[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9372-9376]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY POLICY

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, today the Obama administration released 
a new plan intended to shut down American powerplants. Instead of 
celebrating his policies in the Rose Garden, President Obama delegated 
the bad news to the Environmental Protection Agency.
  Make no mistake about it; what they are announcing today is another 
step in the President's plan to make electricity rates ``necessarily 
skyrocket.'' Remember, that is what the President promised Americans 
when he was running for President the first time in 2008.
  Of course, when he was elected Congress said no--no to his radical 
plan. Even when the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, 
Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House, and the Democrats had 60 
Members of the Senate--even with complete Democratic domination in both 
Houses of Congress--Congress still said: No, Mr. President, this is a 
bad idea.
  So the President decided he knew better than the American people, the 
elected representatives. He decided to go around Congress and go around 
the American people.
  I turn to the front page of today's Wyoming Tribune Eagle out of 
Cheyenne, WY, and the headline is: ``Obama Lets EPA Do His Dirty 
Work.'' The subheadline says: ``The president's charge to limit 
emissions has caused him so much criticism that he is no longer leading 
the pack.'' On the front page of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle they go on 
to say:

       When the Obama administration unveils its much-anticipated 
     proposal to curb power plant emissions, this cornerstone of 
     the president's climate change policy--the most significant 
     environmental regulation of his term--will not be declared in 
     a sun-bathed Rose Garden news conference or from behind the 
     lectern in a major speech.
       It will not be announced by the president at all, but 
     instead by his head of the Environmental Protection Agency, 
     while President Barack Obama adds his comments in an off-
     camera conference call. . . .

  Talk about something that is unpopular with the American people, it 
is this.
  About 1 year ago, the President put out rules limiting carbon dioxide 
emissions from new powerplants--powerplants that were being 
constructed--but today--today--his Environmental Protection Agency is 
applying tight new limits on the emissions of existing powerplants--
powerplants that are already there producing energy.
  The administration says it is going to allow States ``flexibility'' 
in how they meet the new limits. I believe any ``flexibility'' that is 
being offered is just an illusion. States will have a severely limited 
number of options for what they can do to meet the standards. Every one 
of those options is going to raise the cost of energy for American 
families. That means consumers will not even get the illusion of 
flexibility; they will get higher energy costs.
  Businesses are going to have to find ways to pay for their own higher 
bills because it is not just going to be families, when they turn on 
the light switch, who are going to get a higher electric bill. As the 
President said, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket, but 
businesses are going to have to find ways to pay for their higher 
energy costs, which will mean hiring fewer people, laying off people, 
passing on the cost to others.
  That is why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says an aggressive policy 
targeting coal-fired powerplants will lead to less disposable income 
for families and thousands of jobs lost. So families will have less 
disposable income and thousands of jobs will be lost.
  We just learned last week that our economy shrank by 1 percent in the 
last quarter. The U.S. economy shrank. This is the first time in years 
the economy actually shrank by 1 percent in the last quarter. It is the 
first time it has happened, actually, since 2011. Our labor force 
participation rate is at the same level it was when Jimmy Carter was 
the President of the United States. So now the Obama administration 
wants to put more Americans out of work.
  The action they are taking today is the height of irresponsibility 
and it is tone-deaf leadership. The Obama administration is going to 
try to defend their extreme regulations by saying, once again, these 
changes will help save lives and keep families healthy. The fact is 
they are totally ignoring the undeniable fact that when Americans lose 
their jobs, their health and the health of their children suffer.
  There is an enormous public health threat from high unemployment, 
specifically chronic high unemployment. It increases the likelihood of 
hospital visits, illness, and premature death. It hurts children's 
health and the well-being of families. It influences mental illness, 
suicide, alcohol abuse, spouse abuse. It is an important risk factor in 
stroke and high blood pressure and heart disease--major things that 
impact a family, raise the cost of care. I saw it in my days of medical 
training in medical practice, and the White House knows it too.
  One might say: How does the White House know? The New York Times 
actually ran an article on this in November of 2011--November 17, to be 
exact. The headline of the article was ``Policy and Politics Collide as 
Obama Enters Campaign Mode.'' ``Policy and Politics Collide as Obama 
Enters Campaign Mode.'' The article says a meeting occurred in the 
White House between the American Lung Association and then-White House 
Chief of Staff William Daley, and the meeting was about the 
Environmental Protection Agency's proposed ozone regulations.
  In that White House meeting, White House Chief of Staff Daley asked a 
simple question when confronted with the argument that additional Clean 
Air

