[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 14625-14628]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I started my weekly series of 
speeches about the dangers of climate change in the spring of 2012. My 
trusty ``Time to Wake Up'' sign is getting a little battered, showing 
some wear and tear, but I am still determined to get us to act on 
climate before it is too late. The Senator from New Hampshire clearly 
knows what is going on in her State.
  It is long past time to wake up to the industry-controlled campaign 
of calculated misinformation on the dangers of carbon pollution. 
Opponents of climate action relish operating in the dark. Their 
slimiest work to undermine science and deny the harmful effects of 
carbon pollution on human health, natural systems, and the economy is 
done by hidden hands through front groups. If anything is to change, we 
first need to acknowledge peer-reviewed science, the expert assessments

[[Page 14626]]

of our military and national security leaders, and the business case 
for climate action that iconic American companies are making. But if 
anything is really going to change, we need to shine a light on the 
sophisticated scheme of science denial being foisted on the American 
people.
  President Theodore Roosevelt once said: ``Far and away the best prize 
that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.''
  We in Congress have the chance to do this worthy work, but big 
special interests don't want that to happen. So Congress keeps drifting 
toward climate catastrophe, and I keep delivering my weekly remarks--
today for the 150th time.
  Thankfully, I am not a lone voice. Many colleagues have been speaking 
out, particularly our ranking member on the Environment and Public 
Works Committee, Senator Boxer, and one of our Democratic Party's 
Presidential contenders, Senator Sanders. Senator Markey has been 
speaking on climate longer than I have even been in the Senate. 
Senators Schumer, Nelson, Blumenthal, Schatz, King, Baldwin, Brown, and 
Coons have each joined me to speak of the effects of carbon pollution 
on their home States and economies. Our Democratic leader, Senator 
Reid, has pressed the Senate to face up to this challenge, and 18 
fellow Democratic colleagues, including climate champs Merkley, Warren, 
Markey, and Schumer joined me in calling out the industry-controlled 
many-tentacled apparatus deliberately polluting our American discourse 
with climate science denial.
  The climate science that deniers tried to undermine dates back to the 
1800s, predating Henry Ford's first production Model T, predating 
Thomas Edison's first light bulb demonstration, and predating the first 
commercial oil well in the United States. It was 1824, around the time 
that President Monroe added the South Portico to the White House, that 
French scientist Joseph Fourier explained that the Earth's temperature 
would be much lower if the planet lacked an atmosphere, providing one 
of the first descriptions of the greenhouse effect. In 1861, the year 
President Lincoln took office, Irish physicist John Tyndall described 
the trace components of the atmosphere that were responsible for the 
greenhouse effect, including carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor. 
In 1896, the year Utah joined the Union, Swedish scientist Svante 
Arrhenius published the first calculation of global warming due to the 
addition of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
  The concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere at that 
time was 295 parts per million. Today it is 400 parts per million and 
rising--indeed, rising at a pace not seen for 66 million years. 
Scientific research continues to demonstrate planetary warming and the 
many changes that come with it.
  I am from the Ocean State, and we can particularly look at the oceans 
to see the devastating effects of climate change. Of course, the great, 
corrupt denial machine the fossil fuel industry supports rarely talks 
about oceans. But, remember, that machine doesn't care about evidence. 
It just wants to create phony doubt. But there is not much room for 
doubt in measurements of warming, rising, and acidifying seas, which 
are measured with everyday thermometers--with yardsticks, essentially--
and pH tests. So faced with all that measurement, they just don't go 
there.
  But the changes happening in the oceans are real. Our unfettered 
burning of fossil fuels has made our oceans warmer. The oceans have 
absorbed the vast majority of the heat trapped in our atmosphere by our 
carbon pollution--the heat equivalent to several Hiroshima-style atomic 
bombs being set off in the sea every second for the last 20 years. One 
result of all this heat is the calamity now taking place in the world's 
coral reefs, the incubators of the sea.
  Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral ecosystem on 
Earth. Severe bleaching has hit between 60 and 100 percent of corals on 
the Great Barrier Reef, according to Dr. Terry Hughes of James Cook 
University in Queensland. Research led by Dr. Andrew King at the 
University of Melbourne determined that the ocean warming that led to 
widespread and devastating coral destruction was made 175 times more 
likely by human-caused climate change.
  As one researcher put it, climate change ``is the smoking gun.'' We 
are not just warming the oceans. The oceans actually absorb carbon 
dioxide itself, as well as heat. Because carbon dioxide forms carbonic 
acid when it dissolves in sea water, the seas are acidifying at the 
fastest rate in 50 million years. On America's northwest coast, oyster 
hatcheries have already experienced significant losses when their new 
hatches were unable to grow their shells in the acidified sea water. 
Off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California, 50 
percent of tiny sea snails called pteropods--these creatures right 
here--were measured to have ``severe shell damage,'' mostly from 
acidified seas. A NOAA study released just last week detailed for the 
first time the extent to which that damage was caused by human carbon 
pollution. If this species collapses, the bottom falls out of the 
oceanic food chain.
  In Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay's mean winter water temperature is 
up nearly 4 degrees Farenheit. Our Rhode Island lobster fishery is 
crashing, and our winter flounder fishery is practically gone. I know 
that the New Hampshire fishery is equally stressed. With real alarm, 
Rhode Island's clammers, lobstermen, fish farmers, and shellfish 
growers are all watching the damage acidified seas are doing. This is 
the cost of climate change in the oceans.
  We are approaching a point of no return. The U.N. Environment 
Programme's Emissions Gap Report, released earlier this month, warned 
that unless reductions in carbon pollution from the energy sector are 
taken swiftly, it will be nearly impossible to keep warming below 2 
degrees Celsius and avoid widespread catastrophes. The report says that 
the next 3 years are ``likely the last chance'' to limit global warming 
to safe limits in this century--likely the last chance to make a 
difference. But Republicans in this Senate want to do nothing about it.
  Once upon a time, Republicans joined Democrats in pushing for action 
on climate. Senator McCain ran for President on a strong climate change 
platform and was the lead cosponsor of the Climate Stewardship Act, 
which would have created a market-based emissions cap-and-trade program 
to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants from the 
biggest U.S. sources. At the time Senator McCain said:

