Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 38 (Wednesday, February 26, 2025)

[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 38 (Wednesday, February 26, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1402-S1412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CLIMATE CHANGE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today is a sad and discouraging--even
disgraceful--day here in the Senate. The vote that we have just taken
signals the utter and complete subservience of the Trump administration
and the Republican Party to the polluters of the fossil fuel industry.
To the extent that there is any justification for fossil fuel
pollution, leaks from pipes and valves and wells that aren't properly
maintained by fossil fuel companies are probably the most shameless
form of pollution, and yet that is precisely what this vote that we
have just taken protects and even encourages.
Let's start, for a moment, with why methane matters.
We are well into a climate crisis. We have been warned about it for
decades. The scientists, God bless them, actually got it right. Even
Exxon's scientists got it right. And, on the basis of all that science,
it then fell to us here in this building, in Congress, to react
prudently and sensibly and steer our course away from the worst dangers
that the scientists had so well and accurately predicted.
Of course, we did not.
We did not for the worst of all possible reasons, which was improper
influence from the fossil fuel industry itself, which was supercharged
by the Citizens United decision that allowed the industry to flood
unlimited amounts of money into politics and, worse, unlimited amounts
of money into politics secretly through front groups and various
anonymizing screens so that citizens and the public were deprived of
knowing who it was who was actually in their living rooms, on their
televisions, telling them lies about climate change. Front groups with
phony names like Heartland Institute and Americans for Prosperity
shielded the fact that this was a self-interested industry, using
political clout of the worst kind to protect its right to pollute for
free. Nobody should have the right to pollute for free, but this
entitled industry fought to corrupt this body in order to protect its
pollute-for-free business model.
Amidst all the pollution that this industry emits, carbon dioxide is
the gas that is most discussed. We talk about carbon content. We talk
about carbon dioxide limits. We talk about carbon emissions, but
methane--methane--actually, is even more dangerous in the short term
than carbon dioxide. These

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gases go up into the atmosphere, where they have what is called a
greenhouse effect. They trap more heat, which warms up the planet. Over
a 20-year period, methane is more than 80 times more dangerous than
carbon dioxide. A lot is going to go wrong in the next 20 years during
which this methane will have that 80-times effect compared to carbon
dioxide. Methane is explosive; it is poisonous; it is a pollutant.
What this bill tried to do was to get the fossil fuel industry--get
these big companies--to clean up the methane that they were just
leaking into the atmosphere, making a complete mess in really giant
plumes. We have been able, recently, to detect these plumes from above,
from satellites even. So here is just one satellite image--this is on
Google Earth--of one methane plume, and we are allowing immense amounts
of methane into the atmosphere. The fossil fuel industry, for years,
told the EPA that they were releasing 8 million tons of methane per
year. Well, 8 million tons of methane per year, when you consider that
it is 80 times as bad as carbon dioxide--that gets you to a pretty big
number of carbon dioxide equivalent and a pretty big danger to our
national well-being, but it wasn't 8 million tons. The industry did not
tell the truth to the EPA.
As it turned out, when the Environmental Defense Fund actually put up
a satellite to measure this and then flew airplanes over the plume to
get even more distinct clarity out of the signals--it turns out that
the fossil fuel industry was leaking 32 million tons of methane into
the atmosphere--leaking. This is pipes that they didn't maintain,
valves that they didn't maintain, wells that they didn't properly
close--leaking. Ordinarily, just to be a good citizen, just to be a
decent individual, if you were making a big mess that affected other
people, you would stop it; you would clean it up; you might even
apologize for the mess that you had made. Not the fossil fuel industry.

But we needed to solve the problem of 32 million tons of methane
being leaked by this industry every year. They sure weren't going to do
it on their own. They wouldn't even tell the EPA the truth about how
much they were emitting. This is natural gas that if it weren't being
leaked out into the atmosphere would have gone on through those pipes
to an end user. They could have actually sold it. This is an industry
that was so lazy and so sloppy and so cheap that it wouldn't even
maintain its own equipment to prevent it from leaking and spilling out.
Something had to be done, so we worked with the Presiding Officer's
predecessor, who was an ardent advocate for the fossil fuel industry,
to get a measure into the Inflation Reduction Act that would deal with
the problem of 32 million tons of methane negligently leaked by the
fossil fuel industry into the atmosphere because they couldn't be
bothered to clean up their own mess and maintain properly their own
equipment.
And what did we come up with?
We came up with a pretty fair deal for the industry. The industry was
going to get a handout, a government handout, of $1.5 billion to spend
in going out and cleaning up the pipes and the valves and the wells
that they darned well should have been cleaning up on their own
already. It should not take a government handout. It should not take
corporate welfare to this industry to have them maintain their
facilities safely and properly and responsibly.
But, to solve the problem, we agreed. OK. You have been polluting
like crazy for decades. You have been lying about how much you have
been polluting. You have been negligent about maintaining your own
equipment so that this leakage does not happen, and for that, we are
going to reward you with 1.5 billion taxpayer dollars for you to do the
work you should have been doing anyway.
That was not that welcomed as you can imagine for me and, say, for
taxpayers on Rhode Island, who were on the receiving end of so much of
this.
What we got in return for that $1.5 billion government handout of
corporate welfare to this industry was a provision that, if they kept
leaking, when they kept leaking, they would pay a reasonable fee to
give them an incentive to knock off the leaking. When I say a
reasonable fee, let's start with the proposition that they shouldn't
have been leaking in the first place. The fee, first of all, would only
apply to major leaks--300 tons and more. It would only apply to
companies that were below the methane leak standards set by their own
industry trade group.
So it actually allowed these companies to keep leaking for free as
long as they were being as responsible as their own industry trade
group said they should be. So this fee would be limited to those
companies whose corporate behavior was so bad that it didn't even meet
the standards of their own industry trade group, and they could get out
of paying the fee by simply using that $1.5 billion or money of their
own to go and clean up their equipment and maintain their plants enough
that they met the standard of their own friendly industry trade group.
That is what was accomplished in the Inflation Reduction Act--$1.5
billion into the pockets of polluters to encourage them to clean up
their mess in return for which they would agree, if they kept at it and
were doing worse than their own trade association recommended, then
they would have to pay a fee to give them an incentive to knock it off,
which by the way, is Econ 101. This is not Republican versus Democrat.
This is not conservative versus liberal. This is Econ 101.

Even Milton Friedman, the legendary conservative economist,
acknowledged that if you are polluting, whether it is dumping sewage in
a river or methane in the air, you need to pay the cost of that harm.
Economists have fancy words for it. They call it negative
externalities. But everybody who understands that you clean up your own
mess understands the morality of that proposition. Good morals here is
also good economics.
And why is it important to do that? It is important to do that
because, otherwise, you are giving a market participant a subsidy.
Imagine the two factories side by side on the river. One is dumping
all of its waste into the river. The other is paying good money to make
sure that its waste is disposed of, instead of dumped into the river.
You don't want that to happen. So you put the cost of the negative
externality--the waste being thrown into the river--back onto that
company, and now you have fair market competition again. Otherwise, you
have a subsidy to the polluter dumping their waste in the river, and
that is not good economics. That is not market economics.
Very often, our friends on the other side of the aisle talk about the
importance of market economics: Let the market have its way.
Yes, until it is the big polluters--until it is the big polluters--
and then it is pollute for free. It is subsidize them by giving them
the uneconomic, immoral, and unhealthy right to pollute for free.
That is where this deal settled: a billion and a half to the industry
into its pockets and free corporate welfare to do what it should have
been doing all along, to clean up its mess. And in return, if you are
below your own industry standards, you have got to pay a fee.
That is what was undone today. That is what this vote was all about.
This vote was all about saying: We don't care if you are the worst
performers in this industry. We don't care if you are the most
irresponsible performers in this industry. We don't care if you are
emitting way above your own trade group's industry standards. Because
you are the fossil fuel industry, you get special privilege. You don't
have to maintain your equipment. Let the methane roar. Rip it out into
the atmosphere. Have at it. We don't care. Oh, and, by the way, thanks
for all the money you put into our pockets along the way, into our
political funds.
That is where we are right now. This was a really, really despicable
act by the fossil fuel industry to have this done here today.
We have been at this for a while. We have known about climate change
for a long time. We have known what methane and carbon dioxide and
other polluting gases did when they got up into the atmosphere. We are
seeing it happen around us.
I will mention particularly what is happening in the oceans because
the oceans are a pretty darn honest witness, a pretty darn honest
bellwether

