[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 196 (Thursday, November 20, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8266-S8269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for my, oh, I guess 
umpteenth ``Time to Wake Up'' speech.
  This one comes upon my return from Brazil, where I was the entirety 
of the United States of America governmental presence at the COP. That 
was it. Just me. Nobody else went. And not only did nobody else go--
this is not important to anybody really outside the Senate--but for my 
codel, my congressional delegation trip of one, the State Department, 
under President Trump, refused to facilitate my trip.
  I think this is the first time where the Senate, the legislative 
body, has been told by the Executive branch: We are not going to 
facilitate a codel because we don't like what you are doing. I don't 
think that has ever happened before, and whatever your views are on 
whatever issue, I would caution that this is a gate we need to close 
shut because if the Executive branch of government can start telling 
the Members of the Senate what codels they can and

[[Page S8267]]

cannot go on with State Department support and facilitation, we have 
got a real problem on our hands.
  Here is my badge from the event, which the State Department refused 
to facilitate. So I was there as an observer of the Global Legislators 
Organization for a Balanced Environment, not the State Department. That 
is how we had to get around them.
  So that is kind of a first, not mattering much, except that it is yet 
another executive-legislative tradition blown up by the arrogance of 
the Trump administration, their insistence that everything has to be 
their way.
  But it is also a signal that this is how crazy they are on climate 
issues, how completely off base they are.
  So I went down to Brazil--because that is where the rest of the world 
was gathering--to discuss the climate crisis. In the facility where we 
were, the kind of main intersection where the two big aisleways crossed 
was occupied by China, at one of the key corners, with a huge 
delegation, a very big pavilion, lots of activity and crowding, and all 
of the different countries that were there seeing the leadership of 
China--our rival.
  No pavilion for the United States, nothing to be seen, nobody. Across 
the way, Saudis, not exactly the best friends of climate solutions.
  So that was the environment that I went down to, and what I wanted to 
do was convey four messages.
  Message one was: Donald Trump on climate does not represent the 
United States of America. He just doesn't. He represents the big donors 
who gathered at Mar-a-Lago, whom he asked for a billion dollars, and 
who gave him hundreds of millions of dollars in return for his promise 
to do whatever they wanted. It is that corrupt promise that explains 
Trump's behavior, not that he is representing the United States of 
America.
  I thought this cartoon made a pretty good image of what is going on 
in the Trump White House.
  And we know that he doesn't represent America because we can do 
things like test public opinion and polls. And I have a recent one here 
that asks about some of the sensible solutions to the climate change 
problem, to all the pollution spewing. Here is one: Carbon pollution 
limits on big companies.
  Obviously, Trump would do everything he possibly could to prevent 
carbon pollution limits because his big fossil fuel donors wouldn't 
like that, and he is in tow to them. So zero chance that Trump would 
support that. But how about the American people? Mr. President, 12 
percent opposed, 72 percent support. There is a 60-point margin among 
the American public on putting a pollution limit, a carbon pollution 
limit on big companies--72 to 12. That is where the American people 
are, not in the pockets of Big Oil.
  Here is another one: Impose a fee on big polluters. It shouldn't be 
pollute for free. If you are polluting something, whether it is your 
neighbor's yard with your waste, your trash, throwing it over the fence 
or whether it is the river that you are dumping effluent into and 
ruining things for people downstream or whether it is our common 
atmosphere, if you pollute, you should pay for the cost of fixing it.
  Better still, you should pay enough that you don't pollute in the 
first place and the neighbor's yard isn't a wreck of your trash and the 
river isn't dirty downstream and the atmosphere is safe.
  Impose a fee on big polluters. Seventy-four percent of Americans 
liked that, 10 percent opposed. These are massive numbers in our line 
of work, in which we are always testing public opinion. And this is 
without much political pressure behind those ideas. This is just the 
American public in its natural state saying: Yes, by a better-than-60-