       While we cannot say with 100 percent confidence what will 
     happen in the future, we do know the emission of greenhouse 
     gases is not healthy for the environment. As many of the top 
     scientists through the world have stated, the sooner we start 
     to reduce these emissions, the better off we will be in the 
     future.

  Other Republicans got behind cap-and-trade proposals. Senator 
Carper's Clean Air Planning Act at one time or another counted Senators 
Alexander, Graham, and Collins among its supporters. Senator Collins 
later coauthored her own important cap-and-trade bill with Senator 
Cantwell.
  Senator Kirk voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the 
House. Senator Flake, then representing Arizona in the House, was an 
original cosponsor of the Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act to reduce payroll 
taxes for employers and employees in exchange for equal revenue from a 
carbon tax.
  So what happened? Why did this steady heartbeat of Republican climate 
action suddenly flatline in 2010? Something happened in 2010.
  What happened was the Supreme Court's disgraceful 2010 decision in 
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, where, in a nutshell, 
the Court ruled that corporations are people and money is speech, and 
so there can be no limit to corporate money influencing American 
elections.
  When Citizens United uncorked all that big, dark money and allowed it 
to cast its bullying shadow over Congress, Republicans walked back from 
any

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major climate legislation. Rather than freeing up open debate, Citizens 
United effectively ended any honest debate in Congress on the climate 
crisis.
  Unlimited corporate spending in politics can, indeed, corrupt--and 
not just through floods of anonymous attack advertisements. It can 
corrupt secretly and, more dangerously, through the mere threat of that 
spending, through private threats and promises. Sometimes, the fossil 
fuel industry threat to politicians who don't toe their line is not so 
subtle. The Koch brothers-backed political juggernaut Americans for 
Prosperity has openly promised to punish candidates who support curbs 
on carbon pollution and has openly taken credit for the ``political 
peril''--to use their words--that organization created for Republicans 
on climate change.
  Since 2010, the fossil fuel industry strategy has been to crush 
Republican opposition to prohibit Republicans from working with 
Democrats on climate change so that the industry can disguise what is 
basically old-fashioned special-interest pleading as a partisan issue 
in America's culture wars.
  I don't know if you remember the alien in the movie ``Men in Black'' 
who climbed into the skin and clothing of the unfortunate farmer. That 
is what the fossil fuel industry has done to the Republican Party since 
Citizens United.
  The industry has a lot at stake. The International Monetary Fund has 
reported the American subsidy for the U.S. fossil fuel industry at 
nearly $700 billion a year--that is billion with a ``b''--and every 
year. I ask you, how much trouble would an industry go to to protect a 
$700 billion-per-year subsidy?
  A growing body of scholarship is examining the science denial 
apparatus protecting the fossil fuel industry--how it is funded, how it 
communicates, and how it propagates the denial message. That research 
includes work by Harvard's Naomi Oreskes, Michigan State's Aaron 
McCright, Oklahoma State's Riley Dunlap, Yale's Justin Farrell, 
Drexel's Robert Brulle, and others.
  Industrial powers fighting to obscure the harms their products cause 
isn't new. They operate from a well-worn playbook that was used for 
industrial contaminants and health hazards such as DDT, CFCs, and, of 
course, particularly tobacco. It is the ultimate special interest 
lobbying.
  President-elect Trump campaigned on a pledge of draining the swamp of 
big special interests controlling Washington. Yet leading the 
transition at the Environmental Protection Agency for the Trump 
administration is Myron Ebell, the poster child of industry-backed 
climate denial. Mr. Ebell is the director of energy and environment at 
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a corporate front group that has 
specialized in undermining tobacco, climate, and other science. CEI 
received millions of dollars from ExxonMobil, the Koch family, coal 
companies Murray and Massey, and the identity-laundering groups Donors 
Trust and Donors Capital. CEI and Myron Ebell are the quintessential DC 
swamp creatures.
  Politico reports that Ebell was a veteran of the tobacco regulation 
wars. Jeremy Symons of the Environmental Defense Fund credits Ebell 
with ``taking the tobacco playbook and applying it to climate change.'' 
And on climate, Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Niskanen Center says 
Ebell was ``involved in marshaling allies, building a skeptic movement 
and enforcing that political orthodoxy as best he could in the 
Republican Party.''
