[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9079-9080]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           CLIMATE DISRUPTION

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, climate disruption is a significant 
concern for the health of our planet. It is affecting everything from 
our agriculture to our economy, to our forests, to our world's 
glaciers, to our ice sheets, and, certainly, to the distribution of the 
world's insects and the diseases they carry.
  President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement has 
attracted additional attention to the role that America should play in 
taking on this major challenge. How significant are the impacts of 
climate disruption to our forests and our farming and our fishing? What 
are the business opportunities of transforming an economy from that 
based on fossil fuels to that based on clean and renewable energy? What 
are other nations doing? How fast do we need to move to save the 
planet?
  There will be many scholarly speeches on these topics here on the 
floor--many who will have been informed by the experiences that 
Senators will have had in their home States, both in the evolution of 
wind and solar energy and the changes that they are seeing in their 
forests and their farming and their fishing. I hope to draw attention 
and, hopefully, insights as to these issues in a more lighthearted 
fashion by presenting periodic episodes of a Senate Climate Disruption 
Quiz. Today, I am presenting episode No. 1 of this Disruption Quiz 
series. Let's get started.
  Question No. 1: Which famous CEO resigned from three Presidential 
councils after President Trump announced that the United States would 
withdraw from the Paris Agreement? Was it Bob Iger of Disney? Was it 
Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX? Was it Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber? 
Consider which of these individuals made this decision.
  The right answer is Elon Musk. Congratulations if that is what you 
guessed.
  Bob Iger of Disney resigned from a Presidential council, but he 
resigned only from one, not three. He resigned from the Presidential 
Strategic and Policy Forum, and he has been quite significant in 
putting forward other environmental issues, such as the zero waste of 
Disney's theme parks.
  He said when he resigned:

       Protecting our planet and driving economic growth are 
     critical to our future, and they aren't mutually exclusive.

  He continued:

       I deeply disagree with the decision to withdraw from the 
     Paris Agreement.

  Travis Kalanick, the controversial and besieged Uber CEO, also 
resigned from the same council, that being the Presidential Strategic 
and Policy Forum, but he did so in response to the President's Muslim 
ban, not to the announcement that the United States would withdraw from 
the Paris Agreement.
  That takes us to Elon Musk, who resigned from three councils--the 
President's Strategic and Policy Forum, Manufacturing Initiative, and 
Executive Council on Infrastructure.
  He tweeted:

       Am departing Presidential councils. Climate change is real. 
     Leaving Paris is not good for America or for the world.

  So that is the first question. Now get ready to see if you can answer 
the second question correctly.
  Question No. 2: As of today, which two countries are not party to the 
Paris Agreement? Is it Syria and Nicaragua? Is it Iran and North Korea, 
two members of the axis of evil? Is it Togo and Indonesia, or is it 
India and Cambodia? I am sure you have heard climate news about all of 
these countries, but you may not know which ones are the only two 
countries in the world that are not members of the Paris Agreement.
  By the way, the United States is not on this list because even though 
we have announced we are withdrawing, that takes some time, and we are 
actually still a member.
  The correct answer is Syria and Nicaragua.
  Nicaragua hasn't signed on because they don't believe the Paris 
Agreement goes far enough in its fight against climate disruption. 
Today, more than half of Nicaragua's electricity comes from renewable 
resources--wind, solar, wave, and geothermal. The Government of 
Nicaragua predicts that within a few years, the percentage of 
electricity from renewables will rise to 80 percent. Because of the 
abundance of these resources, a 2013 World Bank report labeled 
Nicaragua ``a renewable energy paradise.''
  The reason Syria didn't participate or sign on to the Paris Agreement 
is because it is in the midst of a horrific 6-year-long civil war that 
has claimed the lives of 300,000 men, women, and children and driven 
millions out of the country.
  Now we will turn to question No. 3. Thanks in part to warmer 
temperatures and milder winters, cases of which tick-borne illness have 
more than doubled since 1991? Is the answer Colorado tick fever or 
tularemia or Lyme disease or Heartland virus?
  By the way, all of these are real diseases. Well, Colorado tick fever 
is a viral infection that is mostly found in the mountain areas of the 
Western United States and Canada and is transmitted by the bite of an 
infected Rocky Mountain wood tick. Tularemia, which is also known as 
rabbit fever or deer fly fever or O'Hara's fever, is certainly a scary-
sounding disease. Lyme disease is mostly transmitted by deer tick bites 
and is predominantly found in the Northeast and upper Midwest, the Mid-
Atlantic regions of the country. And then there is the Heartland virus, 
which is transmitted by the lone star tick.
  Well, the correct answer is--drum roll--C, Lyme disease.
  Since 1991, the number of cases of Lyme disease in the United States 
has doubled. Approximately 30,000 people are diagnosed with the disease 
each year, but because it is very difficult to diagnosis, the Centers 
for Disease Control thinks the real number of cases is about 10 times 
that, or 300,000 people per year here in the United States. The main 
reason for the increase we have seen in Lyme disease is warmer 
temperatures and milder winters. Cold winters kill ticks; warm winters 
don't. That is what it boils down to.
  On to question No. 4. Who was recently quoted as saying that ``the 
fuel of choice right now, certainly for us, is wind''? Was it Bono, the 
lead singer of U2 and founder of the One Campaign, known for its 
activist work in Africa? Was it Gwyneth Paltrow, the award-winning 
actress? Was it Ben Fowke, the CEO of Xcel Energy, which owns and 
operates 13 coal plants around the country? Was it Pope Francis, who

