Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate the chairman saying that very much.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, on the day of the news reporting the World Meteorological Organization is declaring that 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, and further declaring that the planet is now in what they call, ``truly uncharted territory,'' I rise for my 161st ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, in this case to update my colleagues on the state of our oceans. I am from the Ocean State. In January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report with the U.S. Geologic Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, researchers at Rutgers University, Columbia University, and the South Florida Water Management District. The report updates global sea level rise estimates--perhaps not a big issue for Colorado but a big issue for Rhode Island. It made region- specific assessments for our American coastline. Based on updated peer- reviewed scientific literature, the report raised the previous upper range, or extreme, scenario for average global sea level in the year 2100 by an additional half a meter. NOAA and its partners then tailored their findings to the U.S. coastline based on regional variations in ocean circulation and gravitational pull and local land conditions like erosion, subsidence, and groundwater depletion, all of which affect the local impacts of global sea level rise. They found that under the higher scenarios, all regions in the United States, except Alaska, can expect sea level rise higher than the global mean average. The news was particularly harsh for the western Gulf of Mexico and for the northeast Atlantic coast-- Virginia through Maine, including my home State of Rhode Island. Our coastal managers, like Rhode Island's Coastal Resources Management Council--the CRMC, we call them--are taking these new estimates seriously and incorporating the high scenario into their planning. Under the new scenario, the Northeast is expected to see 9 vertical feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. That means that a child born today in Providence, RI, at Women & Infants Hospital is likely to live long enough to see this 9-foot vertical sea level rise take place along our shores. By the way, when you go up 9 feet, the shore goes back many, many hundreds of feet in many places. In Rhode Island, what CRMC is now planning for is between 9 and 12 vertical feet of sea level rise for our State. That is going to hit Rhode Island communities pretty hard. Rhode Island's CRMC and our University of Rhode Island have developed together something called STORMTOOLS. It is an online research tool that projects the effects of this sea level rise and additional storm surge onto the State's coastal properties. The tool actually now needs to be updated because it currently maxes out at 7 feet of sea level rise, which was the previous high scenario. Now that we have raised it to 9 to 12 feet, they are going to have to go back and redo it. This is what it looks like based on the 7-foot max. Here is 7 feet of sea level rise in Newport, RI. This is the harbor. This is downtown Newport. America's Cup Avenue, which runs right through there, will be taken out. Through this area are a lot of very successful businesses that appeal to the people who come to visit historic Newport, RI. Through here, we have some of the most significant working wharves still in the Newport area. Then this area here, called The Point, is a historic section that goes back into the 18th and in some cases 17th centuries. These buildings, of course, will be flooded. There is the downtown Newport fire station in the middle of that as well, so it affects our safety infrastructure. This is further up the bay in Rhode Island. This is Barrington here. This is the town of Warren. As you can see in the blue, there are a lot of places where homes and businesses go underwater just under the 7- foot scenario. Some of the stuff that goes underwater is pretty critical. Here in this bluish part is the Warren wastewater treatment plant. You can't have a wastewater treatment plant that is under water, so that is a very significant investment for Warren to have to face. I went to the Warren Town Hall not too long ago to meet with the manager and the folks who work there to hear from them about what they needed in order to accommodate this new risk. Remember that the sea level rise that we are looking at here is just the floor that high tides and storms ride in on. In this simplified illustration, we can see a coastal city with sea level rise encroaching on its infrastructure. Then we add to that the king tides. When celestial bodies line up so the tides are stronger than usual and, therefore, higher than usual, they are called king tides. That is not a scientific term, but it is the lay term for them. These king tides already push water into the streets of Miami and over the tops of the wharves of Boston on clear, sunny days--just from the tide. If you add on top of that a strong coastal storm, our city here does not stand a chance. Homes are destroyed, businesses are ruined, damages reach the billions, and lives perhaps are lost. America's coastal communities are not prepared for the future. Part of that is because so many people are denying the prospect of this future, but also we haven't caught up. Federal Emergency Management Agency flood maps are the things that guide flood insurance for most coastal property owners. FEMA's estimates, however, fall alarmingly short, we have discovered, for coastal communities like those in Rhode Island, as the FEMA studies rely on outdated data and incomplete models. This means that people along America's coast who rely on these models can be lulled into a false sense of comfort if their