[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 110-111]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is my first ``Time to Wake Up'' 
speech in the Senate as a Member of the minority. Being in the minority 
will give me the opportunity, for the first time, to use the tools 
uniquely available to Members of the Senate minority. On the issue of 
climate change, which is affecting all of our States but particularly 
Rhode Island, I intend to use those tools politely and persistently.
  We have just left a period of partisanship and obstruction by the 
minority unique in the Senate's history. I do not intend to return us 
to those days. My intent is to enliven the Senate and see to it that it 
does its duty, that we as Senators do our duty to our fellow Americans. 
My intent is not to blockade and degrade this great institution with 
obstruction for the sake of obstruction. My goal, in short, is Senate 
action, not Senate inaction.
  Pope Francis recently spoke to the world about mankind's care of 
God's creation. He warned us against what he called negligence and 
inaction. I hope to be a constant spur in the Senate against negligence 
and inaction, specifically the negligence and inaction that is our 
present Senate standard of care for God's Earth.
  I know that powerful forces of negligence and inaction are arrayed 
against us. I know the Supreme Court's reckless and shameful decision 
in the Citizens United case has empowered those forces as never before. 
I know there has resulted an unprecedented campaign by polluting 
interests of political spending and threats. It is plain to see that 
the polluters' campaign has, for now at least, silenced meaningful 
bipartisan debate about carbon pollution. We can line up the Citizens 
United decision and the silence almost exactly. Coal and oil interests 
are enjoying massive economic subsidies--massive subsidies--and similar 
to any special interest, they will fight to protect those special 
benefits. But it can't last. It can't last. My confidence is strong 
because our American democracy is ultimately founded in the will of the 
American people, and the American people understand the need to end our 
days of negligence and inaction. They want us to run the blockade that 
polluters have built around Congress.
  Polling shows this. More than 80 percent of Americans say they see 
climate change happening right around them. Sixty-three percent say 
they would pay more for electricity if it would help solve this 
problem. Among Independents, that is 64 percent.
  Even among young Republicans, voters get it--young voters, anyway. 
Under the age of 35, most Republican voters, according to polls, think 
that climate denial is ignorant, out of touch or crazy. Those are the 
words from the poll. Under 50 years of age, a majority of Republicans 
and Republican-leaning Independents support action against climate 
change. Among all Republicans of all ages, fully half support 
restrictions on carbon dioxide, and nearly half think the United States 
should lead the fight.
  Trusted American institutions get it, too--from the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff of our military services to the U.S. Conference of Catholic 
Bishops, from all of America's major scientific societies to the 
experts we trust day in and day out at NOAA and at NASA, and from the 
leaders of America's corporate community--Walmart and Target, Apple and 
Google, Ford and GM, Mars and Nestle USA, Alcoa and Starbucks, Coke and 
Pepsi. From all of them and from many other respected voices comes the 
message that climate change is a serious threat. I have confidence that 
Congress will soon have to heed their voices.
  We might mention the recent agreement in Lima where 194 countries all 
agreed to carbon reductions. Does the Republican Party in the United 
States of America really want to be aligned with Vladimir Putin, the 
great international climate denier?
  My confidence also comes from necessity. This simply must be done. 
Our human species developed on this earth in a climate window that has 
always been between 170 and 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide in 
the atmosphere--always. For as long as human kind has been here on 
Earth, carbon concentration has wobbled up and down but always within 
that range--through our entire history. We have now rocketed outside 
that range and broken 400 parts per million, a condition on Earth that 
is a first in millions of years.
  Our oceans, as a result, are acidifying measurably at a rate 
unprecedented in the life of our species. One has to go back into 
distant geologic time to find anything similar. If you go back that far 
and look at what the geologic record tells us about what life was like 
on the planet in those primal eras, it presents a daunting prospect.
  The scientific warnings about what this means are now starting to be 
matched in our experience with unprecedented rain bursts and droughts, 
wildfires and heat seasons, sea levels and ocean temperatures. In the 
tropic seas, coral reefs are dying off at startling rates; in the 
Arctic seas, sea ice is vanishing at levels never recorded until now. 
Everywhere the oceans shout a warning to those who will listen. Rhode 
Island, as a coastal State, as the Ocean State, is particularly hard 
hit. We get the land problems such as the rain bursts heavily 
associated with climate change, which in 2010 brought unprecedented 
flooding along our historic rivers. We have the sea level rise. It is 
expected now to be several feet by the end of the century--by a warming 
sea that has also disturbed our fisheries

[[Page 111]]

and distressed our fishing economy. ``It is not my grandfather's ocean 
out there,'' as one commercial fisherman told me.
  This only goes one way. There is no theory of how this magically gets 
better on its own. Every theory--and now most observations--all point 
to all this getting worse and perhaps very badly worse. The time for 
negligence and inaction has passed.
  In the Senate we need to begin a conversation about this. We have to 
begin at the beginning. We have to agree on a baseline of facts, 
principles, and laws of nature that can then inform our judgments about 
what to do. I do not think it is asking too much of the new majority in 
the Senate to begin an honest conversation about carbon dioxide and 
climate change. I don't think that it is too much to ask the new 
majority in the Senate that we undertake this conversation in a serious 
and responsible manner. I do not think that is extreme or unreasonable. 
We need to begin at the beginning in this conversation, and I will make 
every effort to see to it that we begin. But even as we begin, we can 
keep the end in sight. That end is a world where polluters pay the 
costs of their pollution. That in turn creates a world where market 
forces work properly in our energy markets. The end is a world where it 
is America that seizes the economic promise of these new energy 
technologies, where we are builders--not buyers--of the energy devices 
of the future. The end is a world that turns back from the brink of a 
plainly foreseeable risk where the consequences of negligence and 
inaction could well be dire for us and for the generations that follow 
us.
  In sum, we in this Senate have a duty before us, and negligence and 
inaction will not meet what that duty demands. For those of you with a 
coal economy or an oil economy in your States, I understand and I want 
to work with you. There are answers to be found. But please, do not 
pretend that this problem doesn't exist. That is false and 
unacceptable.
  I must, on behalf of my State and on behalf of our future, insist 
that we in the Senate meet our duty, even under this new Senate 
majority--and I will.
  I yield the floor, and I thank the Presiding Officer for his 
patience.

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