[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9726-9727]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  PAPAL ENCYCLICAL ON THE ENVIRONMENT

  Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, on Thursday, Pope Francis will 
officially release a historic encyclical on the environment. An 
encyclical is a personal message from the Pope to Catholic bishops and 
the 1.2 billion Catholics around the world on a topic that he feels 
requires urgent attention. It is an opportunity for the Pope to bring 
together accumulated teachings in a

[[Page 9727]]

comprehensive way. This will be only Pope Francis's second papal 
missive, and it has garnered enough attention that the conservative 
Heartland Institute traveled to the Vatican this spring to respectfully 
inform the Pope that there is no global warming crisis.
  Earlier this week, my colleague Senator Inhofe agreed with the 
Heartland Institute and told them that Pope Francis should ``stay with 
his job and we'll stay with ours.'' Well, I disagree with Senator 
Inhofe. Pope Francis is doing his job, but it is Republicans in this 
Chamber who are not doing theirs.
  To those critics who say that Pope Francis shouldn't be speaking out 
on this, I will give them a very simple history lesson. Pope Francis is 
not the first to speak out on climate change and environmental 
protection. He will join a chorus of previous pontiffs who drew 
attention to the crisis of climate change and its impact on people, 
especially the poor and the children of our planet.
  In 1971, Pope Paul VI warned that human actions that harm nature may 
make the future intolerable. Pope John Paul II first raised the 
greenhouse effect as a moral issue in his landmark 1990 World Day of 
Peace message. Two decades later, Pope Benedict XVI shined a light on 
environmental refugees in his World Day of Peace message and committed 
the Vatican to going carbon neutral, including installing a massive 
solar panel energy system on one of the largest buildings in the 
Vatican.
  As the leader of more than 1 billion Catholics around the world, many 
of whom are suffering from the worst consequences of global warming--
disease, displacement, poverty--it is the Pope's responsibility to 
speak out on behalf of the people he leads. And that is exactly what he 
will be calling all of us to do.
  The same people who want to deny Pope Francis's right to speak out on 
climate change are the same people who deny the science of it. But our 
understanding of human influence on climate change rests on 150 years 
of wide-ranging scientific observations and research, and it is 
informed by what we see today with our own eyes and measured by our own 
hands.
  Here is the reality. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are 
melting, sea levels are rising, extreme downpours and weather events 
are increasing, the ocean is becoming more acidic, and last year was 
the warmest year on record. Increasing temperatures increase the risk 
of bad air days, in turn increasing the risk of asthma attacks and 
worse for people with lung disease. We have a public health crisis.
  We are already feeling the cost of climate disruption. The Government 
Accountability Office added climate change to its 2013 high-risk list 
and found that climate change ``presents a significant financial risk 
to the Federal Government.'' GAO could just have easily said it 
presents a significant financial risk for all of America. But the 
United States is not tackling this climate change alone. Efforts are 
underway in countries all around the world. We are seeing academies of 
science in country after country all coming to the same conclusion.
  What can we do here in the United States to answer the call of the 
Pope? Here is what we can do. We can make sure the wind and the solar 
tax credits do not expire. That is what is happening in this Congress. 
We can continue this incredible revolution in wind and solar and other 
renewable sources. That is going to die in this Congress unless we 
renew them.
  We can ensure there is a dramatic increase that continues in the fuel 
economy standards of the vehicles we drive--the cars, the SUVs, the 
trucks--that dramatically reduces greenhouse gases. We can ensure when 
President Obama propounds his clean powerplant rules, which will reduce 
by 30 percent the amount of greenhouse gases going up into the 
atmosphere by the year 2030, that they are not repealed on the Senate 
Floor.
  We are the greatest innovation country in the history of the world. 
Science and technology are the answer to our prayers. They are going to 
give our country the ability to give the leadership and hope to the 
rest of the world when we answer the prayer of Pope Francis. The 
poorest in the world are going to be those who are most adversely 
affected by the richest countries in the world.
  We can, in fact, save all of creation by engaging in massive job 
creation--the new vehicles we drive, the new energy technologies we 
create, the new technologies that will reduce the amount of greenhouse 
gases going up from powerplants. We did it once with the Clean Air Act 
of 1990, and we can do it again.
  So while Pope Francis preaches to the world, the world turns to us 
for leadership. We cannot preach temperance from a barstool. We cannot 
tell the rest of the world they should change their habits unless we 
take the leadership in creating the new technologies that we deploy 
here and then see deployed around the rest of the world.
  We can transform the way energy is in fact produced across this 
entire planet within the 21st century. That is what the Pope is asking 
us to do--not to sacrifice but to innovate, not to give up but to 
invest in those technologies that will transform this planet.
  President Kennedy called upon us in 1961 to put a man on the moon by 
investing in new metals and new propulsion technologies, so that we 
could ensure that the Soviet Union did not impose its communistic 
regime across the entire planet. We invented the new technologies for 
peaceful purposes. And when our astronauts stepped foot on the moon, 
that American flag that flew was the return on investment of that 
generation. This generation of Americans is now being asked to make the 
same kind of commitment to a new generation of energy technologies that 
can reduce greenhouse gases dramatically, give leadership for the rest 
of the world, and answer the call from Pope Francis.
  Those who say it is not Pope Francis's business to speak out on 
something that is obviously created by human beings and that can be 
solved by human beings are wrong. It is his place. He challenges us to 
put on the books of the laws of this country the kinds of standards 
that unleash the green energy revolution, that create jobs by the 
millions, while ensuring that we reduce the greenhouse gases going up 
and endangering the planet.
  I thank the Chair for the opportunity to be recognized, and I say in 
conclusion that it is just an incredible moment when the Pope speaks on 
an issue of this importance. I am not saying action will be easy, but 
if we harness the ambition of the Moon landing, the scope of the Clean 
Air Act, and the moral imperative of Pope Francis's encyclical, we can 
leave the world a better place than we found it. We have the tools to 
do it. Now we need to forge the political will.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from South Dakota.

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