[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4788-4790]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for the 134th time to urge 
the Senate to wake up to the growing threat of global climate change. I 
am afraid my chart here is getting a little bit beat up after all of 
these speeches. I hope we can begin to make progress.
  But we continue here in this body to be besieged by persistent and 
meretricious denial. Of course, the polluters want us to do nothing. 
They are so happy to offload to everybody else the costs of the harm 
from fossil fuels: the cost of heat waves, the cost of sea level rise, 
the cost of ocean acidification, the cost of dying forests, and the 
rest of it. They are running a very profitable ``we keep the profits, 
you bear the costs'' racket. They spend rivers of money on lobbying and 
on politics and on a complex PR machine that fills the airwaves with 
sound bites of cooked-up, paid-for doubt about climate change.
  I believe the worst of them actually know better, but they do it any 
way. In this turbulence, the Wall Street Journal editorial page 
regularly sides with the rightwing climate denial operations. So, 
naturally, they have challenged my call for an appropriate inquiry into 
whether the fossil fuel industry's decades long and purposeful campaign 
of misinformation has run afoul of Federal civil racketeering laws.
  Now, it is very hard for them to argue that the fossil fuel industry 
should be exempt from fraud laws. It is very hard for them to argue 
that the tobacco lawsuit years ago was ill funded, although certainly 
they tried right up until the government won the case. So they turn, 
instead, to invention.

[[Page 4789]]

The Wall Street Journal repeatedly and falsely has accused me of 
seeking to punish anyone who rejects the scientific evidence of climate 
change. That is, of course, a crock. I never said anything close to 
that, but that does not stop them.
  In fact, this line of counterattacks fits the Journal's playbook for 
defending polluting industries. The Wall Street Journal's editorial 
page has a record on acid rain, on the ozone layer, and now on climate 
change. There is a pattern. They deny the science, they question the 
motives of those who call for change, and they exaggerate the costs of 
taking action.
  At all costs, they protect the polluting industry. When the Journal 
is wrong, as they have repeatedly been proven to be, they keep at it, 
over and over. In the 1970s, scientists first warned that 
chlorofluorocarbons could erode the ozone layer of the Earth's 
stratosphere, and that would increase human exposure to cancer-causing 
ultraviolet rays.
  The Wall Street Journal editorial page doggedly fought back against 
the science, questioning it, and attacking any regulation of the CFCs.
  In at least eight editorials between 1976 and 1992, the Wall Street 
Journal proclaimed that the connection between CFCs and ozone depletion 
``is only a theory and will remain only that until further efforts are 
made to test its validity in the atmosphere itself.'' They called the 
scientific evidence ``scanty'' and ``premature,'' suggested that the 
ozone layer ``may even be increasing,'' insinuated that ``it is simply 
not clear to us that real science drives policy in this area,'' and 
warned of ``a dramatic increase in air-conditioning and refrigeration 
costs,'' with ``some $1.52 billion in foregone profits and product-
change expenses'' as well as 8,700 jobs lost. Those are all actual 
quotes from the ed page.
  Well, back then Americans listened to the science. Congress acted, 
the ozone layer and the public's health were protected, and the economy 
prospered. All those terrible costs that the Journal predicted, 
according to the EPA's 1999 progress report, ``Every dollar invested in 
ozone protection provide[d] $20 of societal health benefits in the 
United States''--$1 spent, $20 saved.
  When scientists began reporting that acid rain was falling across our 
Northeastern States, out came the Wall Street Journal again saying the 
``data are not conclusive and more studies are needed''; arguing that 
``nature, not industry, is the primary source of acid rain''; claiming 
``the scientific case for acid rain is dying''; and charging that 
``politics, not nature, is the primary force driving the theory's 
biggest boosters.''
  Again, those are all actual quotes, even as President Reagan's own 
scientific panel said that inaction would risk ``irreversible damage,'' 
which brings us to the Wall Street Journal on climate change.
  In June 1993, they claimed ``growing evidence that global warming 
just isn't happening.''
  September 1999, they reported that ``serious scientists'' call global 
warming ``one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.''
  June 2005, they asserted that the link between fossil fuels and 
global warming had ``become even more doubtful.''
  February 2010, they said: ``We think the science is still 
disputable.''
  June 2011, they called global warming a ``fad-scare.''
  December 2011, an editorial said that the global warming debate 
requires ``more definitive evidence.''
  As recently as last January, the page called extreme weather 
``business as usual,'' while still erroneously clinging to the 
``hiatus'' argument.
  Just this week they published an editorial that any link people have 
talked about between climate change and national security threats--
something we hear from our armed services, from our intelligence 
services--that all is ``silliness,'' to use the word of the author they 
quoted.
  The polluter playbook also produced the usual Journal warnings about 
costs, that ``a high CO2 tax would reduce world GDP a 
staggering 12.9 percent in 2100--the equivalent of $40 trillion a 
year,'' making ``the world poorer than it otherwise would be''; about 
motivations, that this was all really motivated by what they called 
``political actors'' seeking to gain economic control; and about the 
science, claiming that ``global service temperatures have remained 
essentially flat.''
  This is my particular favorite. A December 2009 Wall Street Journal 
claimed that climate scientists were suspect because they ``have been 
on the receiving end of climate change-related funding,'' the Journal 
continues ``so all of them must believe in the reality (and 
catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe 
in the existence of God.''
  Set aside their suggestion that funding is why priests believe in 
God. Look at what they are saying about scientific funding.
  If the Wall Street Journal can make it a conflict of interest for 
scientists to be on the receiving end of scientific funding related to 
their field of inquiry, that covers virtually all science. That would 
make virtually all science not discovered by accident a conflict of 
interest. That is a great trick, because if science itself is a 
conflict of interest, that neatly moots the real conflict of interest 
of the masquerade talk-show science produced by the polluting 
industry's PR machinery. And there is such machinery, according to 
numerous investigative books, journalists' reporting, and academic 
studies.
  Look at the academic work of Professor Robert Brulle of Drexel 
University, Professor Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University, and 
Justin Farrell of Yale University, among others.
  Look at the investigative works of Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in 
their book ``Merchants of Doubt'' or David Michaels' book ``Doubt is 
their Product'' and Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner's book ``Deceit 
and Denial.'' Look at Jeff Nesbit's new book ``Poison Tea.''
  Look at the journalistic work of Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song, David 
Hasemyer, and John Cushman, Jr., in InsideClimate News, which is 
evidently now shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize looking at what 
ExxonMobil knew about climate change versus the things that it chose to 
tell the public. Look at the parallel probe by the Energy and 
Environment Fellowship Project at the Columbia Journalism School, 
published in the Los Angeles Times, which brings us to the Journal's 
question: ``Why even raise the possibility of RICO suits--and suggest 
it to the Justice Department--if Mr. Whitehouse's goal isn't to punish 
those who disagree with him on climate?''
  One reason is that a RICO suit was won by the U.S. Department of 
Justice under the Clinton and Bush administrations against the tobacco 
industry. So there is this little matter of this being the law. The 
Journal never seems to mention the fact that the government won the 
civil case against the tobacco industry.
  Before the RICO lawsuit was won by the Department of Justice, the 
Wall Street Journal editorial page had worked it over pretty well, 
calling it ``abuse,'' ``hypocrisy,'' and ``a shakedown.'' So I 
understand that they don't like that fact, but it is now a fact that 
the Department won that case.
  A second reason is that if there is indeed a core of deliberate fraud 
at the heart of the climate denial enterprise, no industry should be 
too big to dodge the legal consequences. Most of the writers I 
mentioned noted themselves similarities between the tobacco fraud 
scheme and the climate denial operation--as has Sharon Eubanks, the 
lawyer who won the tobacco lawsuit for the Department of Justice--and, 
so it seems, have now more than a dozen State attorneys general who are 
looking at Big Oil and coal for misleading statements, which leads me 
to my last point.
  Note the breadth of the Wall Street Journal editorial page's language 
that I want to ``punish those who disagree with [me] on climate,'' but 
that is just false. As the RICO case itself shows--the tobacco RICO 
case that is the model we would like to have the Department look at--
people who disagree with me on climate change would no more be the 
targets of such an investigation than smokers or people who

