Unanimous Consent Request--S. Con. Res. 32
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first, I thank the Senator from Arkansas for his wonderful remarks. We had a similar event in Rhode Island with veterans of the Battle of the Bulge who recounted their stories and who were celebrated by our State leaders, our adjutant general, and a crowd of admirers. It was a wonderful moment and a wonderful memory. So I thank him for calling it up on the Senate floor. Climate Change
Mr. President, here we are in 2020, and I am still coming to the floor to try to wake this Chamber up to the perils of climate change-- pathetic.
Why do I have to be doing another one of these speeches? Why don't we heed the warnings of our foremost scientists, of our military, of top financial institutions--heck, of our own home State universities? What does it take to get our attention around here?
Why is the fossil fuel industry's unlimited dark money still flooding our politics? Why are the biggest lobbying forces in Washington, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, rated as America's worst climate obstructors? Where are those trade group members who claim to support climate action when their own groups are leading the obstruction? What is going on?
Who around here is so cynical as to still take fossil fuel money and block climate action? In 2020, how is that a legitimate deal?
Who hasn't noticed the world spinning toward climate catastrophe--the forests burning, the seas rising, the ocean water acidifying, the glaciers melting? How can you miss that?
To the liars, the deniers, the connivers, and the stooges, I predict 2020 is going to be a bad year for you. The sand beneath your castle of lies is eroding fast. Now, 2019 was a tough year for you, and 2020 will be worse. We are going to bring down your castle of lies.
The fossil fuel industry campaign of obstruction hides behind an armada of phony front groups. In 2020, we will out you and your fossil fuel funding, too.
To big oil companies that pretend to want progress, while still using that climate denial and obstruction apparatus to attack the very progress you claim to want, we will out that truth. We will expose your two-facedness.
The fossil fuel industry spoons up the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. The International Monetary Fund estimates their global subsidy in the trillions of dollars every year--globally. In the United States alone, the fossil fuel industry was subsidized to the tune of $650 billion in 2015--the last year the IMF has calculated. We will out that massive subsidy and their dark money schemes to protect it.
The fossil fuel industry's biggest schemers against climate action in Congress are the big corporate trade associations. The worst two are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. The watchdog InfluenceMap outed NAM and the chamber in a virtual tie as the two most obstructive forces on climate change in America. That is some prize.
The chamber works its evil in legislation, through regulatory action, in courts, in elections, even fighting State-level progress on carbon pollution.
The chamber funded the phony debunked report that President Trump used to disparage the Paris Agreement.
The chamber stooged for the fossil fuel industry for years and got away with it, but 2019 saw an end to that.
My colleagues and I took to social media, to op-ed pages, and to the Senate floor to out the chamber for its disgraceful record on climate change. We pushed on chamber members to demand change within the organization. We countered the chamber with amicus briefs, laying out its dirty history, when its evil little head popped up in climate lawsuits.
Senator Warren and I lodged a complaint with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate over the chamber's refusal to disclose who is behind its lobbying activities--disclosures, by the way, required by law.
Senators even got hashtag ``ChamberofCarbon'' trending on Twitter, and I made a little yearend visit to the chamber to make, for no charge, a little correction to their sign out front, so that it says ``Welcome to the U.S. Chamber of Carbon.'' So we have been after them.
By year's end, there were signs of discomfort over at the chamber. Up popped a post on its website that said that on climate ``inaction is not an option.'' Hell, for years, inaction had been their purpose. Now they say it is not an option.
The chamber formed a new internal climate change working group. The ``Chamber of Carbon'' even quietly posted that it reversed itself on the Paris Agreement and now was for staying in--OK, baby steps but in the right direction.
I think the chamber and NAM became America's two worst climate obstructors because they were paid with fossil fuel dark money, and in 2020 I intend to find that out. If the chamber is still taking fossil fuel money, it is hard to take those baby steps very seriously. They are probably just PR to placate the chamber members who are embarrassed that their organization got caught and outed as a top climate obstructor.
For that prize, by the way, chamber members have a lot to be embarrassed about. Allstate, MetLife, IBM, FedEx, Bayer, Ford Motor, United Airlines, Delta, American--they all funded and directed a top climate obstructor. Really?
Really? Did they know it? Did they know the chamber--their own organization--was secretly getting fossil fuel money to become a top climate obstructer?
If they did know, by God, they have got some explaining to do. If they did not know, what standard of governance makes it OK for a board member to not even know who is funding your organization? So, look out, board members. We are not letting that go either. The year 2020 is when we intend to get to the bottom of all of this nasty mess.
The real test for the chamber--not baby steps--will be whether it puts its back into passing a real comprehensive climate bill. Will the chamber stop scheming with climate denial organizations? Will the chamber stop opposing climate action candidates? Those are the tests. This, by the way, is not a PR test. It is not a PR test of how little you can get away with. This is a science test. It is a science test of how we keep our planet below 1.5 degrees Celsius, global warming. If we fail the science test, how well we did on the PR test is going to look pretty silly.
Help us meet that 1.5 degrees Celsius. We will be talking, gladly. I look forward to working with you. Until then, expect the pressure on you to rise in 2020.
We called out one other miscreant in 2019: Marathon Petroleum. This gasoline refiner orchestrated the Trump attack on fuel economy standards for automobiles. As I laid out in testimony in a House Oversight Subcommittee hearing last year, Marathon pressured Members of Congress, Governors, and the Trump administration. The corrupt Trump administration was only too eager to oblige, issuing an error-riddled proposal to freeze the fuel economy standards.
