September 15, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 159 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
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Climate Change (Executive Calendar); Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 159
(Senate - September 15, 2020)
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[Pages S5599-S5601] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] Climate Change Madam President, I am here for the 271st time to call this Chamber's attention to climate change and to two of the reports on this defining issue of our generation. As I speak, wildfires are devouring the American West and consuming American lives: east of Salem, OR, two people dead in a scorched vehicle; in Butte County, CA, three dead, overrun by a fast-moving fire; in Ashland, a 1-year-old boy; in Malden, WA, almost the entire town burned down; half a million Oregonians evacuated due to fire. That is 1 out of 10 people in the entire State. Over the weekend, Oregon's emergency management director said they are preparing for a ``mass fatality event.'' Paradise, CA, suffered apocalyptic destruction in the 2018 Camp Fire. It is, once again, under fire warnings, this time the North Complex fire, which has stunned firefighters with its rapid growth and ferocity. We cannot avoid it. Climate change is here. Plenty of factors contribute to individual wildfires, but climate change is now always among them. Last fall, I went out to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and met leading wildfire researcher Daniel Swain. As Dr. Swain puts it: Climate change has not just made the extreme heat waves that coincide with fires worse. The bigger effect is the more subtle, long-term warming. That couple of degrees of (average) warming over decades . . . it's lurking in the background, sucking extra moisture out of the vegetation and the soil. The new normal is smoke, ash, orange skies, and constant nerve- fraying vigilance. Climate change's impacts through the West land crushing economic blows. The 2018 Camp Fire that burned Paradise cost $16.7 billion. NOAA says natural disasters--mostly hurricanes and wildfires, both highly climate-related--inflicted $91 billion worth of damage that year, 2018; and over the past 40 years, 241 climate- and weather-related disasters have cost Americans $1.6 trillion. The first report I want to talk about warns that it is not just what is lost in floods and flames. As climate risk worsens, the harder it is for communities to rebuild, for bankers to write mortgages, for owners to find insurers willing to continue to write policies and pay out claims. That risk spreads beyond burned or flooded land and runs through the rest of the economy. Climate risk becomes what economists call systemic risk. So one of our leading regulatory agencies, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has done a report on risk. [[Page S5600]] Think of the 2008 financial crisis. That home mortgage problem spread far beyond mortgage lenders into a brutal global recession. Millions of people who had no connection to a bad mortgage lost their jobs, lost their homes, or lost their retirement savings. Many are still recovering from that collapse. Now think even worse. The Stanford Business School's Corporations and Society Initiative believes ``the financial risks from climate change are systemic''--there is that economic word again--that these risks are ``singular in nature''; and that ``[g]lobal economic losses from climate change could reach $23 trillion--three or four times the scale of the 2008 Financial Crisis.'' Those of us who were here for the 2008 financial crisis don't want to see that happen again, and we certainly don't want to see it happen at a three- or four-times scale. Senator Schatz and I have been calling for financial regulators to do a better job accounting for these risks. In May, we wrote to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Subcommittee on Climate-Related Market Risk. We had two simple requests: One, recommend a carbon price, and, two, urge our financial regulators to include climate risks in their core market risk assessments and supervisory practices. The CFTC Subcommittee report is out, and I am happy to report that they did both. They write: ``Financial markets will only be able to channel resources efficiently to activities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions if an economy-wide price on carbon is in place at a level that reflects the true social cost of those emissions.'' That is actually kind of economics 101, but it is good to hear them say it. They went on to say: Climate change poses a major risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy. . . . U.S. financial regulators must recognize that climate change poses serious emerging risks to the U.S. financial system, and they should move urgently and decisively to measure, understand, and address these risks. And what if we don't? Well, the CFTC report goes on: Failing to act would lead to what they called ``disorderly repricing of assets''--that is commonly known as a crash--``with cascading effects'' through the economy. Put simply, do nothing and trigger financial chaos far and wide, just like 2008, except probably worse. The CFTC report calls for corporate America to tell the truth about climate-related risks to their business models. Investors need to know the truth for the free market to operate. The subcommittee writes that we must require ``disclosure by corporations of information on material, climate-related financial risks . . . to ensure that climate risks are measured and managed effectively.'' That is a key point. We have seen Exxon, for instance, downplay climate risks to investors, shareholders, and the general public. That mischief will stop if financial regulators require an honest accounting of climate-related risks. The CFTC report is a big deal, but it requires Congress to act. America is