[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 163 (Wednesday, October 4, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4935-S4937]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am back for now the 290th time to 
urge this Chamber to act on climate change. I have my trusty graphic 
here, which after nearly 300 of these is getting a little battered.
  This evening, I would like to talk about two things: First is the 
grim parade of climate-driven disasters the United States and the world 
has experienced over the last several months. Then, our hearings in the 
Budget Committee on the enormous budgetary and economic dangers caused 
by fossil fuel emissions.
  Let's start with the unprecedented warming the world is experiencing. 
This June was the hottest June on record. Then July became the hottest 
month on record. Then August became the hottest August and the second 
hottest month on record, and September was just declared the hottest 
September on record and by the largest margin.
  Here is what that looks like when you compare it to previous years. 
We have popped out of the zone of previous experience.
  So 2023 will almost certainly become the hottest year on record, with 
the first significant chance that global average temperature will hit 
1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the preindustrial average. Exceeding 
that 1.5 degree-Celsius point will expose us to dangerous tipping 
points, things like ice sheet collapses that could cause dozens of feet 
of sea level rise.
  More than 6,500 daily heat records were broken in cities and towns 
across the United States this summer. Phoenix experienced a record 55 
days this year with temperatures above 110 degrees, with a 31-day 
streak. People who fell on Phoenix pavement required medical attention 
for burns. The Midwest experienced its worst drought in over a decade, 
with huge swaths of the Midwest, Southwest, and the South still under 
the most severe drought designation.
  Extreme drought in Hawaii set the conditions for its lethal wildfire. 
In Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, storms triggered deadly floods. 
Florida's gulf coast was hit by Hurricane Idalia, which intensified 
rapidly over warmed-up waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Wind speeds 
increased almost 55 miles per hour in just a 14-hour window.
  Around the world, Europe baked; China hit record high temperatures; 
Italy suffered its worst flooding in a century; and more than 21,000 
Libyans are dead or missing after massive flooding. Recordbreaking 
fires ravaged Greece and Canada.
  Canada's fires burned an area roughly the size of Oklahoma.

[[Page S4936]]