home falls outside one of FEMA's high risk zones but, in actuality, is in harm's way. So Rhode Island officials are out right now trying to educate everyone living and working along our State's coast about the flooding dangers that are fueled by climate change. It is not just State officials. Insurance and mortgage companies are starting to take these changes into account. Even the government-backed mortgage giant, Freddie Mac, is girding for broad housing losses from climate-driven flooding. Let me quote them: ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually,'' Freddie Mac says on its website, ``but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and great recession.'' Think about that. That is pretty serious business, if you are saying that the housing damage and the consequent financial harm is going to be greater than the housing crisis and great recession that we just lived through. Some effects of climate change may not even be insurable, Freddie Mac says, and unlike the 2008 housing crash, owners of homes that are literally under water--not just financially under water--would have little expectation of their homes' values ever recovering and, therefore, little incentive to keep making mortgage payments which would, in turn, add to steeper losses for lenders and for insurers. This is deadly serious economic business. Shoreline counties are just 18 percent of the United States in land area, but they account for around 38 percent of the country's employment and 43 percent of our GDP. Each year, the sea and storms will take a higher toll on the roads, the bridges, the seawalls, the power and wastewater treatment plants, and the military facilities that serve that economically productive shore. Despite all this, President Trump's proposed ``America First'' budget blueprint zeros out the Global Climate Change Initiative, ends U.S. contributions to international climate change programs, eliminates EPA programs that conduct climate change research and implement the Clean Power Plan, ends NOAA's coastal and marine management, research, and education grants and programs, including the sea grant cooperative research program, shifts NASA's Earth science budget, which includes climate research, out to deep space exploration, and cuts funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Obviously they don't like science very much. The President's proposal--if enacted--would accelerate the grim future laid out in NOAA's sea level rise report and in Rhode Island's STORMTOOLS projections. As that grim future accelerates, it is actually science that gives us the headlights to perceive the oncoming threats. Cuts to CRMC of as much as 60 percent would cripple the STORMTOOLS project that provides Rhode Island our headlights. The laws of thermodynamics will still govern the rise of our warming ocean waters. That is not going away. The laws of chemistry will still cause carbon dioxide to acidify seawater. That will not stop. The laws of biology will still affect vital coastal ecosystems and valuable ocean species and transmit the harms of climate change into those areas. The laws of economics mean that this will all have a pretty bleak effect on the prosperity of Americans. All that it gains is that we will just be blinder to what is coming at us. If the President were to forgo just one weekend at Mar-a-Lago, which POLITICO and the Washington Post estimate costs U.S. taxpayers $2 to $3 million each weekend, that money from one weekend could fund Rhode Island's entire sea grant program for a year, helping us guide offshore energy and commercial ocean development, protecting important fishing grounds and the State's vital fishing industry. That is economic effect in Rhode Island. When the ocean starts lapping on the stairs of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump may be hard-pressed to continue denying what all of our scientific agencies are reporting and predicting. This graphic from the Boston Globe shows at 7 feet of sea level rise what is in store for the President's posh resort. The NOAA high scenario for that area actually projects for Florida's Atlantic coast sea level rise just over 8 feet by the end of the century--though this image understates the flooding that is going to take place at Mar-a-Lago in this century. That just shows 7 feet of sea level rise. An added foot of water not shown, plus that king tide problem I discussed, and storm surge--when you have a good wind kicking up, and it blows the surface of the ocean and raises the tide further--will all amplify these effects. Bye-bye, Mar-a-Lago. It is time that we in Congress put fossil fuel interests aside. They have had their way with us quite long enough. It is time for us to start doing what is right by all of the Americans who live and work near the coast and will be facing this predicament in the real world. If the President and this Congress remain beholden to this shameless, polluting industry, we will lose our chance to protect ourselves. It is time that we wake up to the reality of climate change, wake up to the reality of sea level rise, wake up to the reality of ocean acidification, and start to do something about it. We can't say we weren't warned. We are just rotten with fossil fuel money and will not listen. