June 12, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 98 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S3336-S3337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. President, I am here today for my weekly ``Time to Wake up'' 
speech.
  We know a lot of things now. We know our atmosphere is filling with 
carbon dioxide to a point unprecedented in the history of the species 
on our planet; we know global temperatures are climbing and warping the 
weather across our country and around the world; we know our oceans are 
warming and acidifying in a way that the geologic record shows is a 
precursor to massive ocean die-offs; and we know the kind of action we 
must take to stop these changes and to avoid their worst consequences. 
We have known this, in fact, for a very long time.
  However, the fossil fuel industry, just like the tobacco industry 
before it, whose apparatus it appropriated for this purpose, used phony 
manufactured doubt as its weapon of choice to fight against climate 
action. For decades, the fossil fuel industry and its armada of phony 
front groups waged a deliberate campaign of lies, propaganda, and 
political pressure. At the vanguard of this effort was ExxonMobil--
America's largest and most influential oil company.
  Internal reports uncovered by InsideClimate News show just how well 
Exxon privately understood the climate science, even before the public 
was aware of the issue.
  This graphic shows the cover page of an internal Exxon briefing, 
prepared by Exxon scientists in 1982--1982--to inform Exxon management 
about what they termed ``the CO2 greenhouse effect.'' The 
report says it was not to be distributed outside the company.

  Exxon scientists reported to Exxon management in this 1982 report 
that there is ``little doubt'' that atmospheric CO2 
concentrations were increasing and increasing due to fossil fuel 
burning. They state in this report that the resulting greenhouse effect 
``would warm the earth's surface, causing changes in climate affecting 
atmospheric and ocean temperatures, rainfall patterns, soil moisture, 
and . . . potentially melting the polar ice caps.''
  That was in 1982.
  In 1982, Exxon also projected future global temperature increase 
based on their own expectations of fossil fuel burning. The Exxon 
modeling projected that by 2019, atmospheric CO2 would reach 
between 390 and 420 parts per million. This in a band of 170 to 200 
parts per million that had prevailed through the entire history of our 
species on the planet for millions of years. They predicted we would 
jump out of that boundary to between 390 and 420 parts per million, and 
they predicted then that global average temperature in 2019 would be 
around 1 degree Celsius warmer.
  Fast-forward from 1982 to today. It is 2019, and guess what. 
CO2 concentrations are currently 415 parts per million. And 
guess what. Temperature has, in fact, increased about 1 degree Celsius. 
In 1982, Exxon scientists almost perfectly predicted how fossil fuel 
burning would warm the world and told Exxon management in this report. 
The scientists understood the damage this warming would go on to cause, 
and they knew it was bad.
  Exxon scientists predicted to the company that temperature would 
increase 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 and 3 degrees Celsius by 2080.
  Among the report's warnings is this:

       There could be considerable adverse impact including the 
     flooding of some coastal land masses as a result of a rising 
     sea level due to melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. . . . 
     Such a rise would cause flooding on much of the U.S. East 
     Coast, including the state of Florida and Washington, D.C.

