[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12697-12698]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise again for the 41st time to ask 
my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change. Today I come 
to discuss the serious risks that climate change poses to our energy 
sector.
  It is no controversial idea that our climate affects our energy 
infrastructure. In the Northeast, when we think about what causes power 
outages, we naturally think of bad weather. In fact, the American 
Society of Civil Engineers reports that between 2007 and 2012, weather-
related events were the main cause of electrical outages in the United 
States.
  That same report said: ``The average cost of a one-hour power outage 
is just over $1000 for a commercial business,'' just for 1 hour. This 
takes a serious toll on our economy.
  A recent Department of Energy report has highlighted how sensitive 
our energy sector is to climate change and to extreme weather.
  In September 2011, the Department of Energy reports:

       High temperatures and high electricity demand-related 
     loading tripped a transformer and transmission line near 
     Yuma, Arizona, starting a chain of events that led to 
     shutting down the San Onofre nuclear power plant with power 
     lost to the entire San Diego County distribution system, 
     totaling approximately 2.7 million power customers, with 
     outages as long as 12 hours.

  Earlier that summer:

       Consecutive days of triple-digit heat and record drought in 
     Texas resulted in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas 
     declaring power emergencies due to a large number of 
     unplanned power plant outages and at least one power plant 
     reducing its output.

  The report says the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, AL, ``had 
to reduce power output because the temperature of the Tennessee River, 
the body of water into which the plant discharges, was too high to 
discharge heated cooling water from the reactor without risking 
ecological harm to the river.''
  This happened in 2007, 2010, in 2011, and, in some cases, the power 
production was reduced for nearly 2 months. The Department of Energy 
reports that ``the cost of replacement power was estimated at $50 
million.''
  It is not just power generation, energy exploration has been affected 
too. The DOE report explains that last July: ``In the midst of one of 
the worst droughts in American history, certain companies that extract 
natural gas and oil via hydraulic fracturing faced higher water costs 
or were denied access to water for six weeks or more in several States, 
including Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota.''
  It was a similar story in the fall of 2011:

       Due to extreme drought conditions, the city of Grand 
     Prairie, Texas, became the first municipality to ban the use 
     of city water for hydraulic fracturing. Other local water 
     districts in Texas followed suit by implementing similar 
     restrictions limiting city water use during drought 
     conditions.

  In July of 2011, the report recounts that:

       ExxonMobil's Silvertip pipeline, buried beneath the 
     Yellowstone River in Montana, was torn apart by flood-caused 
     debris, spilling oil into the river and disrupting crude oil 
     transport in the region. The property damage cost was $135 
     million.

  Senator Vitter, our ranking member on the Environment and Public 
Works Committee, has told us that 18 percent of the Nation's oil supply 
passes through his home State of Louisiana at Port Fourchon. A recent 
Government Accountability Office report found that the only access road 
to that port is closed 3\1/2\ days a year on average because of 
flooding, effectively shutting down that port. With sea level rise 
climbing due to climate change, NOAA is now projecting that within 15 
years portions of that highway will flood an average of 30 times each 
year--again shutting down access to that port 30 times a year.
  Vital infrastructure such as powerplants, power lines, roads, and 
pipelines are all designed to stand up to historical weather patterns. 
What happens when the weather stops following historical patterns?
  According to the draft National Climate Assessment:

       U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5 degrees 
     Fahrenheit since 1895; more than 80% of this increase has 
     occurred since 1980. The most recent decade was the nation's 
     hottest on record.


[[Page 12698]]


  Oceans and other bodies of water are warming right along with the 
atmosphere.
  The seasons are shifting. Research shows that in the last two decades 
the frost-free season has increased in every region of the contiguous 
United States compared to the average between 1901 and 1960.
  In the Southwest, the record shows the frost-free season has 
increased 3 weeks and the western wildfire season has expanded by more 
than 2 months since the 1970s. Precipitation patterns and the 
availability of water are changing throughout the Nation. One study 
concluded that snow in the western mountains is melting, on average, 1 
to 4 weeks earlier now compared to the 1950s.
  The draft National Climate Assessment shows that the amount of rain 
falling in what we call heavy precipitation events or, more 
colloquially, downpours is up in every region of the Nation. It is up 
45 percent in the Midwest and 74 percent in the Northeast.
  Sea level is rising about 8 inches, on average, globally, but in some 
parts of the country it is much higher. NOAA reports that mean waters 
off the Galveston, TX, coast are rising more than 2 feet per century. 
At Grand Isle, LA, the rate is nearly 3 feet per century.
  These aren't just projections of what is to come, these are actual 
measurements of changes that have already happened or are happening 
around us. The result is that we have an energy infrastructure built 
for a different climate than the one which now exists and the one which 
is to come. Conditions are only predicted to get worse.
  The threat to our energy sector from changes in the climate should be 
neither controversial nor partisan. There are a lot of commonsense 
solutions here. Adapting our infrastructure for climate change is 
smart, and it will save us from costly repairs.
  Investing in energy efficiency by reducing the demand for power will 
relieve pressure on the burdened systems. Investing in a diverse energy 
sector will protect against the unique vulnerabilities of specific 
types of power sources.
  Rhode Island is part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, 
nicknamed Reggie, along with eight other Northern States. Our region 
caps carbon emissions and sells permits to powerplants to emit 
greenhouse gases, which creates economic incentives for both States and 
utilities to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy 
development. These efforts also reduce load demand on the region's 
electrical grid.
  We are proud of the effort we are making in New England. I know a lot 
of States are working just as hard. I say to my colleagues, our home 
States are hampered by the inaction in Congress.
  We have received credible and convincing warnings. We have received 
compelling calls to act. The overwhelming majority of the scientific 
community recognizes climate change is real and we are causing it.
  Our national security and intelligence community, our faith leaders, 
major American corporations, including the insurance and reinsurance 
industry and most Americans all agree we need to act. It is time for 
Congress to wake up, do its work to slow the onslaught of climate 
change, and to prepare for what are now unavoidable, inevitable 
effects. Yet here in Congress we sleepwalk on.
  This is an issue I know hits home in your home State in very 
different ways than it hits home in my State. But In each of our own 
ways, our States are already experiencing the hit from climate change. 
It is caused by carbon pollution that we are putting into the air, that 
our companies, our smokestacks are launching into the atmosphere. It 
changes our weather, changes our temperature, changes our seasons, 
changes our oceans, changes our waterways, changes our weather, and 
changes our lives.
  The tragedy is that we sleepwalk on because we are unwilling to 
address the special interests that are preventing us from taking the 
action that all Americans need. This is the archetypical fight between 
the public good, between an important public security issue and a 
private special interest that is defending itself, that is defending 
its right to pollute, that is defending its ability to compromise our 
atmosphere, compromise our health, and compromise our great oceans and 
waters. This should be an easy struggle. This should be an easy 
struggle, but it is not. And it will be a mark of shame on this 
generation, and it will be a mark of shame on this building that given 
the choice between the clear information from the scientists, the clear 
experience of what is happening in all of our States and the power of 
the special interests, we ignored the first and yielded to the power of 
those special interests.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________