[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 118 (Wednesday, July 9, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4288-S4292]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first of all, thank you, Senator 
Murkowski.
  I rise today for the 300th time with my trusty, increasingly battered 
``Time to Wake Up'' chart to try to rouse this Chamber to the looming 
dangers caused by fossil fuel pollution.
  I am not sure whether this is a triumph of persistence or an 
exposition of failure or a little bit of both. I will say that Speaker 
Pelosi, whom I admire immensely, called out my persistent

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and relentless work on climate. But on the other hand, it is hard, 
given our peril, not to feel a bitter sense of failure about where we 
are.
  The arc of these speeches has gone from climate science and warnings 
through effects in oceans and specific localities, particularly red 
State localities, to the political obstruction that went toxic in 2010, 
and then from that political obstruction through to the climate denial 
apparatus behind it, and behind that, to the dark money from the creepy 
billionaires who have been driving the obstruction, and then an 
exploration into essentially the covert op of climate denial and dark 
money and Supreme Court capture.
  The result is that we have been through some eras along the way. Era 
No. 1 would be the science era which lasted quite a long time. By the 
way, God bless the scientists. They got it right. Even the Exxon 
scientists got it right. Then, that era ended, and the era of climate 
politics began. That is what has been the bitter failure.
  We have badly let down our people with the failure in Congress to do 
anything significant about climate. As a result of that failure, we 
have now entered the era of consequences, when the stuff that was so 
predicted is now starting to actually happen in people's lives.
  So I want to focus today on how and why we are where we are in this 
era of well-predicted consequences and political failure, and that 
takes us to this covert op that I briefly described.
  It is entirely possible that history will show that the three most 
consequential disasters for America in our lifetimes were the capture 
of the Supreme Court by rightwing billionaires, the influx into our 
elections of floods of corrupting special interest dark money, and the 
success of the fossil fuel climate denial operation at blockading 
solutions to the fossil fuel emissions crisis.
  It is entirely possible that fossil fuel interests were the driving 
force behind all three disasters. Indeed, it is likely.
  What makes these disasters the three worst is that their damage will 
be lasting, and perhaps even irrecoverable. Our common failure in all 
three disasters as Democrats was showing up too late. Each of these 
disasters was a victory for the insidious political forces behind the 
Court's capture, behind the corrupting dark money operation, and behind 
the climate denial fraud. Remember, those disasters didn't ``happen.'' 
They were done. And much of the work done by those insidious political 
forces was covert and clandestine.
  But there were plenty of signals of what was going on to anyone 
paying attention. If you paid attention to the Court-capture scheme and 
the dark money operation and the climate fraud, you would quickly 
notice the overlap of the shadowy political forces behind all three.
  You would notice the common thread: fossil fuel. Think of all three 
special interest campaigns as a single covert operation. A covert op 
run against America by forces within our country, an enemy within of 
creepy billionaires, fossil fuel interests, and far-right foundations, 
determined to impose on the country a blighted and unpopular vision 
that they could never achieve democratically.
  Up against a covert power-seizing plan like that, you need to move 
fast; you need to engage early. If you wait too long, you will show up 
too late. Why did we always show up too late? It wasn't because these 
disasters were minor matters. A captured Supreme Court puts an entire 
branch of government under hidden political control, with no electoral 
remedy to its bad decisions thanks to lifetime appointments of the 
captured Justices. Capture of our Supreme Court has caused lasting 
damage already, deforming our constitutional order. The same interests 
always winning is observable, as is the statistical improbability of 
that, that it degrades faith in the Court.
  Capture rocks the Court from within. A billionaire gift program to 
reward the most amenable Justices with lifestyles of the rich and 
famous twisted the Court into knots as it tried to prevent facts from 
coming out, even potential tax cheating, and to defeat any real ethics 
code.

  That is all a devilish and rotten business in a great Republic. As to 
dark money, well, dark money influence has corrupted Congress, and dark 
money political spending denies citizens--American citizens--the basic 
information they need to do their constitutional job of policing the 
public square. Knowing who is out, doing what to whom is essential.