  Exxon's 1982 report stated that unrestrained carbon emissions have 
the potential to cause ``great irreversible harm to our planet.'' 
``Irreversible.'' Interestingly, that is a word Donald Trump and his 
family used about climate change in 2009 when they signed this full-
page ad in the New York Times calling climate science irrefutable and 
saying that the effects of climate change would be ``catastrophic and 
irreversible.'' Yes, those Trumps.
  Exxon understood that there was natural variability in the climate 
system. Before humankind began emitting massive amounts of carbon 
pollution into the atmosphere, global average temperature fluctuated by 
around half a degree Celsius on either side of its long-term average. 
This natural variation allowed Exxon to claim that an increase in 
global temperatures of up to half a degree Celsius could be due to 
natural causes.
  This chart from the Exxon report explains that the signal would 
become undeniable--no half-degree-Celsius excuse--the signal would 
become undeniable that this was human-caused warming around the year 
2000.
  Exxon also understood that we needed to act quickly to head off the 
worst harm. Here is what Exxon's scientists told the company: ``Once 
the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible and little 
could be done to correct the situation in the short term.'' Exxon 
scientists knew what had to be done: ``Mitigation of the greenhouse 
effect would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.''
  In 1982, 37 years ago, Exxon understood climate science very well. 
They understood the uncertainties. They knew how much global 
temperature could increase. They pegged it nearly perfectly. And they 
knew the damage climate change would do, and they told Exxon 
management.
  What did management do with this knowledge? Did they invest in low-
carbon energy to develop the technologies needed to avert a future 
catastrophe? Did they work with governments on policies that would 
reduce carbon emissions and climate risk? Did they use their political 
might to move carbon capture front and center? No. Instead, they set 
out on a campaign to sow false doubt about climate science, to attack 
climate scientists, to block any good climate policy, and, of course, 
to extract and sell ever more fossil fuel. They knew it would be at the 
expense of the rest of society. They knew

[[Page S3337]]

it would be at the expense of future generations. They knew it would 
cause great, irreversible harm. They did it anyway.
  Here are some highlights from Exxon's false-doubt campaign.
  In 1996, 14 years after the 1982 report, Exxon produced this 
publication: ``Global warming: who's right? Facts about a debate that's 
turned up more questions than answers.'' Here, Exxon paints climate 
science as uncertain. It includes a statement by Exxon's then-CEO Lee 
Raymond that the ``scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to 
whether human activities affect global climate.'' Raymond didn't 
mention the conclusions of the 1982 report completely exploding that 
statement--a report they had then sat on for 14 years. Directly 
contrary to Exxon's 1982 report, Raymond also warned against what he 
called ``precipitous, poorly considered action on climate change,'' and 
he claimed that there was ample time to wait and better understand the 
climate system. But the 1982 Exxon report understood it quite 
perfectly.