point margin, we want to impose a fee on big polluters. We want carbon 
pollution limits on big companies. That is where America is.
  Trump is in the pockets of the big polluters. So that was message 
one.
  Message two was: We have got to put that price on carbon, the one 
that the American people want, because that is the only way we have 
remaining to climate safety. We have driven by all the other exits on 
the highway. We are now left with that. And that was my second point. 
We absolutely have to have what is called carbon pricing, a fee, a 
penalty, whatever you call it, for pollution.
  This is part of a review from work that the Potsdam Institute did. 
They looked at 1,200 climate scenarios that over the years have been 
presented to the IPCC, 1,200. Of those 1,200, there are 11 left--11 out 
of 1,200--11 left that put us on a pathway to climate safety to get us 
back below the 1.5 degrees centigrade safety margin--maybe safety 
margin. But that is a conventional one, so I will stick with it, even 
though it is not a guarantee.
  Every single one of them puts a price on carbon. No price on carbon, 
we fail. Other stuff that helps with climate, that may cause the 
airplane to crash higher up the mountain, but the only thing that gets 
the airplane safely across the mountain is putting a price on carbon. 
Twenty years ago, we probably had other alternatives.
  Now, we absolutely must put a price on carbon. And so I, when I met 
with the Europeans and the Brits and the Australians, said to them: You 
have our last lifeboat. Don't let Trump sink it for his fossil fuel 
donors. What is the last lifeboat? It is called the carbon border 
adjustment mechanism. It is a global price on carbon that comes from 
tariffs. It is already law in the European Union, and it is about to go 
into effect next year.
  Behind the European Union is the United Kingdom. Under a conservative 
government, the United Kingdom decided to join the CBAM. They are in 
the process of aligning their internal carbon prices, and they are in 
the process of figuring out how they are going to charge their own 
tariffs.
  So you have the EU economy, and then soon, I hope, the UK economy 
joining, sending a global price signal that, if you are putting in 
goods that are more carbon intensive than ours, we are going to charge 
you for that. You cannot pollute and export for free any longer. This 
is a version of the ``can't pollute for free'' rule.
  Pollute for free, by the way, is wrong--not just morally but as a 
matter of economics. You can go back to the most conservative 
economist, Milton Friedman, and he will say: Yes, if your product 
causes harm, if it pollutes, that is what economists call a negative 
externality. And the cost of that negative externality needs to be in 
the price of the product or else it is a subsidy, and it should be 
treated as a subsidy.
  The subsidy for fossil fuel, just in the United States, is $700 
billion every year. That is how much harm it causes. That is the value 
to the industry of ``pollute for free'' as their business model.
  So the CBAM is beginning to put a price on pollution by causing a 
border tariff. To impose that price is really, really important.
  These are those 11 remaining scenarios. Every single one crosses over 
1.5; every single one requires, probably, direct-air capture to get the 
excess carbon dioxide and other pollutants out of the atmosphere and 
then bring it back down to safety--assuming no tipping point in here 
makes it irrecoverable.
  So the way that I described it is that our last lifeboat to climate 
safety is the CBAM. It gets stronger if the UK joins. It gets stronger 
if the Australians join. They are looking at it as well. That makes it 
a sturdier lifeboat for all of us.
  But we have to do it. It is not a guarantee of climate safety. But 
sinking that lifeboat is a guarantee of failure for us, for the next 
generation of young people, for their children and their grandchildren. 
We are done if we don't protect and, ideally, expand the CBAM.
  So I urge all the countries participating in that: Stand by your 
guns. There is going to be a corrupt fossil fuel-driven attack on this. 
You can count on it. And be ready. Lock arms. Link up. Prepare yourself 
for the onslaught, and do not let yourself be cowed. Do not let 
yourself be stampeded.
  So that was point two. Point three was: We have trouble coming. I 
call it the great climate insurance collapse. It is widely warned of. 
It is on its way. As I went around the COP, I handed out this little 
folder wherever I could, which lists just some of the climate economic 
catastrophe warnings that are out there:

       [C]limate change could reduce the level of global GDP per 
     capita by 10-20%.

