Climate Change
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in a Chamber where the debate on climate change has become woefully one-sided and in a Congress where House Republicans just voted unanimously to oppose the only climate solution Republicans have come to, I want to use my 140th climate speech to remind us of a time when global warming concerns came from both sides of the aisle.
Nearly 30 years ago this week, a Republican chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution, who also served twice as Governor of my State and as Secretary of the Navy, convened a 2-day, 5-panel hearing on ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and climate change. It was June, 1986, and Senator John Chafee, a Republican of Rhode Island, gave opening remarks warning of ``the buildup of greenhouse gases, which threaten to warm the Earth to unprecedented levels. Such a warming could, within the next 50 to 75 years, produce enormous changes in a climate that has remained fairly stable for thousands of years.''
``[T]here is a very real possibility,'' Senator Chafee went on to say, ``that man--through ignorance or indifference, or both--is irreversibly altering the ability of our atmosphere to perform basic life support functions for the planet.''
Last weekend, the Washington Post wrote an article recalling this historic hearing, entitled ``30 years ago scientists warned Congress on global warming.
Imagine, by the way, a Republican-controlled Senate that would even have a Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution. How things have changed. The present Republican Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee is the author of ``The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.'' The contrast is stark between what Senate Republicans and their hearing witnesses were saying 30 years ago and what the polluter-funded GOP is saying today.
Thirty years ago, Senator Chafee declared:
This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling. The scientific evidence . . . is telling us we have a problem; a serious problem.
According to our current EPW Committee chairman, ``Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear rather than science.''
The depth and sophistication of climate science has done nothing but increase since the Chafee hearings, and the damage from climate change is not just a projection; it has started to occur. Scientists are now able to connect the dots. Australian researchers, for example, have determined that the ocean warming that led to widespread and devastating coral bleaching, killing off a significant chunk of the Great Barrier Reef in March, was made 175 times more likely by human- caused climate change. As one researcher put it, ``this is the smoking gun.''
Sadly, as the scientific consensus about the causes and consequences of human-driven climate change has strengthened over 30 years, the GOP's trust in science has eroded. They don't appear to even believe the science in their home State universities. All you have to do is go look at your own home State universities' positions on climate and how they are presented. It is right there.
But when one looks at how that party is funded and how it has now become virtually the political wing of the fossil fuel industry, one can understand this sad state of affairs.
Three decades ago, Republican Senator Chafee said:
Scientists have characterized our treatment of the greenhouse effect as a global experiment. It strikes me as a form of planetary Russian roulette.
He went on to say:
By not making policy choices today, by sticking to a ``wait and see'' approach, . . . [b]y allowing these gases to continue to build in the atmosphere, this generation may be committing all of us to severe economic and environmental disruption without ever having decided that the value of ``business as usual'' is worth the risks.
Those who believe that these are problems to be dealt with by future generations are misleading themselves. Man's activities to date may have already committed us to some level of temperature change.
Even with 30 more years of solid science buttressing it, many in the present-day GOP deny that basic understanding and ignore even the home State mainstream climate science that underpins it. A few--a very few-- Republicans in Congress are now so bold as to accept mainstream, established science as it is taught in their home State universities, as is accepted by all our national science agencies and laboratories, and as it is warned of by our military and intelligence services, which is a nice step. But none will yet act on that understanding. Even that tiny cohort behaves in the face of this known risk--a risk the party recognized 30 years ago--as if it is enough to accept the science and do nothing. All 14 of the House Members who sponsored the House Resolution on climate change--all 14 of them--just voted with ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers against a carbon fee. When the whip comes down.
Thirty years ago, the Chafee hearing witnesses included the long-time director of NASA's Goddard Center, Dr. James Hansen; Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton; Dr. Robert Watson; and then-Senator Al Gore of Tennessee.
Dr. Hansen, now one of the leading advocates for immediate and decisive climate action within the science community, educated the subcommittee on the theory underpinning global climate models.
Dr. Oppenheimer, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, talked about the need for immediate--30 years ago--climate action. Uncertainty, he told the Senators, was no excuse for inaction.