The Trump administration went after California's authority under the Clean Air Act to set fuel standards. Trump's DOJ cooked up a bogus antitrust investigation, I believe, to punish the automakers that had worked with California to hammer out a separate deal on fuel economy standards that defeated Marathon's scheme.
It looks like the Trump administration also pressured automakers to support the administration's legal battle with California, and 2020 is the year I hope we expose all this.
In 2019, investors started noticing Marathon's bad behavior on climate. In fact, in September, 200 investors with $6.5 trillion in assets under management sent a letter to 47 U.S. companies, including Marathon, to urge those companies to align their lobbying with the Paris Agreement 2 degrees Celsius climate goal and to warn that their lobbying against that goal is an investment risk.
Well, the four biggest shareholders in Marathon are BlackRock, JPMorgan, State Street, and Vanguard. They claim to care about climate. We will see, in 2020, if they keep condoning all this Marathon misbehavior.
Happily, there are some things the crooked fossil fuel industry apparatus can't stop. Even with its massive subsidy for fossil fuel, renewables are starting to win on price. New green energy technologies are powering up, like offshore wind and battery storage. Electric vehicles are driving cost down and performance up for consumers. Old coal plants are closing--546 since 2010. New coal plants are unfinanceable, and 2019 saw Murray Energy become the eighth coal company in a year to file for bankruptcy and the biggest drop in coal consumption ever.
Another trend the industry couldn't stop was economists, central bankers, Wall Street, real estate professionals, and asset managers waking up to the crash risks that climate change poses to the global economy. It is not just that it is wrecking our atmosphere and oceans and climate. Our economy stands on those pillars, and at some point there will be economic crashes.
Climate crash warnings used to be scarce. Now they are everywhere. Freddie Mac warns that rising sea levels will prompt a crash in coastal property values worse than the housing crash that caused the 2008 financial crisis.
First Street Foundation found that rising seas have already resulted in $16 billion in lost property values in coastal homes from Maine to Mississippi.
Moody's warns that climate risk will trigger downgrades in coastal communities' bond ratings. BlackRock estimated that, by the end of the century, climate change will cause coastal communities annual losses that could average up to 15 percent of local GDP--average up to 15 percent of local GDP--with the hardest hit communities hit far worse. Look out, Florida. By the way, Louisiana is not too far from Florida.
The Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Bank of Canada, and the European Central Bank--backed by top-tier, peer-reviewed economic papers--are all warning of systemic economic risk--``systemic economic risk'' is economist-speak for risk to the entire economy--from stranded fossil fuel assets, the so-called carbon asset bubble. On top of that, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission here in the United States has launched a climate risk review. Even the Trump Fed is starting to echo those warnings with reports out of local Federal Reserve banks.
It is not just big institutions that are grasping the risks of climate change. I visited Louisiana, Wyoming, and Colorado last year to hear about climate change and see what red- and purple-State Americans are doing about it. The answer is: plenty.
In Louisiana, sea level rise and subsidence are megathreats. I met a hunter and fisherman whose personal efforts to restore marshland have allowed his local delta wetlands to rebound from mismanagement. A scientist with the National Wildlife Federation counted over 30 species of birds just while we were standing around waiting to board the boat.
The sights and sounds of a healthy marsh were an encouraging reminder of nature's ability to find a way to not only survive but to flourish if we give her a chance.
In Wyoming--well, don't get me wrong--climate change isn't always a popular subject. The State is basically run by the fossil fuel industry, but there I met a younger generation that really gets it. I will not forget the determination of leading winter sports athletes in Jackson fighting to preserve their winters; nor, in Lander, the impassioned argument for climate action from a young outdoor instructor from NOLS, National Outdoor Leadership School; nor, out at their campsite, the fire-lit, passionate faces of Central Wyoming College students on their way up to take glacier measurements, who well understand the stakes of climate change for their future and the future of the State they love.
Typically, these climate road trips that I do land me in States where the fight for climate change may need a little, say, boost. The opposite was true in Colorado. It is a State on a major climate winning streak: a State of good climate bills passed during the last legislative session; their biggest public utility transitioning to renewable energy, building impressive renewable energy and electric vehicle infrastructure; and leading research institutes bringing new renewable energy technologies to the marketplace.
The year 2019 also showed polling that showed climate action was becoming a top issue for American voters everywhere. A big part is young voters--and especially young Republicans. More than three-fourths of all millennials and a majority of millennial Republicans agree on the need for climate action. Last year, a Republican former Member of Congress wrote about climate change: My party will never earn the votes of millennials unless it gets serious about finding solutions.
It is not just younger voters. Americans of all ages and political stripes favor many of the solutions that scientists and economists say are needed to tackle climate change. An October 2019 Pew poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe the Federal Government needs to do more to combat climate change. The same poll showed 77 percent of Americans believe the United States ought to prioritize developing alternative energy over fossil fuels.
So the decades-long fossil fuel campaign of obstruction and lies and denial will not be tolerated much longer.
In New England, in the springtime, a moment comes when the roof of your house warms up enough to send the snow sliding down off the roof in a big whumpf. The snow may have piled up slowly, over weeks and months, but it comes down all at once in a whumpf.
The fossil fuel industry and its network of front groups and trade associations have spent years piling up their crooked apparatus of climate obstruction. Increasingly, their evil behavior is facing blowback from the public and from regulators and from investors. Alarm bells are ringing ever louder from all quarters about the economic risks.
Renewable energy and other green technologies are ever more cost competitive. Awareness of climate change dangers is ever growing among the American people. These are all signs that the thaw, the whumpf, is near, and 2020 could be the moment.
I know things in Washington can seem hopeless, but 2019 gave me some reasons to hope. For 2020, well, it is game on to tear down the crooked castle of climate denial and solve this problem while still we can.
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