[[Page 9080]]

gave our President a copy of his encyclical when the President visited 
with him just a few weeks ago?
  Well, it turns out the answer is C, the CEO of Xcel Energy. That is a 
little bit surprising given that they operate more than a dozen coal 
plants, but it is also a company that generates one-fifth of its 
electricity from wind.
  In January, the company shut down a large natural gas plant in 
Colorado for 2 days, and wind, on average, provided the power for half 
of its customer demand. Wind is Xcel's fuel of choice because once the 
turbines are built, the cost of the fuel to operate the turbines is 
zero. The fuel, plainly speaking, is free. And that is what led him to 
this comment saying that it is a preferred choice. Anytime you can get 
free fuel, it beats gearing up your coal plant or your natural gas 
plant.
  Now we will turn to question No. 5, our final question. The Power 
Minister of which country recently announced that they intend to sell 
only electric cars by the year 2030? Is the answer India, which is home 
to 1.3 billion citizens, the world's third largest oil importer and a 
country with 300 million individuals who don't yet have access to 
electricity? Is it Germany, a manufacturing powerhouse, which has had a 
large feed-in tariff--a subsidy, if you will--to encourage distributed 
solar, solar panels on the tops of commercial buildings and homes? Is 
it China, where the use of cars has absolutely exploded. And the 
pollution in Beijing is among the worst pollution in the world, driven 
largely by the combustion of fossil fuels. Is it Canada, which has a 
new Prime Minister, Prime Minister Trudeau, who has prioritized 
tackling climate disruption?
  If you guessed Germany, you are almost right but not quite. Germany's 
Bundesrat, the country's upper legislative chamber, passed a nonbinding 
resolution last October calling for a phaseout of gasoline-powered 
vehicles by 2030. But that is not quite the question that was asked. 
The question is, Which country's Power Minister said they would only 
sell electric cars by the year 2030? And the answer to that is India.
  Speaking at this year's annual conference of the Confederation of 
Indian Industry, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said:

       We are going to introduce electric vehicles in a very big 
     way. We are going to make electric vehicles self-sufficient. 
     The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car 
     should be sold in the country.

  India, by the way, is already on track to be the world's third 
largest solar market, with the country's solar capacity expected to 
reach 18.7 gigawatts by the year's end. The country is also adding 50 
percent more solar and wind generation than currently installed here in 
the United States. They are replacing 770 million street and household 
lights with energy-saving and long-lasting LEDs, and they are bringing 
access to electricity to thousands of poor rural villages through the 
provision of solar. And they are doing all this faster than anyone 
could have anticipated.
  So that is the full five questions for this week's Senate Climate 
Disruption Quiz. Climate disruption is the seminal challenge of our 
generation. We need to start taking strong, decisive action now to 
avoid reaching the point where the damage we are doing to our planet 
becomes irreversible.
  Thank you, Mr. President.

                          ____________________