[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2917-2918]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this marks the 58th consecutive week 
we have been in session where I have come to the floor to seek to wake 
up this Congress to the threat of climate change.
  Carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is altering the 
climate. The consensus around this fact within the scientific 
community--and in fact the reality-based community--is overwhelming.
  Since the industrial revolution, humans have dumped 2 trillion metric 
tons of carbon dioxide into the air and oceans--and counting. The EPA 
estimates that in 2011, the United States alone emitted more than 5.6 
billion tons of carbon dioxide.
  We know the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is higher than 
it has been in the history of mankind. We know that when we put more 
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it warms up the planet. This has 
been understood science since Abraham Lincoln was President.
  We know the ocean absorbs 90 percent of the excess heat and 30 
percent of the carbon in the air. As water warms, it expands, and sea 
levels go up. This is called the law of thermal expansion. We know that 
when carbon dissolves in water, it increases the levels of carbonic 
acid in the water. This is a law of chemistry. We know from simple 
measurements that seawater is acidifying at a rate we haven't seen at 
any time in the past 50 million years. We are a species of homo sapiens 
who have been on the planet for a little over 200,000. So 50 million 
takes us back a way.
  When we put these things together, and then look at things like 37 
straight years with a global temperature above the 20th century 
average, sea level up 10 inches in Newport, RI, oyster spat killed off 
by acidic water in Washington State, shorter seasons for ski resort 
operators and longer seasons for wildfire fighters, our climate is 
changing. The scientific debate is long settled, and public awareness 
of the crisis is growing stronger and even across party lines.
  Outside these walls of Congress, which have been barricaded by lies 
and special interest propaganda, Americans of all stripes, including 
more and more responsible Republican voices, acknowledge the threat of 
climate change and call for responsible solutions. Yet Congress remains 
trapped behind a barricade of polluting special interest influence. 
Republicans in Congress refuse to get serious.
  It wasn't always this way. Conservation of this land's natural 
resources used to be a core value of the Republican party, and 
protecting future generations' natural birthright from plundering by 
special-interest industry was a cornerstone of Republican leadership. 
This month actually marks the anniversary of a milestone in that kind 
of American leadership.
  On February 1, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt established the 
U.S. Forest Service. Fed up with the cronyism and bureaucracy that 
defined

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the weak existing conservation programs, he dissolved the Bureau of 
Forestry within the Department of Agriculture and transferred 
management of the 63 million acres of national forests under the 
Department of the Interior to the new Forest Service.
  Roosevelt resented the ``malefactors of great wealth,'' as he called 
them, the timber and mining interests whose ``selfish and shortsighted 
greed,'' he called it, ``seeks to exploit [our natural resources] in 
such fashion as to ruin them, and thereby to leave our children and our 
children's children heirs only to an exhausted and impoverished 
inheritance.''
  Roosevelt not only knew how to say the right thing, he knew how to 
say it well.
  Pictured here is Teddy Roosevelt looking across the vast expanse of 
Mogollon Rim in Arizona, one of the many forests transferred to the 
newly created Forest Service. With the President is Gifford Pinchot, a 
prime advocate of the Forest Service. As its first Chief, Pinchot 
restructured and professionalized the management of the national 
forests. During Roosevelt's Presidency, the Federal forest system grew 
by nearly 130 million acres. In total, he extended protection to an 
additional 230 million acres of our Nation's land.
  Roosevelt said:

       We have become great in a material sense because of the 
     lavish use of our resources, and we have just reason to be 
     proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire 
     seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when 
     the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when 
     the soils shall have been still further impoverished and 
     washed into the streams, polluting the rivers.

  Today, some of these long-cherished American forests, grasslands, and 
landscapes are under assault due to climate change.
  In July 2010, the Forest Service issued its ``National Roadmap for 
Responding to Climate Change.'' Specifically, the Forest Service report 
says:

       Most of the urgent forest and grassland management 
     challenges of the past 20 years, such as wildfires, changing 
     water regimes, and expanding forest insect infestations, have 
     been driven, in part, by a changing climate. Future impacts 
     are projected to be even more severe.

