[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 7, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2801-S2802]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor today for
the 298th time in my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech series to once again
call attention to the looming climate calamity.
I went last week to the Our Ocean Conference--a conference founded by
the United States of America and dedicated to protecting our oceans
before the damage to them and ultimately to us becomes irrecoverable.
It was the 10th such conference, which made it a bit of a benchmark.
I was the entirety of the U.S. delegation. You are looking at it--100
percent of the entire U.S. delegation. Ordinarily, many executive
branch officials come. In this case, not one executive branch official
attended from the United States. And of course not. This administration
is nothing more than hirelings of the fossil fuel industry, and the
conference, of course, addressed the harm that fossil fuel emissions
are doing in the oceans and the harm that petrochemical plastics are
doing in the oceans.
Fossil fuel emissions are heating up the oceans in zettajoules. It is
a massive number. The joule, as you probably know, is the unit measure
for heat energy. ``Zetta'' means it has 21 zeroes behind it. In more
commonly articulated big numbers, it is a billion trillion joules. It
looks something like this: 14 zettajoules of heat going into the oceans
every single year.
To give a more practical definition, the entire energy production of
the human species across the entire planet Earth amounts to one-half of
a zettajoule of energy--everything. All the energy sources of humankind
produce one-half of a zettajoule of energy every year. That is how much
our species relies on.
The price to all of us of the fossil fuel component of that half-
zettajoule is that those 14 zettajoules get pushed into the ocean, get
absorbed by the ocean, every single year. The heating of the oceans
from fossil fuel pollution is more than 30 times the energy used that
causes the heating. It is not a part of it; it is multiple of it,
magnified by the greenhouse effect. It is not that fossil fuel creates
some excess heat and some of that goes into the oceans; the fossil fuel
creates changes in the Earth's physical environment that magnify the
heat retention of the planet, the so-called greenhouse effect. So for
the component of the half zettajoule of human energy use that comprises
the entire species' energy, 14 zettajoules of heat go into the ocean.
Put another way, if you imagine the heat energy given off by the
nuclear bomb explosion over Hiroshima, multiply that by seven. Seven
Hiroshima nuclear detonations' worth of excess heat is what fossil fuel
emissions are driving into our oceans every single second--every single
second. Every second, seven Hiroshimas' worth of heat.
In the 10 minutes that it takes me to give this speech, the oceans
will absorb 4,000 Hiroshima detonations' worth of heat. That is why
seawater off the Florida Keys hit jacuzzi temperatures. That is why
measuring devices along our coasts show a foot of sea level rise
already. That is why fish species are moving about and fisheries are
collapsing. That is why the world's coral reefs are bleaching out--over
80 percent of the world's reefs hit in the last ocean heating surge
caused by fossil fuel.
The physical disruption of the ocean with this massive injection of
multiple Hiroshimas-per-second of excess physical heat is matched by a
chemical effect--acidification.
The excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel
pollution interacts with the surface of the ocean, covering 70 percent
of our planet--so a lot of surface to interact--and it causes the
seawater chemically to acidify.
I actually did an experiment here at my desk, blowing the carbon
dioxide in my breath through an aquarium bubbler into my water glass.
And, sure enough, pH strips showed that the water in the glass
acidified, measurably, just from my breath.
Acidification in the ocean degrades structures that are made up of
calcium. It injures coral reefs, worsening the problems of pollution
and warming. We are headed for a world of dead reefs at this rate. It
makes life harder for shelled creatures, particularly in their larval
stages, to grow. There are many of them, but one species measurably hit
is the pteropod.
Who cares about the humble pteropod, you may ask. Well, you might,
[[Page S2802]]
and your kids likely will because it is an important part of the
oceanic food web. Crash the pteropod, and a lot of other species fall.
A trawl survey a few years ago off the Pacific Northwest found that
most of the pteropod caught in the trawl survey showed what the
scientists called severe shell damage--severe shell damage. Pteropods
don't survive well in acidified oceans. That much severe shell damage
in a foundational species is a bad harbinger of things to come, and it
is just one of many harms from fossil fuel emissions acidifying the
world's oceans.