[[Page 9373]]

Act regulations would improve public health. Daley asked: ``What are 
the health impacts of unemployment?'' Well, I have just gone over them 
with you, Mr. President. Those are the health impacts of unemployment. 
So the White House knows about it--totally aware about it.
  When the Environmental Protection Agency announced these new rules 
today, the President himself was reportedly talking off camera--a 
conference call--on the phone with the American Lung Association. 
Someone in that room should be talking about the disastrous public 
health effects of the unemployment that these rules are causing. The 
fact is that more regulation from Washington is not what America needs 
right now.
  States already have flexibility in how they approach environmental 
stewardship, and many of them have come up with creative solutions. 
Last month the Senate and Congressional Western Caucuses issued a 
report called ``Washington Gets it Wrong--States Get it Right.'' The 
report showed how regulations imposed by Washington are undermining--
undermining--the work being done at the State level to manage our 
lands, to manage our natural resources, and to protect our air and our 
water. It gave success stories--success stories--where the work being 
done by States is more reasonable, more effective, and less heavyhanded 
than the rules ordered by Washington.
  America does not need Washington to pay lip service to flexibility 
while mandating huge price increases in energy. America wants 
Washington to stop the overreaching regulations and mandates and to 
actually allow the States to get it right. Thousands of Americans have 
already lost their jobs because of Washington's expensive and excessive 
regulations. Now the President is putting more jobs on the chopping 
block. That is why I have written legislation that would stop President 
Obama's massive increase to the Nation's electric bill. I offered this 
as an amendment last fall. Democrats in the Senate blocked it. I plan 
to offer it again and to keep making the point that the President 
should not have the power, the authority to impose these burdens on the 
American economy and on American families.
  My amendment blocks the issuance of new carbon standards for new and 
existing powerplants. It would actually require the approval of 
Congress--can you imagine that, the approval of Congress, the elected 
representatives of the people--require the approval of Congress for 
regulations that increase Americans' energy bills, such as new rules 
proposed by the Obama administration today.
  Congress should act on an affordable energy plan, but these kinds of 
decisions should be for Congress to make, not for the President to make 
on his own. That is true whether the President is a Democrat or a 
Republican.
  We all know we need to make America's energy as clean as we can, as 
fast as we can. It is critically important though that we do this 
without hurting our economy--a struggling economy, an economy where 
people continue to sacrifice--and do this in ways that do not cost 
hundreds of thousands of middle-class families their jobs.
  We should look to States that have come up with ways to balance our 
energy needs, the health of our economy, and our environment.
  President Obama is taking the wrong approach. These new regulations 
are going to hurt our economy. It is an economy that is already 
shrinking. It is astonishing; our economy is shrinking, and it is 
because of the President's other failed policies.
  The policies introduced today will hurt middle-class families who are 
struggling to find work or to keep the jobs they have now. They will 
harm the health of many Americans. The President needs to change 
course. If he will not do it on his own, Congress must do it for him.
  So, once again, today we see the headline: ``Obama Lets EPA Do His 
Dirty Work.'' ``The president's charge to limit emissions has caused 
him so much criticism that he is no longer leading the pack.'' Instead, 
he is hiding. The President today is hiding. If this is something the 
President was proud of, he should have been at the White House in the 
Rose Garden in front of the cameras making an announcement, not asking 
his EPA Administrator to make it so he could be on a conference call 
because he was ashamed to show his face to the American people because 
of the impact these regulations are going to have on families all 
across America.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the President's Environmental Protection 
Agency today--a group that directly reports to him and which reflects 
his decisions about environmental matters--has issued a new proposed 
regulation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing powerplants 
by 30 percent by the year 2030. Those are existing plants, and they 
cannot be operated and have that kind of reduction unless they have 
carbon capture, and there is no technology feasible with any 
reasonable--there is technology, but it is not feasible economically to 
capture carbon. So it is a dramatic hammering of a major portion of the 
baseload electricity production in America. It just is, and it is going 
to drive up costs.
  What I wish to say first and foremost is I am very worried about our 
economy. This economy is not doing well, and anybody who has paid close 
attention to it knows we have had one thing--one very important 
positive factor--over the last half dozen years that has helped our 
economy bounce back and even caused some industries to bring home 
production from foreign countries; and that advantage--that positive 
event--is a decline in energy prices. It is a direct result, primarily, 
of fracking--our ability to produce more energy from existing wells in 
a proven-to-be safe and effective way. It is going on over large 
portions of America. Although this administration and the Environmental 
Protection Agency have thrown up a host of roadblocks to try to keep it 
from occurring, it is such a powerful, positive event it is virtually 
unstoppable.
  So that is good. That is helping our businesses prosper. I remember 
in Alabama, north of Mobile where I grew up, there is a group of 
chemical companies on the river. Those chemical companies are 
international companies, first-rate companies, that were hammered when 
natural gas, 10 or 15 years ago, surged in price so much. Many of them 
reduced their capacity, some have closed and were sold, and we lost a 
lot of good jobs.
  It happened in Ohio. Ohio had a devastation among their strong 
chemical industries. The industry is beginning to come back now because 
of lower natural gas prices. But other industries too are very energy 
sensitive such as the steel industry. We are in a life-and-death 
competition to save America's steel industry. Energy is a huge portion 
of that.
  Electricity is a big portion of that. To eliminate nearly 40 percent 
of our base load, to drive us on a path to drive up those costs 
unnecessarily above what we can rationally achieve, is a mistake, in my 
opinion.
  Looking at Barron's this week--that is a business magazine. It comes 
out weekly. It has articles that sum up the state of the economy in 
America. Of course we know that first-quarter economic growth was 
revised downward, downward to negative 1.0 from positive .1. This is 
the first negative growth in years, since 2011. It was unexpected. 
Corporate profits, excluding the depths of the recession, are the 
lowest in 20 years in America. We have fewer people working today than 
we had in 2007, although there are 15 million more people in America--
fewer people working and more of them are working part time than want 
to work part time. We have a surge in part-time employment. That is not 
good either.
  Wages are down. Adjusted, probably for inflation, wages are down, 
median income is down in America per family