  The smoke. Here is the annual acreage of Canadian wildfires, and here 
is this year. Top year before, down here. This is what we got last 
year. The smoke from these fires blanketed the eastern seaboard for 
weeks. Here in Washington, doctors said that breathing the smoke-choked 
air was worse than smoking a half pack of cigarettes. New York looked 
like this.
  The list of unprecedented, record-breaking, and worst in history 
climate events goes on and on. These disasters seen separately fail to 
capture the full scale of the problem. When you look at them together, 
you see that we are creating a climate for our own habitation unlike 
any in the history of humankind.
  We are increasingly testing the limits of human habitability on this 
planet, and it will worsen if we don't act--which brings us to the 
Budget Committee. Set aside the destruction of lives and livelihoods, 
the 250,000 deaths around the world each year caused by fossil fuel 
emissions. Look just at the financial havoc.
  Last year, weather-related damage in the United States topped $165 
billion, the third costliest year on record. This year, we have had 23 
separate billion-dollar climate disasters already, and that is just 
counting direct, physical damage. Just now, in the CR, we had to add 
$16 billion in disaster relief funds, and that is only a stopgap. 
Failing at our climate responsibilities is immoral, but it is also 
irresponsible, fiscally irresponsible.
  So the Budget Committee did a deep dive into the fiscal costs and 
risks of climate change. Across 10 Budget Committee hearings already 
this year, central bankers, financial experts, economists, insurance 
executives, political leaders, and other responsible experts described 
increased budget costs and systemic risks looming over the U.S. 
economy.
  What is ``systemic''? Systemic means that the damage spreads beyond 
the immediately affected sector and cascades throughout the economy. 
Remember 2008 when a meltdown in the mortgage market cascaded through 
the economy and brought the Great Recession? Between October 2008 and 
April 2009, 700,000 Americans lost their jobs every month. American 
households lost $17 trillion in wealth. The Federal Government's debt 
grew by $5 trillion from lost revenues. Our economy still carries the 
scars.
  And in one of our Budget hearings, a former chief economist from 
Freddie Mac said that climate change could cause a crash in coastal 
property values that would be just as bad. Just as bad.
  Sea level rise and worse coastal storms are on their way to making 
more than a trillion dollars in coastal real estate uninsurable and, 
therefore, unmortgageable, and that is when you get that crash--not 
when the water pours in across your doorstep, but when 30-year 
mortgages won't cover your property because that risk of the water 
coming over the doorstep is so foreseeable.
  And it is not just coastal property either, we heard. There is a 
whole separate risk from wildfires that a similar death spiral occurs 
for Western property values, and we had a hearing on that.
  The other systemic threat we had a hearing about is that the fossil 
fuel industry is artificially propped up, both by massive political 
subsidies and crooked international cartel pricing and that, as 
inevitably declining demand for its products occurs, that, in turn, 
will cause a dash for the exits--when other countries that pump 
enormous amounts of oil and gas abandon the cartel pricing, sell it for 
what they can get, the dash for the exits. When that happens, it will 
strand hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuel assets in what is 
called a carbon-bubble collapse.
  Each of these three systemic risks is well documented. Each could 
create a massive economic crash. And added to that is the steady, 
relentless cost increases, the climate inflation from insurance prices, 
from lost and damaged infrastructure, from increased healthcare needs, 
and from climbing food prices as increased temperatures, higher sea 
levels, and precipitation anomalies break up world food supply 
patterns. We have had hearings on those, too.
  At our very first hearing, a former governor of the banks of England 
and Canada and a former Director of the nonpartisan Congressional 
Budget Office and Goldman Sachs former head of risk management all 
underscored the economic urgency of solving climate change and the 
foreseeable hit of climate change on public budgets. They all suggested 
that a price on carbon so polluters pay for harms they cause would be 
fiscally and economically responsible.
  One Republican member of the committee embraced a domestic price on 
carbon and noted that a carbon border adjustment--a tariff on imports 
from carbon-intensive economies such as China's--would use market 
forces to decarbonize the global economy. I couldn't agree more. I have 
had that bill in the Senate for years, a carbon price with a border 
tariff.
  A later hearing brought conservative support for that kind of climate 
action from former Australian Conservative Prime Minister Malcolm 
Turnbull and former Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist. Up against 
our serious, nonpartisan, and knowledgeable witnesses--among them 
witnesses with real fiduciary obligations and real economic stakes with 
every motive to get it right--the Republican witnesses often spouted 
fossil fuel disinformation, often funded by dark money industry front 
groups.
  We heard some beauties--one witness, a former mouthpiece of the 
tobacco industry, stated that secondhand smoke was not a public health 
issue because lung cancer and emphysema are not contagious, like that 
is the problem. One witness produced cherry-picked and misleading 
testimony so easily refuted that even the fossil fuel friendly Montana 
Attorney General dropped her off his witness list in the youth climate 
case he was defending, a trial that the young plaintiffs won against 
the State of Montana, by the way.
  Another witness informed us that sea level rise was nothing to worry 
about because New York, Miami, and Boston will all just move.
  Republican witnesses spouted the usual debunked falsehoods, that 
renewable energy is expensive, that the fossil fuel industry isn't 
subsidized, that the science around climate change is uncertain, that 
transitioning to clean energy will be bad for the economy. It is all 
nonsense, and they say it anyway.
  One witness even tried to accuse the financial services sector of 
having a conflict of interest behind what she called its climate 
alarmism. But then she had to admit, under examination, that the fossil 
fuel industry was the one with the economic incentive to minimize 
climate dangers and shouldn't be trusted as a reliable source.
  Many of the Republican witnesses have made careers out of being 
industry shills, sheltered in a fossil fuel funded array of front 
groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American 
Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation just to be trotted 
out for hearings like these.
  Well, our hearings began in February, and they got very often this 
response from the other side. But let us take a look at what we warned 
about and what happened since.
  Well, first of all, there is that accelerating cascade of climate 
disasters that I discussed at the beginning of the speech, so I won't 
relitigate that.
  Let us go on to insurance. Our hearings in February and March warned 
of turbulence ahead in the insurance industry. These predictions are 
already coming true--hearings in February and March. By July, insurers 
were exiting or reducing exposure in California, Florida, Texas, and 
Louisiana markets, and reinsurers exited Iowa--all citing exposure to 
climate-related losses. In Florida, homeowners' premiums have spiked to 
nearly four times the national average with a 40-percent increase this 
year predicted.
  There are already signs that insurance affordability and availability 
are beginning to disrupt Florida's real estate market, exactly as 
foretold in our hearings, and I doubt Florida's State insurance fund is 
solvent.
  And don't think it is just Florida. Here is where climate risks are 
hitting home insurance markets. A lot of it is along the coast here, 
where hurricanes and sea level rise and increased storm and tide damage 
is putting homeownership at risk. You will notice that the

[[Page S4937]]

entire State of Florida is covered. But then out here, you get into 
wildfire-adjacent areas where the wildfire risk is already causing 
problems in the home insurance markets.
  In the face of these risks, all across the country, up against truly 
distinguished witnesses, real grownups who know what they are talking 
about, whose warnings are already coming true, Republicans frequently 
put up fossil fuel front group mouthpieces, paid not to understand the 
facts. Sadly, it is a sign that fossil fuel mischief persists. So in 
our 11th hearing, we showed how the fossil fuel industry has known for 
almost seven decades about these dangers they deny.
  As early as the 1950s, industry scientists left records of their 
warnings about climate change. They were measuring and predicting it. 
Industry scientists were measuring and predicting it, and they knew 
their fossil fuel products were causing it.
  In 1977, Exxon Senior Scientist James Black told Exxon's management 
committee--I am quoting him here.

       There is general scientific agreement that the most likely 
     manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is 
     through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil 
     fuels.