Then we get to the other petrochemical problem, plastics. The ocean
is awash with marine plastic waste. Unlike natural substances that
biodegrade into basic elements that return into the cycle of life that
other beings can consume, plastics are manmade. Unlike natural
substances, they break down eventually into microplastic and even
nanoplastic particles that have no use to anything.
Ocean plastic waste is a menace. Large ocean plastic waste ends up in
the bellies of whales, indigestibly, killing them. Ghost gear made of
plastic goes about its lethal business with no fisherman ever
retrieving the catch, just killing, killing, killing.
Pretty much every sea bird consumes plastic, lodging in its belly,
starving its young of real food. You can walk midway island and see the
cadavers of dead young birds with stomachs full of indigestible plastic
unwittingly fed to them by their parents.
Small creatures consume tiny plastic particles. Bigger creatures
consume the small creatures. We consume the bigger creatures. And now
we find plastic particles in mothers' breast milk, in human brain
tissue samples, even in rain drops over Colorado. Unless we change
direction, there will soon be more plastic by weight in the world's
oceans than the weight of living fish in the world's oceans.
The plastics and fossil fuel industry may chortle about their
profits, but none of this is good for humans. These industries are
damaging the natural systems of the planet, the natural systems to
which we have adapted as a species, the natural systems that make Earth
so beautifully and abundantly livable. And there comes a reckoning. As
Pope Francis said, you slap Mother Nature, she will slap you back.
Regrettably, the plastics and fossil fuel industries are also
damaging the political systems of the planet, corrupting government so
as to disable our ability to remedy their pollution. The question of
the moment that people should be asking is why are so many politicians
lying to us about climate change? The answer, of course, is money.
Fossil fuel money floods our political system, pours into it, much of
it secretly.
Politicians, whose home State universities teach about climate
change, lie about climate change. How is that possible? It is not like
there is some unfathomable mystery about how climate change works that
eludes human understanding. No, it is known. There is a counterforce at
work against knowledge. Fossil fuel money and political pressure is
that counterforce.
That force--that malign, corrupt, political operation of the fossil
fuel industry--has now become dangerous. If you delay treatment of a
disease, things get worse and a treatable disease can become lethal. If
you delay dealing with termites in your house, things get worse, and it
is no longer a repair but a teardown.
The fossil fuel political operation, for very selfish reasons, has
delayed the remedies that would have given us a broad pathway to
climate safety, and it is now getting dangerous.
The control of our government by this political operation is right
now complete. Neither House of Congress will do anything right now to
avert the looming danger. After asking for $1 billion from the fossil
fuel industry and getting massive donations, our madman President says
there is no danger--a supposedly educated man calling our climate
perils a ``hoax.''
His executive officials are all in tow to the fossil fuel industry,
doing exactly as they are told--puppets on a fossil fuel string. They
even put Justices on the Supreme Court to ignore the facts about
climate danger.
Here is their problem, which is our problem as well: Politics
responds to money, but nature, she can't be bought. She couldn't care
less. Nature will keep administering the consequences dictated by
natural laws, by laws of physics and chemistry, and biology.
I flew home from the Our Ocean Conference, thanks to our
understanding of those natural laws when you honor those laws,
aerodynamics and metallurgy, and make flying from Seoul, Korea, to
Dulles airport outside Washington, DC, possible. Dishonoring those laws
is foolhardy and dangerous. Dishonoring those laws for money is
reprehensible and dangerous.
A corrupted U.S. Government, a polluted planet, and trillions--
literally trillions--of dollars in economic harm is headed our way
fast, well and completely predicted, all from the bad behavior of a
greedy and amoral industry that knows no bounds--not of decency, not of
honesty, and certainly, not of protection for our planet. If taking
that fight on is not a fight worth having, I don't know what is.
I yield the floor.
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