[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2887-2888]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am back to again urge my colleagues to wake up to 
the stark reality of climate change. We often hear in this Chamber 
colleagues extolling the virtues of the marketplace. Indeed, a fair and 
open marketplace is the cornerstone of our economy. Markets work--not 
perfectly always but better than any other mechanism.
  Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, one might say that markets are the 
worst form of setting prices and exchanging goods, except all of the 
other methods that have been tried. But markets only work when they are 
fair. Markets are not fair if the price of goods does not take all the 
costs into account.
  A grocery store, for instance, has to pay to have its garbage 
removed. It has to build that garbage removal into its prices. And that 
is the right thing. That is the market working. If that grocery store 
can recycle or compact or composite its trash and make removal cheaper 
and lower its prices, then that is right too. That is the market 
working. But if a second grocery store down the street breaks the law 
and throws its garbage into the park next door and then competes with 
lower prices, that is not a market in proper operation. That is not a 
fair market. That is just one person cheating another.
  If a factory makes a product and treats its waste, that is part of 
its cost. That is good. That is how it is supposed to be. If the 
factory can figure out how to treat its waste more efficiently and 
lower prices, terrific. That is also the market at work. But a factory 
down the river that breaks the law by dumping its waste into the river 
may have better prices as a result, but that is not a fair market.
  The value of open and fair markets is lost when people cheat, when 
they offload their costs onto the general public. The garbage in the 
park, the waste in the river--the grocery store down the street and the 
factory down the river--does not reduce costs; businesses just 
offloaded them onto their neighbor, onto the rest of us. They may 
actually have even made it more costly for everyone, but they have 
managed to impose that cost on the public.
  There is even a word for these offloaded costs. They are 
externalities, the harms that are caused that are external to the 
company. This is not complicated. It is econ 101. It is also law 101.
  Seventy years ago a soda bottle exploded and injured the hand of a 
waitress named Gladys Escola. Ms. Escola sued the bottler. The court 
decision has been in most every law student's first-year classes ever 
since.
  In a famous concurrence, Justice Traynor ruled in the case of Escola 
v. Coca-Cola Bottling Company that the cost of Ms. Escola's injury 
should fall on the bottler. His logic was simple and clear: They made 
the bottle. If they did not have to pay for the injuries exploding 
bottles caused, they would just keep making exploding bottles. If you 
made them responsible for the exploding bottles they made, they would 
have a big incentive to improve their bottles and everyone would be 
safer.
  As Judge Traynor said 70 years ago, ``Public policy demands that 
responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the 
hazards.''
  This idea that you shouldn't be able to offload your costs and have 
the park, the river, or Ms. Escola's hand pay the price is not new, and 
it is not unusual. Frankly, we see it in our own lives. It is also 
fairness 101, as well as

[[Page 2888]]

econ 101 and law 101. You may not rake your lawn and throw the leaves 
over the fence into your neighbor's yard. The principle is the same--
they are your leaves, and you clean them up.
  What do soda bottles and yard work have to do with climate change? 
The very same principle applies. We now know how much harm carbon 
pollution is causing. We see the costs all around us in storm-damaged 
homes, flooded cities, in drought-stricken farms, raging wildfires, in 
dying coral and disappearing fish, in shifting habitats and migrating 
diseases, in changed seasons and rising seas, in vanishing glaciers and 
melting icecaps. These are costs. In some cases they are economic 
costs. People lose money. The owner of a ski lodge, for example, losses 
money when the ski season gets shorter and shorter. In some cases they 
are personal costs, such as not being able to take your granddaughter 
to the stream near where you grew up because it is dried up or the 
beach island you used to explore as a kid because it is underwater. In 
some cases the cost is life-and-death. Powerful storms and severe heat 
waves take a deadly toll. These are real costs, and they come as a 
result of carbon pollution.
  These costs, however, are not factored into the price of the coal or 
oil that is burned to release the carbon. The big oil companies and the 
coal barons have offloaded those costs onto society.
