Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, may I just say that some of the projections that my colleague objects to go back to the Chafee hearings of 40 years ago. These are predictions that are the product of NASA scientists. NASA is pretty good at stuff. We have vehicles rolling around on Mars thanks to NASA science. Their predictions are pretty good about where things are going to go. When the 2008 mortgage meltdown happened, there were two guys--one named Burry and one named Burt--who predicted. They got it right. Had we listened to those predictions, we could have saved ourselves a lot of pain. By the way, both of them are predicting a climate-related insurance collapse affecting property values, as we have said. And, indeed, if you look at some of the companies most responsible for this mess, their own scientists predicted exactly what we have seen. We can test those predictions from 30, 40 years ago by measuring what has happened since, and what happened since confirms the predictions that Exxon scientists knew about, American Petroleum Institute scientists knew about, Chevron scientists knew about. Their problem was that when they told their senior management, the senior management said: No. No. No. Let's not talk about that. Let's cover that up, and let's start actually misleading the public about it. The folks who came into the Budget Committee to testify about this are people like the former risk management chief for Goldman Sachs, the chief economist--former chief economist for Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant. We had reports from the international Financial Stability Board about the danger to global banking markets. The Mortgage Bankers Association expressed their concern about this problem. An Allianz board member has written a very compelling article about what the collapse of the insurance market looks like as it continues. The American president of Aon, a huge insurance giant testified about this risk. Mark Carney, who was the president of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada before that and is now Prime Minister of Canada, testified about this. So some predictions are worth paying attention to, either because they have a track record over decades of proving themselves out or because the people really seem to know what they are talking about. And I would urge that we pay more attention to these predictions. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, climate change is real. Earlier this year, I came to the floor and asked my colleagues if they could all agree to that simple scientific fact. Unsurprisingly, given the clout of fossil fuel in this arena, they could not. So I return to the floor in hopes that my Republican colleagues could at least agree to some of the simple truths that make up the bigger picture of climate change. I asked if we could agree that sea levels are rising due to fossil fuel emissions. Republicans objected. I asked that we could agree that oceans are warming due to fossil fuel emissions. Republicans objected. They are actually warming by the zettajoule, if you want to look up a really big number. So I changed tactics. I wanted to see if my Republican colleagues could at least acknowledge some of the realities. I asked if we could agree that climate change is driving up the cost of homeowners insurance, which is something that even homeowners insurers will tell you. But, again, Republicans objected. Well, I am not giving up. Here is today's simple truth: Climate change poses a threat to home values and the mortgage market. Can we all agree on that? Let me break this down. Republicans may object, but facts remain. And the fact is that sea levels are rising. Sea level rise and the flooding that comes along with it causes catastrophic damage to coastal infrastructure, businesses, and homes. This drives enormous financial loss. Between 2005 and 2017, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia together lost $7.4 billion in home value due to sea level rise-related flooding. Absent climate action, flooding like this will get worse in the years to come. Researchers find that 300,000 U.S. homes and commercial properties collectively valued at $136 billion, in today's dollars, are at risk of chronic disruptive flooding in the next 30 years, the duration of a mortgage; and by the end of the 21st century, nearly 2.5 million U.S. homes and commercial properties, collectively valued at over $1 trillion, will be at risk of chronic flooding. Indeed, the chief economist of Freddie Mac has predicted what he called a ``coastal property values crash.'' Sea level rise is not the only climate impact threatening homes across the country. We see it in all kinds of natural calamities. I have shown this chart on the floor before. It tracks billion-dollar climate disasters in the United States between 1980 and now. These include floods, wildfires, cyclones, and drought. As you can see, the events and the costs are increasing. And it is not just homes directly impacted by climate disaster that face declines in property values. Following a weather disaster, housing values decline substantially across entire impacted ZIP Codes, in part because of the market's expectation of future disasters in that area. Last week, I explained that the same forces driving home insurance costs up are driving down home values. That is because climate losses hit insurers first, and insurers then raise their costs; and those costs ultimately affect the home's value. This chart shows that insurance costs are increasing the most in areas facing the highest climate risk, which is only logical. Unfortunately, for the parts of the country most exposed to climate change, insurance premiums are going to continue to climb. This chart shows the county-level forecast for homeowners insurance premiums over the next 30 years. As you can see, all along the gulf coast, through Florida and out through the Intermountain West, where fires are such an issue, premiums are expected to double or triple or even quadruple. The darkest areas here are the highest increase, but everywhere is heading up. And it gets worse. Rising premiums depress home values, as the carrying cost of owning that home increases. If you have to pay, as in Florida, on average, $14,000 every year for home insurance and that doubles or triples, and now you have a $30,000 or $40,000 annual burden--a check you have to pay to keep that home--that is going to drive down the cost of the home because the next buyer is going to be looking at that cost burden. So rising premiums are one key risk to home property values, but insurance unavailability is just as big. More and more often, in the areas of highest climate risk, insurance companies are refusing to insure homes at all. This chart tracks home insurance nonrenewal rates. That is when your insurance company--that you have been a good customer of for years and years and years--suddenly sends a notice into your mail slot saying: Sorry, you are all done. Your property is too dangerous. We are not going to insure it any longer. You will have to look elsewhere. This was based on work we did last Congress in the Budget Committee, and the nonrenewal rates are the highest in areas with high climate risk. Again, it seems obvious, but the data tracks that the greater the climate risk, the more the insurance industry is backing away from uninsurable risks. Obviously, coastal Florida and wildfire-prone western areas are in greatest danger. This problem is a disaster for homeowners because lenders won't approve a mortgage unless the borrower also purchases insurance. An uninsurable home is an unmortgageable home, and an unmortgageable home is, in most places, an unsellable home. At the individual level, homeowner by homeowner, this can wipe out a family's primary source of wealth. One day your home had one value. The notice of nonrenewal comes, you can't get insurance, and your own home's value drops precipitously, wiping out your primary source of wealth, endangering retirements, endangering your children's future. And as climate disasters keep getting worse, so will this. Researchers predict that U.S. residential property will lose nearly $1.5 trillion in value over the next 30 years due to increasingly expensive and unavailable insurance. Just recently, Moody's Analytics came to a similar conclusion. And, sure enough, the places that will see the biggest declines in value are the places most exposed to climate risk: the Southeast and gulf coast, and the West and Plains, which are exposed to wildfire and hail risks. Indeed, in Florida, property values have already started to decline. It has been reported that Florida is the No. 1 State in the country for lost property value, which is the natural endpoint of the cascade from climate risk to insurance collapse, to mortgage market collapse, to property values collapse. And there in Florida, you see it beginning to happen. Here is the bad news. At the end of the day, the pressure from the insurance market on home values--this is the place where home values are likely to decline because of climate change. There has always been a basic truth in America that, with time, over the course of the mortgage, your property is going to go up in value. But in a world burdened by this level of climate risk, that is no longer the case. Now, we are looking at areas where it is predicted that home values may decline. In some cases, the decline is targeted at 100 percent. What is 100 percent decline in home value? That means it ain't worth nothing anymore; you have lost all the value in your home. And, obviously, it is concentrated in the highest risk areas, but the risk is continuing to grow. We know what happened the last time, when there was a widespread decline in property values: The economy spiraled into the great recession. It cost millions of people in the United States their jobs, their homes, their savings. It would be folly to repeat 2008 all over again. The warnings are many, and they are real, and they come from leading voices in the financial sector--not environmentalists--people who track financial markets. So let's agree on the simple truth that climate change portends significant declines in American home values in climate-exposed regions of the United States. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, therefore, that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 555; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would just point out briefly in response to my distinguished colleague that an entire industry understands that climate risk is driving homeowners insurance. The home insurance industry is actually under both a business model requirement and a fiduciary legal obligation to do its very, very best to predict risk, figure out what is driving that risk, and act accordingly. For that reason, we had the president of Aon testify in the Budget Committee about how climate risk is damaging insurance markets. We have an editorial by a board member of the biggest insurance company in the world, Allianz. We have warnings from the risk manager--former risk manager--of Goldman Sachs. We have warnings from the former head of the Bank of England, now the Prime Minister of Canada. We have warnings from the Home Mortgage Association. We have warnings from the international Financial Stability Board. There is an enormous amount of very solid and responsible data that comes not out of the environmental community but out of the financial community warning about the looming great climate insurance collapse. And if we refuse to pay attention to it, we will fail in our duties. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I think it is virtually undisputed, among people who are not on fossil fuel's payroll, that climate change is real. Earlier this year, I came to the floor, and I asked my colleagues if they could all agree on that simple, scientific fact. Well, unfortunately, they could not. So I came back. I returned to the floor in hopes that my Republican colleagues could, at least, agree to some of the simple truths that make up the bigger picture of climate change. I asked if we could agree, for instance, that sea levels are rising due to carbon emissions--again, essentially zero dispute on that fact in the scientific community--but Republicans objected. I asked if we could agree that oceans are warming. Oceans are warming by multiple zettajoules. That is a number with 21 zeros behind it. It is a massive, massive measured scientific fact. And yet Republicans sent someone to the floor to object. Again, there is essentially no nonfossil fuel-funded science disputing any of this. And I have to put the fossil fuel-funded science in air quotes because it is not real science. It is just designed to look like science and tell a lie in scientific vocabulary. So if the environmental realities are too much for the Senate to acknowledge, perhaps my colleagues will at least recognize the economic threats that are emerging. So here is today's simple truth: Climate change is driving up the cost of homeowners insurance. Can we agree on that? Well, let me break down why we should agree on that. Climate change drives extreme weather disasters, including hurricanes and floods and wildfires. Disasters like those destroy homes and destroy infrastructure, and all that destruction carries a heavy cost. Before the Trump administration stopped the practice in 2025, NOAA-- the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--actually used to track the costs of this destruction every year. Thanks to NOAA, we have all this data going back that shows that climate disasters and climate costs have been increasing--quite dramatically, actually. This chart draws on NOAA data from before 2025 and other aggregated data since that, and it shows that the increase in climate change- driven weather has been very notable between 1980 and today--from here up to here. Costs of the disasters spike in particular years, depending on the type of disasters and where the impacts occurred. Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma made 2017--here, that--the costliest year on record. But setting aside the spikes, the average cost is steadily increasing, along with the frequency of disasters. And these costs fall first where? On the insurance companies. In 2023, insurers lost money in 18 of 50 States. That is an increase from 12 States 5 years previously and 8 States in 2013--8 to 12 to 18. The losses to insurers are also increasing. To offset these climate-driven losses, insurance companies raised their premiums. And, sure enough, from 2013 to 2022, home insurance premiums more than doubled, rising to be over 20 percent of mortgage payments, on average. When a family starts with a pretty big payment like their home insurance payment and it then doubles, that is a big hit to the family's finances. We know this increase isn't just inflation because insurance premiums are increasing 40 percent faster than inflation. We know that this cost increase is driven by climate change, and we know it because the numbers don't lie. You can look at the areas with the highest climate risk, and you see that the cost increases most in those counties, the ones at most risk from climate change. The largest increases in insurance rates between 2014 and 2023 happened in the highest climate risk areas--obvious and true. In high-risk States like Florida and Louisiana, premiums are estimated to average more than $14,000 and $11,000 respectively. That is not by accident. That is because those low-lying States are being hammered by increasingly violent and wet storms and hurricanes, combined with rising sea levels. Both phenomena are driven by climate change. Higher home insurance means less money to spend on household essentials like groceries and gas, which are already more expensive than ever. But higher insurance rates are not actually a family's worst-case scenario. The worst-case home insurance scenario for a family is nonrenewal. More and more, in high climate risk counties across the country, insurance companies, unwilling to take on this additional risk, are refusing to insure homes at all. This is a nightmare for homeowners. First of all, you have the enormous hassle of having to go out and find new insurance, which probably costs more and is worse. But also, most lenders won't approve a mortgage unless the borrower also purchases insurance. And if the home is uninsurable, guess what. The home is unmortgageable, and an unmortgageable home is almost inevitably an unsellable home. When you lose your insurance, lenders may also force place a new home insurance policy on you to replace the policy that was canceled. Force- placed insurance obviously protects first the lender's interest, not the homeowner's property, and it almost always costs much, much more, and it covers less. And it is added to the mortgage payment, and that can be a huge financial blow to a family. All of this added cost and risk means that climate change is dragging down home equity value, undermining the primary driver of wealth appreciation for America's middle class, and, by the way, reducing property tax revenue for things like schools and public safety and basic services provided by local government. The bottom line here is that climate risk has moved from the science department to the economics department, and it has landed hard in home insurance, and Americans are paying the price. So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged, and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 554; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. To the Senator, through the Chair, I, too, was at that memorial service. It probably was the first time we saw one another. Thank you.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today marks the 308th time that I have stood on the Senate floor and asked my colleagues to wake up to the realities of climate change. This also marks 308 times that my Republican colleagues have ignored my call to wake up. They even refuse to acknowledge the simple truths that the climate is changing, oceans are warming, sea levels are rising, and our fossil fuel emissions are the principal cause. In the last several weeks, Republicans have sent someone to the floor to object each time I sought unanimous consent to pass a resolution affirming these very simple truths. The Senate's record of failure profoundly disappoints me. In fact, it angers me. I am angry on behalf of the homeowners in Florida, Louisiana, back home in Rhode Island, and across the country who are paying double or triple what they used to for property insurance because climate risk is making floods, storms, and wildfires more frequent and severe. I am angry that these same families are paying more than ever for groceries due to increasingly frequent and severe droughts, heat waves, floods, and storms. This is a tragedy. But, worse, it is a preventable tragedy. Ignoring it will not make climate change go away; it will leave Americans poorer and American communities more vulnerable and less prepared. America can do big things. Our history shows that. And I believe a challenge of the magnitude of climate change justifies congressional action. So here I still am, speaking because I still