Dr. Watson, who would go on to chair the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1997 and 2002 said: ``It is not wise to experiment on the planet Earth by allowing the concentration of these trace gases to increase without full understanding the consequences.''
Senator Gore agreed with these scientists, testifying that ``there is no longer any significant difference of opinion within the scientific community about the fact that the greenhouse effect is real and is already occurring.''
The current GOP chair of our EPW Committee has mocked Dr. Hansen and the IPCC and Vice President Gore, reserving a particular disdain for Vice President Gore, who he says is ``drowning in a sea of his own global warming illusions,'' and ``desperately trying to keep global warming alarmism alive today.''
Thirty years ago, the tone of the GOP was much different. Where Republicans today mock the prudential rule, Senator Chafee actually advocated for prudence in environmental policy. He said this:
The path that society is following today is much like driving a car toward the edge of a cliff. We have a choice. We can go ahead, take no action and drive off the edge-- figuring that, since the car will not hit the bottom of the canyon until our generation is already long gone, the problem of coping with what we have made inevitable, is for future generations to deal with. We can hope that they will learn how to adapt. On the other hand, we can put the brakes on now, before the car gets any closer to the edge of the cliff and before we reach a point where momentum will take us over the edge, with or without application of the brakes.
Present-day Republicans just want to turn up the radio to the tune of ``Drill, Baby, Drill'' and jam the accelerator to the floor. Our current EPW chair has even said: ``CO
Thirty years ago, Senator Chafee knew there was much yet to learn about climate change. Scientists will agree on the margins that there still is more to learn. But Senator Chafee said then that we have to face up to it anyway. I quote him again.
We don't have all the perfect scientific evidence. There may be gaps here and there. . . . Nonetheless, I think we have got to face up to it. We can't wait for every shred of evidence to come in and be absolutely perfect; I think we ought to start . . . to try and do something about [greenhouse gases], and certainly, to increase the public's awareness of the problem and the feeling, as you say, that it is not hopeless. . . . We can do something.''
Six and one-half years ago, the United States was preparing to join the gathering of nations in Copenhagen for the 2009 U.N. Climate Change Conference. When that happened, business leaders took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for passage of U.S. climate legislation, for investment in the clean energy economy, and for leadership to inspire the rest of the world to join the fight against climate change. ``[W]e must embrace the challenge today to ensure that future generations are left with a safe planet and a strong economy.''
``Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.''
Well, interestingly, one of the signatories of that advertisement was none other than Donald J. Trump, Chairman and President of The Trump Organization. It is also signed by Eric F. Trump and Ivanka Trump. Even the 2009 version of the man who is now the Republican Party's presumptive nominee understood and put his name to the need to act on climate change.
Mr. President, what does this individual, now the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, want to do? He is proposing to roll back President Obama's Clean Power Plan and cancel the landmark Paris climate agreement. The same guy who signed this advertisement has since labeled decades of research by thousands of honest and honorable climate scientists as a ``hoax,'' a ``con job,'' and ``BS,'' to use a more polite form of his expression, all the while on his business side he wants a seawall to protect his golf resort from ``global warming and its effects.''
What do actual climate scientists think of the energy policies of the Republican nominee-to-be? Well, in reference to canceling the Paris Agreement and undoing the Clean Power Plan, Dr. Paul Higgins, who is the director of the American Meteorological Society's Policy Program remarked:
Undoing these efforts would mean that future emissions of carbon dioxide would be larger and future atmospheric concentrations would be higher. Higher CO
Dr. Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said: ``[My] quick reaction is that [his] comments show incredible ignorance with regard to the science and global affairs.'' Incredible ignorance, that is the party standard.
Dr. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University--a State that has a GOP Member in the Senate--put it bluntly when he said, ``[I]t is not an overstatement to say that [these] climate change views''--of this man--``and policy proposals constitute an existential threat to this planet.''
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University--that famous liberal, leftwing university, Texas Tech University--has spoken of the potential economic cost of inaction. She said:
As the impacts grow ever more evident, severe, and costly, what was obvious to the 195 nations who met in Paris will become obvious to every human on this planet: doing something about climate change is far cheaper than not.