[[Page S1404]]

of the harms of climate change. If you care about the oceans, if you
know anything about them, you will know that the oceans are warming.
You will notice that fisheries are changing. Fish that used to be
available to local fishermen are no longer there. They have had to move
as the oceans warmed. You will notice that coral reefs are dying off,
which are the nurseries of the ocean, which is where so many of the
fish that we then later take into our diets are born and nurtured or
come for food and sustenance.
You would know that, as the oceans are warming, they rise because
heat expands water, and that along our shores, you see that rise.
Here is what is happening in my home State. This is what we are
looking at. All of this blue area here--all of that--all of that is
land. All of that is land, where people have homes, where people have
businesses, where people have investments. And with sea level rising,
this is the prediction for what is going to be under water. This is the
prediction of what we are going to lose, how the map of my State is
going to have to be redrawn so that the fossil fuel industry can keep
polluting for free. There is a real cost to this in real people's
lives.
This is our historic Providence City Hall. This is an image of what
is going to happen. It is going to be like Venice. You will be able to
come up to the front steps of it in a boat. That is going to be really
expensive, really damaging.
Here is Barrington, RI. It is kind of a bedroom community. It serves
as the residence for a lot of people who work over in Providence. It
has a lot of beautiful homes there. But look at what happens when the
seas rise. It is like hollowed. You don't build a dike around it. It is
under water. That is a massive public works project, a massive
engineering project, a massive risk. And it is one that is brought on
by fossil fuel pollution, by the fossil industry's insistence that it
has to pollute for free, and by the harm that that causes in the
oceans.

Let me give you a scale on the kind of heat that is going into the
oceans, because you have to measure it by something called a
zettajoule. If you know anything about science or even engineering, you
know what a joule is. It is the unit of measurement of heat energy. A
zettajoule is that unit of heat energy with 21 zeroes behind it--21
zeroes behind it. A million has six zeroes behind it. This is 21 zeroes
behind it. It is a massive, enormous number.
To put human scale on how massive and enormous that number is, the
entire production of energy by the human species on the planet Earth
every year is only one-half of a zettajoule. Everything that we run--
the cars, the motors, the furnaces, the boilers, all of it, from India
to China, Africa to the United States, the whole globe around--all of
our energy production consumption adds up to one-half of a zettajoule.
And for the price of the fossil fuel component of that half
zettajoule that we all live on, we are dumping 14 zettajoules of heat
into the ocean every year. It is a 30-to-1 ratio. The emissions from
fossil fuels into the atmosphere actually magnify the direct heat from
the energy consumption.
So if you want to know why the oceans are warming, 14 zettajoules of
heat, nearly 30 times the entire energy production of the planet Earth,
is going into the oceans. And that does not bode well for us.
With all this evidence out there that the scientists saw, the fossil
fuel barons started getting a little nervous. They liked a pollute-for-
free business model. In fact, they probably realized that they couldn't
compete with clean energy unless they had a pollute-for-free business
model.
They knew they needed to get to work to protect their pollute-for-
free business model. So they began to set up a comprehensive, covert
political operation to protect that pollute-for-free business model.
It actually began with the tobacco industry's front groups. When it
became clear how bad tobacco was for smokers' health, how bad it was
for people getting secondary smoke, the tobacco industry went into
action, and they set up a whole array of phony tobacco-funded front
groups that could pretend they were grassroots movements. They could
pretend they were science groups. They ran a complicated operation to
fend off Congress from doing something about the health costs and
consequences of tobacco smoking.
Then along came the U.S. Department of Justice, in a better day, when
it was willing to take on hard things, and it brought a lawsuit against
the tobacco industry, asserting that that whole array of tobacco
industry front groups was a vehicle for propagating fraud; that the
message that tobacco was not dangerous was wrong, was false, was
flatout fraudulent, and that the tobacco industry knew it.
The case went to trial here in the U.S. District Court in the
District of Columbia, and the Department of Justice won a thumping
victory in a decision that ran a little over a thousand pages. God
bless that trial judge who put so much work into listening to all of
the evidence and put together such a powerful and voluminous record of
the fraud of the tobacco industry, so that when it was appealed up to
the circuit court of appeals, it was a slam-dunk win for the Department
of Justice in the appeal.
When they tried to get it overturned at the Supreme Court, the
Supreme Court said: Oh, no--no, no, no, no.
So the decision stood. The decision was this. It was actually fairly
simple for the thousand pages. The effect was fairly simple, almost
biblically simple. It said to the tobacco industry: Thou shalt lie no
more. And, by the way, you have to go back and clean up and straighten
out the lying you already did. But the real punch was ``thou shalt lie
no more.''
So if the tobacco industry couldn't lie anymore about its product,
then this whole array of front groups that the tobacco industry had set
up was out of business. What are you going to do if you are a paid liar
for an industry to try to protect it from Congress?
Well, guess what. Along came the fossil fuel industry looking at a
very similar problem: The dangers of its product and the danger that
Congress would actually do something to mitigate the dangers of that
product.
And, of course, the tobacco industry lying apparatus had a lot of
experience in how to look real, how to put up fake science that
pretended to be real, how to use Madison Avenue sloganeering to
convince people of things that weren't true, how to pretend to be
grassroots when it was actually funded by Big Industry. So the fossil
fuel industry picked all that up right away, but, of course, that
wasn't enough so they actually expanded on that.
Academic researchers who have looked at the fossil fuel industry's
climate denial operation have tagged as many as 100 different front
groups, all operating ``coordinatedly,'' like a bunch of disinformation
keys on the same disinformation piano. When one got badly burned for
being too phony, well, you would retire that one, and you would pop up
a new one with a new phony-baloney name.
For a long time, they were featuring heroic characters like George C.
Marshall and Founding Fathers when they were doing their naming. But it
was a massive, massive, massive political operation to deny the reality
of the harm associated with the industry's product--exactly like the
tobacco industry, although amped up on steroids.
But it wasn't enough just to put the fraudulent information out there
pretending, for instance, that climate change was a hoax. Even their
own scientists knew it wasn't a hoax. But admitting that it was real,
revealing what their own scientists had told them would mean that
Congress would come and behave responsibly, put a price perhaps on the
pollution, make them obey not only moral commands but economic rules.
And that would have put them at a disadvantage. So, instead, they chose
to lie and to lie and to lie and to lie.
They also chose to come here and spend money in politics--immense
amounts of money in politics. As I said, that all got supercharged by
the Citizens United decision. The Citizens United decision said: If you
are a big industry, the limits are off. You can spend as much as you
want. Go for it.
And in the way in which the Supreme Court administered that decision,
they also allowed the unlimited money to be spent secretly from behind
masks, through front groups, so that the citizens of this country who
are supposed to police our political battles and make informed
judgments about our