among the few industrialized nations worst prepared for wide-ranging reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Regulators will not be enough; Congress must act. That is where another report comes in, the Senate Democrats' Special Report on the Climate Crisis. Under Chairman Schatz's leadership, we recently released a roadmap for fixing that problem. We propose a plan to cut emissions across our economy, to get on course to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, to create a host of well-paying jobs in clean energy and other emerging technologies, and to remedy the burdens of pollution across all sectors of the economy, including those usually overlooked. We know we have a battle ahead. The fossil fuel industry runs a covert operation that has blocked progress in Congress. This covert op is extremely well funded and has reached its roots deeply into our politics. We need to tear up those roots. This is how. First, our report tells the dark story of that covert op: the story of the fossil fuel industry apparatus built to obscure the industry's hands behind phony front groups, the story of capture and control of corporate trade associations, the story of lives marketed by flashy PR firms, and the story of brute-force political spending and threats to blockade climate progress. Those tactics were a test run for the fossil fuel industry by Big Tobacco: Manufacture false doubt in science and flex your political muscle against anyone who dares to challenge you. That bullying worked pretty well, and then when the Supreme Court handed down Citizens United, the fossil fuel industry supercharged its covert campaign with dark money, almost immediately turning the ability to spend unlimited money in politics into spending unlimited dark money in politics. Then the bullying worked really well. Citizens United was a climate watershed. After that decision unleashed its fearful weaponry, not one Republican in this body joined any comprehensive bill to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Senate heartbeat of bipartisan climate activity before Citizens United, which I remember and experienced in 2007, 2008, and 2009, all flat-lined under the supercharged political pressure unleashed by fossil fuel interests with Citizens United behind them. Our Senate report tells the full rotten story because that is step 1 in fighting covert influence. Follow the money. Show the American people how corporate interests pay to block progress on climate. Show the co-opted trade associations and the phony front groups. Let the American people see the scheme, and they are less likely to fall for it. Second is cleaning it up. Fully exposing and ending Citizens United dark money and the fossil fuel scheme will take reform. Bold transparency measures like the DISCLOSE Act are needed, and our report calls for that. Then, we need to wake up the so-called good guys in corporate America. They need to see the mischief a few bad actors have perpetrated right under their noses. They need to see how the fossil fuel industry commandeered their corporate trade associations, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is one of the two most obstructive organizations against climate action. Why would the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with its wide corporate membership, be one of the two most obstructive organizations against climate action unless the fossil fuel industry had co-opted it right under their noses? The so-called good guys need to examine how their own lobbyists and their own trade associations and their own political operatives are doing on climate because with very few and very rare exceptions, the answer is that they are doing nothing on climate, not lifting a finger in Congress. Just last week, the giant tech companies came in through their trade group TechNet, with a 13-page list of all of their lobbying priorities--13 pages and not a mention of climate. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook--the Big Tech barons--a lot of big talk, and they never even mentioned climate in their shopping list for Congress. Everyone needs to understand the two faces of corporate America and to imagine how quickly Congress would act if powerful trade associations like the chamber became actual advocates for serious climate policies or if the big interests in Congress, like Big Ag, or Big Tech, or Wall Street, or the insurance industry actually took an interest in something more than their own special interest programs and tax benefits. What if climate had been on Big Tech's list of priorities, perhaps even on page 1 of 13? That would change the game. A 16th century alchemist by the name of Paracelsus is credited with the phrase ``sola dosis facit venenum,'' Latin for ``the dose makes the poison.'' The dose makes the poison. The idea is that everything from a nerve agent to the water we need to drink to survive can be lethal if delivered in sufficient dosage. Right now, in the American West, toxins in the climate wildfire smoke waft in such high concentrations that our typical measurement systems fail. The dosage is literally off the charts. In our Earth's atmosphere, the dosage of carbon dioxide is way outside the range of human experience, putting all of mankind into uncharted territory, to face unprecedented dangers. Citizens United unleashed toxic doses of money, unprecedented doses of virulent dark money, into our American [[Page S5601]] political atmosphere. So our democracy is poisoned, stunned by secret fossil fuel money and threats, and, consequently, failing to listen to plain warnings like those of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. We had better act before the poison has overpowered us, and we had better get the dosages back to safe and normal levels. One good start would be to wake up to the reality of climate change. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
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