[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 173 (Thursday, November 21, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6711-S6712]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is, I think, my 295th ``Time to 
Wake Up'' speech, with my increasingly battered graphic, which the 
Smithsonian has asked for as the most used graphic in Senate history, 
but I wouldn't let them have it until we solve the problem, so it just 
gets increasingly dented.
  But what I want to talk about now is the trip that I just took with 
Senator Markey to the COP, the Conference of the Parties, the COP 29 in 
Azerbaijan, where Senator Markey and I heard a similar message from 
almost everyone there: The transition to clean energy is happening and 
will continue to happen no matter who occupies the White House.
  China's auto market will achieve a milestone this year with electric 
and hybrid vehicles half of all vehicles sold. China is also installing 
record amounts of wind, solar, and nuclear. Europe is rapidly and 
irreversibly weaning itself off fossil fuels, with greenhouse gas 
emissions projected to fall by 8 percent this year--enormous progress. 
In Australia, one-third of homes have rooftop solar, and they are 
growing dramatically. More than 40 percent of Australia's electricity 
comes from renewables, headed for 80 percent by 2030.
  So while America's energy policy has been sold out to Trump's fossil 
fuel donors, the world will go on, leaving America more and more 
behind. Nor does Trump being for sale mean that there won't be 
leadership on climate change coming from the United States. California 
as the fifth largest economy in the world and New York as the 10th 
largest economy in the world, joined by other States like New Jersey 
and Rhode Island, can pursue together ambitious decarbonization 
policies. These States can move markets, and they will win economically 
against States that are left stuck with expensive, polluting fossil 
fuel.
  The European Union is driving forward on climate change, particularly 
with its carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM. Europe's power 
and industrial sectors already work under a domestic carbon price. The 
CBAM extends that carbon price beyond EU borders to imports that are 
entering the European Union. American exporters are going to start 
paying a tariff if their exports aren't up to EU carbon emission 
standards. Given the size of EU markets, the CBAM amounts to a global 
carbon price for energy-intensive industrial goods.
  Not just the EU but the UK has announced that it is joining the CBAM 
also. We spoke with Australia, which is in detailed negotiations to 
join as well. Because of the CBAM, even economies that aren't joining, 
like India and China, are looking at domestic carbon pricing to reduce 
the tariff burden. After all, why pay tariffs to get into EU, UK, and 
Australian markets when you can keep the same revenue at home via a 
domestic carbon price?
  Washington State voters just approved a carbon price by an 
overwhelming margin. New England's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative 
is a small but successful multistate carbon price. Carbon pricing is 
coming, and that is good news because there is no longer a pathway to 
climate safety without a price on carbon.
  We heard from business leaders about the economic havoc that climate 
change is causing, particularly now in insurance markets. It is a 
subject that my Budget Committee has examined closely, and our 
committee is going to release several more reports on the climate 
economic threat before I relinquish that gavel.
  As I said frequently at the COP, we have gone through three stages on 
climate change.
  The first stage was the science phase. Scientists did their job, and 
they gave us accurate warnings about the dangers of fossil fuel 
emissions to the planet and to humanity.
  Then we came to the political phase. We did not do our jobs. Despite 
the warnings of science, politicians yielded to an unprecedented 
campaign of obstruction and disinformation orchestrated and funded by 
the fossil fuel industry through a flotilla of dark money front groups 
and captured trade associations.
  One rare bright moment in this political failure came when Democrats 
passed the Inflation Reduction Act, but despite its now proven benefit 
to Republican districts, not one Republican would vote for it.
  Now we enter the third phase of climate change: the economic phase, 
the time of consequences. In this phase, climate change warnings start 
coming home to roost in household economies. We see it immediately in 
the insurance crisis in climate risk areas, with Florida being ground 
zero for exploding home and car insurance rates in a collapsing 
insurance market. We also see it in grocery aisles as droughts and 
floods hammer agricultural commodities. Shipping is constricted 
in dried-up waterways, like the Panama Canal or the Mississippi River; 
supply chains unravel; and for good measure, Big Oil adds to the cost 
problems by jacking up gas prices.

  Let's review that for a moment. When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 
2022, gas prices spiked, assisted by the OPEC cartel. Big Oil had a 
two-part strategy ready to go: One, raise their prices to meet the new 
cartel price, pushing high prices at the pump for Americans, and two, 
blame the high prices that they put at the pump for Americans on Joe 
Biden. That campaign of blame was pure theater. Obviously, oil 
companies set their own gas prices; government doesn't. The surge in 
oil profits coming from their price gouging shows their multibillion-
dollar motivation. Falsely blaming Joe Biden--well, that helped their 
politics.
  The red line on this graph shows inflation-adjusted oil prices. Two 
things are clear: One, oil prices are dangerously volatile, and two, 
they keep getting higher, even adjusted for inflation.
  This blue line here shows the average postwar oil prices.
  This green line here shows the average price per barrel since 1980, 
up $13 from the postwar average.
  So behind all of this volatility noise is an actual, persistent 
increase in cost, even inflation-adjusted.