  Nineteen seventy-seven, that is what Exxon's scientists told Exxon's 
management. Well, other scientists noticed it, too. And Congress began 
pursuing legislation that would have addressed climate dangers. Big Oil 
responded with billions of dollars in fossil fuel funded 
disinformation, lobbying, and dark money election spending. They are 
still at it, as the more preposterous witnesses attested by their 
presence. It wasn't always so. During my first years here in the 
Senate, climate legislation was bipartisan. John McCain ran for 
President on a serious climate platform.
  But in January 2010, the Citizens United decision set loose a barrage 
of political spending by the fossil fuel industry. Worse, the Court 
allowed that spending to be secret, to hide the identity of the 
spender. The fossil fuel industry was ready with unlimited dark money 
and--and--with the secret threats and promises that the ability to 
spend unlimited dark money allows you to make.
  And between the spending and the threats and the promises, the fossil 
fuel industry snuffed out bipartisanship on climate like that. From 
January of 2010, the date of Citizens United forward, no Republican has 
gotten on a serious climate bill in the Senate.
  Collectively, fossil fuel interest through trade organizations and 
through their dark money front groups have spent billions of dollars 
that we know of so far on ads, on lobbying, on campaign contributions, 
and on super PACs.
  Super PACs, by the way, didn't exist before Citizens United. That 
monstrosity is a creation of Citizens United and dark money. The delay 
in climate action that those billions of dollars bought has directly 
caused the economic perils that our hearings have spotlighted. 
Organizations like the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the 
American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, by 
2021 had received over half a billion dollars from fossil fuel and 
other dark money interests.

  This is the web of various fossil fuel-funded front groups, with the 
bulk of the funding unidentified. That is the dark money blob in the 
middle of this web.
  Here are some of the key groups into which political money flowed to 
support climate denial and climate skepticism. Political money flowed 
through anonymizing intermediaries into Republican super PACs. 
Lobbyists from industries and trade associations crawled around this 
building. They spent a fortune.
  But for all the billions that they spent, this political and 
propaganda effort was a bargain--a corrupting bargain but a bargain. 
The International Monetary Fund calculates, using a peer-reviewed 
procedure, that we subsidize fossil fuels by $760 billion--billion--
annually in the United States alone. Seven hundred and sixty billion 
dollars is the subsidy the IMF points out that the fossil fuel industry 
floats on in this country.
  So let's say the fossil fuel industry spent $7.6 billion on political 
influence and secret corruption schemes every year. They would be 
pocketing a subsidy dollar for every political-influence penny that 
they spent if they protected their $760 billion subsidy. It is the best 
money they could possibly spend. It is more rewarding than drilling for 
oil.
  But while corrupting Congress may have been a bargain for them, the 
price of a corrupted Congress was very high for everyone else. We lost 
an essential decade from the Citizens United decision in January of 
2010 and our passage of the IRA--the first serious piece of climate 
legislation passed by Congress.
  More than $10 trillion of our national debt stems from the 2008 
financial crisis--a warned-of economic shock--and the COVID pandemic--
another warned-of shock. Those trillions of ``shock debt'' amount to 40 
percent of our total national debt. Climate disruption shocks are 
looming, predicted, clearly predicted, just like climate change and its 
consequences were predicted, clearly predicted. Now, as we have seen, 
the climate change consequences are here. The shocks are still looming.
  I will close by saying that the threat from climate change to the 
Federal budget is probably the least of our climate worries as we think 
about the damage we are doing to the natural systems that have made 
Earth habitable for humankind; as we think about new diseases and 
dangers and destruction; as we think about wars and suffering as 
resources shift and global scarcity replaces global abundance; as we 
think about the lost species, the lost places of beauty, the lost 
natural harmonies, the lost human traditions, the trout stream you 
can't teach your granddaughter to fish at because the trout aren't 
there. By some measures, the money is the least of it.
  But here in Mammon Hall, we seem to care most about the money. So our 
Budget Committee hearings have made clear that warnings abound of what 
droughts, floods, wildfires, and heated, rising seas will do 
economically to American families and businesses and to our Federal 
budget.
  The long-predicted damage has already begun. It has gone beyond 
science predictions. It is now within the fiduciary horizons of 
businesses that are having to report to shareholders on climate risks 
because it has become so real and so immediate that their fiduciary 
obligations demand that reporting. That is why the fossil fuel industry 
cooked up this whole phony anti-ESG show that they have put on to try 
to push back against the fiduciary obligations that so many 
corporations are feeling obliged to meet.
  These looming, systemic, economy-wide threats are real. Nothing says 
that it is going to be either the coastal crash or the wildfire crash 
or the carbon bubble crash. Nothing says that all three can't happen.
  If we are to be serious about debt and about deficits and about 
federal spending, we better damn well be serious about climate change. 
It is, as my trusty old graphic says, time to wake up.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, first, I want to commend my colleague from 
Rhode Island. No one has been more accurate and more farseeing about 
climate change than Sheldon Whitehouse.
  When he first came to the Senate, it was a technical issue that 
scientists debated. Now it is an issue we are confronting because of 
his efforts, and it is also an issue we are confronting because we see 
it.
  We are in the midst of a crisis. He foresaw it. He has dedicated 
himself to addressing it. I am just very proud to be his colleague in 
this Senate.