Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Ms. SMITH. Madam President, I rise to discuss the urgency of addressing climate change. I will also address the nomination of Mr. Bernard McNamee to be a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which we are debating on the Senate floor today.
Recently, the Trump administration released the latest installment of the National Climate Assessment. This report is the work of over 300 expert scientists and 13 different government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, NASA, and others. The report makes an urgent case for action by detailing the extreme threat that is posed to our Nation and to our world by climate change.
The need for forward-looking environmental and energy policies is obvious to anyone who reads this report, and it is telling that this report was mandated by a law signed by the late George H. W. Bush in 1990--a President whose life we came together to celebrate yesterday.
The Trump administration doesn't want to talk about the report's findings, but the problems of a changing climate are already well known to us in Minnesota. Our winters are milder than they used to be. Rain patterns are changing. We are now prone to long, hot dry spells in the summer, but when the rains do come, they are more intense. Big storms used to be rare in Minnesota, but now we suffer more than almost anywhere else in the country from these climate-driven increases in so- called mega-rain events. When it rains 6 or 8 or even 10 inches all at once, houses flood and fields flood. The water can't run off or soak into the soil fast enough. As Minnesota's Lieutenant Governor and now as a Senator, I have seen the consequences of these storms.
Without action on climate change, these problems are only going to get worse. Even to those who have long accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, the new report makes for a sobering read. The assessment tells us that if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, ``the Midwest is projected to have the largest increase in extreme temperature-related premature deaths.'' By 2090, the Midwest can expect 2,000 additional deaths a year alone due to heat. That will be more than in any other region in the country.
We know that there are health consequences to a warming climate and also important impacts on our food supply. Minnesota is a vital contributor to our world's food supply. We rank fourth in the country in corn production, and corn is our No. 1 agricultural commodity. In 2017, Minnesota farmers produced $4.5 billion of corn on 8 million acres. This agricultural productivity is threatened by climate change. The problem going forward is that corn doesn't tolerate extreme warm temperatures. Corn plants grow best at approximately 80 degrees, and above 95 degrees, reproductive failure is a risk. U.S. corn yields per acre grew 60 percent from the 1980s to today. Because of warming temperatures, the climate assessment warns that we risk losing all of these productivity gains by 2050.
A world with nearly 10 billion people at midcentury is going to need American farmers to produce even more than ever. Climate change threatens our farmers' ability to rise to that challenge. This is why I agree with the National Farmers Union, which says:
We can't wait for technology to solve climate change. We must take action now.
We grow more than just corn in Minnesota. For example, the Anishinaabe people in my State harvest the world's finest wild rice. The climate assessment states: ``Declines in production are expected, related to increases in climate extremes and climate-related disease and pest outbreaks as well as northward shifts of favorable growing regions.'' The loss of wild rice in Minnesota would be a cultural, ecological, and economic tragedy.
The climate assessment also highlights the economic stakes. Climate change threatens to reduce the size of the U.S. economy by up to 10 percent by the end of this century--a loss of hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
In response to the extreme challenges that we face from climate change, I see two potential ways to respond.
First, the path offered by Mr. McNamee would be that we do nothing to acknowledge this problem.
As the Department of Energy's deputy general counsel, Mr. McNamee pushed a dirty coal plant bailout that would have cost American consumers billions of dollars a year with there being no discernible benefit to our energy system and a huge loss in our fight against climate change. That is why the proposal was rejected unanimously by the five FERC Commissioners. Now Mr. McNamee is nominated to be one of those Commissioners.
To avoid dealing with the climate change problem, Mr. McNamee has-- like many in the Trump administration--decided that the first, best tactic is to deny there is even a problem. In February of this year, Mr. McNamee spoke at a policy orientation for legislators in Texas. When he was asked about how his son and other students should react to being taught climate science in schools, Mr. McNamee said:
Just deny it. I don't care if you get an F. I don't care.
I reject Mr. McNamee's head-in-the-sand approach, which is a fundamentally pessimistic approach to America's ability to lead the fight against climate change by leading the clean energy revolution. I, by contrast, am an optimist.
The thing about the clean energy transition is that it is going to happen with or without American leadership. Between now and 2050, the world will invest $11.5 trillion in building new electric generators. Almost 9 in 10 of those dollars will be spent on renewables and other technologies with zero carbon emissions.
The United States should lead the way in developing, making, and deploying clean energy technology; however, right now, China is leading the way. China leads the way in renewable energy investments, and it spent $127 billion in 2017, which outspent the United States by more than 3 to 1.
We know that Americans want to step up. California and Hawaii have put themselves on a path to 100-percent clean energy by 2050. Just this week, Xcel Energy, which is the largest utility in my State, pledged to deliver 80 percent in carbon dioxide emission reductions by 2030, with a goal of having 100-percent emissions-free electricity by 2050.
States, companies, and individuals can help lead the way, but that doesn't take the Federal Government off the hook. We must pull together as a country. The scale of the challenge requires national and international coordination and cooperation. The United States can lead, or we can be left behind. We led the way during the fossil fuel revolution, and we were rewarded with world-leading prosperity. There is a new revolution happening.
Mr. McNamee and President Trump both believe that we can prosper by doubling down on outdated thinking regarding energy and climate, but they are wrong.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this nominee. It is the duty of those of us in Congress to push for a clear-eyed but optimistic path forward and not to let misguided ideology leave us stuck in the past.
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