[[Page 9374]]

by $2,300. Your wages are down. Your job prospects are down. 
Unemployment remains exceedingly high, and we are now going to add, in 
effect, another tax, a regulatory tax on the price of energy so a 
person's electric bill and their gas bill are going to go up. That is 
the inevitable result of this. It just is.
  We have got to be careful about it. Europe is already regretting the 
mistakes they have made. Spain has had to abandon their overly 
ambitious plan for renewable energy. German businesspeople are telling 
their leaders that if you do not change the energy policy in this 
country, we are not going to be able to compete and be successful as we 
have been in the world markets.
  So this is not a little matter. It is about jobs. It is about middle-
income, hard-working Americans. The lower income people in this country 
pay as much as 25 percent of their income for energy. Oh, the rich 
people, the people who travel around in big jets and claim to be 
concerned about the environment, pay much less. For those making over 
$50,000 a year, you pay about 11 percent of your income on energy.
  So higher energy costs are direct negatives for poorer, hard-working 
people in America. Retired seniors have no ability to have an increase 
in wages, trying to live on Social Security and a little savings. Boom, 
you have got another $10, $20, $30 a month for the electric bill, the 
gas bill. It erodes their standard of living.
  Again, it erodes the ability of American business to be competitive 
in the world marketplace. We have got to take back more work. In fact, 
we are beginning to do that if we would do fewer bad things. We had a 
good result with lower energy prices and this is going to undermine 
that. It just is. We have got the pipeline. No, we will not do the 
pipeline either. All that does is provide another source of oil and 
gas, oil for America, that forces the existing American big oil 
companies to compete with. It helps to bring down the price.
  If you do not have another source from Canada, you have got less 
competition. Competition helps bring down price. I do not believe this 
administration wants to bring down the price of energy. In fact, I 
think the opposite is true. In fact, President Obama said, before he 
was elected, that we could have--if anybody built a coal plant it was 
going bankrupt. That is not possible, to phase out the entire coal 
industry so rapidly. We have done so much to clean it up. They have 
spent billions and billions of dollars reducing the pollutants that 
come out of smokestacks. It helped a lot. That is why our air is 
cleaner than it has been in years. We have made a lot of progress. A 
lot of money has been spent. But this is an excessive action, in my 
view, focused primarily on CO2, carbon dioxide.
  We all know about photosynthesis. We know how plants grow. We know 
they take in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. We breathe in 
oxygen and we let out carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is odorless, it is 
tasteless, it is not poisonous, it is not harmful. In fact, plants grow 
faster if there is more carbon dioxide than if there is less carbon 
dioxide. This is a scientific fact that is not disputable.
  So what do they say? They say, well, the Clean Air Act gives the 
responsibility of eliminating pollutants from our atmosphere. It was 
passed in 1970 before anybody even dreamed of global warming. So carbon 
dioxide--when the law was passed, the Clean Air Act in the 1970s, they 
had no thought whatsoever in the Congress that we would be banning 
carbon dioxide. John Dingell, a long-term Democratic Congressman, one 
of the longest serving ever, was a Member of Congress who voted on 
that. He recently said they had no idea we were voting to regulate 
carbon dioxide.
  So how did it happen? Well, the environmentalists filed a lawsuit. 
They said the Congress passed a law in 1970. That law said you should 
reduce pollutants. You have a responsibility to reduce pollutants and 
carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Why? Well, the IPCC, the International 
Panel on Climate Change, said that CO2 creates global 
