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[Page S3019]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, earlier this month, a report from
Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory found that carbon dioxide levels in our
atmosphere have now reached the highest level in human history--in
human history. It was a chilling reminder that the threat from climate
change is real, immediate, and existential. Almost everyone accepts
this science and the gravity of the threat it portends. The only group
of folks that still seem skeptical of climate science are Republicans
and the Trump administration.
Yesterday the New York Times reported that the Trump EPA is planning
to rewrite the established benchmarks for unsafe levels of air
pollution. You heard that right. They are planning to use dubious math
to obscure the real and long-known health risks of air pollution. These
new formulations would result in fewer predicted deaths than what the
experts have long agreed to. People will still die. The numbers will
just be wrong about the effect.
Why, might you ask, would anyone want to obscure the full health
risks of air pollution? Because then the Trump administration could use
the fake math to justify further rollbacks to clean air rules at a time
when global warming is increasing and when Americans know the danger.
This Trump administration and the Republican majority are rolling the
clock back--more carbon, more coal, more oil, and more gas, when we
need less. We all know that.
What kind of Orwellian nonsense is this? The Environmental Protection
Agency making it easier to pollute the environment? It is a textbook
definition of ``dystopian.''
As my colleague Senator Whitehouse so often points out, dark money
lurks behind so much of what the Trump administration does. Big Oil,
Big Gas, and big polluters everywhere are the only possible boosters of
this decision. It is their money, funneled to political organizations
and politicians without a trace of disclosure, that motivates folks in
the Trump administration to make it easier to release more pollution
into the air.
We should be using the Senate to debate climate policies in search of
common ground, but Leader McConnell has decided to bring forward his
version of the Green New Deal just so his party could vote against it.
We know what Leader McConnell and the Republicans are against. What are
they for in dealing with climate change? So far, nada, zero, nothing--
they haven't put a single thing on the floor. The American people see
the effects of climate change in their lives, and they know Congress
must act. Only the Republican majority stands in the way.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Romney). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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