January 14, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 8 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
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CLIMATE CHANGE; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 8
(Senate - January 14, 2020)
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[Pages S186-S189] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] CLIMATE CHANGE Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the publication Grist did an article recently about climate change with a bunch of images. I grabbed a few of those images, and I have added a few in this speech because they give a pretty good overview of the mess that we are in on climate change. Right now, the most devastating wildfires anyone can remember are ripping across Australia. Here, you see an iconic kangaroo going by a building up in flames. Those Australian fires have destroyed thousands of homes. They have killed an estimated 1 billion animals--get your head around 1 billion animals killed--and they have made a day of breathing the air in Sidney, Australia, the equivalent of smoking 37 cigarettes. In fact, I read in the news that in a tennis championship in Australia today, one of the competitors withdrew because the air was so bad that she couldn't finish her match. Why is this going on? According to the Australia Bureau of Meteorology, Australia has warmed by about a full degree Celsius over the last century. That means a longer, hotter fire season, which loads the dice in favor of extreme winds and heat and bushfire, as they call it in Australia. Why did it warm in Australia? The cause could not be more clear. This is the measurement of carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, going back hundreds of thousands of years--100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, and 800,000 years. That is way back. There was no agriculture then, no wheel then, and, for sure, no Twitter--nothing. Over time, we have seen this steady range of atmospheric CO2 levels, running between about 180 and--here is the cresting out--just under 300 parts per million. So it is 800,000 years, all between 180 and 300 degrees. That is a 120-degree range. We are now out of that range by more than the entire range itself. We are out by more than 120. This chart goes up to 400 parts per million. We are literally off the chart right now at 410 parts per million. Of course, this is connected to heat. That is not news. The graphics here were compiled by Clayton Aldern and Emily Pontecorvo [[Page S187]] of Grist. So let me take this opportunity to thank them. This next chart shows the increase in carbon dioxide just in the last decade. This is from 2010 to 2019. If you took the previous graph, which is in here somewhere, this is just the tiniest little slice at the very edge of this--just 10 years out of 800,000. That is like one eighty-thousandths of that graph, that tiny little sliver. In that tiny little sliver, here is what has happened. It has gone from below 390 parts per million up to 410. We hit the magic 400 back in about 2013 for the first time right here with this dot. That was a big deal. The measurement came from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Never, ever, ever before in human history, over those hundreds of thousands of years, had we seen 400 parts per million, and in just the last decade, it shot up by all this. In fact, in the last 7 years, it shot up more than 10 parts per million. We know something about what happens as these CO2 levels go up. We know that the planet warms. That is not news. We have known that since Abraham Lincoln was President. When Abraham Lincoln was riding around Washington in his top hat, scientists had already begun to write about and understand the link between greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and global warming. Heck, even Exxon scientists knew about this decades ago, and their scientists warned the company about this in reports that we now have. Of course, Exxon did the wickedest possible thing with that information, which was to bury it, deny it, and try to convince the public that the opposite was true. There is nothing new in any of this information. The science is totally established, and that level is unprecedented in humankind's history. As a result--guess what--things have started to go haywire. This chart shows the cost of annual billion-dollar disasters in the United States, the disasters that cost us $1 billion each. There is a very clear trendline that draws through this, and it is climbing upward. If you don't believe me, ask an insurance company, ask a reinsurance company. Now, bear in mind that these costs, the cost of natural disasters, are just one of the big economic threats from climate change. We have warnings about coastal property values crashing. Those come from Freddie Mac, of all places. We have warnings about the carbon bubble crashing. Those come from the Bank of England and many other sovereign banks. We have warnings about insurance markets and about the bond safety of coastal communities. In fact, those numbers--the numbers of the cost of natural disasters--are actually pretty tiny so far compared to what is projected. What is projected is an estimated tens of trillions of dollars by 2100. One way this plays out is in my home State. This is northern Narragansett Bay. Here is Providence, our capital city. Here is Warwick. Over here is Bristol. Everything that is blue on this map is land today. On these blue parts people have homes; people have businesses; the State has infrastructure; there is economic activity; and, my God, there are memories. Well, the blue disappears. The blue disappears. The blue disappears at 10 feet of sea level rise. That is what this measures. This comes off a program called STORMTOOLS run by the Coastal Resources Management Council, our Rhode Island CZMA agency. Our State officials, based on the latest information from NOAA and from our University of Rhode Island and from the Coastal Resources Management Council, are preparing for scenarios up to 9 feet of sea level rise in Rhode Island by the end of the century--not storm surge, just bathtub-level sea level rise. Add in storm surge, and you not only get over 9 feet; you get over the 10 feet that is displayed here in this graph. The damage to my State is going to be very serious. The very map of Rhode Island will change because of this. Now, some of my colleagues think this is all funny, that this is something we can just yuck it up about and mock the science and call people alarmists when they take this seriously. It