[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1858-1859]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am here, actually, Mr. President, to once again 
urge Congress that we have to wake up to the growing threat of climate 
change. The alarm bells are ringing. The signs are all around us. Yet 
we continue to sleepwalk through history, ignoring the warnings from 
the scientific community, from economists and business leaders--even 
from our military--of long-term shifts in the climate of our planet.
  Another alarm has now sounded--this time by the Government 
Accountability Office, the taxpayers' watchdog. For the first time 
ever, the threat to the Federal Government of climate change has been 
included on the Government Accountability Office's High Risk List.
  Every 2 years, at the start of a new Congress, GAO--the Government 
Accountability Office--provides the House and Senate with a list of 
program areas that are at high risk. GAO was the government's 
nonpartisan auditor, and the High Risk List is its catalog of threats 
to the integrity and performance of the Federal Government.
  GAO says:

       Solutions to high-risk problems offer the potential to save 
     billions of dollars, improve service to the public, and 
     strengthen the performance and accountability of the U.S. 
     government.

  House Oversight Committee chairman, Darrell Issa, has called the High 
Risk List ``the most important report published.'' As we face the 
indiscriminate spending cuts of the multibillion-dollar sequester, 
Chairman Issa pointed out that ``the list represents tremendous 
opportunities to save those billions of dollars.'' It is enough, 
actually, to prevent the sequester we are careening toward twice over.
  Only 55 issues have been elevated to the High Risk List since it 
first began in 1990. The current list comprises 30 big-ticket problems, 
such as improving defense program management, protecting the Nation's 
cyber infrastructure, and modernizing Federal health programs. When a 
problem reaches GAO's High Risk List, it shouldn't matter if you are a 
Democrat or a Republican. These issues must be among the top priorities 
of Congress and of the Nation.
  Add now to this list of serious national problems the destabilizing 
fiscal risk posed by climate change.
  The Federal Government and our military--and by definition, the 
American taxpayer--own and operate hundreds of thousands of buildings 
and extensive infrastructure in every State, including utilities, flood 
control and navigation systems, powerplants, distribution networks, and 
irrigation systems, not to mention the usual roads and bridges. The 
Federal Government also manages about 650 million acres of land for 
grazing, for timber, for conservation, and for recreation. That is 
nearly 30 percent of the total area of the United States, and climate 
change is affecting virtually all of it.

[[Page 1859]]