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before I get into my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, let me say I appreciate the concern of the Senator from Texas that the Affordable Care Act leaves too many Americans uninsured. I am not sure the solution to that problem is to throw another 24 million people off of their insurance. I appreciate his concern that premiums for many are too high. I am not sure the solution is to dramatically increase premiums on the elderly. I appreciate his concern that Medicaid can be managed by the States--and I think I used his words correctly--along with the money to pay for it. But when the bill has $800 billion in Medicaid savings but will not cure or prevent a single illness, you are not reducing those $800 billion in savings; you are just moving it to the States. You are just putting that burden on the States. Ask Arizona how that worked when they tried to do Medicaid as they dealt with the mortgage meltdown. The American people do perhaps demand better than ObamaCare, but the solution to offer them something that is far, far worse does not seem very sensible. I believe we are willing to work together. Indeed, in the HELP Committee our chairman has already said that as soon as we start talking about repair, we can get to work. But the notion that there is an invitation out to us to work in a bipartisan fashion when the majority party is jamming this bill through without negotiation, using reconciliation as an extraordinary process to try to put it through under arcane budget rules that were never designed for this-- that is not exactly much of a signal. So as soon as we get to regular order and 60 votes, I think we will be able to actually work and serve our constituents very well. Climate Change Mr. President, I am here today for my 160th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, this one focused on the security consequences of our failure to deal with carbon emissions and climate change. My remarks at the Munich Security Conference this year pointed out that climate change presents several orders of security risk to society. The first order of security risk is just physical damage, damage that science and our senses are already perceiving and measuring in our atmosphere, our oceans, and our environment. This security risk, risks to the Earth's present national state, will hurt farming communities, coastal communities, fishing communities, and of course anyone vulnerable to wildfires, droughts, and extreme weather. Of course, the poorer you are in this world, the more vulnerable you are to this peril. The second order of security risk from climate change is the consequences in human society from that physical, biological, and chemical damage in our environment. As farms and fisheries fail, people are impoverished and dislocated. Scarce resources lead to conflicts and confrontations. Storms and fires can make suffering acute, and people who are hungry or dislocated or torn from their roots can become desperate, radicalized, and violent. That is why the U.S. Department of Defense has for years called climate change a catalyst of conflict. Drought in Syria, for instance, has been described as a root cause of the conflict there, a conflict that has killed more than 400,000 people, according to some estimates, and displaced more than 11 million. Researchers from NASA and the University of Arizona have determined that drought was very likely the worst in a millennium. Massive crop failures and livestock losses moved farmers into stressed cities, where popular protests met with brutal violence from the Assad regime and the tide of refugees from that chaos swamped Europe. Nigeria, Sudan, and Central America are other areas where violence and flight are driven by scarce resources. So the second order of national security risk is the societal damage that cascades from the natural damage caused by climate change. The third order of security risk is perhaps the most dangerous for our country; that is, reputational damage to the keystone institutions of our present world order: market capitalism and democratic government. People around the world who have been harmed by the first- order environmental effects of climate change, or people around the world who get swept up in the second-order societal effects of climate change will want answers, as will many who are witness to the global suffering and harm caused by climate change. When that reckoning comes, as it will, the discredit to institutions like capitalism and democracy which failed to act, even when loudly and clearly warned, could be profound. This failure of action by these institutions is compounded by the moral failure. Fossil fuel companies are knowingly causing this harm. They are aggressively fighting solutions to this problem. Their weapons are as disreputable as their conduct: professionally administered misinformation--climate denial, after all, is the original fake news--and massive, massive floods of political money. As a result, the Congress has shown itself utterly unable to resist the threats and blandishments of this industry, despite the fact that we know very clearly of the industry's enormous conflict of interest. This all stands to be a lasting blot on both democracy and capitalism, a blot that will worsen as the consequences of our climate failure worsen. If you believe, as Daniel Webster did, in the power of America's example, that we are, indeed, a city on a hill, then you should worry about this terrible example of greed, ignorance, and corruption triumphant. It is not like we have not been warned. The National Intelligence Council has estimated that worldwide demand for food, water, and energy will grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50 percent respectively in coming decades. This increased resource demand is on a collision course with those first-order harms--disrupting fisheries and agriculture around the globe. The U.S. Institute for Peace has warned that ``poor responses to climatic shifts create shortages of resources such as land and water. Shortages are followed by negative secondary impacts, such as more sickness, hunger and joblessness. Poor responses to these, in turn, open the door to conflict.'' For those who discount this as a bunch of peaceniks' prattle, let me add that in 2013, our National Intelligence Council