is deadly serious. In fact, a 2017 report from the real estate database company Zillow identified over 4,800 homes in Rhode Island with a collective value at over $3 billion that would be underwater by 2100 using only a 6-foot bathtub sea level rise figure--$3 billion just in my small State. That doesn't count the value of the memories. If you have a house near the shore, you very likely have family memories. Some of these places in Rhode Island go back generations--even small, small houses. People have had them. Their grandfather had them. They have memories. All of that is at risk to be lost. So don't think I am not going to fight about this just because somebody else thinks this is funny. The reason that is happening is the oceans are warming. When you warm water, it expands, so it rises--in addition, of course, to all the trillions of gallons pouring off of Greenland and other land-based icecaps. Look at how the ocean has warmed. The red is the 3-month average. It has more variation in it. The black is the annual average. The blue is the 5-year average that smooths it out a little bit more. The ocean is absorbing intense amounts of heat. I will tell you how much heat the ocean is absorbing. If you took the Hiroshima atom bomb and you captured all of its energy as heat--it produced light; it produced a variety of other things--the rate at which the ocean is warming is the equivalent--I usually use--of between three and four Hiroshima-sized nuclear detonations per second in the ocean--per second. So, in the time of this speech, there will be dozens, probably 100, Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions' worth of heat that the oceans have to absorb. Today a new report came out that says that the number is actually five Hiroshima-sized explosions per second. As they measure it better, as they see it increase more, we are seeing that number. It is not just that they are warming. That would be bad enough. They are becoming more acid. They are becoming more acid because they absorb carbon dioxide at the surface. This is a chemical interface. This took away 90 percent of the extra heat that our fossil fuel emissions have caused, the absorption of the heat by the oceans. At the same time, while it was absorbing 90 percent of the heat, it was also absorbing 30 percent of the carbon dioxide. Imagine for a second if we were not an ocean planet. Imagine if we were a fully terrestrial planet and we didn't have the oceans to buffer this. You would have to add back that extra third of CO2 , which would be a 50-percent increase on the lower base, and you would have to multiply by 10 the increase from heat. You put those two factors together--this is a very rough number, and the scientists on my staff would be mad at me for saying this, but maybe 15 times the result that we are seeing right now. We are experiencing a fraction of what we would face without the cooling and buffering oceans. Without our oceans, Australia wouldn't just be one location on fire; the whole planet would be a catastrophe. Those are the chances that we are taking. Why are we taking these chances? We are taking these chances because politicians don't dare say no to the crooked fossil fuel industry that profits from this mess. That is just the sickening political fact that we have to deal with here. That is steadily moving because the public is beginning to understand this. Notwithstanding a long and very, very expensive campaign of misleading propaganda by the fossil fuel industry, people are starting to catch on. These are the numbers--from 60 up to 72 percent--of people who believe that warming is happening. The number of people who are denying went from 20 percent down to 12 percent. Understanding is up. Denial is down. Ditto for that it is caused by us: 46 up to 59 percent, and 35 down to 30 percent denying. Understanding is up. Denial is down. So the other thing that is good that is happening behind these numbers is that Americans of a whole variety of persuasions actually favor the solutions that scientists and economists recommend to solve the climate change problem. Now, the fossil fuel industry, in its portfolio of lies, tells you that the remedies to solve climate change will be painful. That is just another fossil fuel lie, and Americans are catching on to that one too. An October 2019 Pew poll found that two-thirds [[Page S188]] of Americans want the Federal Government to do more to combat climate change. One thing that we are getting rid of in a hurry is coal. This represents the cumulative retirements of coal plants. Coal plants are phasing out, with 546 coal plants having closed in the United States since 2010, just in this last decade. In late 2019, Murray Energy became the eighth U.S. coal company in a year to file for bankruptcy. Coal plants anywhere are virtually unfinanceable. We have even seen operating, depreciated coal plants close because just operating that coal plant costs more than financing, building, and operating renewable energy facilities. That is good news for our safety and for our well- being. Here is our overall energy portfolio and where it has increased. Look at solar go. Ho, ho. Oh, my gosh. It is up about 1,000 percent. It is really, really rocking. The second biggest increase: wind. More are coming on as we begin to develop offshore wind. Fossil fuels still dominate. You can see this little inlay here--the transportation sector--but Americans are starting to buy more and more electric vehicles. Some really stunning new models are coming to the market. We are, of course, not doing anywhere near enough to encourage their adoption, which means we are likely to lose out, and we are doing this because rogue fossil fuel companies like Marathon Petroleum use political mischief to poke sticks in the wheels of vehicle fuel efficiency standards. What the fossil fuel industry likes to do is to blame China: Oh, we are not going to do anything because China has to go first. What they omit telling you is that, at the end of 2017, 40 percent of all the electric cars in the world were in China. In 2018, China manufactured nearly half of all electric vehicles worldwide. China dominates global markets for electric buses and for electric two-wheelers--scooters and so forth. You may recall that Exxon Corporation fabulously predicted to its shareholders--a prediction they have not yet corrected--that there would be zero electric buses by 2040. China is already operating 400,000. We are going to get run away from by China if we don't smarten up and compete. Here is more good news. The price of digging out and transporting