  Well, the donors and the candidates and the party leadership, they 
all know the players in the game. Donors don't spend billions without 
making sure the politicians know. It is America's citizenry that is 
left in ignorance. What citizens do see and feel is that they are not 
being listened to. They don't matter so much anymore, not when tens of 
millions of dollars of secret funds can be dumped into an election by a 
billionaire.
  Politicians are drawn to the money, inevitably. Remember the famous 
saying:

       Money is the mother's milk of politics.

  Climate denial fraud may be the worst of the three. Climate denial 
fraud success may have cost us our children's futures--the looming 
physical catastrophes made inevitable by fossil fuel pollution, 
damaging Earth's natural systems. They are first prefigured 
economically in insurance markets, and it is happening. Insurance 
markets are seeing what is coming.
  Unlike fossil fuel, the insurance industry can't lie about our 
future. Insurers are under a fiduciary obligation, reinforced by 
trillions of dollars in bets, to predict future risk honestly and well, 
and they are telling us that an economic storm is coming, driven by 
climate upheaval. The leading edge of that economic storm is already 
upon us in homeowners' property insurance markets melting down in 
Florida and other coastal and wildfire risk areas. We are heading into 
that storm unprepared while being lied to at industrial scale.
  Three terrible things were done. Much of the scheme was covert, but 
there was plenty to see. So what went wrong? I would say that my party 
fell into a rut. We too often allowed pollsters to determine our 
priorities. There are uses for pollsters in politics, but pollsters 
should not set priorities.
  Politicians worth their salt should set their own priorities, using 
their own judgment based on their own interactions with their own 
constituents and their own powers of foresight and anticipation. Those 
capacities are important in politics. Depending on polls can make those 
capacities flabby and weak.
  Polling also depends on getting the questions right. When pollsters 
aren't asking the right questions, it leaves massive blind spots. I 
have seen polling presentations supposedly telling us what we should 
care about that didn't even ask about climate change pollution or dark 
money corruption.
  Plus polling is inherently backward-looking, at least back to the 
time the survey was taken, obviously, but truly well before that into 
the lived experience of the polls' audience from previous months and 
years that informed their answers to the polling.
  So polling is ``reverse Gretzky.'' It tells you where the puck was. 
How often have we been told in the Senate: That issue isn't very high 
up in importance to voters. What a dumb and irresponsible way to think. 
That way of thinking suffers from a huge readiness problem. By the time 
a captured Supreme Court reveals its bad effects in voters' lives, it 
is too late. The Court is captured.
  By the time dark money influence invades elections, it is too late. 
Dark money, the sin that makes possible all the sins dark money pays 
for, is devilishly hard to root out.
  And climate change, climate change is physics. Once that fossil fuel 
pollution unleashes natural forces that will destroy our climate 
safety, they are not always possible to call off. It is too late.
  The lesson here, if you wait to fight until the polls tell you an 
issue is important, the battle can be over before you show up. 
Republicans' big donors want lower taxes for the rich, freedom for 
polluters to pollute for free, less safety regulation of business.
  None of those results is politically popular, so Republicans use 
polling as a tool to manipulate and move public opinion. The purpose is 
dynamic. Democrats think of polls like goalposts. Show me where the 
goalposts are, and I will kick my policy football through those 
goalposts. Static. Being static fails us.

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  When danger looms, it is irresponsible to wait until everybody sees 
the danger to give warning. If it was your house on fire, would you 
wait around for your family to wake up and ask for your help? Of course 
not.
  And when you are up against strategy, particularly covert strategy, 
you have to fight strategy with strategy. You have to prepare, not wait 
around. And third, if you are always meeting voters where they already 
are or were, they will begin to notice over time that you never have 
anything new to say; that they never learn anything from you; that you 
are not a leader but a follower of polls.
  That sense of political listlessness quietly sinks in and informs the 
political refrain: Republicans are shameless; Democrats are spineless.
  Look now at the climate mess we are in. We are sailing toward 
economic catastrophe, kicked off by collapsing insurance markets, 
followed by physical catastrophe as Earth's natural systems collapse. 