A quick aside on Dr. Hayhoe's comment, when this becomes ``obvious to every human on this planet,'' what will then be the legacy of the Republican Party? Not a proud one. Indeed, it will be a legacy to run from. The fossil fuel companies, their trade associations, front groups, and many in the GOP have spent the 30 years since the Chafee hearings obstructing responsible climate action despite better scientific understanding and growing public support for climate action. The fossil fuel industry has particular blame. They have erected a multi-tentacled, climate-denial apparatus that has deliberately caused that obstruction, and there are plenty of scientists looking at that now.
Citizens United is what gave that industry the unprecedented political weaponry that it has used to accomplish that end. The GOP- Citizens United-fossil fuel industry nexus will earn history's condemnation. Let's just hope it is not too late.
The Washington Post article asked Dr. Oppenheimer to reflect on the intervening 30 years. Dr. Oppenheimer said: This hearing helped bring the concern together, and essentially painted a picture that things are kind of spinning out of control, that science is trying to tell us something, that the world seems to be changing even faster than our scientific understanding of the problem, and worst of all, our political leaders are way behind the eight ball.
I knew Senator Chafee. He was a family friend. He may have been my father's best friend. He was an optimist and a pragmatist. He used to say: Given half a chance, nature will rebound and overcome tremendous setbacks, but we must--at the very least--give it that half a chance. He also knew nature's tolerance is not unlimited. At those groundbreaking hearings, Senator Chafee warned:
It seems that the problems man creates for our planet are never ending. But we have found solutions for prior difficulties, and we will for these as well. What is required is for all of us to do a better job of anticipating and responding to today's new environmental warnings before they become tomorrow's environmental tragedies.
With those words, I close and yield the floor.
What They Said Sounds Eerily Familiar (By Chris Mooney)
It was such a different time--and yet, the message was so similar.
Thirty years ago, on June 10 and 11 of 1986, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works commenced two days of hearings, convened by Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), on the subject of ``Ozone Depletion, the Greenhouse Effect, and Climate Change.''
``This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling,'' Chafee said at the hearing. ``The scientific evidence . . . is telling us we have a problem, a serious problem.''
The hearings garnered considerable media coverage, including on the front page of The Washington Post (see below).
``There is no longer any significant difference of opinion within the scientific community about the fact that the greenhouse effect is real and already occurring,'' said newly elected Sen. Al Gore, who, as a congressman, had already held several House hearings on the matter. Gore cited the Villach Conference, a scientific meeting held in Austria the previous year (1985), which concluded that ``as a result of the increasing greenhouse gases it is now believed that in the first half of the next century (21st century) a rise of global mean temperature could occur which is greater than in any man's history.''
``They were the breakthrough hearings,'' remembers Rafe Pomerance, then a staffer with the World Resources Institute, who helped suggest witnesses. ``You never saw front-page coverage of this stuff.''
The scientists assembled included some of the voices that would be unmistakable and constant in coming decades. They included NASA's James Hansen, who would go on to become the most visible scientist in the world on the topic, and Robert Watson, who would go on to chair the soon-to-be formed United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And what they said was clear: Human greenhouse gas emissions would cause a major warming trend, and sea level rise to boot.
Here's how the hearings were covered on the front page of The Post:
The New York Times also covered the hearings, writing that ``The rise in carbon dioxide and other gases in the earth's atmosphere will have an earlier and more pronounced impact on global temperature and climate than previously expected, according to evidence presented to a Senate subcommittee today.''
Two years later, still more famously, Hansen would testify in another series of hearings that had an even greater public impact when it came to consciousness-raising--in part because at that point, he said that the warming of the globe caused by humans was already detectable. ``It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,'' he said then. In 1986, by contrast, scientists were still mostly predicting the future, rather than saying they had measured and documented a clear warming trend--one that could be clearly distinguished from natural climate variability--and that it was already having demonstrable consequences.
``The 1986 testimony is interesting because it was so similar to my 1988 testimony,'' Hansen recalls. ``I already had, and showed, some of the climate modeling results that formed the basis for my 1988 testimony.''
