Climate Change
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, when we yielded to accommodate the majority leader, I was talking about the episode on the Senate floor with the Republican Senators coming to bash the Green New Deal. I wanted to go on to say that the USA Today editorial--the one saying climate change is "a true crisis facing the United States and the world''--also said this about the Green New Deal critics:
Republicans in the White House and Congress are having a grand old time mocking the Green New Deal. . . . But the critics owe this and future generations more than scorn; they have an obligation to put better ideas and solutions on the table.
So far we have not seen much from my Republican colleagues by way of better or, indeed, any solutions.
Madam President, I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude and appreciation to Senators Murkowski and Manchin for the joint piece that they wrote in the "Washington Post'' recently.
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So we get that my colleagues don't like the Green New Deal.
Let's consider other proposals. We have lots of them on the Democratic side. We have had cap and trade. We have had "keep it in the ground.'' We have had Green New Deals. We have had revenue-neutral carbon fee proposals.
Senator Van Hollen, of Maryland, is here to discuss his ideas. We are ready here.
Republicans said last week they wanted innovation to address climate change--great, me too. But you can't count on the innovation fairy to fly down and wave innovation fairy dust on the problem and make it go away. One of the reasons that Senator Barrasso's and my bipartisan carbon capture bill was necessary is because there was not enough innovation. There was not enough innovation because, quoting the USA Today article, "fossil-fuel polluters keep using the atmosphere as a free waste dump.''
It is really hard to spur innovation when there is no revenue in the business model. So our bill put revenue in the business model. We did it in the form of tax credits.
But the big driver for developing innovation and for developing innovative, new technologies would be a price on carbon, just like Senator Schatz and I have in our American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act--a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable carbon fee. This bill passes all the major Republican tests. It is a market solution that fixes a market failure. It does not grow government or regulation, and it does not put American industry at a disadvantage against foreign competitors. It will drive innovation: Put a $50 per ton price on carbon emissions, and every polluter paying the price has an incentive to spend up to $49 per ton on solutions. That is how you get innovation.
This carbon pricing idea has support from a swath of senior Republican officials, including seven Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, six current and former Members of Congress, four EPA Administrators, three Secretaries of State or Treasury, two Chairs of the Federal Reserve, and one Congressional Budget Office Director--all Republicans. Some of these Republicans were members of a group of prominent economists, including 27 Nobel Prize winners, who recently published this statement in the Wall Street Journal editorial page supporting just the kind of carbon fee model that is the basis of Senator Schatz's and my legislation. Since then, over 3,500 U.S. economists have signed this statement, and that is because it is pretty obvious how you have to solve this problem, once you want to.
Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis has been very active in this area. He said of our carbon fee proposal: "Democrats . . . have offered Republicans an olive limb, not just an olive branch.''
We are trying to reach out. We are trying to get to yes, and that olive branch will remain extended as long as it takes.
If you think all of our bills are no good, come up with something better, for Pete's sake. Give it a try. I am ready to work with Republicans on passing a carbon fee or other climate change legislation. I think I have proved that by working in a bipartisan fashion. But when Republicans will not propose anything and will not agree to anything--even an olive limb offered to them--then, that is a pretty strong sign that there is something more going on than objections to a Green New Deal. If you don't like the Green New Deal, tell us what you do like. Go the carbon fee route. Go "leave it in the ground''--whatever. But please, let's get together and solve this problem.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am now honored to yield the floor to my distinguished colleague from Maryland who has been working on this issue in the House before he came to the Senate and has become a real leader in our Senate caucus, Senator Van Hollen.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I may, Madam President, I would like to remark on the figure that Senator Van Hollen used of the recent measurement in our atmosphere of a carbon dioxide concentration of 411 parts per million. Standing on its own, that may not seem particularly significant, so let's put that into context.
NASA, which Senator Van Hollen mentioned and which has important facilities in Maryland, has been measuring this for a long time.
By the way, I think NASA's scientists have demonstrated they know what they are talking about. They have rovers driving around on Mars right now, so they know what they are talking about.
The scientists have gone back and determined what the carbon dioxide levels were on Earth over a period of 400,000 years. If you look back, there is a graph that NASA has that shows the carbon dioxide levels ramping up and down, up and down, over 400,000 years. For that entire time, the levels have stayed between 180 parts per million and 300 parts per million. That was the range within which the entire human species experienced our development--180 parts per million at the low and 300 parts per million at the high. At 411, we are now out of that range by almost the entire range. We are not out by a little; we are out of that range by a lot.
Also, 400,000 years is a very long time. If you look at how long humankind has been farming--kind of the basic, organized activity of our species--the common view is that we really started farming about 12,000 years ago. Some people push that number further, more towards 20,000 years. We invented the wheel a little over 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. If you think about the first people who put seeds in the ground and planted farms, you only go back 12,000 to 20,000 years. If you think about the first people who rolled a wagon or a chariot on a wheel, you only go back about 5,000 years. This record goes back 400,000 years. They know it because you can go into ancient ice, and you can find bubbles of air from tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago, and you can test them. I have been to the freezer at Ohio State University, which is where they keep the cores they have drilled out of glaciers, and I have seen how they go back and do these micro measurements that let you know what the carbon dioxide levels were. So we are not off by a little, folks; we are off by a lot.
When you consider the known scientific effect of carbon dioxide concentrations, we have known what it has done. This has been a greenhouse gas since Abraham Lincoln rode around in his top hat. This is not scientific news; we know this stuff.
When you consider that we are that far out of the range that has made human life and development comfortable on this planet throughout the entire duration of our species--that we are out of that range for the first time in 400,000 years and are out of that range by an amount that is practically equal to the entire range itself--if that is not a signal for us to wake up and pay attention, I don't know what is. The fact that the fossil fuel industry can drown out that signal with its political signal in this body is astounding.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Arsenic, too, is a naturally occurring substance, but you don't want too much of it.
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank Senator Van Hollen for joining me in this colloquy and for speaking today on the floor.
I see the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee here.
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