The fossil fuel polluters who caused this mess aren't penalized. They 
float instead on an economic subsidy in the United States of $700 
billion per year.
  That subsidy comes from getting to pollute for free, a violation of 
basic economic market principles. That $700 billion annual subsidy 
roughly reflects the annual damage fossil fuels cause, a $700 billion 
negative externality, as economists would say, that should be baked 
into the price of the product.
  But Republicans in Congress desperately protect that $700 billion 
subsidy for their fossil fuel donors. Think of how that subsidy 
motivates the fossil fuel industry in politics. To protect a $700 
billion annual subsidy, would you spend, say, $7 billion a year in 
politics defending the pollute-for-free subsidy? Seven billion dollars 
a year to defend $700 billion a year?
  At that rate, fossil fuel's political operation is likely the most 
profitable facet of the entire industry. So they have an immense, well-
funded, covert, purposeful operation. And we wait until the pollsters 
tell us the public is alert to it before we do battle? Ridiculous.
  How do we recover? How do we recover from all the years we skated to 
where the puck was and ignored the massive fossil fuel covert op 
because the public hadn't seen it yet?
  Well, first, we had better get on it. We have let a lot of sand run 
through the hourglass as we dawdled, and we lost a lot of credibility 
from missing those fights.
  On climate, we have to face the facts. The facts are grim, and the 
stakes are high.
  The corporate consulting firm Deloitte has estimated a $220 trillion 
difference in global GDP by 2070, depending on whether we succeed on 
climate, thereby generating $40 trillion in global economic growth, or 
continue failing and take a global $180 trillion economic hit. The 
spread is $220 trillion, and Deloitte is not the lone voice.
  The Potsdam Institute has warned of a $38 trillion annual hit to 
global GDP by midcentury. Predictions of multitrillion dollar hits 
abound.
  And the international Financial Stability Board just warned the 
global banking sector to buckle up.
  The warnings focus on insurance, mortgage, and real estate markets. 
The Economist magazine has reported a looming $25 trillion hit just to 
the global real estate sector.
  Fed Chair Powell testified earlier this year before the Senate 
Banking Committee that climate change will make insurance and, 
therefore, mortgages unavailable in entire regions of the United 
States.
  Voices at Allianz and Aon have warned that climate change threatened 
to upend their entire industry.
  The former chief economist of Freddie Mac told the Budget Committee 
last Congress how insurance becomes unavailable, making mortgages 
unavailable, driving down the value of your home. Similarly, when 
insurance premiums--if you can get insurance. But if the premiums 
double or triple, then property values fall as the carrying costs of 
your home dramatically increase.
  Average insurance costs in Florida--$14,000 a year--predicted to 
double, triple, or quadruple. What does that do to the home price?
  Together, the chief economist said, the crisis in insurance 
availability and affordability can cascade into a 2008-style economic 
meltdown that clobbers the entire economy.
  Many of these warnings use the word ``systemic.'' Boring sounding 
word but perhaps the most dangerous word in the economic lexicon. It 
means the whole system gets hit, not just the particular sector--like 
2008, or worse, 1929. Everyone suffers as the economy implodes.
  The way out from this danger is clear and simple: It can't continue 
to be free to pollute. There must be a global price or penalty on 
carbon emissions. Nothing else works, not after the time we have 
wasted. We have squandered every other option.
  ``Polluter pays'' is not just the right thing to do morally and 
economically and environmentally, it is our last lifeboat. And it is a 
lifeboat the fossil fuel industry is trying to sink, even after 
pretending for years that that was the solution they wanted. Big 
surprise. They lied. Hydrocarbons and lies are their twin products.
  Our best prospect on carbon pollution right now is the European 
Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, called the CBAM. It is a 
tariff on the emissions associated with carbon-intensive goods like 
steel and aluminum that are imported into the EU.
  Our scenario for success--if we still have one--is that the EU sticks 
to its guns and doesn't chicken out; the UK honors its commitment to 
join the CBAM--the two economies, by the way, just coordinated carbon 
prices, a key step--and Australia and Canada and Mexico and other 
economies follow suit.