believe in the power of this body to take action, to serve the people whom we took an oath to serve, and to use the awesome power that our constituents have granted us to solve the greatest problems facing our country today. This is a significant anniversary. Republican Senator John Chafee, whose distinguished career in the Senate spanned from 1976 to 1999, and who also served as Governor of my State and Secretary of the Navy, shared my belief. On a note of personal disclosure, when he and my father both came back from World War II as marines from the Pacific theater, they ended up as roommates in college. So there is some personal family affection there, as well as professional appreciation. Well, exactly 40 years ago this week, while serving as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution, Senator Chafee convened a 2-day, 5-panel hearing on the greenhouse effect, climate change, and ozone depletion. Senator Chafee believed Congress had a role in addressing both the hole in the ozone layer and the rising temperatures and global disruptions caused by climate change. The 1986 Chafee hearing witnesses included scientists and policymakers--among them, Dr. James Hansen, who went on to become a leading advocate for decisive climate action and served NASA with great distinction; Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, later an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change participant and Nobel prize recipient; and even then- Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. Also testifying were President Reagan's EPA Administrator, Lee Thomas, and his Commerce Deputy Secretary, Clarence Brown. In Senator Chafee's opening remarks, he warned of what he called two ``critical problems facing the world.'' First was ``the growing use of manmade chemicals'' that were significantly depleting the ozone layer, and second was the ``buildup of greenhouse gases, which threaten to warm the Earth to unprecedented levels.'' Those problems had to be addressed, Senator Chafee warned 40 years ago, because--and I will continue with his words here--``there is a very real possibility 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.'' He asked the scientists to educate the public on the scientific consensus on ozone depletion and climate change, and he urged the government officials to take immediate action to, as he said, ``put the brakes on'' these looming crises and ensure a livable planet for future generations. Notably, Ronald Reagan's appointees acknowledged the climate crisis and agreed to take action. This is not the first time I have brought this graph to the Senate floor. This is the so-called Keeling Curve, well known in science circles. This chart shows the change in carbon dioxide concentration in the Earth's atmosphere. As you can see, it has accelerated rapidly since 1950. Last month, the Member whom the Republicans sent to the floor to object to my statement of the science made the point that CO2 levels have naturally fluctuated over many, many years of geologic time. Well, yeah, that is true. Here is what that looks like. This is 800,000 years ago--800,000 years ago. For the last 800,000 years, the carbon concentration in the atmosphere has never gone above 300 parts per million. It has varied up and down. But something very, very different happened when our Industrial Revolution began and we started emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, like methane, into the atmosphere. There it is--up like a rocket. The notion that this can be explained by that is just plain preposterous. This is also not the first time I have come to the floor to speak about the 1986 Chafee hearings. I did so 10 years ago, in 2016, to mark those hearings' 30th anniversary. Then, as now, I reflected not only on the reality of climate science, which is virtually undisputed except among those on fossil fuel's payroll, and the climate costs that have accrued since 1986. But I also spoke about the shocking transformation of the Republican Party from the 1980s to today. In June of 1986, a Republican Senator, concerned by the same data that I am sharing with you now, committed to immediate and urgent action. He directed a panel of Ronald Reagan-appointed officials to outline their plans to address the crisis, and they did so. At that time, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was approximately 348 parts per million. In June of 2016, when I recognized the 30th anniversary of this hearing, the fossil fuel billionaire-backed Supreme Court had just stayed the Clean Power Plan, EPA's first-ever attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants. Then-Candidate Donald Trump promised to rescind the Clean Power Plan when he got into office, and the U.S. House of Representatives voted to officially denounce a carbon price. They went to bat to protect the freedom to pollute for their fossil fuel donors. In 2016, the concentration of CO2 had climbed from 348 parts per million to 404 parts per million. These are measurements, by the way, not opinions. Today, President Trump, approaching the halfway point of his second term, calls climate change a ``hoax.'' Hoax. His EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin rescinded EPA's greenhouse gas endangerment finding--an action flatly at odds with known science and with the law--and then celebrated what he called ``driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.'' Really. And to bring things full circle, earlier this spring, 40 years after a senior Reagan administration Commerce official acknowledged the reality of climate change, today's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a strident opponent of affordable renewable energy, denies the science. The Republican Party steps backward. Today, as I speak, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is north of 430 parts per million--348, up to 404, and now up to 430. In just four decades, atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by nearly 25 percent due to fossil fuel combustion. As climate deniers are fond of pointing out, CO2 doesn't harm or kill people. What it does is trap heat in the atmosphere-- enormous amounts of heat--and it is that heated atmosphere that harms and kills people through more violent extreme weather events, wildfires, and rising seas. Here you see global average temperatures. Back in 1986, they were 0.46 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial norm. Now, they are 1.4 degrees above that preindustrial norm. That difference, nearly a full degree, has already had profound consequences for our planet. For one, our oceans are heating every year by the zettajoule. If you don't know what a zettajoule is, let me tell you. It has 21 zeroes after it. You can either call it a billion trillions or a trillion billions. It is an enormous number. The entire production and consumption of energy by the human species on planet Earth is half a zettajoule. And because of the heating generated by the greenhouse gases, more than 24 zettajoules of excess heat go into the ocean every year. A multiple of our total energy consumption as a species is absorbed by the oceans. If you want to know why they are warming, if you want to know why reefs are dying, if you want to know why fisheries are moving around, if you want to know why seas are rising, if you want to know why storms are worsening, there is your answer: zettajoules of excess heat into the oceans caused by fossil fuel. And all of that has economic cost. In this building, I have grown, I suppose, accustomed to the fact that nobody cares about anything that can't be monetized, and they only care about it to the extent that it is monetized. So here is some monetization of what all that means. In 1986--here--there were three--one, two, three--three billion-dollar disasters in the United States. Last year, there were 23 billion-dollar disasters. The recent L.A. wildfires alone destroyed thousands of homes and did tens of billions of dollars in damage. And guess what happens when that kind of damage soars? Insurance moves with it. You actually don't have to be directly affected by a climate change-driven extreme weather event, a hurricane, or a wildfire to be paying the price for climate change. Back in 1986, when Senator Chafee held his hearings, homeowners insurance premiums averaged about $150 annually. In today's money, they averaged $470, roughly. Today-- today--premiums average almost $2,500, and--no surprise--the largest increases are in the highest climate risk areas. In Florida and Louisiana, homeowners insurance premiums average more than $10,000, and they are predicted to increase--doubling, even tripling--off the proverbial charts. Climate change is no longer tomorrow's problem, and it has moved from the science department into the economics department. It is here today. And whether my colleagues care to admit it or not, we are all already paying for it. Economists estimate that it costs every household an average of around $500 per year in heightened climate cost, and that is a conservative estimate. In many coastal and wildfire-exposed parts of the country, that average annual cost is already north of $1,000 per household cost. And that hidden climate tax, brought to you by the fossil fuel industry, is steadily rising year after year. This is what 40 years of inaction and obstruction following the Chafee hearings has wrought: huge costs and increasing economic dislocation. What was once a scientific issue, a prediction, is now knocking at our door and causing immediate economic harm. And then there is the politics. In 1986, the hope and determination to