and burning dirty fuels is high: nearly $110 for a megawatt hour of coal- fueled power. If you look, the most expensive are nuclear power plants; the next most expensive, coal; the next most expensive, solar thermal, which generates heat; the next most expensive, natural gas; and down here, the two cheapest by far are solar photovoltaic and wind. So we know where these markets are going, with just $40 per megawatt hour for solar photovoltaic compared to $110 for coal. Over the last decade, the average cost of solar dropped from $200 per megawatt hour to less than a quarter of that. The cost of wind power is down, and offshore wind is emerging. Battery storage now competes on price with gas-fired, peak-demand plants in many areas. Even with the massive subsidy that we all have to pay to prop up fossil fuel, renewables are starting to win on price anyway. If the price of wind, solar, battery storage, and other renewable technologies continues to drop, we could reach 100 percent renewable energy by the middle of the century, and we will need to if we are going to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe zone. In fact, here is what you see. The power sector's emissions are declining. There is a lot of work left to do in transportation--what you might call room for improvement there. There is a lot of room for improvement in industry and a lot of room for improvement in buildings and other. So there is work to be done here. Of course, these other sectors don't have much of an incentive to solve their emissions problem because it is still free to pollute. We continue to violate the most basic market theory about externalities, and we let these fossil fuel polluters pollute for free. When we let them pollute for free, it takes away any incentive in these other sectors to fix that problem--and, of course, that is goal 1 for the fossil-fuel industry. With a $650 billion-per-year subsidy, they are throwing everything they have politically at trying to protect that phony, non-market-based, unfair subsidy. And even with it, they are still losing. We could be doing better in all these sectors if we put a proper market-based price on carbon. So far they have won, if you can call not preparing for a looming calamity to be winning. Here is a quick summary of the lessons of the 2010s. One, the science is clear--we have blown by 400 parts per million. We are now in unchartered territory for the human species. Two, climate change is a massive threat to our economy, particularly with the danger of crashes coming soon in coastal property values and carbon assets. I just read the letter from BlackRock to CEOs and investors. BlackRock is one of the biggest investment companies in the world. They have warned of what they called capital reallocation. That means things are going to shift--happening as markets anticipate climate hazard-- things like facing the danger of coastal property value crashes or carbon asset value crashes. Those crashes create capital reallocation. I love the way economists talk. All the agony behind that, and they call it capital reallocation. Wrecking the world economy, they call systemic risk. Three, Americans are getting that climate change is a big problem. It is a big change. It is a big change particularly with young Republicans, who totally get it. Here is my challenge to my Republican colleagues in the Senate: Sit down with your own young staffers. Sit down with the young staffers in your own office and hear them out about climate change. You will see that there is a big generational divide. Four, coal is on the ropes. Experts predict huge stranded assets in gas and oil. Solar and other renewables are booming as they outcompete fossil fuel on costs alone. That is a genie even the crooked fossil fuel machine can't put back in the bottle. Of course, the fossil fuel industry is still up to no good, with its vast array of phony front groups so it does not look like it is them. They have names like the George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute--a bunch of phony front groups filled with stables of paid liars emitting slimy rivers of dark money, polluting our politics as badly as their emissions pollute our planet. That hasn't stopped, and they should be held accountable. The 2020s are going to be tough, for sure. Australia is seeing the opening episode. I have an analogy that I will use as I close. I have spent time running rivers. I like running rivers. I like running rivers in inflatables. I like running rivers in kayaks. I have run rivers from the placid Rappahannock in Virginia to the mighty Colorado through our massive Grand Canyon and lots in between. One of the things about running a river that has big rapids is that the first thing you do is you look at the map and you learn where the big rapids are so you can stop, get safely to shore, and figure out whether you can navigate the rapids or whether you need to portage around them. Well, we had a map for where the rapids are on this. The scientists showed us. They told us. They warned us. But we ignored them. But not paying attention to what you are told on the science map is not your last chance. Going down the river, when you get closer, you can actually start to hear the falls, the rapids roaring up ahead of you. The wildfires, the flooding, the rising seas, the species relocating around the planet--if that is not a roaring for us to hear now from the planet about the dangers ahead, shame on us. It is enough for us to know that we are actually getting close to big trouble, and we still do nothing. Then there is a point on the river where it is your last chance. You have no choice as to whether you are going to miss the rapids or the falls ahead. You have ignored all the warnings. You have ignored the map. You haven't listened to the roar, and now you are close. Now you will have to paddle very hard to avoid the roaring rapids ahead. Nature's forces are pulling you inexorably toward the cataract. You will have to paddle for your life to avoid it. That is where I believe we are right now. I believe that as human kind, as a [[Page S189]] country, we have to paddle for our lives right now to avoid being sucked over the climate falls and into dangers that we don't want to see and that we don't want our children to have to see. Let's wake up here. Let's shake off the shackles of this crooked fossil fuel industry, and let's get paddling for our lives. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. McSally). The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________
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