[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 196 (Wednesday, November 29, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5649-S5650]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Madam President, we are about to see the beginning of COP28. That is 
the annual international meeting to take climate action. This one is a 
little different because America finally took historic action on 
climate, and it is working.
  And so the message that America will be bringing to this COP--COP28, 
which begins in Dubai tomorrow--is that we finally did it. We finally 
took the biggest climate action in human history. Is it enough? No.
  Is it more than we have ever done before? Absolutely, it is more than 
we have ever done before.
  And the COP is a unique opportunity for governments across the world 
to work together and coordinate their response to what is the greatest 
challenge of our time: the climate crisis. Climate change is getting 
worse by the year, and it is affecting more and more people in every 
corner of the planet, including all of us in the United States. 
Recognizing that, Congress took the biggest climate action in American 
history a year ago with the Inflation Reduction Act, in addition to 
setting

[[Page S5650]]

targets to dramatically reduce carbon emissions in the United States, 
the IRA also made historic investments to accelerate the transition to 
a clean energy future. It was an ambitious piece of legislation. But 
the truth is, the IRA's impact in just a year--just a year--has 
surpassed even the most hopeful projections. And none of the parade of 
horribles that the fossil fuel industry articulated ended up happening: 
Prices did not go up for regular consumers; the economy didn't crash; 
and all of the things that, frankly, the clean energy side said was 
going to happen--and some of it, in my view, was aspirational, like 
hundreds of thousands of new union clean energy jobs--it actually is 
happening. So everything we said was going to happen, happened. None of 
the things that they were fearing would happen did happen, and it is 
working faster and better and more powerfully than even our experts 
were able to project. But there is still more to come.

  The IRA has proof that big, bold climate action is not just possible, 
but it benefits everyone, and it offers a roadmap for the rest of the 
world. As my dear friend and family member--may she rest in piece--
Madeleine Albright always said that ``We are the indispensable 
nation.'' The United States is the indispensable Nation.
  And I look at the presiding officer, and I think you know this: When 
we go abroad, it is a little shocking the extent to which people are 
hanging on tenterhooks wondering, What does the United States think? 
You don't need to be the head of state for people to still be 
especially tuned in to, What is the United States going to do? What are 
they going to say? What actions are they going to take?
  And, finally, after the first COP, where we organized through 
President Obama's leadership global climate action and we had some 
momentum, and then we lost our momentum. Federal action on climate 
basically ground to a halt. So we were going to these COPs to say: Hey, 
we are still in. We are still committed to climate action. Yes, it is 
true that we weren't able to do something this year or last year or the 
year before, but we are still in. And it was hard to make that case 
year over year over year as the indispensable Nation while we try to 
tell everybody to take climate action and we hadn't yet done it at the 
scale that was necessary.
  Well, this is different. Now we have done it. It is working. It is 
equal to the task in front of us. And every other nation should 
capitalize on this opportunity and do their own version of the 
Inflation Reduction Act. This is a real chance for us to put words into 
action. We have been talking about what to do about climate for years. 
It is time to finally put the resources and the money behind those 
pledges as time runs out.
  What absolutely cannot happen in this conference is that it cannot be 
co-opted by fossil fuel interests. Too many oil and gas companies are 
paying lip service to addressing climate change, all the while actively 
expanding their fossil fuel enterprise.
  Just this week, we saw alarming reports that the host of the COP was 
looking to cut deals with countries on oil and gas projects. Now, I 
know that he denied that. I know that the reporting is somewhat mixed, 
and I don't begrudge UAE chairing this COP. It is a rotating COP. It 
goes by region. UAE gets to chair it. That is not the problem.
  The problem is the extent to which fossil energy companies, the 
American Chamber of Commerce, and other international corporations have 
decided to bear-hug this process to undermine it. And we have to be 
very, very wary. If there are fossil companies or energy companies that 
are both on the clean and the fossil side that want to be 
constructively engaged in how to take climate action, that is great. 
But we will be damned if we allow these companies to bear-hug the COP 
process to the point where it becomes meaningless.
  And so myself, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Cardin, Senator Heinrich, 
Senator Markey, and others will be watching this like a hawk.