[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 184 (Wednesday, November 30, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6886-S6888]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, one of the greatest challenges we have is 
climate change. We are seeing the cost of inaction: the flooding that 
is occurring very frequently here in the United States and around the 
world; the forest fires that we have experienced here in the United 
States; droughts; extreme weather events occurring more frequently, 
including in my own State, where we had two 100-year floods within 20 
months in Ellicott City, MD; climate migrants, people who can no longer 
live in their communities because of the rising sea levels. It is an 
urgent issue for us to address.
  So I want to share with my colleagues the recent codel I led to the 
COP27 climate discussions at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. I was joined in 
that codel with Senator Whitehouse and Senator Markey. We were there 
November 10 through 12 for approximately 2\1/2\ days.
  COP27 is the United Nations climate change conference. It was my 
fourth conference that I have led Senators to attend to deal with the 
climate issues with the international community.
  My first was in 2015, COP21 in Paris, in which the U.S. leadership 
under the Obama administration was able to bring together the global 
community to a commitment that we needed to limit the rising heat--
rising temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. But we also 
needed that commitment among all nations. And we got that in Paris. It 
was a major accomplishment, thanks to U.S. leadership.
  I returned to a COP23 meeting in 2017 in Bonn. That is when President 
Trump had withdrawn the United States from the climate discussions and 
from Paris. We were there to make it clear that the United States was 
still committed to our participation in doing what is responsible to 
reverse the trend of rising climate heat.
  I then attended the COP meeting in 2021, COP26 in Glasgow. I was 
pleased to report at that time with my colleagues that America was 
back. This was after President Trump had withdrawn and President Biden 
reengaged the United States in the global climate discussions. We were 
very strong in our language, but the international community wanted to 
know if the United States would back those words with action.
  So I was very pleased that in 2022, at the COP27 meetings in Sharm 
el-Sheikh. We could say, in fact, that the United States was back, that 
we have acted; we have taken action. And I must tell you that the 
international community was very impressed by what we have been able to 
do in this Congress, what the Biden administration has been able to do 
on the climate agenda. In fact, one complaint I got is that--from our 
traditional allies is that we may have done too much, and they are not 
sure they can compete with us in regards to the renewable energy 
industry. That is a nice situation for us to be in as the leader of the 
world.
  So we talked about the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, 
which was our first major investment into electric vehicle 
infrastructure for green infrastructure.
  But the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a game changer. It 
was the largest investment in climate change by a nation ever--$369 
billion we were able to get done. It provided many incentives and many 
different buckets in areas in order to deal with our commitment to 
reduce emissions. It provided incentives for electric vehicles. It 
provided incentives for a battery supply chain here in the United 
States. It provided incentives for offshore wind, a major renewable 
energy source. And the list goes on and on and on.
  It included a major commitment on environmental justice, because we 
know vulnerable communities are more vulnerable, those that are the 
traditionally underserved communities are more vulnerable to the 
effects of climate change. We need to make sure that we help these 
communities deal with these challenges.
  The bottom line that what we can report at the COP27 conference is 
the United States is on target to meet our emission goals. We have 
taken decisive action in order to achieve the goals

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that President Biden announced of a 50- to 52-percent reduction in 
emissions over 2005 levels.
  That was good news for the international community and provided, I 
think, the type of energy in Egypt that allowed us to make progress.
  We were there for 2\1/2\ days. We had over 30 meetings. I must tell 
you we were a popular group. Many countries wanted to meet with us. We 
had a lot of bilateral meetings. We do this because we recognize that 
every country must meet its goals if we are going to be able to achieve 
the emission reductions that are necessary. So we made ourselves 
available to listen to the concerns of other countries. Some of them 
were our traditional allies that are fully industrialized nations; some 
of them were developing countries. We all understood that we all need 
to find a way to meet our emission reductions goals if we are going to 
be able to avert the most severe consequences of climate change.
  We met with many foreign officials. We met with the U.N. officials 
that are responsible to conduct the conference. We got a good briefing 
as to the politics of trying to get 190-plus nations together on the 
same page on these issues--not an easy task. We met with global 
business leaders.
  We met with the indigenous community leaders, because the indigenous 
communities--particularly in the developing countries--are the ones who 
are the most vulnerable. They are living under very difficult 
circumstances. And when we asked them not to deforest the land in which 
they are living on which they do for farming practices or we ask them 
to make certain sacrifices, they are saying: Well, why should we be 
making these sacrifices when the developed nations didn't do that way 
back when?
  So we need to be concerned about the welfare of all these 
communities.
  We met with civil society leaders, because you cannot have success in 
a strategy to deal with climate unless we had the buy-in from all of 
the stakeholders.
  And, yes, we met with our leaders, the U.S. leaders. I want to give a 
special shout-out to our former colleague John Kerry, who has been one 
of our principal leaders in negotiating on behalf of the United States 
and has traveled the world in order to increase countries' commitments 
to emission reductions.
  The theme for the 2 days that we were there, the theme every day at 
the COP meetings--one was Decarbonization Day, and the other was 
Adaptation and Agriculture Day.
  On decarbonization, it was right on message of what we are concerned 
about. We talked about meetings that we had with the power sector as to 
how we needed to use the incentives we have in America and then 
globally to have clean energy credits to bring down the emissions that 
are being created through the fossil fuels in creating energy. We 
talked about how we in America can use the credits that are in the 
Inflation Reduction Act to show the international community how we can 
all help in reducing emissions.