put climate change alongside events like nuclear war and a severe pandemic among the eight events with the greatest potential for global disruption--noting for climate change that ``dramatic and unforeseen changes are occurring at a faster rate than expected.'' The Department of Defense 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review described climate change as a ``global threat multiplier.'' That report warned that ``the pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world.'' As head of U.S. Pacific Command, ADM Samuel Locklear warned in 2013 that climate change was the biggest long-term security threat in his area of operation, noting the need to organize the military for ``when the effects of climate change start to impact these massive populations.'' Again, I will quote him. ``If it goes bad,'' he said, ``you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly.'' Operation Free, a coalition of national security and veterans organizations, has continually pointed out the national security threat posed by climate change, as has the American Security Project, comprised of retired military flag officers. The Government Accountability Office, GAO, has warned that climate change is affecting defense infrastructure around the world, from sea level rise at Naval Station Norfolk to heavy rain and flooding at Fort Irwin, CA, to thawing permafrost affecting Air Force radar installations in Alaska, to faraway effects, even at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Coast Guard, of course, must meet entirely new demands of the icecap's melt in the Arctic for transportation and shipping, for new fishing grounds, for resource exploration, and of course the possibility there of conflict. In 2005, when Defense Secretary Mattis led Marine Corps Combat Development Command, he called on Navy researchers to find ways to make the military more energy efficient, to ``unleash''--to use his words--U.S. military forces from the ``tether [of] fuel.'' Ask Senator Tammy Duckworth about the casualties sustained among her comrades in arms defending fuel supply lines if you want to see a passionate conversation. The military funds research into alternative energy and studies how climate change affects military capability because in the real world, where real lives are at risk, they can't afford to believe the false facts peddled by the fossil fuel industry. The people we entrust to keep us safe, who have to deal with real threats in the real world, recognize the danger climate change represents. The National Intelligence Council said in January that ``issues like . . . climate change invoke high stakes and will require sustained collaboration.'' Instead of that, we get a Congress and an administration that has deliberately let the fossil fuel industry occupy and sabotage the orderly operation of the Government of the United States to deal with this problem. So I am going to start to push back. When these tools of the fossil fuel industry, to whom we in the Senate gave advice and consent, go too egregiously about their dirty business of climate denial, expect that I may come to the floor and object to consent requests. Last week, Administrator Pruitt said carbon dioxide does not cause climate change. That is nonsense. That is somewhere between ignorant and fraudulent. He gets that one lie for free but no more--not next time with the stakes this high. It can't be free to have these fossil fuel tools spouting their fossil fuel nonsense from Senate-confirmed positions of governmental authority. Starting now, it will not be. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech No. 159. In giving these speeches, I have come to realize that some of my colleagues seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around the basic understanding of climate change. Some of President Trump's Cabinet nominees seem to have the same problem. They say the scientific community is split on the issue. It is not. They say the climate has always been changing. Not like this, it hasn't. They say we can't trust projections and complex computer models. But overall, they have actually been right. And, of course, they have the notorious ``I'm not a scientist'' dodge. Well, if a colleague doesn't understand this, then perhaps he ought to trust the scientists at NOAA and at NASA, at our National Labs, and at universities in Rhode Island and across the country--the scientists whose job it is to understand this. I must say, in addition to trusting the scientists, I also trust Rhode Island fishermen who see the changes in their traps and nets and our shoreline homeowners watching the sea steadily rising toward their homes. You don't need fancy computer models to see the ocean changes already taking place; you just need a thermometer to measure rising temperatures, basically a yardstick to measure sea level rise or a simple pH kit to measure the acidification of our oceans. Let's look at ocean acidification. The oceans have absorbed about one-third of all the excess carbon dioxide produced by humans since the industrial revolution, around 600 gigatons' worth. When that carbon dioxide dissolves into the ocean, chemistry happens, and it makes the oceans more acidic. Carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid. Carbonic acid isn't stable in ocean water, so it breaks down into bicarbonate ions, a base, and hydrogen ions, an acid. The increase in acidic hydrogen ions is the crux of the chemistry of ocean acidification. More hydrogen ions lower the water's pH, and the lower the pH, the higher the acidity. Regular viewers of my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches or people who spent the night up with us while we objected to Administrator Pruitt's nomination may remember that I demonstrated this in a simple experiment on the Senate floor just