tackle climate change was a bipartisan thing. Today, climate change has been replaced in the Republican Party by climate denial. When I got here in 2007, climate change was still a bipartisan concern. We had major climate legislation in this body--four different measures that I recall, each significant, each that would have changed the trajectory that these pages will face in their lifetime. But then--then--the 2010 Citizens United decision came down. That decision unleashed a vast fossil fuel-funded armada of front groups that spread around climate disinformation, perhaps the biggest fraudulent operation in the country's history, and unlimited dark money into our politics--perhaps the largest corruption enterprise in American history. Back in 1986, Senator Chafee did not face a politics awash in fossil fuel dark money, and the armada of climate denial front groups did not exist; and so the Senate was able to focus more on the public interest and less on fossil fuel's special interests. Today, objecting to my calls to this body to recognize the reality of climate change, the objector sent here accused me of ``subscribing to Chicken Little scare tactics.'' That is the 2026 Republican position. Back in 1986, Republican John Chafee, before this became the ``House of Mammon,'' opened his climate change hearing by saying something very different. He said: This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling. Forty years of fossil fuel influence has made a sickening difference. The 1986 Chafee hearing is also illustrative of the power of Congress when, uncorrupted by a powerful special interest, it acts decisively in favor of the public. At the time of the Chafee hearing, depletion of the Earth's protective ozone layer was allowing dangerous levels of solar radiation to penetrate the atmosphere. Twin holes in the ozone layer had formed around the North and South Poles, and the ozone holes were growing. Scientists worried that, absent immediate action, the holes would grow big enough to threaten the survival of life on Earth. That fear is ancient history now. Why? Not because we mocked the scientists for fearmongering, but because we did as the science advised and phased out the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. In 1990, just 4 years after the Chafee hearings, Congress passed the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, which required this phaseout. No surprise, the scientists were right, and the phaseout worked. Chlorofluorocarbons stay in the atmosphere for decades. So it took years to see the effects of the ban. But beginning in the 2000s, the ozone holes stabilized and then began to shrink. And if current policies remain in place, scientists expect a return to pre-1980s levels, a healing of the ozone holes, within the next four decades. We could still do the same for climate change: Follow the science, pass a law to implement policies that would reduce and eventually eliminate carbon pollution, remove the already emitted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and restore our climate's natural health, halt and eventually reverse dangerous sea level rise and the dangerous cycle of ever-worsening storms and wildfires, and fend off the insurance collapse that this trajectory portends. Many of us watched the recent Artemis II mission with awe--with awe of the astronauts who traveled farther than any human has gone before and with awe of NASA's ingenuity to be able to send them there. Astronaut Christina Koch, speaking from over 200,000 miles away from Earth, spoke to future generations. She said: We will explore. We will build. . . . We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. . . . We will found companies. We will bolster industry. We will inspire. But, ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other. Her closing words would resonate, I think, with Senator John Chafee. Forty years ago, he said: 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. With those words of his, I salute the memory of Senator John Chafee, whose seat I now hold. He was an inspiring and farsighted public servant. We need more of them. I should add that the NASA scientists who made that remarkable Artemis voyage possible have no doubts about the climate science. Those climate doubts, that fake climate denial, are precisely coextensive with the reach of the fossil fuel industry's corrupt political influence. There are two paths that emerged from Senator Chafee's hearing. One was the path of science to success against ozone depletion. The other-- the one we have unfortunately chosen--is the path of climate denial fraud and dark-money political corruption that leads to failure. We can do better, but only if we wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the Senate floor every year around this time to remark upon an event in our pathway toward revolution. As we close in on the semiquincentennial celebration of our day of independence--July 4, 1776--I want to take this Chamber back 4 more years than that to June 9, 1772, when the first blow was struck of armed conflict between the American Colonies and Great Britain's fleet. The story begins with the arrival on Narragansett Bay of His Majesty's officer Lieutenant William Duddingston, the captain of a revenue cutter named the Gaspee. Lieutenant Duddingston's task was to police the commerce going in and out of Narragansett Bay, and he went about his task with bumptious, arrogant zeal, which included arrogant exchanges of correspondence with the Colonial Governor and Chief Justice and unnecessary harassment and interference with colonial shipping on Narragansett Bay. Before we get to June and the events that I am going to describe, I will take a quick sidebar to one of his first exploits in February. He had only gotten there in January. By February, Captain Duddingston of the Gaspee seized a ship called the Fortune, and he seized its cargo. He had the ship and the cargo transferred up to Boston, where His Majesty's government sold the cargo and sold the ship and transferred the funds to the exchequer of Great Britain. What they had not appreciated was that one of the owners of the Fortune was a Rhode Islander named Nathanael Greene, who had not beforehand been much involved in the Committees of Correspondence and the spirit of rebellion. But the seizure of his vessel put him into what he called a spirit of resentment that changed the course of his life. As students of history will know, he went on to become the chief operating officer of the Revolutionary War, the top lieutenant to George Washington, the guy who made the supplies and the work-- everything--happen. He was important in that role, but he constantly begged General Washington for a real command. Ultimately, General Washington relented, though it wounded him to lose the administrative capability of General Nathanael Greene. General Greene went down to run the southern campaign of the Revolutionary War, whose motto, according to General Greene, was: We fight, we get beat, we rise up, and we fight again. Sure enough, he did. He fought over and over and over again, never winning a battle but definitively winning the war in one of the first real examples of guerrilla-type conflict the world had seen. They were used to staged, matched armies in colorful regalia, standing at a reasonable distance from each other and firing at each other with muskets and with cannons. The entire campaign in the South was a guerrilla campaign in which they fought, they got beat, they got away, they rose up, and they fought again. The result was that General Cornwallis, commanding the British Army, wrote to his wife: That damn Greene is more dangerous than Washington. He was a very significant participant in the victory that America achieved and the independence that we asserted on the Fourth of July, 1776. He doesn't get the credit he deserves because he spent so much of the war facilitating the work of General Washington, but historians know what a remarkable job he did running that southern campaign. You can trace that all the way back to Lieutenant William Duddingston and the Gaspee seizing his ship the Fortune and lighting up that spirit of resentment. So scroll forward to June 9, 1772. Lieutenant Duddingston is still helming the Gaspee, and the Gaspee is still harassing Rhode Islanders. A June day on Narragansett Bay is a beautiful thing to behold, and in the sparkling light of that wonderful day, a little ship called the Hannah, bearing cargo, was sailing on its way up to Providence, which was one of the maritime centers of the Colonies, and the Gaspee gave chase, seeking to arrest the Hannah and seize its cargo and send it off to Boston the way the Fortune's had been sent. Only Captain Lindsey of the Hannah decided: To hell with that. I am not going to surrender. I am going to run for it. He sailed away up Narragansett Bay with the Gaspee in chase. Along the Warwick shore, about halfway up Narragansett Bay, the Pawtuxet River comes into the bay, and, as rivers do, it carries silt and dirt from the river washing through into the bay. When the river slows down and the water goes out into the larger bay, the silt and the sand fall to the bottom, and there is a little barrier along the bottom of the bay left by the river. Well, Captain Lindsey had sailed there quite a lot, and like any good captain, he had a pretty good idea of how deeply his vessel drew. He sailed over the sandbar off of Namquid Point and continued on his merry way in the sparkling midday of June 9, 1772. Behind him came the bigger, heavier, lumbering Gaspee, and it floundered and stuck on that sandbar. The tide was