[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 14609-14610]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HONORING RUSSELL TRAIN

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, this week the conservation community 
mourns the passing of a great American leader, a passionate individual, 
and an inspiration and friend to many, Russell Errol Train.
  President Nixon first named Russell Train as Under Secretary of the 
Department of the Interior and then as the first Chairman of the new 
White House Council on Environmental Quality from 1970 to 1973. Russ 
Train then became the Administrator of the EPA, serving there from 1973 
to 1977. He was at the forefront of the legislation that became the 
bedrock of our country's environmental policy: the Clean Air Act, the 
Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Toxic 
Substances Control Act--laws that keep the American public safe and 
that protect our American natural resources.
  His desire to protect wildlife and habitat predated these years of 
public service. He founded the Wildlife Conservation Foundation in 1959 
and then the African Wildlife Foundation. When the World Wildlife Fund 
was established in the United States, he became its first President.
  This week the World Wildlife Fund U.S. CEO Carter Roberts described 
Russell Train as ``a true national treasure and an inspiration to all 
of us who embrace conservation as their life's work.''
  Mr. Roberts went on to say:

       Undoubtedly, Russ would prefer that we not spend a lot of 
     time mourning his passing. He would want us to redouble our 
     efforts to save the animals and places we care about, to 
     solve the problems of climate change and resource scarcity, 
     and to build leadership capacity in those countries where it 
     is needed most.

  So it is with his legacy in mind that I come to the Senate floor 
today, as I try to do every week, to discuss climate change, the 
science behind it, and the reality of the changes we are already 
seeing. This week I will focus on how the carbon pollution that is 
causing these climate changes is also affecting our oceans and causing 
an equally threatening problem--ocean acidification.
  Sea water absorbs carbon dioxide; and when it does, chemical 
reactions occur that change the concentration of carbonate and hydrogen 
ions in a process that lowers the pH of sea water, commonly referred to 
as ocean acidification.
  Since the Industrial Revolution, we have burned carbon-rich fuels in 
measurable and ever-increasing amounts, now up to 7 to 8 gigatons each 
year. We have raised the average parts per million of CO2 in 
our atmosphere from 280 parts to 390. By the way, the range for carbon 
dioxide in our atmosphere for the last, say, 8,000 centuries has been 
170-300 parts per million. So we are well outside of that range. 
Indeed, in the Arctic, measurements have already reached 400 parts per 
million.
  The oceans of the Earth have absorbed more than 550 billion tons of 
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That is approximately 30 percent of 
all of our carbon dioxide emissions. The good news is that absorbing 
all this carbon has significantly reduced the greenhouse gas levels in 
our atmosphere. The bad news is that because of all this carbon 
absorption, the ocean pH has changed globally, representing a nearly 
30-percent increase in the acidity of the ocean. By the end of the 
century, ocean pH is predicted to change further, leading to a 160-
percent increase in acidity.
  This is where we are so far. This is what is projected. This rate of 
change in ocean acidity is already thought to be faster than anytime in 
the past 50 million years. A paper published in Science this year 
concluded that the current rate of CO2 emissions could drive 
chemical changes in the ocean unparalleled in at least the last 300 
million years.
  The authors of that Science study in March warned that we may be 
``entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.'' As the pH 
of sea water drops, so does the saturation of calcium carbonate, a 
compound critical to marine life for the construction of their shells 
and skeletons. Some organisms absorb calcium and carbonate directly 
right out of the water, others out of the food they ingest, but changes 
in the concentrations of these chemicals mean the building blocks 
become less available to make the shells of species such as oysters, 
crabs, lobsters, corals and the plankton that comprise the very base of 
the food web.
  As oceans get more acidic, it gets harder and harder for these 
important species to thrive, and it puts at risk the economies that 
depend on these species.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. REID. I appreciate very much my friend from Rhode Island 
yielding, and I appreciate his focusing attention on something we do 
not focus on nearly enough--and that is a gross understatement--and 
that is our oceans. I admire the work he has done in so many different 
areas. We thought we had a path

[[Page 14610]]

forward to do some good for oceans. It did not work out the way Senator 
Whitehouse and I wanted. We will come back again because we have to do 
something about oceans. We study everything else but not our oceans, 
and most everything else depends on what happens in the ocean.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the leader.

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