a few weeks ago. I took the glass of water on my desk, and I used the carbon dioxide in my own breath. Blowing through an aquarium stone, I was able to show, with the help of a little pH dye, how easy it is to actually measure the effect of CO2 on the acidity of water. With just a few breaths into the water, I was able to visibly make this glass of drinking water more acidic. That little experiment is a microcosm of what is happening in our oceans right now, except, instead of bubbles blown through a straw, it is a transfer of excess CO2 from the atmosphere into the surface waters of the ocean all around the globe. Scientific observations confirm that what the laws of chemistry tell us should happen is actually happening. Massive carbon pollution resulting from burning fossil fuels is changing ocean acidity faster than ever in the past 50 million years. Now, you start talking in big numbers, and it all goes into a blur-- 50 million years, compared to how long the human species has been on the planet, which is about 200,000 years. So 50 million years is, what, 250 times the length of time that our species has inhabited the Earth. This chart shows measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. That is the redline of climbing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And it shows carbon dioxide in the ocean, which is the green measure, which is also climbing in tandem with the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Finally, it shows the pH of ocean water in the sea. Of course, as the chemistry would tell us, as the carbon dioxide goes up, the pH comes down, and the acidity rises; the water becomes more acidic. We measure that surface seawater on the Earth's oceans has, since the industrial revolution, become roughly 30 percent more acidic. NOAA predicts that oceans will be 150 percent more acidic than now by the end of the century. Coastal States, like Rhode Island and Florida, will feel the hit. Ocean acidification disrupts life in the sea when those loose hydrogen ions we talked about latch onto free carbonate ions. Usually that carbonate is plentiful in ocean water. Shell-forming marine creatures, like oysters and clams, use this loose carbonate to help form their shells. But if the carbonate they need is bound up by hydrogen ions, they can't get enough carbonate to build their shells. We have even seen acidification scenarios in which shells start to dissolve in the water. Shellfish hatcheries on the west coast have already seen devastating losses of larval oysters due to acidic waters. When ocean pH fell too low, baby oysters couldn't form their shells, and they quickly died off. Dr. Julia Ekstrom, the lead researcher for Nature Climate Change's 2015 study on ocean acidification, told PBS that it has cost the Pacific Northwest oyster industry more than $100 million and jeopardized thousands of jobs. Her research flagged 15 States where the shellfish industry would be hardest hit, from Alaska to Florida, to my home State of Rhode Island. Toward the bottom of the oceanic food web is the humble pteropod. Pteropods are sometimes called sea butterflies because their tiny snail foot has evolved into an oceanic wing. In 2014 NOAA found that more than half of pteropods sampled off the west coast were suffering from severely dissolved shells due to ocean acidification, and it is worsening. This is a pteropod shell degrading over time in acidified water. Of course, we are here in ``Mammon Hall,'' where it feels laughable to care about anything that can't be monetized. We talk a good game here in the Senate about God's Earth and God's creation and God's creatures, but what we really care about is the money. So let's monetize this. Who cares about this humble species? Salmon do. As the west coast loses its pteropods, that collapse reverberates up the food chain, and the salmon care because many of them feed on the pteropods. The west coast salmon fishery is a big deal, so salmon fishermen care about this. Another foundational marine species, krill, is also affected by ocean acidification. In the Southern Ocean, nearly all marine animals can thank krill for their survival. From penguin diets to whale diets, krill is king. A 2013 study in Nature Climate Change found ocean acidification inhibiting the hatching of krill eggs and the normal development of larvae. The researchers note that unless we cut emissions, collapse of the krill population in the Southern Ocean portends ``dire consequences for the entire ecosystem.'' Closer to home, the University of Alaska's Ocean Acidification Research Center--yes, ocean acidification is serious enough that the University of Alaska has an Ocean Acidification Research Center, and it warns that ocean acidification ``has the potential to disrupt [Alaska's fishing] industry from top to bottom.'' Turning to warmer waters, coral reefs are also highly susceptible to ocean acidification. A healthy coral reef is one of the most productive and diverse ecosystems on Earth, home to 25 percent of the world's fish biodiversity. Those reef-building corals rely on calcium carbonate to build their skeletons. Since the Presiding Officer is from Florida, I know how important coral reefs are to the tourism industry in his State. Coral depends on a symbiotic relationship with tiny photosynthetic algae, called zooxanthellae, that live in the surface tissue of the coral. There is a range of pH, as well as temperature, salinity, and water clarity, within which this symbiosis between the coral and the zooxanthellae thrives. Outside that comfort range, the corals get stressed, and they begin to evict the algae. This is called coral bleaching because corals shed their colorful algae. Without these algae, corals soon die. The effects of acidification on sea life are far-reaching. Studies have found ocean acidification