[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11044]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, in this time of extreme weather events, 
our hearts go out to victims of the storms, wildfires, power outages, 
torrential downpours, the winds, trees crashing into homes. It makes 
our hearts ache, thinking of the suffering of hundreds of thousands of 
people in sweltering heat without electricity.
  Beyond our shores, we see this extreme weather is global in scale, 
such as the flash floods that killed hundreds in Russia this last week. 
We must pause, shudder, and feel sadness for those families.
  For many, the instinct is to help people resettle, rebuild, and 
reconnect. But the Nation's elected leaders should do more than comfort 
those in distress and try to help people recover. As policymakers, 
shouldn't we act to try and prevent the next catastrophe?
  Some of this is relatively simple and straightforward, even if 
potentially controversial. Don't relocate people right back in the same 
flame or flood zone. We know they'll be ravaged by fire and flood. At a 
minimum, we shouldn't have the Federal Government pay to put people 
right back in harm's way.
  This discussion is part of flood insurance reform and national 
disaster policy that I personally have been working on for decades. We 
have made some progress, but not nearly what we should.
  You would think we would stop making it worse, yet we allow more and 
more people to move into the flame zone seeking to live with nature, 
and these people then expect government to prevent nature from doing 
what it's done for eons. In most cases, the fires in these areas not 
only cannot be stopped, but we make the next fire worse by suppressing 
nature's natural fire cycle until there's so much fuel in the forest 
that the inevitable next fire burns longer and more furiously, putting 
more at risk.
  The more people who are permitted or even encouraged to build homes 
and live in an area that cannot be defended is a prescription for 
disaster. It's an example of political malpractice, a head-in-the-sand 
attitude that many today in this Chamber have regarding climate change, 
rising sea level and weather instability, which are all completely 
predictable, foreseen consequences of carbon pollution.
  It's being played out in a variety of areas. We're watching oceans 
become more acidic, bleaching and killing coral reefs, which are the 
rain forests of the sea. Shouldn't we be doing something to try and 
prevent it?
  On the land, it's becoming clear what warming will mean to our 
communities with more instability, hotter temperatures, heavier 
precipitation events, 23,383 all-time heat records set this year.
  The worst example of government response, I think, is legislation in 
North Carolina, and it's already passed the State senate and is working 
its way through, that would prevent the State and local governments 
from planning based on the best scientific evidence about the 
accelerating pace of sea level increase.
  In Congress, it's notable that one of our major parties has firm 
opposition to even using the words ``climate change,'' let alone plan 
for or prevent it happening. It's not an energy policy to promote more 
carbon pollution and lavish support for old fossil fuel technology, nor 
to claim climate science is a hoax.
  That's the mindset that puts at risk replacement of a vitally needed 
satellite providing climate data. With all the ominous signs, horrific 
events and high stakes, how can we, as policymakers, not at least give 
weight to the advice of the vast majority of scientists.
  I'll tell you, this current generation of politicians will be asked 
by their grandchildren what could you possibly have been thinking. 
Indeed, I'll wager that some of today's policymakers, even the most 
obtuse and dogmatic, will live long enough to regret their hostility to 
science and their shortsighted devotion to politics of the moment over 
the future of the planet and their very families.
  They are like King Canute, who ordered the tide not to come in until 
it washed over his feet. Unlike King Canute, today's policymakers could 
do something about it.

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