  This is Fed Chair Powell. He is on my sheet right here: In 10 or 15 
years, there

[[Page S8268]]

are going to be regions of the country where you can't get a mortgage.
  Why is that? Because in those regions of the country you won't be 
able to get home insurance. And if you can't get home insurance on your 
property, if it has become uninsurable, no mortgage.
  So what he is really saying here is whole regions of the United 
States are going to become so climate risky that they are uninsurable 
and, therefore, unmortgageable, and that is why, in those regions of 
the country, you will not be able to get a mortgage.
  Think for a minute about what the economy looks like in an entire 
region of the country in which nobody can get a mortgage any longer.
  Where is this likely to hit first? I will tell you a region that is 
headed for this fast is Florida. In Florida, the insurance market is 
already trembling, propped up, perhaps even fake. And if it loses that 
insurance market and Florida is a region in which nobody can get a 
mortgage any longer, well, that may be fine for Palm Beach billionaires 
who are swapping mansions with their extra money, but for a working 
person who has to get a mortgage to afford a house or for a working 
person who has a house on which he or she is paying a mortgage and now 
they need to sell it and they can't find a buyer because the buyer 
can't get a mortgage to buy the house because the house can't get 
insurance--the property is uninsurable.
  That is how that cascade works. It goes from climate risk to 
uninsurability, to mortgage collapse, to property values collapse, to 
recession. That is what the chief economist for Freddie Mac predicted.
  This guy, Fed Chair Powell, is not green at all. He is lousy on 
climate, but he is good on finance, and he sees this coming.
  Freddie Mac is not a green organization. It is a mortgage company. So 
when its chief economist says we are headed for a 2008-style economic 
recession because there won't be mortgages because you can't get 
insurance so property values will fall so there will be that recession, 
you are hearing that from the finance community, not from 
environmentalists.
  We go on. The Economist magazine, in an article entitled ``The Next 
Housing Disaster''--there is its cover; it was about a year ago--
predicted $25 trillion as the size of the hit to the global real estate 
market from this climate risk to insurance meltdown, to no mortgages, 
to property values collapse cascade--$25 trillion.

  ``Climate change, in short,'' it said, ``could prompt the next global 
property collapse.''
  The president of Aon, one of the biggest insurance companies in the 
country, testified before the Senate Budget Committee:

       Climate risk is a global, systemic risk.

  What does ``systemic'' mean?

       Climate change is a global, systemic risk.

  What does ``systemic'' mean? Systemic is the scariest word in the 
economic lexicon. Systemic means that when things go bad, it is not 
contained to the place where the things went bad.
  The 2008 recession was systemic, meaning that you didn't have to have 
a bad mortgage or you didn't have to be one of the financiers who 
crookedly packaged the bad mortgages to get clobbered. The damage was 
so deep in that part of the financial system that it cascaded out 
across the entire economy, and everybody got hurt. Car dealers, 
Realtors, small businesses, people who lost their jobs got hurt in 2008 
because it was systemic.
  Now you have got the CEO of one of America's biggest insurance 
entities warning us about this systemic risk.
  Here is an even bigger insurance company, the biggest one in the 
world, Allianz, put one of its board members out to warn that if we get 
past the 1.5 degrees here and if you get up to 3 degrees, what happens 
at 3 degrees? Which, by the way, is very much what we are headed for 
right now. What happens at 3 degrees? Here is what he says:

       [T]he financial sector as we know it ceases to function. 
     And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.

  Same scenario: climate risk, insurance collapse, mortgage failure, 
property values crash.
  The Mortgage Bankers Association:

       [C]hronic physical risk associated with climate change may 
     . . . exceed the capacity of insurance and government 
     assistance to sustain some areas.

  Whole regions.
  By the way, the Allianz guy said the same thing about regions that 
Jay Powell did, that whole regions are becoming uninsurable.
  The Financial Stability Board is the board that looks at the world's 
banking system. They have put out a warning saying, ``buckle up'' to 
the world's banks because if the climate risk to insurance collapse, to 
mortgage market failure, to property value crash transpires, the banks' 
balance sheets collapses. Its collateral value is gone. Its loan-to-
value ratio makes it insolvent. And now you have a bank crash laid over 
the underlying great climate insurance collapse.
  That is not from me. That is not from the League of Conservation 
Voters. That is not from the Sierra Club. That is from the 
international Financial Stability Board.
  So that was the second message: Look out. This is about to get deadly 
serious, and people at the top of the finance profession are warning 
about it.
  I will close with Bob Litterman. He was the chief risk management 
officer for Goldman Sachs, right? Goldman Sachs ain't green--except 
green with money. And he was their chief risk management officer. Here 
is what he told the Senate Budget Committee:

       A sudden revision of market perceptions about climate 
     risk--

i.e., the market realizes that climate risk is out there and has not 
been priced adequately into financial documents--

     could lead to a disorderly repricing of assets, which could 
     in turn have cascading effects on portfolios and balance 
     sheets and therefore systemic--

Systemic--

     implications for financial stability.