disrupts everything from the sensory systems of clownfish--those are little Nemos, for those who have seen the movie--to phytoplankton populations, to sea urchin reproduction, to the Dungeness crab, another valuable west coast specialty. I asked Scott Pruitt, our ethically challenged Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, about ocean acidification. He gave these answers: ``The oceans are alkaline and are projected to remain so,'' and two, ``The degree of alkalinity in the ocean is highly variable and therefore it is difficult to attribute that variability to any single cause.'' Let's look at those answers. The first answer is plain and simple nonsense because the harm to ocean creatures from acidification comes from the dramatic shift in ocean acidity, not from where along the acid-based spectrum the shift takes place. The observation he made is irrelevant to the question. His second answer is no better. It exhibits purposeful ignorance of the role humans' carbon pollution plays in damaging the ocean, because the chemical principles at issue here are indisputable. You can replicate them in a middle school laboratory in any Florida school. As I showed in my little demonstration, you can replicate them even here on the Senate floor. Like its carbon cousin, climate change, ocean acidification doesn't care whether you believe in chemistry. It doesn't matter to chemistry if you swallow the propaganda pumped out by the fossil fuel lobby. The principles of science operate notwithstanding. The chemical interactions take place by law of nature whether you believe them or not. If you believe in God, then you have to acknowledge that these laws of nature are God's laws, the basic operating principles He established in His creation. But, of course, here at Mammon Hall, it is always about the money. Any decent EPA Administrator is obliged to trust in real science and to take action to protect human health and the environment. I am deeply unconvinced that Administrator Pruitt will live up in any respect to those obligations, but I would welcome being proven wrong. Likewise, I similarly challenge my colleagues here in the Senate. This Chamber and our Nation will be judged harshly by our descendants, both for our pigheaded disregard for the basic truths, the basic operating systems of the world we live in, and for the shameful reason why we disregard them. Mammon Hall indeed. Mr. President, it is time for the Senate to wake up before it is too late. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

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 that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here today for the 158th time to ask this Chamber to wake up to the mounting evidence of climate change. The sad truth is that, in Congress anyway, this issue has turned starkly partisan thanks to a torrent of dark political money that the fossil fuel industry uses to both threaten and reward the Republican Party in a dirty, dark money game of stick-and-carrot. Republicans in Congress ignore climate change for the simple reason that the fossil fuel industry has become their political life support system. It does not have to be this way. Outside this Chamber, even Republicans see things very differently. In the investment sector, where people have to make decisions based on real facts and where duties to shareholders limit overly creative accounting, the Republican signal is clear. An impressive group of Republican former Treasury Secretaries and Republican former Presidential economic advisers recently proposed a conservative, market-based climate solution. Republican Presidents trusted these folks with the conduct of the U.S. economy. Jim Baker was Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Hank Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush, and George Shultz was Secretary of the Treasury under President Nixon, in addition to other distinguished offices that they held. Joining those three were Martin Feldstein, Chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, and Greg Mankiw, who held that position for President George W. Bush; Rob Walton, the former chairman of the board of Walmart, the world's largest retailer and employer; and Tom Stephenson from Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm out in Silicon Valley. This Republican group proposed a ``carbon dividends'' plan. It combines a carbon tax on fossil fuels--which reflects harm from carbon emissions which market economics ordinarily requires to be built into the price of the product--with a big dividend returning all of the revenues to the American people, and a reduction of regulations, which may be mooted by a good enough carbon fee. This idea is actually not so different from my own American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act. In their report, they all note that the ``mounting evidence of climate change is growing too strong to ignore.'' Many would say that it grew too strong to ignore a good decade ago, but it is important that these Republican leaders have acknowledged this. They also said: ``Economists are nearly unanimous in their belief that a carbon tax is the most efficient and effective way to reduce carbon emissions.'' This report lines up with many other Republicans outside Congress who support a revenue-neutral carbon fee. It is the favorite climate solution in conservative economic circles. Indeed, it is the only widely accepted climate solution among Republicans. The Niskanen Center, a Libertarian think tank that spun off from the Cato Institute, last month wrote this: The case for climate action is now so strong that one would be hard-pressed to find a serious academic economist who opposes using market forces to manage the damage done by greenhouse emissions. Like the Treasury Secretaries, economists and