  Our Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I chair with 
Congressman Waxman, hosted a roundtable of firefighters and State and 
Federal foresters. Here is what Dave Cleaves, the Forest Service's 
Climate Change Advisor, told us:

       So what have we been seeing? . . . The length of the fire 
     season increasing by more than 60 days over the last 10 
     years, the annual area burned by wildfire increasing more 
     than four times what it was in the 1970s; the portion of the 
     area burned by large fires has gone up two to seven times, so 
     most of that increase in acreage has been because of the 
     large fires, and the extreme part of the distribution of 
     fires.
       . . . So we have a big issue on our hands, it's an 
     ecological issue, it's an economic issue, it's a social 
     issue, and dealing with it means we have to understand it 
     better and understand some of the related challenges.

  Shown here is the devastation from the largest rim fire in the Sierra 
Nevada range in recorded history. The healthy forest is shown 2 years 
prior to the fire on the left, while monitoring right before the fire 
showed a sudden decline in the health of the forest caused by the 
western pine beetle killing ponderosa pine and making the forest 
vulnerable to burning. This is a beetle that is killed off by cold 
weather. So where it can infest forests is limited by cold weather and 
altitude, of course, because it gets colder at higher altitudes.
  With climate change, the territory of the infestation has expanded, 
and we see this change from a healthy forest to this. When it turns to 
this, it can burn. On the right we see the charred and unrecognizable 
landscape. Although we cannot definitively attribute any single fire to 
climate change, according to a 2012 comprehensive science report for 
the U.S. forest sector, increased temperature and drought can increase 
frequency and magnitude of fires and amplify insect and pathogen 
outbreaks which affect forest health. For example, Montana's deep 
freezes used to kill off the pine bark beetle. Today, that beetle kills 
millions of acres of trees across the American West.
  President Roosevelt issued a warning a century ago:

       One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized men 
     is foresight. We have to, as a nation, exercise foresight for 
     this nation in the future; and if we do not exercise that 
     foresight, dark will be the future.

  Have we heeded Roosevelt's warning? We can clearly foresee the 
devastation climate change will bring. Yet many modern Republicans, 
particularly those in Congress, are aligning themselves with the 
polluters and deniers to manufacture doubt about the science and fight 
any limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
  Roosevelt, a Republican, had foresight to protect the natural 
resources we relay on, but his once great party has lost track of his 
ideals. Democrats and Republicans should be working with President 
Obama to implement his climate action plan to reduce carbon pollution. 
But when the Environment and Public Works Committee recently held an 
oversight hearing on the President's plan, what did we get from our 
Republican colleagues? Flat-out climate denial--the polluter party 
line.
  Theodore Roosevelt, the great Republican conservationist, stood up to 
polluting special interests. He was, in the name of the recent book, 
``The Wilderness Warrior.''
  Today, too many Republicans in Congress have joined polluting 
corporate special interests in their war on the wilderness. Perhaps 
they should listen to another Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt IV is the 
great-grandson of the 26th President, and he is still a Republican. He 
wants his fellow Republicans to return to the values of his great-
grandfather.

       It seems to be beyond the scope of many on the right to 
     say, for instance, that species extinction, as a result of 
     unrestrained human activity, is immoral and indefensible; 
     that our refusal to seriously engage in a global effort to 
     address climate change is unethical and imprudent.

  There are such clear warnings. The facts speak for themselves. The 
denial position has shown itself to be nonsense, a sham. Yet in 
Congress we sleepwalk on. Every day more and more Americans realize the 
truth, and they increasingly want this Congress to wake up. They know 
that climate change is real.
  It is time to wake up and to do the work necessary to combat climate 
change. It is time for us to heed the words of President Theodore 
Roosevelt:

       Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, 
     cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and 
     romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your 
     children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy 
     interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its 
     romance.

  Let us wake up.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant 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 (Mr. Blumenthal). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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