  Like the Financial Stability Board said.
  So I pointed out that this risk was looming, and we need to pay 
attention to it. This isn't about polar bears any longer. This isn't 
about green jobs any longer. This is a serious warning about a 
potential collapse in not just the United States but the global 
financial system. Remember The Economist magazine said that $25 
trillion hit was coming to global real estate markets. That is what 
this article said.
  So how do we prevent that? Well, one thing, as I said already, is you 
have to put a price on carbon. If it is free to pollute, you are going 
to get more polluting. There is no excuse for an industry polluting for 
free. There just isn't. It is morally wrong, economically wrong, 
environmentally wrong. It is wrong by the rules which your mom taught 
you--to clean up after your damn self.
  But when it is $700 billion every year of harm that you are getting 
away with for free, that gives you a big reason as an industry to try 
to fake and lie and pressure your way through it. Now, you don't want 
to be caught doing that by your own name. You don't want it to be 
ExxonMobil that is doing all of this in its own name, so you have set 
up a whole scheme. But for $700 billion a year, you can spend a lot of 
money on setting up your whole scheme.
  And sure enough, here is an image I have used on the Senate floor 
before. This is a web of all, not all, a significant number of the big 
front groups that the fossil fuel industry has propped up and funds to 
propagate its climate denial fraud operation--pretend that this isn't 
real, pretend that the scientists are just kidding or that they are 
making it up--and its dark money political corruption operation, which 
shovels billions of dollars into our politics to make sure that people 
obediently deny climate change in return for the money that keeps them 
in office.
  So my final point in Brazil was, if we want to win this, we not only 
have to get the policy right, we have to tell the story right.
  This is a story with a villain in it, just like a children's story 
that has a troll or a witch or an ogre or a dragon. You don't want to 
tell that story without the troll or the witch or the ogre or the 
dragon. First of all, it gets to be a really boring story, and second 
of all, it ain't the right story.
  What we have is a situation in which we are in this peril that I 
described. We are in this peril because the fossil fuel industry has 
propped up this whole array of phony front groups to spread climate 
disinformation, stuff that just isn't true.
  By the way, they don't care that it is not true. That is the point. 
So they

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don't stand corrected when somebody says ``Oh, that is not true''; they 
just dial up the volume and say it twice as much. It is not intended to 
be true. This is not a quest for truth; this is a barrage of noise and 
propaganda designed to cover the truth.
  On the money side, we are into multiple billions of dollars that are 
poured into this building from fossil fuel industry coffers through all 
these phony-baloney front groups. I make fun of their names. I made up 
one: Rhode Islanders for Peace and Puppies and Prosperity--with nothing 
but a mail drop behind it. But behind the mail drop, creepy 
billionaires are shoveling in the money so people will ignore this 
problem for just another year, just another 2 years, just long enough 
to make a few more billion dollars in profit.
  So that was my message.
  Trump ain't us on this. Trump is the mouthpiece of the fossil fuel 
industry. The American public hasn't gone anywhere on this. He has just 
gone off on a fossil fuel-funded excursion.
  If we don't protect the CBAM and put a price on carbon, there is no 
way out of this mess. We are totally toast, and we are going to see the 
looming edge of being totally toast coming through our insurance 
markets. It is already happening in Florida. Watch it. It is there.
  I did a poll in Texas. Ninety-two percent of Texans are concerned 
about their homeowners insurance. Everybody talks about affordability 
here. They are concerned about their homeowners insurance 
affordability. They are more concerned about that than healthcare. They 
are more concerned about that than groceries. This is a top-of-mind 
concern because of wildfires, flooding, hail exploding the Texas 
homeowners insurance market.
  Sixty-three percent say they are very concerned--very concerned. 
Sixty-six percent in oil patch Texas, in red Texas, in a State where 
zero effort has been made to connect the dots, understand that climate 
change links to extreme weather that is driving their homeowners 
insurance crisis--66 percent already get that. They are just being 
ignored because the fossil fuel industry can out-fog horn them with its 
propaganda and outspend them with its sluice gates open of dark money 
corrupting our politics.
  That takes us to the last point, which is, yes, there is a villain in 
the story, and we need to put a spotlight on that villain and make them 
own the harm they are so dishonestly creating.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________