[[Page 4790]]

disagreed with the Surgeon General about tobacco's dangers were targets 
of the tobacco case. Those folks may very well have been victims of the 
tobacco industry's fraud. They may be the dupes.
  For the record, fraud investigations focus on those who lie, knowing 
that they are lying, intending to fool others and doing it for gain, 
for money. Even fossil fuel companies should not be too big to answer 
for that conduct if it were proven in court.
  Why would the Wall Street Journal editorial page and other rightwing 
editorialists be trying to saddle me with an argument I am not making? 
Well, one obvious reason would be because they don't have a good 
response to the one I am making. Let's say, if they were operating as a 
shill for the industry here and emitting industry propaganda, they 
would be providing their industry clients a very valuable service of 
misdirection. Like squid ink released to create a helpful distraction, 
an imaginary argument to quarrel with gives them an advantage. As I 
said, it is going to be tough to convince people that the fossil 
industry should be too big to sue, no matter what they did or that it 
should deserve different rules under the law than the tobacco industry.
  If you are going to lose those arguments, you have to make another 
one, and they invented that I want to jail people--including contrarian 
scientists and skeptics.
  This is not rational argument. This is not the kind of rational, 
fact-based argument that a court would demand. It is defensive behavior 
on behalf of a creature that feels itself threatened and desperately 
wants to avoid that fair courtroom forum, a forum where the evidence 
matters, where the truth is required, and where the industry doesn't 
get to put in the fix.
  Everybody should know I take climate change very seriously. Rhode 
Island is the Ocean State. Just this week we had major news stories in 
our statewide paper about drowning sea coast marshes, endangered 
historic buildings, and ocean fisheries in upheaval, all from climate 
change. This is the first one.
  ``Drowning marshes: Buying time against the tide, they pour sand in 
an uphill fight.''

       As the climate warms, causing the ice caps to melt, 
     currents to slow and ocean waters to expand, sea levels are 
     rising at a rate that could eventually wipe out many of Rhode 
     Island's salt marshes.

  Just days later:
  ``Newport sees the firsthand threat of climate change.''

       But the confluence of rising seas and more extreme storms 
     caused by climate change could present an insurmountable 
     challenge for those trying to protect this and thousands of 
     other historical structures near the coast.

  Then, finally:
  ``Is commercial fishing sustainable? An industry at crossroads.''

       John Bullard, regional administrator with NOAA's Northeast 
     Regional Office, said that he believes commercial fishing can 
     be sustainable but a number of issues, including climate 
     change, need attention for that to happen.

  I represent a State whose fishing industry depends on doing something 
about climate change, whose historic buildings are at risk of being 
flooded and lost by the insurmountable problem of climate change, and 
whose salt marshes, which are very important to our State, are rising 
at a rate that could eventually wipe them out.
  Am I supposed to ignore that? Am I supposed to ignore this? It is not 
going to happen.
  I am proud to stand with our leading research institutions and 
scientists around the country, our national security experts, 
corporations such as Apple, Google, Mars, and National Grid. I am proud 
to stand with President Obama and Pope Francis, who both agree about 
the seriousness of climate change.
  If the polluter machine wants to score more ink, so be it. I cannot 
stop them, but I am not going anywhere. My State is in the crosshairs. 
This is one of those fights worth having.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.

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