  There is nothing inherently wrong with producing energy. There is 
nothing inherently wrong with bottling soda or running a grocery store. 
What is wrong is when you knowingly pass on the cost of your exploding 
bottle, your waste disposal, or your carbon pollution to everybody 
else.
  Oil and coal companies have been sending carbon pollution into the 
atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. When these industries 
started, the risks were poorly understood. Today they know better. They 
know what the harm is that they are doing, and they continue. When they 
lie and pretend those costs aren't out there--leaves? What leaves? 
There is no garbage in the park. Your hand is just fine, Mrs. Escola--
and when they pay people to lie and pretend those costs aren't out 
there, well, that is all just flat wrong. And when they do it with fat 
campaign contributions, slick lobbyists, and marauding super PACs, that 
makes it worse. That is dirty pool. It is a market failure. It takes 
unfair advantage of competing energy sources that don't pollute so 
much, and it makes the competition between them unfair. The big oil 
companies and the coal barons are no different than the grocery store 
dumping its garbage in the park or the factory spilling its waste into 
the river. They are not bearing the costs of their product, and they 
are cheating on their competitors. There is a right way to do it. They 
figured out how to do it the wrong way and have other people pick up 
the tab.
  When it comes to carbon pollution, economists can estimate the true 
cost of dirty energy. It is often called the ``social cost of carbon.'' 
The social cost of carbon includes the financial consequences of a 
change in climate, such as property loss, increased health care costs, 
and loss of productivity that come with heat waves, drought, heavy 
rains, sea-level rise, habitat shifts, ocean warming, and 
acidification.
  We recently learned from NOAA that their scientists predict that 
worldwide, the average summertime loss in labor capacity will double by 
2050, as the climate warms and periods of extreme heat become more 
frequent and more intense, affecting labor-intensive outdoor work such 
as construction and farming. That is a social cost of carbon.
  Of course, certain costs can be hard to predict. How do you calculate 
the cost of an extinct species? What does it cost to leave to our 
children and grandchildren warmer, more acidic, less biodiverse oceans? 
These calculations may not always be perfect, but that doesn't make the 
costs any less real. For instance, in my home State of Rhode Island, 
the costs to our fishermen of these changes is very real.
  In the final tally, economists tell us that big carbon emitters are 
unloading a big cost onto the public and onto future generations. On 
average, estimates of the social cost of carbon are about $48 per ton 
of carbon dioxide--$48 per ton that these big businesses dodge and that 
we all pay for.
  Whatever the exact dollar amount, it is time for Congress to wake up 
and start discussing these very real costs. This is why I am working 
with several colleagues to establish a fee on carbon pollution. We hope 
to have a draft framework soon to start this discussion. The idea is 
simple: The big carbon polluters pay a fee to the American people to 
cover the cost of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans--
the costs they now push off onto the rest of us, giving them unfair 
advantage against their competitors.
  I am pleased to participate in an effort to determine how best to 
assess a carbon pollution fee, how to protect American manufacturers 
from overseas competition that is cheating, and how to protect middle- 
and low-income families. It has been recognized by Republicans and 
Democrats alike that a carbon pollution fee can reduce emissions and 
help make the market more efficient.
  Last month Senator Sanders and Senator Boxer introduced related 
legislation, and I commend them for their efforts. I also wish to 
commend Senator Boxer this week, as chairwoman on the Environment and 
Public Works Committee, for beginning a regular appearance on the floor 
to draw this Chamber's attention to the dangers of carbon pollution. I 
hope more colleagues will join us in this important discussion. It is 
economics 101, it is law 101, and it is fairness 101.
  We have had enough sleepwalking. We have had enough silence. We have 
been warned by our national defense and intelligence communities, we 
have been warned by the national academies, we have been warned by the 
Government Accountability Office, we have been warned by the 
overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, and, of course, we 
are hearing from millions of concerned Americans. It is time for this 
Congress to wake up and to put a price on carbon pollution that matches 
the costs of carbon pollution. We won't get it done if we don't wake up 
to what is happening all around us.
  I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coons). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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