  There is actually even a sliver of Senate Republican interest in a 
U.S. carbon border tariff.
  A price on carbon pollution in international trade, at last, moves 
things. It begins to offset fossil fuel's global multitrillion dollar 
free-to-pollute subsidy. It aligns market incentives properly, and it 
creates a revenue proposition--a revenue proposition for pollution 
reduction and carbon-capture technologies, boosting an innovation 
pathway to climate safety that presently does not exist.
  Dark money corruption got us into this pickle, and the way out of 
there is also clear and simple: Pass the damn DISCLOSE Act. Require 
that donors over 10 grand into a political race show the public who 
they are. No more front groups and shell corporations.
  The dark money battle is a race against time to stop the dark money 
influence operation before it gets its claws so deep into all three 
branches of government that the whole system is too corrupted to care 
how badly voters want transparency.
  When that disclosure bill passes into law, the public will feel 
immediate relief. People will notice the political class beginning to 
turn its attention back to voters rather than to the billionaire donors 
and the corporate polluter elite running the foul dark money operation.
  And political ads, that tsunami of slime, will diminish as real 
entities would have to own political messages. Many players behind the 
tsunami of slime will actually back off. Because once voters understand 
who is behind a message, sometimes, they get the joke, and you can't go 
forward any longer. And even if they don't back off, at least someone 
can be accountable for the slime and lies that permeate our politics.
  Less special interest money, less slime and lies, less secrecy, 
voters heard again--you might call it morning in America.
  Fix dark money and you break the grip of fossil fuel. Look at what 
fossil fuel dark money gets the Trump administration and Republicans in 
Congress to do for them every day. Right out of the gate, day one of 
his regime, Trump issued an Executive order that took wind and solar 
power out of the definition of ``energy.''
  Forget the politics; that doesn't even comport with the dictionary.
  Trump's Interior Department set out to kill offshore wind, halting 
the permitting process, even attempting to stop projects under 
construction.
  Trump's Energy Department choked off loans and funding for the 
development and deployment of low-carbon technologies and proposed 
slashing research budgets at our National Labs.
  Trump's Environmental Protection Agency--now better called ``Polluter

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Protector Agency''--illegally terminated billions for clean energy 
products around the country. It set up California's Clean Air Act 
vehicle emissions standards to be killed by the Congressional Review 
Act, a gambit first floated by fossil fuel industry lawyers in an op-ed 
in the polluter-run Wall Street Journal's editorial page.
  And to pull this off, my Republican colleagues even went nuclear: 
overruled the Senate Parliamentarian.
  The Trump EPA announces it will repeal rules limiting air pollution 
from powerplants and vehicles, reverse the 2009 finding that greenhouse 
gas emissions endanger humans, suspend the collection of emissions 
data--they don't even want the data?--and eliminate the social cost of 
carbon, the rule that quantifies that $700 billion in fossil fuel 
emissions harm.
  In Congress--because bad things happen here as well--here is my 
favorite: Republicans undid our fee on excess methane emissions. You 
have to know that this fee only applied to emissions exceeding the 
industry's own industry standards. And half of those methane leaks 
could be eliminated at no net cost since methane--natural gas--if not 
leaked, can be sold. So Republicans in Congress took the side of the 
industry's worst leakers to relieve them of having to pay for their 
mess.
  And just last week, Republicans passed Trump's megabill, a many-
headed hydra, turning the power of government to help fossil fuel 
billionaires throttle their clean energy competition. This will kill 
thousands of jobs, cede dominance of clean energy to China, drive 
consumers' electric prices way higher, and turbocharge the carbon 
pollution that is already making insurance, groceries, and electricity 
more expensive.
  There is one simple goal behind all of this: help Republicans' fossil 
fuel donors to sell more oil, natural gas, gasoline, and diesel. Every 
electric car that is never produced means one more internal combustion 
engine that will spend years consuming their gasoline. Every solar 
array or wind turbine that is never built will mean more of their 
natural gas combusted to produce electricity.
  It doesn't matter to the creepy billionaires that the ownership cost 
of an EV are already less than those of a combustion engine or that 
solar power is now the cheapest form of energy there is. All that 
matters is the narrow self-interest of the polluting fossil fuel 
industry that funds and controls the Republican Party.