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political battles were denied the most basic information about who was
wearing whose jersey, who is on whose team, who is telling me this
stuff.
I make fun that the groups had names like Rhode Islanders for Peace
and Puppies and Prosperity, but if you went to look at the phony front
group with a ridiculous name like that, you would find that it was
located in a post office box or that it shared space with another
organization and didn't have any real employees--or that it was one of
a nest of related front groups that all shared common space and
employees and would change their names like moving the masks place to
place to keep up the pretense that this was real.
And the money poured in. The money poured in. And it allowed the
industry to be able to go to party leaders and say: If you will get
your party members to shut up about climate change, to shut up about
the danger of our product, to turn off the voices of, for instance,
Republicans like Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island, who hosted the
first hearing into the dangers of climate change--shut them up--if you
will shut them up and if you will line up behind us, we can give you
unlimited amounts of money. We can give you all the money you could
possibly need to win races, and we can hide that it is us.
This money can come through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It can come
through something called Americans for Prosperity. It can come through
something called the Heartland Institute. It can come through, in some
cases, multiple hops, like Russian nesting dolls, to hide who was the
original donor from the fossil fuel industry.
All of that apparatus, all of that scheme emerged after Citizens
United. Our political system is now rotten with fossil fuel money. We
have things like super PACs that didn't even used to exist, but they
are useful because you can put $100 million into a super PAC and send
it into a particular race and just blow up the adversary. And because
the super PAC only has to report the immediate donor, you just launder
your money through a corporate entity so the name of the fake group is
described as the name of the donor, and the real donor--whether it is
Marathon Petroleum or Exxon oil or whoever it is--is not available to
the public. We, as citizens, are deprived of that most basic piece of
information.
So all that money poured in, and sure enough, Republican interest in
doing something about climate change evaporated. Bob Inglis was the
House Member who had the temerity to insist on continuing to work on
climate change. Blasted out of his seat in a primary despite a near-
100-percent conservative voting record.
The signal was clear: If you are in with us, we will take care of
you. If you are not, you are out. You are out of the party, even.
So this covert scheme has been operating for a long, long time with
lots of shifting front groups. It must cost--it is hard to tell because
it is dark money; it is hidden. Some of it, you would repeat it, if you
ran it through five different front groups, so it is hard to know what
the real number is. But it is in the billions. It is in the billions.
And why does it make sense to spend that kind of money to meddle
improperly in politics and prevent Congress from meeting its
responsibilities to the American public? Why is it worth spending
billions to do that? It is worth spending billions to do that because
it saves you hundreds of billions.
The International Monetary Fund is not a green group. It is an
economic group. It pays economists to study stuff. And the
International Monetary Fund has studied how much harm the fossil fuel
industry does to America with this negative externalities subsidy.
There are actually two subsidies. There are the direct subsidies, where
Congress appropriates money to the fossil fuel industry, like the $1.5
billion we gave them to encourage them to clean up the mess that they
are making or like tax advantages so that they don't have to pay proper
taxes like other companies. But the big one--the big one--is the
pollute-for-free business model, not justified by economics, not
justified by morality, not justified by prudent concern over the safety
of the planet.
So how much is that negative externality according to the
International Monetary Fund? At last count, $700 billion per year--$700
billion per year.
So let's just say you are an industry that gets a government subsidy
in the form of a pollute-for-free business model of $700 billion a
year. How much is it worth spending to control Congress and fix the
politics so that you can protect that subsidy? Well, let's just say,
for purposes of argument, that they spent $7 billion a year on
influence, on lobbyists, on campaign contributions, on super PACs, on
dark money, on supporting the whole apparatus of lies and fake science.
Let's just say that that all adds up to $7 billion a year. That means
you are making a 100-to-1 return on your investment every single year.
That makes the political operation of the fossil fuel industry its
most profitable division. They don't make 100 to 1 out of oil. They
don't make 100 to 1 out of gas. They don't make 100 to 1 out of coal.
But they make 100 to 1 out of politics if they are spending $7 billion
a year in political influence.
So why are these big numbers spent? Why is it sensible, from their
point of view, to maintain this entire armada of phony front groups?
This is the biggest political influence operation in history, and, boy,
is it worth it. What a return on investment you get.
And they have used a whole variety of groups to do it. They have like
popup groups that show up for the minute. They have got ones that are
completely under their control, like American Petroleum Institute. But
that is a little obvious. It has the word ``petroleum'' right in the
name.
So they run a lot of money, say, through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
or the National Association of Manufacturers, who don't report their
donors, so you don't see. U.S. Chamber of Commerce seems like such a
nice group. I have chambers of commerce all around Rhode Island. I love
our chambers of commerce. They do a wonderful job.
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been a virulent enemy to any
serious climate legislation. Why? It is hard to know because they won't
report. I asked them, repeatedly: How much money do you get from fossil
fuel every year? How much money have you gotten from fossil fuel since
the Citizens United decision?
They won't say. It is a secret. It is a secret. But it allows the
fossil fuel industry to appear politically without having to show their
hand.
Well, now, with President Trump in office, sloshed into office on a
wave of $100 million minimum in fossil fuel money, the industry is
triumphant, and this vote that we just took is this body's tribute to
that industry.
We don't care if this is you leaking. We don't care if this is you
not maintaining your property. We don't care if this is dangerous. We
don't care if you are being irresponsible. We don't care if we already
gave you $1.5 billion to clean up your mess. We don't care about any of
that. We don't care that the only people who have to pay this fee are
the ones who are polluting above what their own industry recommends as
a pollution level. We don't care about any of that. You are the fossil
fuel industry, and you shall have whatever you want from us, whatever
the cost.
There is a problem, though. There is a problem, which is that fossil
fuel influence can mess with laws in Congress and does, but fossil fuel
influence can't mess with the laws of nature. Fossil fuel influence
can't mess, frankly, with the laws of economics.
So where are we right now? We have been through that era when the
scientists were giving their warnings, the academic scientists from the
great universities, the industry science from Exxon and even from the
American Petroleum Institute, scientists in America, scientists
overseas, powerful scientific consensus about what was going to happen.
Go back and read what Exxon scientists warned about what was going to
happen. We are living it right now. They were right. They knew. Exxon
knew. The scientists knew. So that was the era, and the scientists got
it right. They did their jobs.
Then we did not do our job under the pressure of all of that fossil
fuel influence, all those hundreds of millions or billions or whatever
was spent to protect the $700 billion annual subsidy on which this
industry floats.
So now here we are. We are in a new era in this climate story, and
the new

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era in the climate story is the era of consequences, the things that
were warned of that are now coming true because we failed in our
responsibilities as a Congress.
The first place the campaign of fraud and disinformation and
political pressure by the fossil fuel industry is crashing into is the
insurance industry. The fossil fuel industry is compromising our future
with all of these added emissions, including the methane leaks that
were given a green light today. The fossil fuel industry is
compromising our future by pretending that these climate warnings
aren't real.
But the insurance industry has to look at a real future. It can't lie
about the future to protect its present profits. It has to predict the
future accurately in order to price its product. You can't insure
against a risk that you can't actuarially predict.
So insurance companies get pretty expert at knowing how often there
is likely to be a storm, how often there is likely to be a drought, how
often there is likely to be wildfires, how often there is likely to be
flooding, and they get that way because it is their fiduciary
obligation to their owners to get it right, to do their very best to
honestly get the predictions right.
What is the insurance industry doing right now? They are looking into
this fossil fuel future, and they are saying: Whoa, we don't know what
to do. We can't insure that. These emissions are making our natural
systems--the weather--so weird and so unpredictable that we are
starting to have to change the way we do business.
So what are they doing? Well, Florida is probably the epicenter for
all of this. It has coasts all around it. It is in the pathway of
hurricanes that come from the Atlantic or through the gulf. It is smack
in the climate danger zone.
What is happening in Florida? Well, the big insurers are clearing
out. They have looked at this market, they have looked at consumers
they have served for decades in many cases, and they said: We can't
figure this out any longer. These dangers are too hard to anticipate.
We can't price this risk. We are out of here.
So little pop-up insurers have emerged that Floridians now have to
deal with, and the prices have gone through the roof. Homeowners'
insurance prices in Florida are four times the national average. In
Miami-Dade County, the average property insurance bill is $17,000 a
year. In our inquiries through the Budget Committee, we over and over
again heard of people whose rates have doubled and even quadrupled.