[[Page S6712]]

  This brown line up here shortens the timeframe further. It shows the 
average price since 2000, and it is up another $12--a total $25-per-
barrel increase.
  The lesson? Stay addicted to oil, and our future will be volatile, 
increasingly expensive, and dangerous.
  Where fossil fuel denies us energy security and drives inflation, 
renewable energy offers us stable, affordable energy, powered by fuels 
that are free--sunlight and wind and flowing water and geothermal heat. 
None depend on tyrants' whims or foreign cartels' greed.
  Then add the economic costs of climate change--not just the cost of 
the product but the cost to life of burning that product. Fossil fuel 
emissions are driving up the cost of insurance, electricity, and 
groceries, to name just the most prominent examples. Homeowners' 
premiums in Florida have tripled or quadrupled. And it is not just 
Florida--go to coastal Louisiana or Texas or even California and other 
States. They are seeing surging insurance premiums, including auto 
premiums, as floods and hailstorms and fires become more common and 
intense.
  Electricity bills soared when utilities had to spend billions of 
dollars upgrading their distribution networks to prevent them from 
sparking wildfires in this new hotter, dryer condition that climate 
change has caused, and hotter temperatures increased electric utility 
bills as families had to use more energy in order to cool their homes. 
Phoenix's record 113 consecutive days of 100-plus-degree heat this year 
required lots of excess electricity.
  In America's grocery aisles, you will find example after example of 
staples whose prices increased due to climate change--climate-fueled 
droughts, climate-fueled floods, climate-fueled heat waves. Orange 
juice, chocolate, olive oil, sugar--the list goes on. It is 
climateflation, and we should call it that.
  The fossil fuel industry's fake concern for America's consumers is 
illustrated by liquefied natural gas--LNG--exports. Guess how economies 
work. Domestic prices rise when we export more LNG because there is 
less left for the American consumer: supply down, demand the same, 
price up. Yet Big Oil happily raises prices on Americans by fighting 
for more, more, more LNG exports and more and more profits, driving 
higher prices for American families.
  Who is actually responsible for these price increases? The oil and 
gas executives who obstructed climate action for decades, putting our 
economy and our planet at ever greater peril. They knew that the 
continued combustion of oil and gas would eventually result in dozens 
of feet of sea level rise and make extreme storms, droughts, heat 
waves, wildfires, and floods far more likely. They knew, and rather 
than fix it, they bought off the Republican Party with campaign cash 
and dark money front groups. Those oil and gas chieftains were among 
the biggest donors to President Trump's campaign. Just this year, Trump 
asked them for $1 billion in campaign money in exchange for doing their 
bidding--quid pro quo.
  The burden on American families of higher insurance premiums, higher 
electricity bills, higher grocery bills, and storm-ravaged homes and 
cars is about to turn worse. There is an old saying--I think it was 
Ernest Hemingway--about going bankrupt. He said it happens very slowly 
and then all at once. We are headed for an all-at-once moment. 
Witnesses in our Budget Committee hearings warn that when insurance 
markets melt down because of unpredictable climate risk, the problem 
then cascades on into mortgage markets because you need insurance to 
get a mortgage, and that then cascades on into property values because 
your property's value drops if buyers can't get a mortgage to buy it 
from you.
  I mean, it is fine if you are a billionaire in Palm Beach who is 
going to sell Mar-a-Lago to the next billionaire, and it is all a big 
cash transaction. But if you are a plumber in a development outside of 
Orlando, you need somebody who can get a mortgage to buy your property. 
And if you can't insure your property so that it can't support a 
mortgage, you are going to have a real problem with its property value.
  The former chief economist of mortgage giant Freddie Mac testified 
this cascade ends in a shock to the economy like the 2008 mortgage 
meltdown.
  He is not alone. Just to give one other example of many, The 
Economist magazine--not exactly a green outfit--warned in a cover 
article that ``climate change . . . could wipe out . . . $25 trillion'' 
of value in the global housing market; ``experts warn of a `climate-
insurance bubble' affecting a third of American homes.''
  That prediction from the chief economist of Freddie Mac about a 
coastal property values crash that would cascade into a 2008-style 
economic meltdown for the country was based on, as I said, coastal 
property values, but now the Carolinas can tell you about upland 
flooding destroying the reliability of insurance. And California and 
Western States can tell you about wildfire risk crashing insurance 
markets.
  So the original risk to coastal properties now has these evil 
siblings of climate risk to upland flooding and to wildfire-adjacent 
properties. So it is likely to be worse. And as The Economist points 
out, it is affecting a third of American homes.
  Rather than face up to any of this, the incoming administration will 
deny it all as payback to their oil and gas industry donors--corruption 
of the lowest sort. But no amount of lies, propaganda, and corruption 
can change the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. You can deny 
gravity all you want, but when you step out a window, the result is the 
same.
  So I will be laser-focused on the corruption that Trump will unleash 
on America and the economic consequences of climate change that 
Americans will face. As the climate danger long warned about comes home 
to roost in surging insurance premiums, flooded communities, higher 
prices, and crashing property values in flood and wildfire-exposed 
communities--again, potentially causing a 2008-style economywide 
economic shock--we will explain to Americans how it did not have to be 
this way, how these costs are the poison fruit of the fossil fuel 
industry's climate fraud and its corrupt bargains with Trump.
  And with that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.