investors throughout the financial community are saying loud and clear: We can no longer ignore climate change. Goldman Sachs, for instance, in 2015 did a report on the low-carbon economy. It was called: ``Goldman Sachs equity investor's guide to a low carbon world, 2015-2025.'' So unless somebody here is going to say that Goldman Sachs is in on the hoax, Goldman Sachs is taking this pretty seriously. Last year, the investment firm BlackRock, with more than $1 trillion in assets under management, issued a report titled: ``Adapting Portfolios to Climate Change.'' I don't think investors trust $1 trillion to a firm that falls for hoaxes. BlackRock, like Goldman, knows that climate change is real and is helping its investors plan for the economic fallout. BlackRock warns in its report: ``Investors can no longer ignore climate change. . . .'' Parenthetical editorial comment: That is the job of Republicans in Congress. BlackRock also had something to say about a price on carbon. They said this: ``Higher carbon pricing would help address [externalities from fossil fuels] and would be the most cost-effective way for countries to meet their Paris agreement pledges.'' So in the real world, where real decisions are being made by very smart people backed by real money, they are telling their clients: You must take climate change seriously, and you must take carbon pricing seriously. The BlackRock report had this data on prices that companies are setting on carbon internally--in their own internal accounting--across sectors, including healthcare and energy and utilities. As we can see, the price per metric ton ranges from a low of about $10 in information technology, up to over $350 per metric ton--internal costs of carbon accounting in these industries. The point ought to be pretty clear. The business community is acting, investors are insisting on it, and a price on carbon is a key part of the program. The legendary Wayne Gretsky's rule was to ``skate to where the puck is going to be.'' These major firms recognize where the carbon economy is heading. We should too. We would, if it weren't for the political mischief wreaked in Congress by the fossil fuel industry. BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are not alone. The insurance and reinsurance industry is one of the world's biggest investors, as well as one of the world's best analyzers of risk. Munich Re and Swiss Re, and others in property casualty and reinsurance, warn us that climate change is real and portends huge costs for society. Munich Re's head of risk accumulation in the United States said in 2015: ``As a nation, we need to take steps to reduce the societal impact of weather events as we see greater variability and volatility in our climate.'' One of the biggest investors in the housing market is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac has warned about climate change impact on the real estate sector: ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis of the great recession.'' When we think of what we went through in the housing crisis of the great recession, wow, Freddie Mac is warning that the economic losses and social disruption from climate change in our housing markets are likely to be worse. These are all serious investors and they have serious warnings for us, and ignoring all of them just to please fossil fuel industry patrons is a big, big mistake. Even President Trump's nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, thinks we need action. For years, his law firm has encouraged clients, including ExxonMobil, to disclose climate change-related risks to the SEC and to investors. If he is confirmed, I hope he will enforce the SEC's existing disclosure requirements for climate risk and clarify that public disclosures should include asset valuations based on global compliance with international treaties. Investors need climate change risks disclosed against a ``reality check'' baseline that assumes international compliance with the Paris climate commitments. An assumption that we fail should not be acceptable. Slowly, investor disclosures are improving. Last year, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman forced Peabody Energy to restate its disclosures. Just last week, Chevron acknowledged to its investors in an SEC filing that, lo and behold, some of its products ``may be considered pollutants,'' noted ``new conclusions about the effects of the company's operations on human health or the environment,'' and they acknowledged ``an increased possibility of governmental investigations and, potentially, private litigation against the company.'' It is better late than never, I suppose. Now it is time for the rest of the industry to report fully and fairly, first on the risks that shareholders bear from assets that are wrongly valued now--that are falsely valued in their reports--and, second, on the company's potentially culpable behavior in climate denial. Institutional investors are joining in those efforts. Our Rhode Island pension fund, managed by our treasurer, Seth Magaziner, is pushing for greater transparency on political and lobbying spending at large energy companies like Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Devon. For the resolution filed at ConocoPhillips, Rhode Island was joined by over 20 other cofilers, including the State of Connecticut, Senator Murphy's home State, whom I see here on the floor. Just recently, the G20 nations--the 20 biggest economies in the world--set up a group called the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. It is made up of 32 members from large banks, insurance companies, asset management companies, pension funds, credit rating agencies, and accounting and consulting firms--you know, liberal extremists. And they are saying: Here it comes; let's get ready. They have asked