Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse, who has been out here on the floor, week after week after week, sounding the warning, like Churchill, that there is danger ahead, that there is a gathering storm. Yet it is not metaphorical as it was for Churchill. It is real. There is a gathering storm. What Senator Whitehouse has been doing, year after year after year, is coming out on the floor to document this gathering storm and to warn that we have to take action.
I thank Senator Whitehouse for his incredible, historic leadership because, between the U.N. and the U.S. scientists, all of the evidence is now there. My belief is, the failure that he talked about to heed the dire warnings on climate change is much more now than that figurative gathering storm; it is literally gathering much fiercer energy in super-charged storms that will bear down on our shores as a result of our warming crisis.
Scientists have shot off the warning flare. In the last 2 months, we have received two of the most alarming reports to date on the threat that climate change poses to our country, our economy, our security, and to our planet. It questions the morality of our country because ultimately that is what it is. It is a moral issue of whether we are going to leave this planet better than we found it.
Are we going to be the stewards of this planet and pass it on to future generations better than we found it? Right now, the gathering evidence from the United Nations and from our own U.S. Government's scientists is that we are not.
The Federal Government's National Climate Assessment that was released last week as well as the recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are clarion calls. The science in these reports is clear. If we fail to act now, storms will grow more frequent and more powerful. Extreme weather events, like Hurricane Michael, which grew more quickly this October than any storm we have seen, will continue to cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The National Climate Assessment--the congressionally mandated report issued by 13 Federal agencies-- underscores the specific impacts we are facing now and will continue to face in the future.
In our home region of the Northeast, which Senator Shaheen and Senator Whitehouse and I have the privilege to represent, the impacts are going to be truly devastating. The Northeast region will surpass 2 degrees centigrade of warming beyond preindustrial levels by as soon as 2035--not 2050, not 2100 but by the year 2035--if emissions continue at their current pace. That would be the quickest warming in the contiguous United States and would occur as much as two decades before global average temperatures reach a similar point.
The real-world effects of this warming trajectory are shocking. Sea levels in the Northeast could rise upward of 11 feet by the end of the century. Almost one-third of the sandy shorelines along the Atlantic coast could erode inland at rates of at least 3.3 feet per year. We will feel the impact on our economy, which is so strongly tied to fishing, to our beaches and tourism, and to our natural environmental resources.
In 2012, a 2-degree centigrade water temperature increase boosted lobster landings to high summer levels a month earlier than usual. The result was an early supply glut and a collapse in prices to the lowest level in almost two decades. This type of negative impact on our fishing industries will become more commonplace as the climate continues to warm and our marine life is forced to move to new areas.
Outdoor recreation in the Northeast, which will suffer the consequences of climate change, contributes nearly $150 billion in consumer spending and supports more than 1 million jobs across our region. Climate impacts, like beach erosion, are an imminent threat to this economic powerhouse. Yet perhaps most devastating will be the impacts on the public's health. According to estimates, up to 10,000 people in Massachusetts could, by the end of the century, visit the emergency room annually due to the rising heat.
Despite these generational warnings from both the United Nations and the scientists in our own country, President Trump has continued to dismiss the impending disaster from our dangerously warming planet.
How did President Trump respond when asked about the conclusion that climate change could devastate the American economy?
His answer: ``I don't believe it.''
Well, it doesn't matter, Mr. President, if you don't believe it because the world's leading scientists have shown it to be true, and 70 percent of Americans believe it. They believe global warming is happening.
President Trump may deny climate science, but there is no denying the consequences of climate change. Yet the Trump administration will not stop at climate denial. It has a much more insidious scheme to block action on climate--deny, delay, and defund. The list of its climate sins is long, with each action more egregious than the last one.
First came the appointment of an all-star Big Oil Cabinet--Scott Pruitt at the EPA, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson at the State Department, and former Texas Governor Rick Perry at the Department of Energy.
Since Mr. Pruitt's ouster after numerous ethics violations, the Trump administration has nominated king coal's favorite son, Andrew Wheeler, to head the EPA. Mr. Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist and has downplayed the recent science on the devastating impacts to come from climate change. After these reports came out, he said: ``I have some questions about the assumptions.'' These are assumptions that have been vetted by 300 leading scientists in the United States and across the planet.
The only question, I believe, is why someone like Andrew Wheeler was put in charge at the EPA. A coal lobbyist is now the head of the EPA. The EPA just turned into every polluter's ally. That is the net result of what Donald Trump has done at the Agency.
The Trump administration is also moving to freeze fuel economy standards rather than pushing for the historic and technically achievable goal of 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025. I am the author of the 2007 law that required the first fuel economy increase in 32 years. Increasing our fuel economy standard to 54.5 miles per gallon is the single largest action that any nation has ever taken on climate--that one law. Yet the Trump administration is trying to make a U-turn on those standards that are saving customers money at the pump and reducing the emissions we pump into the air.
The Trump administration is also trying to repeal President Obama's Clean Power Plan. Turning our back on this roadmap for reducing pollution in the electricity sector will result in at least 12 times more carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade.
Why is the Trump administration taking us backward on climate in the face of these dire warnings? Just follow the money.
Yesterday, during the weekly Senate Climate Change Task Force meeting, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Cardin, other colleagues, and I heard about the complex funding behind the climate countermovement, which the fossil fuel industry has funded and used to mislead the American people and to hold this administration hostage.