falling, so the Gaspee was going no place until the tide fell all the way to low tide and came all the way back up to the tide level at which it foundered and then raised farther enough to lift the vessel off where it was stuck. When the Hannah got to Providence, her captain told the story of what had taken place. He described to the worthies on the Providence shore that the Gaspee--this dread vessel that had caused so much nuisance and cost to Rhode Islanders--was stuck. That night, Rhode Islanders rode down from Providence to the Gaspee at night in longboats with muffled oars. As they approached the stuck Gaspee, Abraham Whipple, who was the local sheriff and was in the party, yelled out that he was there to arrest the captain of the vessel and arrest the vessel. Duddingston was not about to put up with that, so he called his crew up to the deck, called them to arms, and a battle ensued between the longboats surrounding the Gaspee and the Gaspee itself. As the Rhode Islanders swarmed onto the Gaspee, among the gunshots was one that struck Captain Duddingston, so, injured, he surrendered his crew, and the Rhode Islanders captured--his rank was lieutenant; his position was captain. Captain Duddingston. Lieutenant Duddingston. They took him ashore with the crew and turned them all over to be held prisoner and detained. Then they went back out onto the bay, out to the stricken and stranded Gaspee, and they set her alight. When a ship burns, particularly a ship of that era, whose rope is covered with tar, whose rigging is canvas, whose structure is wood, with so many parts that are varnished and oiled, the combustion is rapid. And, as the Gaspee burned, the fire reached the Gaspee's powder magazine. And, when the fire reached the powder magazine, the gunpowder did what gunpowder does, and it blew the Gaspee to smithereens. It is now about 4 in the morning on June 10, 1772. More than 4 years would go by before the Fourth of July Declaration of Independence; and, interestingly, more than a year and a half would go by until another event--that is much more prominent even though much less brave and significant--took place, and that is the so-called Boston Tea Party. Now, I have nothing against my friends from Massachusetts, but they got drunk; they went onboard a civilian ship. They seized bales of tea, and they pushed the tea bales into Boston Harbor. Well, bully for them, but well more than a year earlier, Rhode Islanders had seized a vessel of Her Majesty's Navy; had captured the crew; and had blown the damned boat up, and I think that deserves a little credit. So I come here every year. When I go home this weekend, we will be marching in the Gaspee Days Parade that goes by Namquid Point--now called Gaspee Point--where an annual celebration takes place. And I want to make sure that all of the pages who are here know that, when they hear about the Boston Tea Party, they should know to scroll back 18 months to a bolder, more violent, and more remarkable engagement by Rhode Island. The aftermath was immediate. King George was furious. He demanded that everyone involved be hanged, and he sent commissioners to come and root out who the miscreants were who had participated in the raid on the Gaspee. And here is what is interesting. There are probably five long boatloads of Rhode Islanders--enough to overwhelm the crew of the Gaspee--and enormous rewards were offered for people to cooperate and testify against their comrades--against all that pressure from the King, against all that inducement of reward. In Rhode Island, no one squealed. The commissioners went home emptyhanded. The nooses hung empty. That was the second conclusion. The blowing up of the vessel was one thing. The solidarity of not yielding to testify against their fellow colonists was the other. So I will read my poem about this event with apologies to the ride of Paul Revere. Listen, my colleagues, and you shall see How Rhode Islanders blew up the dread Gaspee. Great Britain was fearsome, she ruled the sea, But Rhode Islanders burned with the fire to be free. So when George sent his frigate to tax our coast, And its arrogant captain was heard to boast That he'd soon have Rhode Island under his sway, [Well] a course was set for a fateful day. Narragansett Bay sparkled bright and blue June 9 of 1772, The trading ship Hannah was making her way With cargo for Providence that fine day. King George's Gaspee pursued in chase, But the Hannah decided to give her a race. Away fled the Hannah with wind in her sails, As the Gaspee's cannon fired from its rails. Evading the Gaspee's cannon balls, The Hannah sailed for the Namquid shoals. Fast and light, Hannah crossed the shallow, But when the Gaspee attempted to follow, She ran aground on the Warwick shore, In a falling tide, and could move no more. That night dark longboats with muffled oars, Came slipping quietly down the shore, To rid our Bay of the dread Gaspee, And show old King George that Rhode Island [would be] free. The battle was fierce off Warwick Neck. When the gunsmoke cleared from the Gaspee's deck, The Rhode Islanders had her as their prize, And her crew bound up in chains and ties. When the crew was ashore, Pawtuxet's Rangers Assured they'd present us no further danger. Back to the Bay, in the dark of the night, Went the Gaspee Raiders to set her alight. The fire spread through the Raiders' prize, 'Til a blast filled the Narragansett Bay skies. The fire had reached the Gaspee's magazines, And her gunpowder blew her to smithereens. Away sped the Raiders into the dark, Leaving in the embers freedom's spark. ``I want their names!'' King George demanded, And ordered the Raiders be apprehended. But his call for hangings came to naught: His nooses hung empty; no charge was brought; Because never a traitorous tale was told. Rhode Island stood steady and silent and bold. The spark that was struck in the Gaspee Raid Lit a flame that still burns in our hearts today. And the lesson from then is a lesson now, That every American still will avow. ``However majestic your powers be, You should heed our warning: don't tread on me.'' I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask for the yeas and nays. Vote on Motion

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are here on my Congressional Review Act motion, and I understand that the Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee has already spoken in opposition, so I want to make the case for why we should vote yes on this. Months before the 2024 election, President Trump offered his Big Oil and Coal cronies a deal: If they gave him a billion dollars to take the White House, he would pay them back one hundredfold. Well, he doesn't keep a lot of promises, but he seems to have kept this one. Since taking office in January, Trump has bent over backward to make big polluters happy, and Americans pay the price. This sweetheart billion-dollar deal for polluters has meant a number of things: one, basically a driveby window handing out regulatory exemptions to individual coal plants and other toxic sources to pollute with impunity. Quite the driveby window. That sweetheart deal meant ordering coal plants to stay online so that the coal dealers can continue to fuel them even against the wishes of the local communities and even the utilities themselves. This sweetheart billion-dollar deal meant--and this is relevant to this particular motion--rolling back toxic pollution standards for every coal- and oil-fired powerplant across the country. EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics rule established lifesaving standards, restricting emissions of the most dangerous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired powerplants. And, naturally, the Trump EPA rolled these health standards back. As dirty power sources go, coal is the dirtiest. Coal plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States. Mercury pollution is bad stuff, and coal and oil plants also emit massive volumes of other toxic pollutants, including arsenic, lead, and cadmium--more bad stuff. Approximately 80 million Americans, including about 17 million children, live within 3 miles of one of those toxin-spewing, fossil fuel-fired powerplants. Without strong rules limiting their toxic pollution, all those millions of Americans are exposed to unacceptable risk to their health and well-being. But in the Trump ``put polluters first'' world, that doesn't matter. We can do something about it, however, because the Congressional Review Act gives Congress the opportunity to vote on such evil regulations. With the Trump administration engaged in an effort, at breakneck speed, to tear down protections of Americans' health and safety and our environment, Congressional Review Act resolutions like this one can help hold the administration to account and protect Americans' health and safety while doing so. For those reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this measure, in favor of the protection of those 17 million children in the harm zone of these toxins. Mr. President, I now move to proceed to Calendar No. 409, S.J. Res. 188.