  Every indication is that the fossil fuel industry dark money 
operation orchestrated the Republicans' energy agenda. Every indication 
is that they have burrowed into the executive branch and are running it 
from the inside.
  Russell Vought, for instance, running OMB, has spent, essentially, 
his entire career on fossil fuel's dark money payroll. His counsel 
there is Mark Paoletta from that infamous painting of the Court fixer 
Leonard Leo, billionaire donor Harlan Crow, and their pet Supreme Court 
Justice Clarence Thomas from the Court capture operation.
  Which brings us to the captured Court, the Court that dark money 
built. Freeing the Supreme Court from its captured state will not be 
easy. Too many Justices are willing participants in the capture scheme.
  If the Supreme Court Justices wanted to redeem their Court, they 
could have done it already. They could do it on their own any day. But 
captured is as captured does; they don't want to.
  It matters on climate. A rejuvenated Court would take the evidence of 
climate harm seriously. Over and over, the Court that dark money built 
has favored fossil fuel interests. For instance, it threw out the Clean 
Power Plan, saving industry tens of billions in compliance costs and 
allowing more than a dozen years of continued pollution.
  Let's say that $700 billion fossil fuel subsidy number is close to 
right. If the Clean Power Plan would only have shaved 10 percent off 
the harm, that one decision cost Americans nearly $1 trillion in 
pollution harm. That is worth capturing the Court for if you are the 
fossil fuel industry.
  The Court created the major questions doctrine to give the fossil 
fuel industry a legal weapon to stop future climate regulations. The 
Court withdrew the Chevron doctrine, taking away from experts in the 
regulatory process the benefit of the doubt.
  In all these cases, the fossil fuel industry got free legal services 
from Republican attorneys general, undoubtedly grateful for their 
fossil fuel political funding. What a rotten misuse of that badge of 
office.
  To reform the Court, Congress will have to act on two fronts. One is 
to require a proper ethics code for the Court, including the essential 
elements of proper legal process: actual factfinding and neutral 
decision making. Not complicated stuff. Rule of law is based on those 
two principles. The Justices shield themselves from both.
  The present Court and its political defenders pretend that fixing 
this is impossible, but it is not. Every State supreme court faces the 
issue of administering a proper ethics code for itself, and every 
single one has figured it out.
  Forget impossible; it is not even hard.
  The problem is that the Justices--or certain of them--enjoy being the 
only nine people in government immune from proper ethics scrutiny. Look 
at that billionaire gift program, and you might see why.
  They violate an ancient principle so ancient it is in Latin: ``nemo 
judex in causa sua''--no one should judge their own case. As an ethics 
scholar recently put it, it is a conflict of interest to judge one's 
only conflict of interest.
  The public is ready for more than just real ethics, however. The 
present Court's legacy of scandals, destruction of precedent, doctrinal 
leaps, false factfinding in cases, and striking, striking patterns in 
what interests always win is damning. Add the unhealthy secrets--around 
who chose Justices and why, and around the billionaires' campaign of 
gifts to amenable Justices, and around tax mischief related to those 
gifts--and it is a mess. The public is ready for term limits and 
turnover.

  A Court rejuvenated with regular turnover, with its secrets disclosed 
and a proper ethics procedure going forward, is a Court that can again 
merit the confidence of the American people and perform the judicial 
function honorably.
  So can we win a pathway to climate safety, rid our politics of dark 
money, and liberate a captured Court? Yes, we actually can, but it 
won't be easy.
  The successful fraud of climate denial, the insidious corruption of 
our politics by dark money, and the special interest capture of the 
Court all are political prizes that will be defended to the death by 
the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel-funded infrastructure of 
front groups that propagates the climate lies, that launders and 
funnels the dark money, and that captured and now cossets and guides 
the Justices will be fighting for its very survival. The front groups 
are many, but like keys on a piano, they are part of a larger 
instrument: a fossil fuel instrument of secret influence and corruption 
now operating our government from within. That instrument must be 
defanged to revive American popular democracy.