Granted, in some cases the future temperature projections made in the 1986 hearings--based on assumptions about the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a high sensitivity of the climate to them--suggested temperatures might rise even more, or even faster, than scientists now believe they will. By email, Hansen clarified that we now know the world is closer to one scenario he presented in 1986--called Scenario B--than to Scenario A, which assumed a much more rapid rate of greenhouse gas growth, and accordingly, much faster warming.
Still, the theoretical understanding was in place for why temperatures would rise as greenhouse gases filled the atmosphere--simply because scientists knew enough physics to know that that's what greenhouse gases do.
``We knew in the '70s what the problem was,'' said George Woodwell, founding director of the Woods Hole Research Center, who also testified in 1986. ``We knew there was a problem with sea level rise, all disruptions of climate. And the disruptions of climate are fundamental in that they undermine all the life on the Earth.''
Much of the formal understanding had been affirmed by a 1979 report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, led by the celebrated atmospheric physicist Jule Charney of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That group famously assessed that if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were to double, the ``most probable global warming'' would amount to 3 degrees Celsius, with a range between 1.5 degrees and 4.5 degrees, a number quite similar to modern estimates.
``We have tried but have been unable to find any overlooked or underestimated physical effects that could reduce the currently estimated global warmings due to a doubling of atmospheric CO
Indeed, the fundamental understanding of the greenhouse effect, and that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas because of its particular properties, dates back to the 19th century, when the Irish scientist John Tyndall conducted experiments to determine the radiative properties of gases.
No wonder, then, that there was so much that scientists could say about it in 1986. And indeed, if you look at global temperature trends, it turns out they were speaking at a time when the planet's temperatures were beginning a steady upswing, one that, despite various yearly deviations, would continue inexorably to the present:
``This hearing helped bring the concern together, and essentially painted a picture that things are kind of spinning out of control, that science is trying to tell us something, that the world seems to be changing even faster than our scientific understanding of the problem, and worst of all, our political leaders are way behind the eight ball,'' said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton climate scientist who testified that day, and argued that action was warranted on climate change even though not everything was known about its consequences.
``I have to say, reading my own testimony . . . you know, I'd stick by everything in that today, even though it's 30 years later,'' Oppenheimer said.
There was an additional context, though, that we're now less conversant with: The hearings were also about the issue of the depletion of the Earth's protective ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. Scientists had recently discovered an ``ozone hole'' over Antarctica that frightened the public, and seemed a definitive indicator of just how much human activities could change the atmosphere.
Even today, some still confuse the issue of climate change with that of the depletion of the ozone layer. They are not the same, but they are closely related in that both showed how seemingly small actions by individual humans, or by human industry, could add up to planetary consequences.
However, the ozone problem would prove far easier to fix. In 1987, just a year later, the nations of the world adopted the Montreal Protocol, which is today regarded as a major success in environmental protection. Under the treaty, a flexible and adaptable approach was taken to reductions--and regular scientific assessments allowed for course adaptation based on the latest information about how well progress was proceeding. Thus, by 2007, the U.N. Environment Program could declare of the treaty that ``to date, the results of this effort have been nothing less than spectacular.''
The contrast with climate change is stark Despite having been alerted by scientists not only in 1986, but also in 1979 and, frankly, even earlier, what happened was not policy action, but rather the beginnings of a long political battle.
Even as the formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, and the global adoption of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, signaled steps toward action in the scientific and diplomatic communities, skeptical scientists emerged to challenges the views expressed by Hansen and others, supported by conservative think tanks and sometimes linked to fossil fuel interests. Meanwhile, U.S. politics shifted, as over the 1990s and especially the 2000s the climate change issue became polarized and it became rarer to see Republicans, such as Chafee, who were also strong environmentalists and advocates for climate action.