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I just want to make sure it is absolutely clear that that argument is what Republicans have sent to the floor of the U.S. Senate to question the measurements and the facts of climate change. That is what they sent to the floor. The questions are the talking points of the fossil fuel industry. To what extent does man cause it? Here is what NASA says: There is unequivocal evidence that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. [With] human activity . . . the principal cause. And lest it be not clear that human activity is fossil fuel burning and emissions. That is not a question. That is a known thing, just ask NASA. And what to do about it? Well, one good thing to do about it would be to bring more clean energy onto the grid, and that doesn't cost trillions. Over time, that will save trillions. Just in my State of Rhode Island, we tried to bring clean energy onto our grid at a contract price of 9 cents per kilowatt hour from an offshore wind farm. Our average grid price is 18 cents per kilowatt hour. So the offshore wind would literally be half-price energy for our grid. And the Trump administration tried twice illegally to stop it. We would have saved a lot of money had we gone to clean energy. Look at any one of America's grids and look at what power sources run first. It is the clean stuff. Why? Because they operate by the rule of running the less expensive power first. Wherever you go in the country, clean energy is the least expensive power. It lowers costs for people. If you want a solution, there is an easy one that protects against the dangers of climate change, and that lowers costs for consumers. I would only advise my friend from Wisconsin that he just might want to consider running his argument by the University of Wisconsin before trotting it out on the Senate floor. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the Senate this afternoon with a simple proposition and a resolution that recognizes that simple truth, and that is that: Climate change is real. Earlier this year, I came to the floor, and I asked my colleagues if they could all agree on this simple scientific fact. On this occasion, I also asked my colleagues to acknowledge what the fossil fuel industry has known for nearly 60 years, which is not only that climate change is real but also that they are the primary cause of climate change--their emissions. Unfortunately, Republicans refused to acknowledge those facts. So I came back and asked for a simple recognition that sea levels were rising as a result of climate change, and Republicans refused to acknowledge that. I came back and asked that we recognize, very simply, that oceans are warming because of climate change, and Republicans refused to acknowledge that fact. So let's try this. It is super simple. Resolved, That the Senate recognizes that climate change is real. That is the text of this resolution. It is a simple, four-word proposition that I hope we can agree on. But just to show the fact base that this simple fact stands on, we can start with NASA. NASA has pretty good scientists. They are actually driving rovers around on Mars. They are pretty good at what they do. And here is what NASA maintains: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. [And that] human activity is the principal cause. And if you don't trust NASA, if you don't want to take their word for it, you can just take a look at the data. It is pretty straightforward. This graph reflects the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is a known thing. It is done by measurement. I hope we still believe, in the Senate, in measurement. This chart shows what is called the Keeling curve--daily atmospheric CO2 concentrations measured at scientific observatories. The historic data going back is actually collected from testing air bubbles frozen in ice sheets. And I have been to the Ohio State lab where some of those ice cores from old glaciers are maintained, from where they take those measurements. The Ohio State scientists know what they are doing. The measurement is not that complicated. So that is the track of CO2 in the atmosphere according to the Keeling curve. Here is the next fact: Global average temperature is increasing at an accompanying rate as the CO2 emissions climb. You can see how well it tracks. Global temperature is not that hard to measure. Again, we are dealing with measurement--in effect, thermometers. It is not that hard. And if you look, as I said before, at what is going on with the heat in the oceans, here is how that tracks. And the reason that the ocean heat tracks the CO2 concentration and the land heat measures is because most of the excess heat that fossil fuel emission causes gets absorbed by the oceans. We would already be on an unlivable planet if it weren't for the oceans absorbing 90 percent of that excess heat. And the amount of heat that the oceans absorb is pretty astounding. You have to measure it in zettajoules. Last week, I explained that we are now warming the oceans by 23 zettajoules a year, breaking the ocean heat content record for the ninth consecutive year. As I said before, what is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is the unit of heat measure--the joule--with 21 zeroes behind it. That makes it a very big number. That is actually a billion trillions or, to put it the other way, a trillion billions. It is an enormous amount of heat. It is more than 40 times the total amount of energy that human beings generate on all of planet Earth to warm ourselves, cool ourselves, drive our cars, run our motors, push refrigerators--whatever it is we are trying to do. The whole energy footprint of humankind on planet Earth is half a zettajoule. And the oceans, because of that excess fossil fuel emission, are absorbing more than 40 times that much. It has a huge magnifier effect. And that does things like drop the Antarctic ice shelf. And when the Antarctic ice mass shrinks, the ice that is on the land that goes into the water does what? Raises the sea level. You can test that proposition for yourself by putting ice in a cup and letting it pour into another cup as it melts, and you will see the level of the cup rise. So here is where global sea level has been going. Again, we are not dealing with complicated stuff here. We measure heat with thermometers. We measure sea level rise with tide monitors. It is basically a yardstick, and you go and look at the time of day when the tide is the same, and you measure where on the yardstick the sea level is. This is not something that is complex or amenable to much legitimate confusion or dissent. Here we can look at the areas burned by wildfires. It is not just coasts and oceans that are getting clobbered by our emissions, but the area in the United States burned by wildfires keeps climbing and climbing. And the harm that this causes goes on and on. Hurricanes driven by warmer seas are becoming stronger and wetter. Wildfires driven by drought and wind are burning far more land. And it is not just scientists who are reporting what they measure. You can actually go back to a very interesting and somewhat unique dataset. In Japan, in Kyoto, believe it or not, the Japanese people have been measuring the peak bloom of their cherry trees for 1,200 years. It is one of the longest datasets on the planet: 1,200 years of when Kyoto's cherry trees hit peak bloom. And you can see, going back to the year 800, it moves fairly steadily along until you get to the Industrial Revolution, until you get to the fossil fuel emissions barrage that drove the CO2 concentrations so high. As CO2 went up and as the planet heated, spring came sooner. And so you see here, earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier comes the day of peak bloom. I thought that was interesting because I thought a 1,200-year dataset kept by the Japanese people was interesting. So that is where we are. We have more violent storms. We have more ferocious and damaging wildfires. We have hotter temperatures. We have a dramatically warming ocean. And as I have said, climate change has moved from the science department to the economics department because all of those science measures bring costs onto the American public. Droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes disrupt agriculture and the transit of groceries, and they make food more expensive for Americans. These climate impacts drive up homeowners insurance in regions where the climate risk becomes unmanageable. And they drive down property values, because when your homeowners insurance cost doubles or triples and threatens to double or triple again, that cost knocks down the value of your home. And we are seeing that right now in Florida. And then, of course, all of this drives up energy bills at a time when oil prices are already extremely high because of Trump's mad war in Iran. All of this is real in family budgets today, and it is a big deal. It is a big cost when homeowners insurance, which starts as a big number, doubles, as it has in Iowa in recent years. It is a big deal when you get told by your insurance company that you are fired, they are not going to insure your property any longer, and now you have to scramble to find insurance. And when you do, it is worse. It is more expensive, provides less coverage. There is a huge cost factor, and there is a huge hassle factor for real Americans right now. That is our reality. Climate change is real. Can we agree on that simple truth? That is my question today. Mr. President, therefore, I ask, as if in legislative session, unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 553; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as the Trump administration has walked back from protecting American consumers to help all of its creepy billionaires who it loves so much, States have had to step up into the breach and enact commonsense protections for regular consumers. That includes 15 States, like my State of Rhode Island, helping to make sure medical debt does not send consumers, American families, into a financial tailspin, blocking their access to credit. While the Fair Credit Reporting Act continues to provide some key protections for consumers, this rule is particularly concerning at a time the administration has sidelined the CFPB at every turn. Rhode Island consumers have filed almost 13,000 complaints about credit reporting with the CFPB in the past year. We need its help again. We need vigorous, empowered State enforcement more than ever as well. I yield back. Vote on Motion to Proceed