warming, this perfectly positive small amount of gas in our massive 
environment, that makes plants grow better, is increasing. It is. It is 
increasing in the environment because of burning carbon fuels.
  They said this increase is going to warm the planet. We are going to 
have more storms, more tornadoes, and the coasts are going to flood and 
all of this. Therefore, EPA should regulate it. Must regulate it. By a 
5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court agreed. Congress has never voted for 
that. Congress has voted against global warming legislation multiple 
times. It would never ever pass this Congress if it were brought up for 
a vote. Never pass.
  So unelected folks in the Environmental Protection Agency, unelected, 
lifetime appointed Federal judges, at least five of the nine, concluded 
that this is a pollutant. So here we are.
  I do not know whether we have got warming. I have assumed it is. 
Temperatures, I believe over the last hundred years, have increased 
about 1 degree. But I do think we need to be a lot more modest about 
this. It is well below what the alarmists have been telling us.
  How did it all happen? Why did the Supreme Court decide that this 
plant food, CO2, is a pollutant? They said it was because 
these models are saying the planet is warming and all of the scientists 
agree, which is not true. But the scientists have said the planet is 
warming, so therefore CO2 is a pollutant. They so ruled. But 
things are not happening as the experts told us. It is just not 
happening. I am beginning to wonder what is going on here.
  This chart, the red line--this is zero. The red line is an average of 
all of the computer models that projected what the increase in 
climate--in temperature would be based on steadily increasing 
CO2 in the atmosphere. Back in dinosaur days, we had a lot 
more CO2 in the atmosphere than we have today. But it has 
been reduced. It has been increasing as we go into the ground, get coal 
and get oil and get natural gas and burn it. That emits more 
CO2. It is released back into the atmosphere, actually. It 
was sucked out of the atmosphere through plants and animals.
  This was the chart. Every single climate change model that is the 
foundation of the argument for dangerous global warming predicted more 
than has actually occurred in the last 15 years.
  This is the chart. You go back to about 2000 here. This green line is 
the actual result from--I believe that is balloon temperature gauges. 
It actually has not gone up at all since 2001. That is what, 13 years? 
This is not the temperatures they were predicting. Besides, the charts 
looks a little more dramatic than they are. This is zero. This is two-
tenths. They were predicting, from 1979 I believe was their key date, 
that the temperature would increase 1.2 degrees. It has increased about 
three-tenths of 1 degree. That is in this part.
  But if you go here, when the chart is going off here, saying it 
should be accelerating every year, it has been flat. So I do not know. 
Some people say the Sun is involved in it. Some people have other 
theories. I do not know. I have assumed we are going to have some 
warming out there. But it is certainly not coming in at the rate the 
alarmists have told us. That is indisputable fact.
  We in Congress need to be asking ourselves how much burden we can 
afford to put on the American people at this time. The President--I 
have got to tell you, one of the most frustrating things and 
disappointing things to me is that the President in the last several 
years--he has not in over a year now because I have been asking his 
people before the environment committee to be sure and tell him not to 
say it anymore. But he has two times said that the temperature is 
increasing faster than the experts predicted over the last 10 or 15 
years. Think about that. The President of the United States, in the 
face of obvious data to the contrary, is repeatedly going out and 
saying, it is increasing faster than the red line. That worries me. I 
believe the President of the United States has a responsibility, when 
he advocates for policies, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth.