Even then, insurers are still pulling out. Insurers are going bust
when storms come. Florida has had to step in and back up its own
insurance company--it is called Citizens Property Insurance--because
there simply isn't enough interest from the insurance industry to
provide enough coverage for Floridians without this entity, which has
grown to be enormous. The liability of Citizens Property Insurance is
more than the entire debt of the State of Florida. This is a big
financial anchor hanging on Florida, waiting for disaster to strike. So
this is getting real.
After the era of science came the era of influence, and now it is the
era of consequences. It is not just me talking about this. Here is
April's Economist magazine. You can't see it; I have a larger version
of it that I can show you. There it is: ``The next housing disaster.''
What The Economist magazine is predicting in this front-page article is
a dramatic shock to the global real estate industry. They are talking
about a potential $25 trillion hit to the global real estate industry.
How does this relate to the insurance problem that caused Florida to
have to set up Citizens Property Insurance, that caused rates to
quadruple, that caused all of these major insurers to have to bail,
that caused people to have to count for their home insurance on little
pop-up startups that keep going bust, going bust, going bust? It is
this: When you can't get property insurance on your home, you can't get
a mortgage on your home, which means that if you ever want to sell your
home, you can't get a buyer. The only buyers left for you, for your
home, are people who don't need a mortgage, people who can pay cash.
Well, if you are a Palm Beach billionaire, you don't care because
some other Palm Beach billionaire has all the money in the world to buy
your multimillion-dollar mansion for cash. You are done. It is fine. It
doesn't affect the Palm Beach millionaire world.
But let's say you are a plumber living in a development outside of
Orlando, and the way you afforded your house was with a mortgage. Now
your home, your castle, when it comes time to sell it, won't get a
mortgage. There is not going to be a billionaire who wants that. So
property values crash.
That is the cascade, like dominoes: boom goes the insurance industry,
boom goes the mortgage industry, boom go the property values, and then
out into the economy goes the harm.
This isn't just Senator Whitehouse talking. This is The Economist
magazine. This is the chief economist of the mortgage giant Freddie
Mac. This is the chairman of the Federal Reserve telling us just
recently that whole regions of the United States in 10 to 15 years
won't be able to have mortgages--a whole region without mortgages. What
happens to property values in that region?
If he is saying that in 10 to 15 years, that is going to happen, what
are investors going to start doing as they are planning for that
future? Markets aren't going to wait until the region suddenly says: No
more mortgages here. Markets are going to start to take action.
Property values are going to start to decline because investors are
going to be able to look forward and say: Well, if we can't get a
mortgage on that property in 10 years, that property is not going to be
very valuable right now.
It cascades into--we even had a hearing in the Budget Committee about
how it cascades into the municipal bond market, and there was a
terrific article just today confirming our warnings from the Senate
Budget Committee about how this cascades to the municipal bond market,
because what happens when all those property values go down? The tax
revenues of the municipality go down. If that has happened at a time
when climate risk is going up and expenditures to maintain and protect
infrastructure are going up, you are in a terrible situation for your
bondholders because you have less money to pay your bondholders and
more expenses. So the municipal bond markets are starting to take
action. They are starting to look at this as a real problem. This is
real stuff.
The international organization that gives the international banking
world warnings about what is coming just did a report on this very
situation.
The Financial Stability Board, it is called. And its report is titled
``Assessment of Climate-Related Vulnerabilities,'' 16 January 2025.
And its warnings are that the banking system is imperiled, because,
frankly, if you can't write mortgages in whole regions of the country,
particularly if you are a regional bank, then that line of business for
you is shot. Or if you are a bank whose ratings, whose safety for all
the depositors depends on a loan-to-value ratio, that is sort of the
coin of the realm for the solvency of banks, if your loan portfolio has
collateral from the homes on which you wrote mortgages and the value of
that collateral has dropped because of this insurance problem, you can
move pretty quickly from being a solvent bank to being an insolvent
bank that regulators have to move in and shore up or take over.
And the warnings are serious enough that the Financial Stability
Board is warning banks all around the world: Get ready. This trouble is
coming. And it is.
So that is the context for this embarrassing display that we saw
today in the Senate. Whatever you want for the fossil fuel industry,
even if it is the right to leak and pollute and maintain your equipment
worse than your own industry recommends, we have got your back. Leak
away. Pollute away. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, here is what could possibly go wrong: The natural systems that
are being disrupted by these emissions control the weather, and the
weather produces climate risk, and the insurance industry has to look
forward accurately because it owes that duty to its shareholders. And
they look forward and say: Whoops, we are out of here.
And then the cascade begins from insurance to mortgage to property
values

[[Page S1407]]

to a general economic crash, expected by the economists to be $25
trillion globally. It is really pretty stunning.
So let me go through some of my charts here. Here is a chart that
looks at the scenarios for the future with respect to how carbon
emissions and methane emissions will endanger our safety. This is
derived from all the peer-reviewed scenarios that were provided over
the years to the IPCC, the international climate tracking body.
They looked at about 1,200 of them. Of those 1,200 various climate
scenarios, there are 11 left--11 out of 1,200 that allow us to get to a
pathway to climate safety. Only 11.
They all have two characteristics: They overshoot first, so you need
to have carbon capture and, specifically, direct air capture to get us
back on the pathway to safety. It is not enough to stop the polluting,
you actually have to extract the excess carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere.
Trump just demolished all the offices at the Department of Energy
that support carbon capture, which is a little weird because the fossil
fuel industry has depended on carbon capture for rhetorical support of
its continued pollution. The argument, roughly, is: Don't worry about
us continuing to pollute because carbon capture is going to come along
and save the day.
Of course, that rhetoric is not backed up by investment, because over
and over again they refuse to actually build carbon capture equipment.
It is a talking point, not a real solution that they will put any
investment behind. And when regulators try to say, well, think about
carbon capture; that will reduce the pollution here of this carbon
pollutant. They say oh, no, no, no, that is not a serious technology;
we can't do it. It is a serious technology when we are trying to
continue polluting, use this as our rhetorical excuse to keep
polluting; but if you actually want us to apply it, oh, no, that is a
different thing. We are not going to talk about that.
So here they all are. They all overshoot--this one just by a little--
so you need that direct air capture. And the other thing that they all
need, they all need a price on carbon. They all need for it to stop
being free to pollute. It is now mandatory, if we are going to get on a
pathway to climate safety, that there be a price on pollution.
The free-to-pollute business model that the fossil fuel industry
defends so virulently is a pathway to disaster. We have to put a price
on greenhouse gas emissions or fail. And today was the little canary in
the coal mine for how responsible we will be about putting a price on
carbon. Because today, we blew up a price on methane, an even more
dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, under circumstances in
which we had literally paid the industry a billion and a half dollars
as a bounty to clean up its own act and then limited the penalty, the
methane fee, to only those companies that couldn't meet even their own
industry standards.
And you can bet that the industry standards are pretty generous to
the industry. Nobody develops standards that are terrible for their own
industry. This was their self-imposed industry standards, and only the
ones that couldn't meet their own industry standards would pay the
penalty. And we just stripped that away. The methane fee is headed for
gone.