  Ebell criticizes scientists for working outside their degreed fields, 
but it turns out he isn't even a scientist himself. After college, he 
studied political theory at the London School of Economics and history 
at Cambridge.
  He has even criticized Pope Francis's encyclical on climate change, 
calling it ``scientifically ill-informed, economically illiterate, 
intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.'' That is rich right 
there--an outspoken climate contrarian whose organization receives 
fossil fuel money calling Pope Francis morally obtuse.
  Well, the President-elect mocked Republican politicians when they 
went groveling before the Koch brothers at their ``beg-a-thon,'' as the 
President-elect called it, but now he is busy filling his staff with 
Koch operatives. Donald Trump may have won the Presidency, but with 
operatives like Myron Ebell, the Koch brothers are moving in to run the 
Presidency.
  The new President, however, will hear from our military, he will hear 
from our National Labs, and he will hear from NASA, which, with a rover 
driving around on Mars right now, may actually know a little science, 
that this is deadly serious.
  I encourage President-elect Trump to listen to the voices of reason 
and expertise, not to the swamp things. Don't, Mr. President-elect, be 
taken in by industry lobbyists and front groups scratching and clawing 
to protect a $700 billion conflict of interest. Consider, Mr. 
President-elect, listening to your children, who joined you just 7 
years ago in saying climate science was ``irrefutable'' and portends 
``catastrophic and irreversible'' consequences. That is what you and 
they said just 7 years ago.
  Madam President, let's assume something. Let's assume that all our 
National Labs, NASA and NOAA, our military leaders, our home State 
universities across our 50 States, hundreds of major American 
companies, and the more than 190 different nations that signed the 
Paris climate agreement are all actually not deluded about climate 
change, that they are not part of a hoax. If that is so, if these 
trained expert scientists who don't labor under a $700 billion-per-year 
conflict of interest are telling the truth, then the fossil fuel 
industry's science denial operation is a fraud. As a fraud, it is a 
particularly evil one because in order to achieve its goal, the 
industry has to drag down the Government of the United States or at 
least the Congress of the United States to its level. The fossil fuel 
industry maintains a science denial operation and a political influence 
operation designed and intended to willfully sabotage the proper 
operation of a branch of the Government of the United States. We ought 
to all have a problem when a powerful special interest is willing to 
damage our American experiment in democracy just to achieve its selfish 
ends.
  As a Senator, John F. Kennedy once said this:

       Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican 
     answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us 
     not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own 
     responsibility for the future.

  Solutions to climate change need be neither Republican nor 
Democratic. They do need to be based on sound science and healthy and 
open debate. And we will be a stronger and more respected country if 
they are American solutions, if we are leading the world, not tailing 
along behind other countries.
  For a country like ours that claims to stand as an example--as a city 
on a hill, we call it--a country that benefits from the power of our 
example around the world, this horrible example of out-of-control 
special interest influence will have lasting consequences. We have a 
role to play in this world, we Americans, and it is time we got about 
it.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, let me also take a moment to add to 
my climate remarks my appreciation to Dr. Gifford Wong, who is here 
with me on the floor today. He has been helpful in my office as a 
trained expert scientist and has helped with many of these speeches. He 
is leaving us this week after working as a fellow on my staff for over 
a year. I am proud to have had him serve in my office, and I wish him 
well. This is his last climate speech with me.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.

[[Page 14628]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator withhold?
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes, the Senator withholds.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I want to commend Senator Whitehouse for 
his 150th climate speech. It takes a lot of passion, a lot of research, 
and a lot of focus to be willing to stay on one topic in the Senate for 
that many consecutive speeches. There are a lot of things that are 
important in the Senate and it is easy to get distracted, but Senator 
Whitehouse remains steadfast, focused, and passionate, and history will 
show that Sheldon Whitehouse was right and is right. I am proud to be 
his colleague.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, sir.

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