[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13939]
[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, as the House Republicans prepare to shut 
down the government and threaten the global economy with debt ceiling 
blackmail, it's ironic that they refuse to allow their Members to vote 
on their own spending bills. They even refused to allow a conference 
committee with the Senate to resolve the budget impasse. I suppose it 
should be no surprise that their denial extends to climate change and 
the future of the planet, but Americans don't have that luxury.
  Between this summer's wildfires in the West, last year's drought, 
Superstorm Sandy, and the recent horrific flooding in Colorado, 
Americans are seeing the impact of climate change. Tuesday, Matt 
Russell, a fifth-generation Iowa farmer, gave a quick history of what 
climate change looks like in Iowa.
  In 2008, they suffered a 500-year flood. In 2010, there was another 
series of 100-year floods. The next year, the Missouri River wiped out 
thousands of acres of farm land, some of which will never be farmed 
again. In 2012 was the catastrophic drought. In half a decade, Iowa saw 
the worst flooding and the worst drought in over a century of record-
keeping.
  This is what climate change will look like, and it will get worse and 
more extreme, which is exactly what's happening this year. On May 4, 
there was a foot of heavy wet snow, the most snow ever recorded in Iowa 
in May. Then it began raining, the most rain ever recorded in the month 
of May in Iowa. Then it was drought. Last month was the driest August 
on record, even drier than last year's epic drought. And in between, 
July was one of the coldest, on record with temperatures in the 
thirties. Now they're experiencing one of the hottest Septembers on 
record. The hottest days in 2013 came after Labor Day, multiple days of 
over 100-degree temperatures. This is what climate change means: the 
wrong weather at the wrong time.
  Their joke is that February came in May, along with all the rain for 
the summer; and September came in July and July came in September, and 
now they wonder what month is going to show up in October. But it's not 
a joke for the people who are trying to farm. It's not a joke for the 
taxpayers who are picking up the cost of crop insurance, which totaled 
almost $2 billion last year.
  Farmers in Iowa and elsewhere are working to be part of the solution, 
but what they can't afford is for Congress to continue wasting time 
with debate, ignoring science, and spending billions of dollars on 
disaster relief. They want us to spend money upfront, not just to save 
money in the long run, but the lives and, indeed, the environment for 
all of our families to enjoy.
  Listening to America's farmers or just looking out of the window and 
paying close attention to the news tells Americans all they need to 
know. The science is real, and the time for action is now. Farmers, 
small business, utilities, insurance companies, universities, colleges, 
we all should insist that Congress stop playing games with the budget, 
threatening the global economy with debt ceiling blackmail and the 
future of the planet.

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