So if that is the canary in the coal mine of where this body is going
to be now that we have to put a price on carbon or condemn our children
and our grandchildren to worsening climate disaster and worsening
economic disaster, what a signal we just sent. What a shameful,
disgraceful signal we just sent.
Here is some of the stuff that is coming our way. Let me start with
some of the work that we did in the Budget Committee. We went out and
we dug out from the insurance industry information about their
nonrenewal rates. What is a nonrenewal rate? Well, a nonrenewal is when
there you are, the customer of the insurance company, and it comes time
of the year when they renew your policy, send you the new bill, all of
that.
But this time, even if you have been a good client, paying your
premiums regularly for 15, 20 years, maybe, what comes in the mailbox
isn't the updated contract and the new bill for you to pay. Nope; it is
a notice saying: You are fired as our client. We are not going to have
you as a customer anymore. How many businesses want to tell a loyal
customer go away?
This is not ordinary business behavior. It is driven because they
can't figure out the risk of your property any longer. So they nonrenew
you. They don't want your check any longer. They don't want you as a
customer any longer, because your property is now so unpredictably
dangerous to them that they just walk away.
And where is it happening? Well, guess what? Florida is at the
epicenter. Louisiana is at the epicenter. California, because of
wildfires, is at the epicenter. It spreads all across, mostly heavily,
coastal areas. But wildfire is catching up--don't worry.
And then this measures the rate of increase. It is not just a
question of how many nonrenewals, it is how many more each year, how
much is the insurance company increasing its shedding of customers.
So you see it popping up even here in Montana. From Florida to
Montana, it is spread all over. And after we did this research, folks
came in behind us and did some more detailed research.
So we start with this one first. This took our research and the
insurance information that we used, and it also projected climate risk
forward. And by the way, there is a lot of this happening. This isn't
just like people making this stuff up. There are entire firms that are
predicting climate risk for insurance companies, for banks. This is a
booming and expert area because people need to know. They need to get
it right for investment purposes. So this is how climate change may
cause rising insurance rates over the next 30 years.
If you go to, let's say, Miami down here or just east of Phoenix
here, you see that the color gets really dark. Here, along the North
Florida east coast, the shade gets really dark. And you can't read this
on the TV, on the screen, but I will tell you that means a 300-percent
increase over the next 30 years.
So let's go back to what I said earlier about Miami-Dade. The average
of the property insurance premium is $17,000. When you are increasing
by 300 percent, you are quadrupling. So four times $17,000, that is
$68,000 every year average from Miami-Dade County, if this comes true.
Now, to get just a little bit mathematically here and wonky, if you
look at the present value of a $68,000 charge every single year out
into the future, you get a big number, and that number comes right off
the value of your property.
If your home is for sale, and let's say it is a $500,000 home, and
somebody comes and they will say, well, that is a $500,000 home, I will
pay you $500,000 for it. That makes perfect sense.
And then you say, ah, yes, but--but there is this other little
consideration, which is that when you buy that home, you are also
buying into a huge--let's for purposes of argument say $20,000--annual
charge.
(Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)
Well, if you are offered that deal, here is a home worth $500,000.
Will you pay $500,000 for it? Sure, I will. Here is a home worth
$500,000, but it comes with an annual $20,000 cost that you have to
carry. Are you going to pay $500,000 for that? Of course, you are not
because you are going to bake into the value what the present value is
of those $20,000 payments you are going to have make year after year
after year just to keep your home insured.
So property values crash when home insurance premiums spike.
And as you see, it is the wildfire and coastal areas that are hardest
hit across red and blue States alike. And when those premiums increase
and the housing prices fall, here is where home values may decline
because of climate change.
How far are we looking forward? We are looking forward 30 years. Why
are we looking forward 30 years in this? Because that is how long a
mortgage is, in the life of a mortgage.
So here, you see the maps look kind of alike. This one is happening
quicker, so the response is quicker; the colors get darker quicker.
There is more of the map that is darker.
But this, this is where it really hits home. This is ``Change in Home
Value Due to Insurance Costs'' over the 30-year life of the mortgage.
And it goes from no change expected at all in all of

[[Page S1408]]

these tan areas, all the way up to minus 100 percent change in home
value. That is pretty easy math. Minus 100 percent change in home value
means your home is worth nothing any longer, and that is popping up all
over.
So solving for this is a real and ``now'' problem because who is
going to look forward 30 years to see where a home will have no value
any longer? Banks that are issuing mortgages will. So this isn't a 30-
years-from-now problem; this is a ``now'' problem as banks start to
look at this information and wonder about putting a mortgage on a
property whose collateral value to them at the end of the mortgage will
be zero.
That is not a good business proposition for them. And from a bank
solvency point of view, it hits them at the heart of their loan-to-
value ratio based on the value of their collateral. So it puts them in
peril as a solvent institution as well.
So banks are going to start looking at this stuff way ahead of 30
years. Indeed, they are starting to look at it already.
So why does the fossil fuel industry need to spend so much money
preventing Congress from taking proper action when the science has been
so clear forever? The chickens are coming home to roost in the economy
through the insurance industry. The insurance industry is not going to
listen to fossil fuel lies about what the future looks like when it has
trillions of dollars at stake. It is going to continue to get it right,
and it is going to continue to back away from risk if we don't solve
this.
So this is all deadly real and coming now. Why does the fossil fuel
industry spend so much money to block us in Congress from doing this?
The reason is--well, there are several. One is the $700 billion subsidy
they get every year for being able to pollute for free. But the other
is the public is really concerned about this. The public actually
really wants climate action. So they have to defeat public opinion.
They have to make this body serve them and not the public. They have to
make the Senate ignore the American people.
And, of course, you do that with this massive campaign of dark money,
political influence, fake science, phony front groups, the whole
multibillion-dollar operation.
Because, and I know--I apologize to viewers--you can't read this. So
I will read aloud. This is a polling chart with a sample size of around
2,000 people. It is a pretty serious poll. I had the guy whom I know
who is a pollster take a look at it, and he said: Yep, this is solid.
This is the real deal.
So let's look at what it shows. We will start with the second one
down. The second one down right here reads: ``Penalties on high-
pollution imports.'' Of the survey, 12 percent of Americans were
opposed to penalties on high-pollution imports--12 percent opposed to
penalties on high-pollution imports. Support, 74 percent, 74 percent of
Americans would like to see our economy protected by penalties on high-
pollution imports for, among other reasons, to make sure that our
manufacturers have a fair chance when we are not high pollution to make
sure that those high-polluting foreign companies pay a penalty in order
to come into our market--12 percent to 74 percent. That is a huge
margin.

