tech companies came in through their trade 
group TechNet, with a 13-page list of all of their lobbying 
priorities--13 pages and not a mention of climate. Google, Apple, 
Microsoft, Facebook--the Big Tech barons--a lot of big talk, and they 
never even mentioned climate in their shopping list for Congress.
  Everyone needs to understand the two faces of corporate America and 
to imagine how quickly Congress would act if powerful trade 
associations like the chamber became actual advocates for serious 
climate policies or if the big interests in Congress, like Big Ag, or 
Big Tech, or Wall Street, or the insurance industry actually took an 
interest in something more than their own special interest programs and 
tax benefits.
  What if climate had been on Big Tech's list of priorities, perhaps 
even on page 1 of 13? That would change the game.
  A 16th century alchemist by the name of Paracelsus is credited with 
the phrase ``sola dosis facit venenum,'' Latin for ``the dose makes the 
poison.'' The dose makes the poison. The idea is that everything from a 
nerve agent to the water we need to drink to survive can be lethal if 
delivered in sufficient dosage.
  Right now, in the American West, toxins in the climate wildfire smoke 
waft in such high concentrations that our typical measurement systems 
fail. The dosage is literally off the charts. In our Earth's 
atmosphere, the dosage of carbon dioxide is way outside the range of 
human experience, putting all of mankind into uncharted territory, to 
face unprecedented dangers.
  Citizens United unleashed toxic doses of money, unprecedented doses 
of virulent dark money, into our American

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political atmosphere. So our democracy is poisoned, stunned by secret 
fossil fuel money and threats, and, consequently, failing to listen to 
plain warnings like those of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
  We had better act before the poison has overpowered us, and we had 
better get the dosages back to safe and normal levels. One good start 
would be to wake up to the reality of climate change.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.