[[Page 9375]]

  That is not so. It is not increasing faster. It has hardly increased 
at all in the last 10 or so years.
  Then they say the storms--the President and his team when Sandy hit 
go out and say this is all a direct result of global warming. See? 
Every time there is a storm, every time there is a drought, and every 
time there is a problem, it is always climate change, global warming.
  Dr. Roger Pielke laid out the numbers. I don't have the details here, 
but he testified before the Environment and Public Works Committee and 
he said: It is not so, hurricanes are not increasing. It is not hard to 
see how many hurricanes you have.
  You simply go back each year. They are quite calculating. He went 
back and calculated the hurricanes--how many category 5's, 4's, 3's, 
2's, and 1's. The result is pretty astonishing that we have had fewer 
of them. This chart is hard to read. I will quote what it says:

       Hurricanes have not increased in the US in frequency, 
     intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900.

  He has not been disputed either. They have tried to push back and 
attack him, but nobody has produced data that dispute what he says 
because it is easier to calculate that data.
  This is important. Dr. Pielke recently produced an analysis that said 
it has been 3,140 days since this country has had a category 3 
hurricane. Camille was a 5, and we have had some others in the past. 
But we have had almost 10 years since we had a category 3. Sandy, this 
storm which hit the Northeast, which was very rare, happened to miss 
the southeast, missed Florida, and hit the Northeast. It was not even a 
hurricane when it hit land. It was below the speed, I understand, of a 
hurricane. At best, it was a category 1. It just happened to hit the 
Northeast where people are not used to it, and it did a lot of damage.
  How can it be argued, I ask colleagues, that global warming is 
causing more storms? Moreover, the 2012-2013 tornado season was one of 
the lowest in the past 50 years. Only 5 out of 50 years have been that 
low.
  We are not seeing an increase in tornadoes. We read about them more. 
We have The Weather Channel, and they talk about them more. But, in 
truth, the numbers aren't there.
  Now, if hurricanes are down--and it has been 3,100 days since we have 
had a category 3 hurricane--it is about the longest in history that we 
recorded. It is an unusual drought of big hurricanes. It means a lot to 
me. I live in Mobile, AL, and I remember Hurricane Frederic in 1979 
barreling up Mobile Bay. I remember the fear people had who had been 
there when Camille hit nearby in Mississippi. I know something about 
hurricanes, and they are very real factors. It surprises me we have had 
as few as we have had. We have also not seen an increase in tornadoes.
  What we are proposing is that we have to carry out a policy that 
would go beyond our technology to produce electricity in a cost-
effective manner, and it has the impact of massively closing base-load 
coal plants. Existing plants are going to be hammered, and new ones 
will not be built.
  I am also on the subcommittee of Environment and Public Works that 
deals with nuclear power. Not a single American since the beginning of 
nuclear power 50 years ago has been killed as a result of a nuclear 
power accident. How many die in natural gas pipelines, drilling rigs, 
coal mines, transportation of coal, and so forth?
  We basically shut down nuclear power. I am telling us this is a big 
problem for our country, the erosion of nuclear power. We had four 
plants close--existing nuclear plants close. They have been hammered 
with regulations, and they have never been safer. We have never known 
more about how to operate a nuclear plant safely than we know today.
  But they know only one or two are being constructed, and this assault 
on nuclear power has the potential to erode the 20 percent of our 
electricity that comes from nuclear power. So if we lose the coal and 
we lose nuclear power--and most of these plants are 30-plus, 40 or 45 
years old, and they will soon be at the end of their lifetime. If we 
don't replace them, where will our energy come from, pray tell?
  In any finding, anything that we do today to try to impact 
CO2 is only a drop in the bucket worldwide. They are 
building coal-fired plants in China, India, the East, the Middle East, 
other places, and Africa in large numbers. We are a very small part of 
the overall picture, and our actions are not going to reverse this 
trend.
  I don't know and I don't pretend to know all of the answers, but I 
would say that if we have more CO2 and we have more global 
warming and global climate change, how do we know it won't result in 
fewer hurricanes? We have had fewer.
  How do we know it won't result in fewer tornadoes? We have had fewer 
tornadoes.
  Life on the planet has tended to be more healthy and prosperous in 
times of higher temperatures than lower temperatures. I certainly don't 
want to see a surging temperature in America and rapidly changing 
conditions. I think we could have real damage. As I said, I don't know 
what the full answer is.
  I am just saying in my judgment, this administration is pushing this 
beyond what is reasonable. It is going to adversely affect the economy 
of America. It is going to drive up the cost of every household's 
electric bill, every household's gasoline bill. Every business in 
America that hires American workers is going to try to export products, 
and those products are going to be more expensive because they had to 
pay more for their energy.
  The last thing we need to be doing at this point in American history 
is driving up--artificially--the price of energy. One expert said a 
number of years ago that the lifespan--the average lifespan of a person 
in a nation where electricity is readily available--is twice that 
wherever it is not readily available.
  I have been in poor places in the world where there is not 
electricity. You see the difficulty they have with water, you see the 
difficulty they have with cleanliness and so forth, and cooling and 
keeping food refrigerated and the disease that comes from that.
  Energy is a positive force. It has made this world--the western 
world, the developed world--so much more prosperous. It is creating 
wealth that we can then use for good causes--to clean up the 
environment, and to produce healthy foods for billions worldwide.
  I don't think we should see energy as an evil thing. I think energy 
is a good thing, and we don't need to drive the price up. It makes life 
harder for people, especially those of limited income.
  I thank the Chair for the opportunity to share these thoughts. It 
means a lot to me. We will keep working on it. We will analyze in 
detail, as time goes by, the proposal the President has presented. I 
remain very concerned, as a matter of constitutional order, that this 
is being done without a vote of the people. This is being done by a 5-
to-4 Supreme Court ruling, an aggressive President, and an aggressive 
EPA.
  It seems as if there is not enough, and there is an inability in 
Congress to do anything about it. The average American who disagrees 
has no voice, apparently, in being able to have their voice heard. So 
we will continue to talk about it and as time goes by, we will look at 
the trend and hopefully we can reduce some of the excesses that I think 
clearly exist.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. King). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, having just come down from the chair, I 
wish to briefly respond to the remarks of the junior Senator from 
Alabama, who engaged in a pretty stunning and broad denial of science 
for about 15 minutes on the floor of the Senate as part of what I 
imagine will be a pretty robust