The American public is eager for us to take political action to solve
this problem, which is why the fossil fuel industry has to come in here
and spend so much money and use so much pressure and get so much
influence and put $100 million into Trump's political coffers, plus
whatever they did in dark money. They have to do all that because the
public is on to what is going on.
Here is another one: ``Reduce carbon pollution across industry,'' 9
percent oppose, 76 percent positive. If my math is right, that is a 67-
percent swing between opposed and supported. That is massive public
support for reducing carbon pollution.
``Putting carbon pollution limits on big companies,'' 12 percent
opposed, 72 percent support--a differential of 60 percent. The American
people are really, really leaning into carbon pollution limits on big
companies. They would love to see that by a margin of 72 to 12.
And then here is the one that relates to what we have just done
today. ``Impose a fee on big polluters.'' ``Impose a fee on big
polluters,'' 10 percent opposed--10 percent of Americans are opposed to
imposing a fee on big polluters--74 percent of Americans support it. A
64-percent differential, 74 to 10, that is a rout. That is a mandate.
But what did we do just today about that mandate? We just voted down
a fee on big polluters, even though it was front-loaded with a $1.5
billion chunk of corporate welfare for them to spend to clean up their
messes--shouldn't be the taxpayers' business to get a corporation to
clean up its messes on its own, but this is the fossil fuel industry.
So that is what we did. We gave them $1.5 billion to take care of their
own equipment.
And then we asked: Once that is done, when this fee goes into effect,
you are going to have to pay if you are still polluting. You don't have
to pay a nickel if you only meet your own industry trade associations'
standards. But if you can't even meet your own industry trade
associations' standard, there will be a fee.
So 1.5 billion in free corporate welfare for the polluters to clean
up their equipment and, in return, a fee on big polluters. You have got
to be a big polluter. It is not the little guys we are going after
here. And you have got to be worse than your own industry standards.
That is the population we were dealing with here.
And we just voted down a fee on big polluters--not all big
polluters--in this case, the big polluters who don't even meet their
own industry standards for leaks. We just voted that down, even though
74 percent of the public would like to see fees on big polluters and
even though only 10 percent would oppose that.
Why do we behave this way in this body? Why do we ignore 74 percent
of the American people? Why do we follow the 10 percent who don't want
this in a democracy where the majority is supposed to rule, and we have
a 74-to-10 vote? Fossil fuel industry influence, plain and simple,
because the public--oh, my Lord--they are so with it.
Even something like get really rough here: ``Phase out the burning of
fossil fuels,'' 26 percent opposed, 54 support--2 to 1 for something as
strenuous as phasing out the burning of fossil fuels.
``Stop new fossil fuel projects,'' 25 percent oppose, 48 percent
support--2-to-1 support for something as strenuous as ``Stop new fossil
fuel projects.'' That is where the American public is.
Everybody gets that you shouldn't pollute for free. I mean, for
Pete's sake, if you go to somebody's house and you knock over your
soda, you go get a napkin and you clean up your mess. This is basic
stuff. When children make a mess, what do their parents tell them? No,
you are not going to the movies. No, you are not doing whatever it is
you want until you clean up your mess. Put your stuff away. You made
that mess. Clean it up. It is basic responsibility that we apply to
children, but will we apply it to the fossil fuel industry? No, because
they come in here squirting money all over the place, making threats,
and using this whole armada of climate denial front groups to pretend
that what is true is actually false.
And, again, if you think that is because some green people say that,
no. The insurance industry is saying this because the insurance
industry is saying: The risks of climate change are so real, we have to
get out of certain markets. We have to quadruple our rates in certain
areas. We have to have additional props from State government to stay
in the State at all.
Do we have an alternative? Boy, do we ever. We have got a great
alternative. And that is why 74 percent of Americans versus 10 who
oppose would like to see a fee on big polluters. It is fair; it is
right; and there is a real alternative.
You can go to wind and solar. This map is of various sections of the
world, and it shows where there is good baseline wind energy to take
advantage of.
And here is the good old United States of America--best case
situation. We are sitting on a free, renewable resource as the wind
blows, and all we have to do is build the turbines to collect it.
And if you like solar, here is how well we do on solar. Boy, you go
through the Southwest, that is rich country for solar. We could be
truly energy independent with wind and solar--free of OPEC and cartel
pricing, free of

[[Page S1409]]

all the pollution costs and all the trauma and drama in the insurance
industry from those pollution costs. We could be free of all of that,
and it would be less expensive. And it is there. It is there for us. It
is there for the taking.

With the $100 million that was given by the fossil fuel industry to
the Trump administration, what does the Trump administration do?
By the way, to clarify, $100 million reported. Dark money--$500
million? A billion? Who knows. Trump asked them for a billion dollars
in that quid pro quo meeting down at Mar-a-Lago. He said: Give me a
billion dollars; here is all the stuff I will do for you. And he went
through the fossil fuel industry checklist. So we know he got $100
million for it. Who knows what else he got?
But what he said in his recent fake energy emergency declaration--he
said that all of this solar and all of this wind potential--he said it
is not even energy. If you look at how he defines the word ``energy,''
it is every kind of fossil fuel and nuclear and hydro; no solar, no
wind. It is not even considered energy, which is weird because there
are a bunch of States in which solar and wind are really big.
Once you get past California, the top three States for solar are all
red States. The top States for wind are all red States. I have been to
Iowa to look at the wind farms out there. Iowa has the highest
concentration of wind power of any State. It has so much wind power
that the grid operator in Iowa has figured out that it can treat the
wind as baseload power.
There is a common--forgive my term--knuckle head argument that, oh,
what happens when the wind stops blowing?
Well, the wind doesn't stop blowing, not everywhere. You may have a
still day in one place, but there is enough wind blowing around Iowa
that the grid operator--not a greenie but a technician who has the duty
to keep the grid up and operating--has determined that they can dial in
wind as baseload because somewhere it is going to be operating.
We have enormous, enormous capacity here. Wind and solar are big
contributors to the energy portfolio in major red States. There is no
logic, there is no sense, there is no integrity to saying that wind and
solar aren't even energy unless you are listening to the worst--worst--
voices in the fossil fuel industry, the ones who don't dare to compete
with wind and solar because they know it is cheaper.
It is not enough for them to sit on a $700 billion annual subsidy to
suppress wind, to suppress solar, to move costs that should be theirs
onto the general public. It is not enough to enjoy a $700 billion
subsidy every single darn year. Now they have Trump to say that solar
and wind aren't even energy--aren't even energy. It has gotten just
wild.
Here is an example of the cost. This is a residential area in Los
Angeles, taken in the fires that just burned. It is a pretty serious
tragedy for those individuals who lost their homes, lost all the
treasured possessions they cared about. It is also a tragedy for pretty
much everybody in California because there has already been a billion-
dollar assessment from the California backup insurance plan, the State
plan--the FAIR Plan, they call it--on insurers.
Sorry, guys, need a billion from you to prop up our State plan. And
by the way, half of that billion--collect it from your customers.
So all customers are going to pay an extra half a billion dollars
from this in California.
California is only the most recent example of wildfire damage. In
Oregon, you had entire towns destroyed by wildfires. Good luck getting
insurance in those areas.
So the pain is very real. The cost is very real. The damage to
markets is very real. It is all to try to keep out the truly low-cost
power.
Here are electricity costs over time. It starts here back in 2009.
Here we are in 2023. This, the lowest cost, is wind. The next one up,
the yellow here, used to be expensive. It used to be the highest. Now
it is just an inch above wind as the lowest cost electricity, and it is
solar panels. Next up is natural gas. Next up is geothermal.
In this race down here, wind and solar beat natural gas all the time.
Again, that is why the fossil fuel industry has to come to Congress
with its phony front groups and its super PACs and its dark money and
its influence and throw its weight around, because even natural gas
loses on price to solar and wind. Now their response is so crude as to
get the guy who they put $100 million into the political pockets of to
define energy as not even including solar and wind.
Here are some of the threats we have heard. This is from the article
I showed you earlier, the front page of The Economist magazine. It is
not a green publication. This is about the danger to the world's real
estate markets.

It begins by saying, if I recall the article correctly, that what we
are looking at is a shock to the largest asset class on the planet from
climate damage. ``The impending bill is so huge, in fact, that it will
have grim implications not just for personal prosperity''--not just the
homeowners, not just the people who have to pay the high insurance
cost, not just personal prosperity--``but also for the financial
system,'' which aligns exactly with what the chief economist from
Freddie Mac said.
This cascades. The insurance market fails, mortgage markets fail,
property values fall, and the financial system crashes. That is why the
Financial Stability Board wrote this report warning of systemic--that
is the magic word--dangers to the financial system.
``Systemic'' sounds like a superboring word, but in the context of
economic dangers, it is the most terrifying word there is because it
means that the economic danger has jumped the fence. It means that it
is no longer the affected industry that is affected when things go
wrong; it means that it is so bad that it cascades out across the
economy, like 2008, when a bunch of crooked mortgages and a bunch of
creepy ratings blew up the whole national economy. You didn't have to
have a bad mortgage to be hurt in that; everybody was hurt in that.
That is a systemic harm.
Here is how it is going to work, they say. ``If the size of the
risk''--this risk to property values from the insurance load and from
direct destruction by hail and storms and everything else--``If the
size of the risk suddenly sinks in, and borrowers and lenders alike
realize the collateral underpinning so many transactions''--the
collateral is not just behind an individual mortgage but behind the big
tranches of mortgages that are bought and sold behind Fannie and
Freddie, which buy huge numbers of mortgages that are all at risk--
``the collateral underpinning so many transactions is not worth as much
as they thought, a wave of repricing will reverberate through financial
markets.'' This is what we are spinning towards.
Conclusion from The Economist:

Climate change, in short, could prompt the next global
property crash.