  Then came this 1998 Exxon publication: ``Global climate change: 
everyone's debate.'' It is full of the familiar, phony climate-denial 
arguments. In this publication, Exxon CEO Raymond writes: ``The current 
state of climate science is too uncertain to provide clear answers to 
many key questions about global climate change.'' Well, the 1982 report 
had enough answers for them to know what to do. Raymond didn't mention 
the 1982 report.
  Nineteen ninety-eight was a year after the Kyoto Protocol. The fossil 
fuel industry fought to ensure that the United States would never 
ratify that protocol.
  Exxon helped the American Petroleum Institute develop a plan they 
called the ``Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan.'' The 
plan was to sow false doubt--doubt that the 1982 report completely blew 
out of the water--about climate science. The plan said: ``Victory will 
be achieved when . . . average citizens and the media `understand' 
uncertainties in climate science.'' It set out a national media 
strategy to exaggerate the uncertainties in climate science, including 
a plan to ``identify, recruit, and train a team of five independent 
scientists to participate in media outreach.'' Train a team. It planned 
to distribute a ``steady stream of climate science information''--for 
that, read ``misinformation''--to science writers, newspapers, and TV 
journalists around the country.
  If you think Exxon's false-doubt campaign is a thing of the distant 
past, think again. At Exxon Mobil's 2015--this decade--shareholder 
meeting, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson was still alleging uncertainty, saying 
that we ``don't really know what the climate effects of 600 parts per 
million versus 450 parts per million will be, because the models simply 
are not that good.'' Tillerson, like Raymond, didn't mention the 1982 
report, which modeled very well the climate effects. Exxon by then had 
sat on the 1982 report for 33 years.
  If this all seems somehow familiar to you, it ought to be because 
Exxon stole its false-doubt strategy directly from the tobacco 
industry's science-denial playbook.
  In 1999, the Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the 
major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups, alleging 
that the tobacco companies had ``engaged in and executed--and continued 
to engage in and execute--a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the 
public.''
  In 2006, U.S. district court judge Gladys Kessler, in a lengthy and 
authoritative opinion that was upheld on appeal by the U.S. court of 
appeals, found the tobacco companies' fraudulent campaign to have 
amounted to racketeering. In her ruling, she found that the tobacco 
industry ``coordinated significant aspects of their public relations, 
scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared 
objective--to . . . maximize industry profits by preserving and 
expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the 
public.''
  Take that sentence and replace the word ``cigarettes'' with ``fossil 
fuel,'' and Judge Kessler's finding describes exactly what Exxon and 
other companies did: coordinated significant aspects of their public 
relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of 
a shared objective--to maximize industry profits by preserving and 
expanding the market for fossil fuel through a scheme to deceive the 
public.
  In the face of increasingly obvious and overwhelming evidence, Exxon 
and the fossil fuel industry have recently backed away a little bit 
from their false-doubt efforts on climate science, but have they really 
changed their stripes, or have they, in their long battle to prevent 
meaningful climate action, just fallen back to new battlements?
  Take carbon pricing. Economists from across the ideological spectrum 
say carbon pricing is the most efficient and the most effective way to 
reduce carbon emissions. In the past year, Exxon and BP each announced 
that they supported carbon pricing and would give $1 million to 
Americans for Carbon Dividends, a group advocating for carbon pricing. 
But these donations are a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of 
millions Exxon has given to political machinery peddling climate denial 
and opposing carbon pricing or compared to the $13 million BP just 
spent to defeat Washington State's carbon pricing initiative.
  Senator Schatz and I have some firsthand experience because we have 
introduced a revenue-neutral carbon fee bill in the last three 
Congresses. I can assure you, Exxon has made no effort to support it.
  Industry support for carbon pricing seems to mysteriously evaporate 
in proximity to an actual carbon pricing bill.
  Science writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben sums up Exxon's 
climate strategy well. I quote him here:

       [T]he world's largest and most powerful oil company knew 
     everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-
     1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically 
     funding climate denial and lying about the state of the 
     science.

  That is its record. It is responsible for where we are in Congress. 
After the Citizens United decision, it paid to slaughter bipartisanship 
in Congress on climate change with its new Citizens United political 
weaponry. It paid a whole armada of front groups to lie about climate 
change, and those front groups are still out there and are still lying. 
The industry is behind the relentless climate antagonism we have seen 
from business groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the 
National Association of Manufacturers, as if clean and renewable energy 
doesn't involve commerce and manufacturing. It created and funded a 
vast apparatus of denial and obstruction, and it has lied and lied and 
lied.
  There is every reason to believe that the oil industry, with Exxon at 
the lead, remains just as opposed to meaningful climate action today as 
it has been for three decades. With its long history of lying, it is 
easy to believe that whatever corporate sinews might bind Exxon to the 
truth are long atrophied and degraded and that this is just another 
chapter in the industry's great climate scam--that this is the 
``pretend to support a carbon price'' chapter of the scam.
  Even if somewhere in Exxon's corporate bowels there were some flicker 
of sincerity, it would not be enough for Exxon to just stop the scam. 
After all of the evil Exxon has done, it needs to undo its evil, not 
just stop doing evil.
  It is not enough to stand next to the burning house you have lit on 
fire and pledge no further arson. Even if you are sincere about no 
further arson, it is still not enough. You need to help step in and put 
the fire out. You need to put your heart and your back into putting out 
the fire that you lit.
  When you are sincere, Exxon, I will be in. Let's solve this. Yet you 
have a long record and much to atone for. Meanwhile, our planet remains 
on course for the great, irreversible harm your own scientists 
predicted nearly four decades ago.
  It is due to Exxon's political mischief that we have yet to wake up 
in Congress to what Exxon itself predicted 37 years ago.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.