  In this battle, yes, we have disadvantages. The infrastructure built 
for Republicans by their fossil fuel billionaire backers is immense. 
They can run media operations that drown us out. They have unlimited 
money. They plan years in advance. They have whipped the Republican 
Party into exceptional battle discipline.
  Don't get me wrong; we have some super talent on the Democratic side. 
But it is ballet dancers against centurions. Ballet dancers may be 
better athletes than centurions, but 100 centurions against 100 ballet 
dancers will end predictably. We don't have much muscle memory for 
fighting either, as recent Democratic administrations have tended to be 
conflict-averse. We have been less aggressive--lambs versus wolves. The 
wolf doesn't much fear the bite of the lamb, and they don't much fear 
us.
  Imagine Winston Churchill trying to defend Britain without radar or 
Spitfires or his war room under the streets of London. Proper defense 
infrastructure can be outcome-determinative, and we haven't had that.
  We do have one big advantage: The whole crooked apparatus of the 
rightwing fossil fuel billionaires depends on secrecy to work its 
evils. We don't have to match fossil fuel front group for front group, 
propaganda mouthpiece

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for propaganda mouthpiece, lie for lie, even dollar for dollar. It 
doesn't have to take $7 billion on our side. Our cause can win by 
shining a bright light on their mischief and their motives.
  Americans love solving mysteries, love to hear what Paul Harvey 
called ``the end of the story.'' Fossil fuel has to lie and connive and 
hide behind masks to win. We can be truth tellers and win. People don't 
like being lied to. The truth--that is our superpower.
  Even with that superpower, it is still not going to be easy. We have 
to face that there is some real work ahead of us. I was a prosecutor. 
You have seen the TV shows. Prosecutors investigating gangs build 
careful diagrams of all the gang's members, showing who reports to 
whom, who is connected to whom, what phone numbers and addresses we 
have, what evidence we have got, where they get their guns, and where 
they distribute the drugs. All of that goes up on the cork board.
  You have to know your adversary. Intelligence Agencies do deep 
research into the personnel of opposing services. Know your adversary. 
We don't. Until recently, few Democrats even knew who Leonard Leo was--
the top operative of the billionaires' Court-capture scheme. Most 
Democrats couldn't pass a basic test of what front groups are arrayed 
against us. That is not the fault of individual Members of Congress. We 
have just had no war room to organize the information, no offense 
coordinator to plan strategy, no batters' book to tell us who can't hit 
inside pitches, no cork board to pin up the gang's information. 
Corporations do better research on rivals when prepping a corporate 
takeover than we did trying to defend our country from this political 
takeover.
  The idea of a realtime, anti-fraud, climate cleanup operations center 
calling out the lies, following the money, and spotlighting who is 
behind the front groups may seem beyond our reach, but it is not. The 
military has had op centers for years. You have seen the Hollywood 
versions with the TV screens up on the walls and the satellite feeds 
and the drone feeds coming in. The RAF, back in World War II, had a 
simpler one during the Battle of Britain, with those little ships and 
plane models being pushed around with the long sticks on the big map 
table. Radar told the RAF war room when to scramble the Spitfires, 
where to send them, and what enemy to expect when they got there. We 
haven't built that--no radar, no Spitfires, no war room under London--
but we can.
  Remember those three evils: the fossil fuel industry's climate denial 
fraud, the capture of the Supreme Court, that dark money infiltration 
of our politics. They didn't ``happen.'' They were all done very 
deliberately, using an armada of front groups and carefully scripted 
fakery. It is best to think of it all as a single beast--a beast that 
has now burrowed in and is running the government for Trump. It is a 
takeover by a shadow government, working for rightwing extremists and 
fossil fuel polluters.
  If we don't see it for what it is and call it out for what it is, how 
can we warn people of what is happening? And if we don't warn people of 
what is happening, how can we possibly believe we have done our duty in 
this moment of peril?
  Climate change makes this a battle with a ratchet. There are some 
things you just can't come back from. The ratchet has clicked, and 
there is no return. So it is urgent. It is time for us all to wake up 
and fight.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

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