``Climate change, in short, could prompt the next global property
crash.'' I don't know how much more clear the warning could be.
It is not just The Economist article; here is the corporate
consultancy Deloitte.
Again, The Economist is not a liberal paper. It is not an
environmental paper. It is a very conservative, business-oriented
paper. The Financial Stability Board is not a bunch of Green New
Dealers. It is people whose job is to protect the international banking
system.
Deloitte is a corporate consultancy.

If we allow climate change to go unchecked, it will ravage
our global economy.

``If we allow climate change to go unchecked, it will ravage our
global economy.'' How much clearer does the warning have to be?
That talks about the global economy. They looked specifically at the
United States: ``For the United States, the damages to 2070''--that is
their window looking forward what would be 45 years--``are projected to
reach $14.5 trillion''--$14.5 trillion in economic damage in the United
States--``a lifetime loss of nearly $70,000 for each working
American.''
How many working Americans even have $70,000 put away someplace? They
do have $70,000 probably in the value of their home. If their home is
in one of these regions where property values are going to fall because
of the combination of insurance costs and insurance unavailability,
including a change in home value straight to minus 100 percent or
zeroing out of the home

[[Page S1410]]

value, then good luck with that loss of nearly $70,000.
It is going to be hard to stop, though, even with all the influence
peddling that takes place around here, even with all the political
pressure, even with all the dark money threats and all the dark money
cajoling and all the dark money inducements, because solar and battery
storage are kind of killing it. I mean, this is solar and battery
storage in new U.S. generating capacity additions, the stuff that is
being added to the grid. Solar is more than half. Solar alone is 52
percent of all the new additions. Look at how many people were employed
in that new solar construction. And this administration wants to
pretend that that is not even energy? That is how bad the pretense has
to be to grovel before the fossil fuel interests, with their big
checkbooks, to pretend that solar isn't even energy when it is 52
percent of what was put in last year. And 29 percent was battery
storage. You put solar and battery storage together--80 percent. Eighty
percent of the new electricity-generating installations in our country
was solar and battery storage.

By the way, they play really nicely together because, when the Sun
ain't shining because it is nighttime, your batteries kick in. So solar
and battery together move into baseload country. It is way cheaper than
baseload coal or baseload nuclear or baseload natural gas. And here it
comes. Here it comes. Wind is another 12 percent. So, if you add all
this up, it is about 93 percent of the new power that came onto our
grid or is coming onto our grid in 2025. Ninety-three percent is wind,
solar, and battery. Seven percent is natural gas. So we are doubling
down on 7 percent and taking the 93 percent and pretending it is not
even energy?
That doesn't even make sense, but it shows how ferocious and
rapacious the fossil fuel industry is when it uses its political power
and its super-PACs and its front groups and its dark money and all of
that to demand that we stop defining wind and solar as energy. That
violates the dictionary, but that is how their behavior is.
That is why today was so aggravating and so wrong because, frankly,
the fossil fuel industry should have had the decency to let this one
go. Pick something else. But what they went forward with was a
reasonable fee after a $1.5 billion government handout for leaks of
methane--a deadly, dangerous climate gas--that they are just leaking.
You could fix it with wrenches. Fix the pipes. Fix the valves. Fix
the wells. Just do it. You should be doing it as a good citizen anyway,
but then we gave you $1.5 billion in a free taxpayer handout to do what
you should have been doing anyway. So now you are up $1.5 billion, and
all we asked in return was that, if you are among the worst polluters
in your industry, if you can't meet your own industry standards, well
then, you have got to pay until you clean up your act.
We give you an incentive to clean up your act. Your fee goes to zero
if you only meet your own industry standards for leaks. What could be
more reasonable? Yet this industry is so politically rapacious right
now that it went after that, and that is what we saw today. That was so
low.
It makes me think of this cartoon. I don't know how well you can see
it. There are a couple of MAGA folks standing out in front of Mar-a-
Lago, saying: ``Boy, we showed those elites who is in charge.'' But who
is behind the wall of Mar-a-Lago? All the big special interests, all
the big special interests getting what they want--Big Oil right there,
front and center; coal right there, front and center. That is what is
happening. That is what is happening.
Electric prices are going to go up. Why? Because fossil fuel is more
expensive because, when you take the industry that is producing 93
percent of our new additions, there is a reason the market has chosen
that 93 percent. They chose it because it is cheaper. It is a better
business proposition. Take that out, and what do you have more of? You
have more of the expensive fossil fuel plants.
The way this works is that a whole bunch of plants are on the grid,
standing by, ready to produce power as demand kicks in. And the way the
grid operators do it is they start with the lowest cost providers, the
lowest cost energy, and then, as demand grows, they work up the
dispatch queue to bring on more and more and more expensive energy
sources. So, if you strip out the less expensive stuff--if you strip
out solar and wind--and pretend they are not even energy any longer,
what happens? The more expensive plants are the ones that run more, and
bills go up.

If you look at the wealth of our country in wind capability and in
solar capability, we are rich with wind and solar. But if we don't take
advantage of those free domestic resources, then we are stuck behind
the fossil fuel cartel, behind OPEC.
We saw what happened after Russia invaded Ukraine and market prices
spiked to feed the European market. We saw the American companies run
up their prices even though their costs hadn't gone up--run up their
prices to take advantage of that world market surge--and they made, as
a result, the biggest profits in the history of the planet. They gouged
the American consumer willfully.
That is a risk that goes away, of price spikes happening in global
fossil fuel markets. That is a risk that goes away when we are counting
on God's own wind and solar that we have in such abundance.
But when you have got all the special interests packed into Mar-a-
Lago, wheeling and dealing--when it is the looters and polluters who
are making the decisions--this is what you get. Costs are going to go
up for Americans because of the malign influence of the fossil fuel
industry in Congress. They just are. It is basic economics, and that
doesn't even count the $700 billion worth of harm that the emissions
are causing, which are already starting to come home to roost in the
insurance market.
Let me show you one more thing, and I ask unanimous consent to use an
oversized slide here.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Presiding Officer.
This is oversized because it is big. This was a full-page ad in the
New York Times--Sunday, December 6, 2009. Barack Obama was President,
and to be absolutely candid, he wasn't doing much on climate. The Obama
administration went through a long period of not darned much on
climate.
So this full-page ad was taken out in the New York Times:

Dear President Obama and the United States Congress:
Tomorrow, leaders from 192 countries will gather at the
U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to determine the
fate of our planet.
As business leaders--

the advertisement continues--
we are optimistic that President Obama is attending
Copenhagen emissions targets. Additionally, we urge you, our
government, to strengthen and pass United States legislation,
and lead the world by example. We support your effort to
ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate
change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and
the world today. Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail
to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will
be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity
and our planet.
We recognize the key role that American innovation and
leadership play in stimulating the worldwide economy.
Investing in a Clean Energy Economy will drive state-of-the-
art technologies that will spur economic growth, create new
energy jobs, and increase our energy security, all while
reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at
risk. We have the ability and the know-how to lead the world
in clean energy technology to thrive in a global market and
economy. But we must embrace the challenge today to ensure
that future generations are left with a safe planet and a
strong economy.
Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in
modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our
planet.