[[Page 9376]]

critique this week of the new EPA rules from the administration.
  When we were all schoolkids, we probably had the chance to read the 
play ``Inherit the Wind.'' It is rather de rigueur for students to 
read. In the end, as Drummond is essentially excoriating Matthew 
Harrison Brady on the stand, the book ends with almost a sense of 
sorrow about the unraveling of Brady's argument and the kind of figure 
he is portrayed at the end of the book to be.
  My hope is that the same degree of strange affection may be the 
legacy of those who come to the floor and engage in the same denial of 
basic science that is at the root of the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 
book which made it famous.
  Our colleague talked about the fact that the jury is still out as to 
whether the planet is warming. Here are the 10 hottest years on record 
since 1880: 2010, 2005, 1998, 2013, 2003, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2007, and 
2004.
  The Senator said that all the science doesn't really suggest global 
warming is happening. Well, he is right. Ninety-seven percent of 
scientists with peer-reviewed literature have come to the conclusion 
that the planet is warming and humans are contributing to it.
  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said this in their last 
report: ``Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.''
  My friend said: Well, even if it is happening, we are really only a 
small part of the problem. So why is it even necessary for us to act?
  Well, we are not a small part of the problem. We are 5 percent of the 
world's population and 25 percent of the world's pollution. And even if 
the specific actions this week do represent a very small percentage of 
the ultimate solution when we talk about trying to get the temperature 
of the planet under control, that is a terrible argument in and of 
itself. Is that a reason why none of us should bother to vote--because 
each one of our own actions in and of itself really doesn't affect the 
overall outcome? It is the collection of all of the actions we take in 
a democracy that makes the difference, and it is the collection of 
actions we will take as a community of nations and a community of 
individuals that will ultimately make the difference.
  I imagine this debate will continue.

                          ____________________