  We also had a chance on Adaptation and Agriculture Day to listen to 
President Biden. President Biden attended the COP27 meetings and gave I 
think a very important address to all of the conferees about America's 
leadership. It was Adaptation Day, and the President announced 
additional funds that America committed to the Adaptation Fund to make 
it clear that the United States is going to be part of these efforts.
  I must tell you, we met with the Pakistani delegation. We expressed 
our condolences over the loss of thousands of citizens of Pakistan due 
to the consistent and continuance flooding that has taken place in that 
country. A large portion of Pakistan is really not habitable today 
because of sea level increases and the effects of climate change. 
Adaptation is very important. They don't have the resources for 
adaptation.
  (Ms. SMITH assumed the Chair.)
  Madam President, I was just at the Naval Academy this past week, 
where we had a groundbreaking for raising the seawall. We have to raise 
the seawall in order to protect the Naval Academy. That is something we 
have to do to adapt to the realities that we have--more frequent high-
tide flooding in Annapolis. We had the resources to do that. Pakistan 
does not have the resources to protect their population.
  The United States and the international community must work on 
adaptation, but it is not a substitute for mitigation. Our principal 
way to deal with climate is to make sure we reach our emissions goals 
and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions so that the worst effects can 
be avoided. Mitigation and adaptation are critically important. We need 
to do both.
  Now, I will tell you, the most controversial discussions that took 
place at COP27 dealt with the international climate financing issues. 
You may have heard about the loss and damage discussions that took 
place there, and it is controversial. It is not controversial, what we 
are trying to achieve.
  I pointed out and my colleagues Senator Whitehouse and Senator Markey 
pointed out that the United States has been very actively engaged with 
the developing world to help develop their green infrastructure. We do 
that through USAID and the work they do around the world. We do it in 
the Millennium Challenge grants and the work they do around the world. 
We do that in our participation with international banking institutions 
to provide credit to the developing countries so that they can develop 
green infrastructure, particularly in the energy sector. We do that 
through many bills we pass here.
  I will just give you one example. I am proud of the Neotropical 
Migratory Bird Act, that I was partially responsible for making sure 
that we funded that. That provides grants for habitats for migratory 
birds. That money is almost all spent in other countries. I was just 
recently in South America, and they were thanking us for the work they 
have done in regard to this program in protecting the habitat for 
migratory birds.
  So the United States does a lot in regard to international financing. 
We share our technology. It is U.S. technology that is being used by 
these countries in order to develop their infrastructure.
  Our objective is clear: We want the developing world to have green 
infrastructure that gives them reliable energy, gives them reliable 
transportation. We want them to do that without deforestation, without 
taking away their forests. We want them to do that without using their 
fossil reserves. For that, we have to be active participants in 
international financing to help them. We are that. We are a reliable 
global partner, and we made that point over and over again.
  I will just give you one more example of how we are helping. Senator 
Menendez has introduced what is known as AMAZON21, a bill I hope we can 
pass in this Congress. It provides help to preserve forestation around 
the world. It is named for the Amazon, of course, which is the greatest 
treasure we have in our hemisphere on forest lands that are very much 
subject to being lost.
  I joined Senator Menendez in Ecuador recently, and we talked to 
leadership there about what they are doing to protect the Amazon. They 
need help so that the indigenous population does not have to cut down 
the forests in order to farm. We need to be helpful in that, and 
AMAZON21 would be the U.S. response to help to maintain the forests. 
Why do we want to maintain the forests? Twenty percent of the global 
carbon emissions is occurring through deforestation. It is a huge 
source to meet our goals that we need to meet.
  COP27 was held in Egypt, and we cannot go to Egypt without mentioning 
the human rights concerns that we have in that country. Thousands of 
journalists, protesters, and activists are in jail today without trial 
solely because they are trying to report the news or disagree with 
their government or be environmentalists.
  That is wrong, and we raised those issues. We met with the families 
of some of the victims who are in jail today, and we met with the 
Foreign Minister of Egypt in order to raise these issues. We will 
continue to raise these issues and urge the Egyptians to release those 
who are being held for just expressing their views or being 
journalists. That is wrong, and they need to be released.
  Lastly, let me just compliment the U.S. leadership at COP27. I 
already mentioned Secretary John Kerry. John Kerry has done a great 
service to this country and to the global community.

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He has traveled the world. He has gotten countries to move a lot 
further than I think any of us thought was possible. I want to 
congratulate our former colleague for the work he has done on the 
climate issues. I want to also acknowledge Assistant Secretary Monica 
Medina, who worked tirelessly during COP27 in order to get results.
  We are certainly not satisfied with everything that happened at 
COP27. Let me make that clear. There were disappointments. We would 
like to have seen an increase in the emissions targets, much more than 
have been made. We have to do better. They only made modest progress on 
mitigation. But important progress was made in forest protection. So we 
did make progress, and we brought the international community together 
in order to recognize that this is a global problem.
  I am so proud that the U.S. leadership is back on the international 
scene, leading the international community to do what we need to to 
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avert the most severe consequences 
of climate change.
  With that, I would yield the floor.