Signed by Donald J. Trump, chairman and president; Donald J. Trump,
Jr., executive vice president; Eric F. Trump, executive vice president;
Ivanka M. Trump, executive vice president; and the Trump Organization.
Fifteen years ago, the guy who now says that solar and wind aren't
even energy, despite their prominence in the economies and the grids of
so many red States, despite making up 93 percent of the new capacity
added to the grid this year--that same guy: Please act now. ``It is
scientifically irrefutable that

[[Page S1411]]

there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity
and our planet.'' We will spur, with clean energy, economic growth. We
will ``create new energy jobs.'' We will ``increase our energy security
all while reducing the harmful emissions that are putting our planet at
risk.'' Signed Donald J. Trump.
This was before the fossil fuel industry was in the position to put
$100 million into his campaign to help him get elected--assuming it is
only $100 million. It could be $1 billion. I don't know. They use dark
money so well you can't keep track. And $100 million is just what we
could count.
But there was Donald J. Trump before, telling Obama: Do a better job,
President Obama. Get after this clean energy stuff. It is
scientifically irrefutable that we are in deep trouble, and America can
lead on clean energy. We can be the best there is. We can create jobs.
We can develop the technologies of tomorrow. Do a better job, Obama.
Get us there.
That was what he said then.
Now what he says is, solar and wind aren't even energy, and he
supports this vote that knocked out a reasonable fee on methane leaks--
leaks, for God's sake--and only the leaks that were from the worst
industry participants, the ones who didn't even meet their own crummy
industry standards for leaks. These are like the bad outliers who won't
even meet their own industry standard and got $1.5 billion in a
corporate handout to clean up their own darned equipment, which they
should take care of themselves. And then, after all that, they come in
and undo the fee. Obviously, President Trump wanted it because
Republicans wouldn't be doing that stuff here if he didn't.

So we are back to the looters and polluters being in charge. We are
back to immense harm to the American economy that has already started.
Just look at the Florida insurance market. You see it coming. The
warnings could not be clearer.
When I ran the Budget Committee, I circulated this volume--which I
will spare you reading right now--of all of the reports that have come
out, peer-reviewed official reports about the economic risks of climate
change:

The exposure of UK investors, including insurance
companies, to [stranded fossil fuel assets] is potentially
huge.
[C]limate change will threaten financial resilience and
longer term prosperity.
[I]nvestments in fossil fuels and related technologies . .
. may take a huge hit.
Estimates of losses . . . are large and range from $1
trillion to $4 trillion when considering the energy sector
alone, or up to $20 trillion when looking at the economy more
broadly.
[A] third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80
percent of current coal reserves should remain unused . . .
in order to meet the target of 2 degrees Celsius.

When that happens, the carbon bubble bursts, and you get these
massive losses. The losses from the carbon bubble could be a loss
comparable to the 2008 financial crisis. That is the carbon bubble.
The insurance risk from a coastal property values crash equivalent to
the 2008 mortgage meltdown is another risk. They are separate risks.
They could both take place.
There is a third one, which is the wildfire risk, which wasn't part
of the original coastal risk report.
So the risks are piling up and piling up and piling up. It really is
time that we take this seriously. The danger to the U.S. economy is
deadly real. We are already seeing it landing in people's mail slots in
the form of the quadrupling of insurance bills and in the form of
nonrenewal notices. That doesn't even count the harm that is being done
in the real world. I am talking about economic harms here, the things
that will hit people in the pocketbook, the things that are going to
make the bills harder to pay around the kitchen table, the stuff that
is in people's financial lives.
But before I close, I want to remind everybody here that the stuff
going wrong goes wrong in the real world in a way that goes beyond
economic measure. The insurance harm, the carbon bubble harm, the
threat of another 2008-style financial meltdown across three separate
fronts--wildfire, carbon bubble, and coastal--all of that just takes a
piece of it. But in the meantime, we are also seeing our world turned
upside down. We are also seeing changes that are deeply personal.
How do you put a value on a grandfather not being able to take his
granddaughter to the creek where he used to go fishing, where his
grandfather taught him to fish, and now he can't do that with his
granddaughter because it dried up because there is a drought, because
the water is too warm for trout to live in it any longer? How do you
put a value on that? You can't.
When you are dealing with just the economics of climate change, you
are already being fundamentally irresponsible because you are not
giving due respect to God's creation.
There are so many miracles that take place on this planet. I went to
Delaware to see the arrival of the red knot. A red knot is a bird. It
is not much bigger than this glass of water, and it does amazing
things. It flies from the southern end of South America all the way up
to Brazil, and then it flies from Brazil to Delaware Bay. There is no
place to land, if you look at the map, between Brazil and Delaware Bay.
This is a small bird flying all of those hundreds of miles, somehow
knowing where Delaware Bay is and landing there, timed in God's and
nature's beautiful way, timed to land in Delaware Bay when the
horseshoe crabs are releasing their eggs.
The horseshoe crabs were all over the beach, and these birds would
come in because, in God's grace, somehow they knew to fly from Brazil
to Delaware Bay then, and that food source would be there for them so
they could fuel up and continue the rest of their journey up into the
Arctic.
This is a bird that migrates from the southern end of South America
to Brazil, across the ocean to Delaware Bay, and then up to the Arctic
every year. A tiny little bird can accomplish that. Hell, I would be
tired in a plane flight from Brazil to Delaware, sitting in a seat and
being given a soda. These little miracles fly that flight.
If we screw this planet up the way we are doing, then the different
life cycles, in this case, of the horseshoe crab and the red knot no
longer line up, and when they land, the food source isn't there for
them, and that species gets clobbered.
What is the value in money of this heroic little species performing
this amazing achievement year in and year out and suddenly finding out
that it doesn't work any longer; that they will starve and die because
we fouled up the timing of the natural systems that they need to have
work for them? Can you put a price on that? No. It is worth zero. It is
worth zero.
What is the price of going down off a boat into the water, down
towards a reef, and as you fall through the water toward the reef and
as it becomes clear what is along the bottom below you, and for the
first time going back to familiar spots, you see that the coral is
bleaching white; you see that it is so distressed that it can't manage
the relationship between the coral polyps and the algae and it bleaches
white. It is an alarm signal that something has gone wrong in that
coral reef.
If you look at many coral reefs in the Caribbean, it is all white. It
is all white, and then it begins to fall apart, and pretty soon, you
have rubble. What used to be a vibrant, living coral reef with all the
glorious colors and all the interacting ways in which nature makes her
magic work--all of that is turned into what looks like rubble in a
construction site because the water was too warm, the water was too
acidic, the oxygen levels were too low, and all of that died. What is
the value of that? The value of that is zero to us here in mammon,
where we only care about things that can be assigned a dollar value.
So it ain't just the economic harm that is coming at us. We are doing
something that is so grievously disrespectful to this world that God
gave us, to the natural order of it that sustains our livelihoods on
this planet. Today was such an embarrassing, embarrassing example of
our disrespect.
If you had to pick the most unworthy segment of the fossil fuel
industry, it is probably the companies that take such bad care of their
own equipment that they are the worst leakers in their whole industry.
That is the population that we served today after having given them a
$1.5 billion handout. And the reciprocal for that was when you are in
the worst half, when you are

[[Page S1412]]

still leaking, even though we gave you $1.5 billion to fix your leaks,
when that is you that is left, you have to pay a fee, an incentive, to
just knock it off, just quit the pollution. If we can't do that, shame
on us.
With that, I yield the floor.

____________________