  The overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us that the air 
and oceans are warming, that sea level is rising, and that we are 
changing the very chemistry of our oceans. These changes--some of them 
unprecedented in human history--increase the risk of extreme weather, 
such as heat waves, floods, droughts, and storms. As GAO points out, 
Federal assets in every corner of the country are at risk.
  Storms crashing into the Southeast, wildfires burning throughout the 
West, and floods inundating the Northeast are not just local problems. 
Droughts are draining aquifers in the Midwest, warm temperatures are 
melting permafrost in Alaska, and rising, warming, more acidic oceans 
are eroding our national coast lines and threatening our lives and our 
seas. These are not just local problems. Climate change is a high-risk 
threat to our shared national well-being, our shared national wealth, 
and our shared national heritage.
  The GAO High Risk List sounds yet another alarm that we are fools to 
ignore. For instance, GAO found that neither the National Flood 
Insurance Program nor the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation is 
prepared to deal with climate change.
  Between 1980 and 2005, the Flood Insurance Program's exposure 
quadrupled to nearly $1 trillion. The Crop Insurance Program increased 
26-fold to $44 billion. Yet GAO reports that these programs have not 
even developed the ``information needed to understand their long-term 
exposure to climate change and not yet analyzed the potential impacts 
of an increase in the frequency or severity of weather-related 
events.''
  Major private insurance companies such as Allianz, Swiss Re, Munich 
Re, and Lloyd's of London have for years been developing strategies to 
address climate change. Our Federal insurance programs don't even have 
the basic information to address these risks.
  Understanding and preparing for these risks is essential to protect 
our communities from catastrophic loss. According to NOAA, the value of 
flood insurance coverage in my home State of Rhode Island was $2.2 
billion in 2011. The Ocean State has received $57 million in payouts 
since 1978, some of which helped Rhode Islanders recover from our 
record floods of 2010 brought on by extremely heavy rainfall. Folks who 
have flood coverage through the National Flood Insurance Program should 
know that heavy rainfall has increased in the Northeast by 74 percent 
since the 1950s, and scientists predict that warmer air will continue 
to increase the frequency of heavy rainfall and consequent flooding in 
the Northeast.
  Disaster aid is expensive. FEMA has obligated more than $80 billion 
in Federal disaster aid between 2004 and 2011. Another $50.5 billion in 
emergency aid was just approved for the northeastern communities 
devastated by Hurricane Sandy. PSE&G, New Jersey's largest utility, 
plans to spend over $4 billion over 10 years to make its electric and 
gas systems more resilient to these severe storms. New Jersey's second 
largest utility, JDP&L, announced that it intends to spend $200 million 
to do the same. According to Jeanne Fox, who is a commissioner on the 
New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, ``This is a cost of climate 
change, pure and simple.''
  It is really time for us to wake up. In the private sector, the 
insurance and utility industries are facing the threat. Congress must 
now act responsively.
  House Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings asked GAO 
Comptroller Gene Dodaro if it was ``GAO's opinion that regardless of 
the outcome of global negotiations to reduce carbon emissions, the 
United States Government should take immediate action to mitigate the 
risk posed by the climate change.'' Comptroller General Dodaro 
responded with a simple and unequivocal ``yes.''
  In the High Risk List, GAO states that despite any possible future 
reduction of emissions, ``greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere 
will continue altering the climate system for many decades.'' That is 
the way the laws of physics and chemistry work. Damage with lasting 
consequences is already done.
  Many effects of climate change can be mitigated, and it is the 
responsibility of this Congress to help our Nation prepare and adapt. 
Some Federal efforts are underway. In 2003 the U.S. Department of 
Transportation initiated a study of climate risks to gulf coast 
transportation. It is now cooperating in that study with the South 
Alabama Regional Planning Commission. The Bureau of Land Management and 
the U.S. Forest Service are developing a drought vulnerability model, a 
carbon storage map, and an alpine monitoring program to help land 
managers in southwestern Colorado cope with the effects of a changing 
climate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a Climate-
Ready States and Cities Initiative to help local health departments 
prepare for changes in health risks driven by climate change. EPA 
partnered with New York City's Department of Environmental Protection 
to develop a software tool that helps drinking water and wastewater 
utility operators understand how climate change poses risks to their 
facilities.
  Rhode Island, I am proud to say, is one of many States that have 
formed a climate change commission. The commission is coordinating with 
Federal officials to identify specific State and local challenges that 
are presented by our changing climate. Twenty other States have similar 
climate action plans developed or underway.
  Despite the actions by States, the actions in the private sector, and 
the warnings in the GAO High Risk List, special interest politics in 
Congress prevent the Federal Government from using our resources 
effectively and efficiently against this threat. The polluting special 
interests have Washington gripped in a barricade of obstruction, and 
the effect truly is disgraceful.
  Consider, for example, NOAA's proposal to create a National Climate 
Service, akin to its renowned National Weather Service. This was a no-
cost restructuring that would have centralized NOAA's work on 
understanding the climate, including its observations of climate 
change. The National Climate Service would have helped meet the growing 
local demand for climate change science information. This proposal was 
blocked by Republicans over in the House who simply don't want to hear 
about climate change. That kind of thinking will not get climate change 
off the High Risk List.
  According to GAO, ``The Nation's vulnerability can be reduced by 
limiting the magnitude of climate change through actions to limit 
greenhouse gas emissions. . . . While implementing adaptive measures 
may be costly, there is a growing recognition that the cost of inaction 
could be greater and--given the government's precarious fiscal 
position--increasingly difficult to manage given expected budget 
pressures.''
  Congress has been asleep long enough. We have a tradition in this 
body of taking the accounting of GAO--our nonpartisan watchdog--
seriously and of taking GAO's High Risk List seriously. GAO now joins 
our defense and intelligence communities, our scientific research 
communities, our State and local governments, and major sectors of 
private industry that have all elevated climate change from their to-do 
list to their must-do list. It is time for Congress to wake up to its 
duties and to get to work.
  I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Republican leader is recognized.

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