The ``web of climate denial'' is nothing more than dirty energy corporations and their shady front groups spending over a quarter of a billion dollars each year to deceive Americans about climate change. These corporations distort scientific consensus and turn it into an artificial political debate. They produce sham scientific documents, such as ``Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warning,'' a report published by the Heartland Institute and sent to over 300,000 science teachers across the country. Funding 300,000 documents to be sent to every science teacher in America over science that is patently untrue-- that is how much money the fossil fuel industry has. That is how high they try to send up a smoke screen around this issue to terrify teachers that they might be getting in trouble if they actually teach accurate science rather than the bogus documents that are sent to them by the fossil fuel industry, by their handmaidens, the Heartland Institute.
These fossil fuel phonies are on a mission to sow doubt, and their efforts seem to be bearing fruit in this administration. The web of denial messaging strategy is highly sophisticated, disciplined, and politically controlled. Conferences, advertisements, websites, talking heads--this fossil fuel-funded farce may be a well-oiled machine and well funded, but they are wrong.
What do we do in the face of this web of denial? We need to look at the dollars and cents of it all--not the Big Oil and King Coal greenbacks but the success of green energy.
We are ushering our power sector into a clean energy future that is good for our environment and good for our economy. Coal cannot compete against wind, solar, and other renewables and natural gas in the free market. By the early 2020s, it could be cheaper to build new renewables from scratch than to continue operating old, dirty, coal-fired powerplants. That is not a conspiracy; that is called competition. Adam Smith is smiling in his grave, watching this market force begin to take over. And that is why this renewable revolution has become unstoppable. It is because the cost of renewables is plummeting. The cost of solar has fallen 50 to 60 percent over the last 5 to 6 years. In fact, wind and solar are generally cheaper than coal and nuclear energy right now. Coal is losing the war against wind and solar in the free market. That is what we call it--the free market. The War on Coal is a war that has been declared by the free market on coal, and it lost that war.
It is not just happening here in the United States; it is happening all around the globe. Mexico had a power auction at the end of November 2017 where the average price for solar was 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour. In 2017, solar in Saudi Arabia came in at 1.8 cents a kilowatt hour. In Dubai, it is 2.4 cents a kilowatt hour.
Half of all electricity installed around the world last year was renewable. Let me say that again. Half of all new electrical generation capacity in the world that was installed last year was renewable. So it is not just the United States; this is happening globally. The revolution is on.
Renewable energy deployment around the world has increased by 8 percent a year for 7 years in a row. Globally, more than $330 billion was invested in clean energy last year. This is a global clean energy race. It is a global job-creation race. It is a global clean energy investment race. We are going to save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation, as we have all of these people who are hired in order to install these new technologies.
Right now, we have more than 50,000 megawatts of solar installed here in the United States. By 2020, we are projected to have more than 90,000 megawatts of solar. Solar is projected to add another 35,000 megawatts combined in 2021 and 2022. That means that by the end of 2022--4 years from now--we are going to have 250,000 megawatts of wind and solar in the United States.
If you think of a nuclear powerplant having 1,000 megawatts--the Seabrook nuclear powerplant, the Diablo Canyon nuclear powerplant--think of 250 solar and wind facilities. That would be the equivalent of each one of those nuclear powerplants. That is what we are talking about.
By the year 2020, we will have 500,000 people employed in the wind and solar industry. Contrast that with the 50,000 people in the coal industry. By 2020, there will be 500,000 in wind and solar. Who are they? They are roofers. They are electricians. They are engineers. They are people who are working with their hands to install all of this equipment.
The President doesn't seem to really care about those blue-collar workers--upwards of 500,000 by the year 2020--but they are working hard, they are working for good wages, and they are also not running the risk of inhaling dangerous air that can be dangerous to their health. That is where we are. We have this incredible opportunity that is before us. It is already happening. The President is in denial.
The climate change fight is not just a question of job creation or economic imperative; it is about the moral imperative we have to act. We know climate change will get worse. We know lives will be lost. We cannot sit back and do nothing.
In 2015, Pope Francis came to Capitol Hill, and he delivered his environmental ``Sermon on the Mount.'' He told us that mankind created this problem of climate change and now mankind must fix it. With the world's poorest and most vulnerable suffering the worst consequences of climate change--extreme poverty, famine, disease, and displacement--we have a moral obligation to act.
I agree with Pope Francis that the United States and the Congress have an important role to play. We have a responsibility to help those less fortunate amongst us who will be harmed the most by rising seas, a warming planet, and more pollutions spewing into our air and water. That is why, right now and in the next Congress, I am standing here with my colleagues in this fight to ensure that we take climate action, for a price on carbon, for investment in clean energy, for resilient infrastructure, for 100 percent renewable energy in our country.
If there is a tax extenders bill, we will be fighting for clean energy tax credits and for extenders to help reduce our carbon emissions, including for offshore wind, for storage of electricity, and for clean vehicles. We will be standing side by side in that fight in 2019 on the Senate floor so that we continue this revolution.
If there is an infrastructure package, we will be fighting for aggressive renewable energy standards for utilities and the Federal Government and for coastal infrastructure needs.
As we work on appropriations, we will fight for more funding for energy efficiency and programs that protect the health of children and families from climate change.
The climate challenges facing our Nation and the entire world are indeed great, but the United States has the technological imperative to lead on solutions. We have the economic imperative to create opportunities and jobs for all people, and we have the moral imperative to protect our planet for future generations.
The rest the world will not listen to us and follow us if we do not, in fact, take these actions. You cannot preach temperance from a barstool. You cannot ask other countries to act when we ourselves are walking away from the responsibility. That is the moment we are in.
By January 1, 2019, this battle is going to be on. We have been given the warning, and we are heeding it. We are going to have mighty battles up here on the floor to make sure that future generations do not look back at us and wonder why we didn't heed all of those warnings that were given to us by the smartest scientists on the planet.
Now I would like to yield to my great colleague from the State of New Hampshire, a woman who has dedicated her career to the issues of clean energy up in her home State. I give you the great Senator from New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen.
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