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 399, S.J. Res. 155.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the vote scheduled for 2 o'clock be called immediately.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would just note for the record that the University of Wisconsin in the good Senator's home State teaches the science of climate change, teaches courses with names like ``Climate and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change, Human and Planetary Health,'' ``Climate Change Ecology,'' ``Ice and Climate Dynamics,'' ``Climate Change and Health Disparities,'' ``Soils and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change Medicine,'' ``Climatic Environments of the Past,'' ``Agricultural Weather and Climate,'' ``Climate Action Planning: Sustainable Transportation,'' ``Case Studies Exploring Infrastructure, Sustainability and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change Governance,'' ``Climate Change, Sustainability, and Education,'' and as a lawyer, I would add ``Climate Change, Human Rights, and the Environment.'' I would strongly recommend that all of my colleagues who are unfamiliar with what is happening in the real world with climate change go to their home State universities that teach the stuff and listen to what their home State universities have to say. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, here is a simple truth: Climate change is real. Earlier this year, I came to the floor and asked my colleagues if they could all agree on this simple scientific fact. This being the Temple of Mammon, run by fossil fuel, to no one's surprise, they could not. So I hoped that if I broke down the reality of climate change into smaller simple truths, we could then find areas of agreement. But 2 weeks ago, when I asked on the floor if we could all agree to the simple truth that sea levels are rising, I was once again met with an objection. So let's give it another go. Today's simple truth: The oceans are warming. Can we agree on that? I have come to the floor several times to talk about the fact that the oceans are heating by the zettajoule. So let's talk for a minute about what a zettajoule is. A joule is the standard unit of energy--heat energy. A zettajoule has 21 zeroes behind it. It is a spectacularly enormous number. In the past, I have reported that our oceans are measured absorbing around 14 zettajoules of excess heat every year. If you want a comparison, you can image that that is the equivalent of seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating in the ocean every second. That is the size of the heat transfer, and, indeed, that is the number in this resolution. Sadly, since we introduced this resolution, that measure has increased. Our oceans now are warming by 23 zettajoules a year. We are breaking the ocean heat content record for the ninth consecutive year. To put that in context, the total energy consumption of all humankind on planet Earth is about one-half of a zettajoule per year--all of it, every turbine, every boiler, every engine. All of our energy is one- half of a zettajoule. That means that, for the fossil fuel component of that one-half of a zettajoule that human beings create, we add 23 zettajoules of excess heat to the oceans. It is a 50-to-1 magnification, nearly, and it is driving ocean temperatures skyward. Since 1955, the top 2,000 meters of the global ocean have gained approximately 372 zettajoules of heat. And, as you can see, the trajectory is that things are going to get a lot worse. By 2100, it is projected that the rate of ocean warming will be somewhere between two and six times greater than the rate of warming at the 14-zettajoule level of annual excess heat. A world in which the ocean is warming at six times 14 zettajoules of excess heat every year rapidly becomes an unlivable world for a great many human beings. This amount of heat has horrific effects on biodiversity and sea life, happening already--happening already. Fisherman know that fish populations are moving across international boundaries or out into the high seas, causing economic uncertainty and harm for fishermen. Warming sea surface temperatures shrink populations of the world's most abundant phytoplankton, significantly damaging the ocean food webs on which so many humans ultimately depend. Warming and acidification combined prevents species from being able to create their calcium carbonate shells. I have often spoken on the Senate floor about the humble pteropod--a species that I think nobody cares very much about here, but they are enormously abundant in the oceans. They have been measured as suffering extreme shell damage in the oceans. And they are not a very long trophic hop from things we do care about, like salmon. When you kick the foundation out from under a food chain, it collapses. Harmful algal blooms grow in warmer water and become more and more severe, taking a toll on fisheries, on public health, on recreation and tourism. If you want a description of what rotting algae on beaches does to tourism, just look at the stories about what Florida has experienced. Warmer oceans increase evaporation rates, which increases atmospheric humidity, which fuels extreme precipitation and stronger hurricanes. Those stronger, wetter storms and other climate change-induced threats crashing into insurance markets pose a roughly $25 trillion risk to the global housing market over the next 25 years. When the climate risk gets so severe that it crashes insurance markets, that cascades into mortgage markets, and that cascades into property values. That is where the $25 trillion estimate comes from. If you want to look more locally, Florida now leads the country in property value loss as the first and worst exposed to this climate risk. The threats don't end there. The risks that stronger, wetter storms pose to agriculture and food production, insurance, tourism, infrastructure, the energy sector, and more are very, very real. Mature and responsible warnings abound. As we noted in my last resolution, 30 percent of Americans live in coastal areas. Ten trillion dollars of goods and services are produced in coastal counties across the United States each year. There is a lot in jeopardy due to our warming oceans. It is the simple truth: Climate change is real. Sea level rise is real. Ocean warming by the zettajoule is real. And all of it is already disrupting American lives, pocketbooks, and families, and it is getting steadily worse. Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 552; further, that the resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here now for the 307th time with my trusty and increasingly battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart to warn this Chamber about how America's worst polluters have occupied the Trump administration from within. These polluters are up to no good. They are desperate--desperate--to pollute for free. That is their business model, to pollute for free, even though polluting for free is wrong--wrong under the laws of economics, wrong under the laws of morality, wrong under the laws of nature. But they are desperate to pollute for free because the stakes are huge. And the stakes are really huge. The International Monetary Fund has calculated that the fossil fuel industry's subsidy from being allowed to pollute for free is over $700 billion every year. Mr. President, $700 billion every year is a lot of money, and it is a lot of motive to fund a lot of mischief. The polluters deny the science of what their emissions are doing to Earth's natural systems. Indeed, they have mounted a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial. As I have said in earlier speeches, that is actually phase 2. Phase 1 was when their own scientists warned them what their emissions would do to Earth's natural systems and they chose to hide that information and cover it up. But once it became more standard science to know that, then they went into the phase 2 part--a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial. Phase 3 was to spend massive amounts of dark money--massive amounts of dark money--to influence and control American politics, specifically to control the Republican Party. I was here when it was OK to be a Republican on a serious climate bill. That was true until January of 2010, the day that Citizen United was decided. And at that point the amount of money that fossil fuel offered made it irresistible for the Republican Party to become the party of climate denial. And that fossil fuel industry doesn't operate in its own name. It operates through many, many front groups, front groups which they play like piano keys. It amounts to corruption at epic scale. Today, I highlight the polluters' latest corrupt trick, which is to use the powers of government, a Federal Government that is theirs now to corruptly command, to block low-cost clean energy from getting to the grid. What is happening is that the polluting industries' expensive polluting plants are being outcompeted--outcompeted by reliable renewable clean energy like wind and solar. The polluters know that their only chance of survival against less expensive, cleaner power is to interfere using government. So