``Thirty years ago we had a Republican senator who was leading the charge on addressing what he said then was a real and serious threat of climate change from the emission of gases from fossil fuel burning,'' says Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), recalling the 1986 hearings. ``You can read through all the things that Senator Chafee said back then, and it has all been proven true. It's very disappointing that thirty years later, there is no such voice anywhere in the Republican Senate, and if you look for a micron of daylight between what the fossil fuel industry wants, and what the Republican Party in the Senate does, you won't find it.''
It was only in late 2015, in Paris, that the United States helped to negotiate a global agreement to address climate change, one in which each country sets its own pace on reducing emissions. But scientists widely agree that this accord isn't strong enough, on its own terms, to ensure that warming remains below a 2-degree Celsius danger zone.
Thirty years after the 1986 hearings, meanwhile, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that if elected, he would attempt ``renegotiating'' that agreement.
``Those agreements are one-sided agreements, and they are bad for the United States,'' Trump said. ____ [From New York Times advertisement, Dec. 6, 2009]
Dear President Obama and the United States Congress: Tomorrow leaders from 192 countries will gather at The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to determine the fate of our planet.
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Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet. In partnership,
Chris Anderson, Curator, TED; Richard Baker, Chairman, Lord & Taylor; Dan, David & Laureen Barber, Blue Hill; Chris Blackwell, Founder, Island Records, Island Outpost; Graydon Carter, Editor, Vanity Fair; Deepak Chopra, Adjunct Professor, Kellogg School of Business and Management; Yvon Chouinard, Founder, Patagonia; Ben Cohen, Jerry Greenfield, Co-founders, Ben &Jerry's; Gregory Colbert, Creator, Ashes & Snow; Kenneth Cole, Chairman, Kenneth Cole; Paulette Cole, CEO & Creative Director, ABC Home, ABC Carpet & Home; Tom Collicchio, Chef & Owner, Craft Restaurants; Kit Crawford, Gary Erickson, Co-Owners and Co-CEOs, Clif Bar & Company; Steve Ells, Founder, Chairman & Co-CEO, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.; Eileen Fisher, CEO, Eileen Fisher; Walt Freese, CEO, Ben & Jerry's Homemade; Mitchell Gold, Chairman, Bob Williams, President, Co-Founders, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams; Matt Goldman, Co-Founder & CEO, Blue Man Group; Seth Goldman, CEO, Honest Tea; Robert Grebler, Founder, Pokonobe Associates, Jenga Licensor; Adrian Grenier, Reckless Productions; Alan Hassenfeld, former Chairman, Hasbro, Inc.; Don Hazen, Executive Editor, AlterNet; Gary Hirshberg, CEO, Stonyfield Yogurt.
Jeffrey Hollender, CEO, Seventh Generation, Kate Hudson, David Babali, Co-Founders, David Babali for WildAid; Mike Kaplan, CEO, Aspen Skiing Company; Michael Kieschnick, President, Credo Mobile; Sheryl Leach, Creator & Founder of Barney; Sven-Olof Lindblad, Founder, Lindblad Expeditions; Danny Meyer, CEO, Union Square Hospitality Group; Laura Michalchyshyn, President & GM, Planet Green, Discovery Communications; Will Raap, Chairman & Founder, Gardeners's Supply Company; Horst Rechelbacher, Founder, Aveda, Founder & CEO, Intelligent Nutrients; David Rockwell, Founder & Owner, Rockwell Group; Maury Rubin, Founder, Chef & CEO, City Bakery, Birdbath Green Bakery; Michael Rupp, CEO & President, The Rockport Company; Gordon Segal, Chairman, Crate & Barrel; Jeff Skoll, Founder, Participant Media and Skoll foundation; Harvey Spevak, CEO, Equinox; Greg Steltenpohl, Founder, Odwalla; Michelle Stein, President, Aeffe USA; Martha Stewart, Founder, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc.; Jeffrey Swartz, CEO, Timberland; Tom Szaky, CEO, TerraCycle; Donald J. Trump, Chairman and President, Donald J. Trump Jr., EVP, Eric F. Trump, EVP, Ivanka M. Trump, EVP, The Trump Organization; Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Executive Chef & Owner, Jean-Georges Management LLC.
If you want to quickly, go along. If you want to go far, go together. [African Proverb]
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