what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign. We know it is hundreds of millions. It could have been the whole billion that Trump asked for; but given how complicated dark money is, it is hard to tell. We do know they put at least hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign. And the result is a Trump administration that is paying them back to the tune of billions of dollars. And here is the rub: They are using your money to pay them. From the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of the Interior to the Department of Energy, polluters have infiltrated the government itself and are using its levers to shut down their clean energy competition. From EPA Administrator Zeldin to Interior Secretary Burgum to Energy Secretary Wright, the Trump administration first started by telling the big lie--the big lie that clean energy is more expensive than dirty, polluting fossil fuel energy. That is, in fact, a lie. But that was the opening premise, and then they went to work killing clean energy. At EPA, Administrator Zeldin went after congressionally appropriated and obligated funds that supported the rollout of affordable clean energy. He attacked the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, costing consumers potentially $52 billion in lost energy savings, money out of consumers' pockets. He went after Solar for All funding, costing Americans as much as $350 million per year in lost energy savings--billions lost to consumers over time. Zeldin canceled grants totaling over $1.7 billion, including congressionally appropriated and obligated funding for clean energy projects. The result of all of that was clean, renewable energy kept off the grid, increasing the costs that American consumers have to pay. The trick is that the extra cost paid by consumers was more money in the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors. That is EPA. Over at Interior, Secretary Burgum went after the companies trying to build and operate affordable clean energy projects. Early in 2025, Burgum halted construction on two offshore wind projects off the coast of Rhode Island and New York. Later, he ordered a second halt to five offshore wind projects--the two he had already stopped that were back operational and three more projects in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York. That stalled nearly 6 gigawatts of clean electricity. If those gigawatts were off the grid, that would mean polluting oil, gas, and coal plants would be picking up the slack. That extra 6 gigawatts of polluting oil, gas, and coal would, in turn, mean billions of dollars to the polluters. Thankfully, the courts stepped in again against the illegal Trump orders. And the projects continued, but they were stalled. Now Interior has a new plan: With taxpayer money, pay off companies to walk away from offshore wind leases and, instead, invest the payoff money on fossil fuel projects--again, clean renewable energy off the grid; increased costs for consumers but more profits for polluters-- Trump's big donors. Three different companies have made these dirty deals so far. That is Interior. Over at the Department of Energy, Secretary Wright made it his mission to ``revive''--their own word--beautiful, clean coal, even where no one seems to want it. Trump's Energy Department announced that it would provide 625 million taxpayer dollars for retrofits, recommissioning, and life-extension projects for coal plants, including at least one instance where neither the grid operator nor the local utility wanted this intervention. DOE then announced $175 million more from taxpayers to extend the life of six coal-fired power plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Ohio. The Department of Energy may have illegally repurposed funds Congress had appropriated for carbon capture programs to subsidize those coal plants. The net result of all of this--increased costs for ratepayers because of the expense of running these polluting plants but more profits in the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors. These attacks from polluters, who have infiltrated the government, drive up costs for consumers by billions. The excess costs consumers must pay flows to fossil fuel. You know how the grid works. They run the clean energy first because it is least expensive. If you can back off that low-cost clean energy, the grid has to climb up the generation stack to more and more expensive fossil fuel plants. And all that added money goes straight to fossil fuel industry pockets--from consumers to the fossil fuel industry, a crooked money pump driving up costs for consumers. You don't even have to kill the plant. Every day that low-cost clean energy is delayed is another day that money is steered from consumers' pockets into the pockets of the owners and fuel dealers of the expensive, polluting fossil fuel units. Those billions are the polluters' rewards from Trump. In an America deeply concerned about the cost of stuff, this corrupt extraction of money from consumers to pay off Trump's big donors won't go over well. Cost and corruption are what most concern voters, and this scheme is on the wrong side of both, which brings us to the coming election. Trump is in desperate political trouble. Costs are exploding, and corruption is epidemic. Voters are angry. So the big polluters need to corrupt the election. A corrupt attack on our elections is the last gasp of the big polluters' and creepy billionaires' grasp on power. They would rather rule corruptly in an oligarchy than live lawfully in a democracy. Their attack on democracy uses the corrupted Federal Government as its agent. It is an attack coming from inside our own house. Just recently, the captured Supreme Court delivered yet another vote- suppressing service to billionaire-funded Republicans with its destruction of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais. The Callais case is the culmination of a yearslong ``judicial project to destroy the Voting Rights Act,'' quoting Justice Kagan. As we all know, in a normal world, judges are supposed to, as Roberts once said ``call balls and strikes,'' not have projects to destroy legislation crafted by Congress. So Justice Kagan using those words is powerful. Discarding decades of precedent and ignoring mountains of factual findings made by Congress, the Court supercharged Republican partisan gerrymandering across the south. And, boy, did it work. In just 2 weeks, we have already seen Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi begin redrawing voting maps to disenfranchise minority voters and benefit Republican candidates. This all comes on top of the Court's other persistent mischief-- defending, for instance, billionaires' dark money flooding our elections and defending Republican red map gerrymandering. Even here, Republicans desperately tried to pass the vote-suppressing so-called SAVE Act, supposedly based on the bogus claim that undocumented immigrants are committing widespread voter fraud. That, as experienced in States that have looked at similar legislation shows, is unequivocally false. What would have happened is that the bill's excessive restrictions would have disenfranchised millions of legitimate voters, just not the kind that Republicans wanted voting. As we close in now on the November election, the Trump Federal Agencies are already seizing voter files. At least 48 States have received requests for their complete voter registration lists. The Department of Justice sued 30 of those States and Washington, DC, for their refusal to turn over the voter information. The administration even faked a criminal investigation to seize records in Fulton County, GA, after the DOJ had failed to obtain those records through civil proceedings. I won't explain that here because I have given a speech on that subject, laying out all of the mischief and shenanigans behind that search warrant. Even the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, seized voting machines in Puerto Rico. The plot here is simple. It is to make sure the corrupt billionaires keep their control of the government so that they can use their control of the government to prop up their pollute-for-free business model and keep gouging you on cost. Well, to keep gouging Americans on cost and to keep polluting for free and to maintain their corrupt influence over the Trump administration, they have got to mess with the election. So be alert. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the following statement from medical professionals and their names into the Record on behalf of myself and Senator Reed.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would wrap things up this evening by simply pointing out that the views expressed by the Senator from Wisconsin related to climate change are not shared by the University of Wisconsin, which actually teaches climate science. It has programs in the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Department. It has programs in the Environmental Sciences Department. Courses include Climate and Climate Change; Climate Change, Human and Planetary Health; Climatic Environments of the Past; Climate Change Ecology; Ice and Climate Dynamics; Soils and Climate Change; Climate Change and Health Disparities; Climate Change Medicine; Agricultural Weather and Climate; Climate Change Economics and Policy; Climate Change Action Planning; Case Studies Exploring Infrastructure Sustainability and Climate Change; Climate Change Governance; Climate Change, Sustainability, and Education; and for the lawyers in the room, even a law class: Climate Change, Human Rights, and the Environment. I yield the floor.