that companies begin to come clean on the climate risk they face. The big energy companies need to come clean on how much they are spending to deny climate science and where they are spending it, because, ultimately, it is their own investors who will be hurt by their irresponsibility. Ultimately, all the phony climate denial they pay for is a fool's errand because the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology aren't going away, and a day of reckoning for all this mischief and nonsense they have paid for inevitably will come. We in the Senate have a duty to the American people to find a way to combat climate change. I realize this body will need help in that task. We will need help from the business community, which can apply its understanding of market forces and risk analysis to this challenge. It would help if the fossil fuel industry would focus on the long term health of its shareholders rather than on short-term gain. The fossil fuel industry should stand down the relentless political opposition it has maintained to any climate solution, and it should stand down the phony climate denial operation it continues to support. It will take all of us coming together--companies, investors, regulators, governments, citizens, Republicans and Democrats--to achieve Donald Trump's once-stated goal of combating the ``catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change''--his quote: ``catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change.'' I did not misquote President Trump, although he was Donald Trump then. It was 2009, and this full page advertisement was taken out in the New York Times declaring that the science of climate change was ``irrefutable'' and the consequences of climate change would be ``catastrophic and irreversible.'' It was signed by none other than Donald J. Trump, as well as his children, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump. They were right then. If they get back to this, they will be right now. The evidence and the science have only piled up since 2009. It is time for all of us to heed the advice of our universities, our scientists, and the people who actually know what they are talking about, and put the arguments of the fossil fuel industry where they belong--in the trash bin of history. We need to wake up before it is too late. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. One of the points I think could be made here with respect to the emails is that the first tranche of emails--the ones the judge instructed be released on Tuesday--are communications with Scott Pruitt's donors, with Devon Energy right here, with Peabody coal--which I don't see on the list--and with API, the American Petroleum Institute, which is right here. That funding has gone into his political operation. It is worth understanding how that pays off. I don't know if we can see this, but this says ``confidential.'' I don't know if that is clear on the screen. This is the confidential agenda for a Republican Attorneys General Association meeting, at a nice place--the Greenbrier in West Virginia. It is pretty swish. Look here on the agenda: Private meeting with Murray Energy. There is Murray Energy, right in the energy donors. He is attorney general. Look at what they get--a private meeting with the Republican attorneys general on the confidential agenda. If you go to the next day, the morning meeting is an issue briefing on the dangerous consequences of the Clean Power Plan and other EPA rules, and guess who the lead panelist is--Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma. What you have is this link between a big political donor, Murray Energy, and a private meeting for Murray Energy on the confidential agenda and a followup meeting at the same retreat on attacking the Clean Power Plan. And guess who a lead plaintiff with Scott Pruitt is in the lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan? Boom--Murray Energy. There is a little machine here that turns between money in from the fossil fuel industry and litigation out on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. These emails aren't just matters of general interest. These emails may provide some good connection, some good evidence into what exactly that little feedback loop entails, because there are plenty of circumstances, and, as somebody who spent years as an attorney general and years as the U.S. Attorney, those little feedback loops is sometimes called corruption. Depending on what those emails say, that could easily be prosecutable corruption. Rather than answer that question, of whether this link between big donors and action on cases using the badge of the State of Oklahoma as a shield to protect the fossil fuel interests, which were the donors, and talking about it in confidential meetings, in private meetings on confidential agendas--to me, that smells pretty high all by itself, before you have actually dug into it and seen what the emails say and gotten to the potentially really stinky part. The fact that this is being jammed through is not without consequence for the Republicans on the other side who are not being given the chance by their leadership to say: Hold it. Whistle. Let's give this a couple of weeks. Let's see if there is something beyond how bad it is already--that perhaps might even make this chargeable stuff--before we are forced to vote on this guy. Once again, the fact that they are being forced to vote on this guy in this circumstance is very, very unusual behavior. And unusual behavior, to me, signals powerful forces. I could not agree more with the Senator from Oregon about the importance of these emails and their potential significance. I agree with my friend from Hawaii that I hope there isn't anything really bad here, but the likelihood that there is is very strong. The dogs are hunting.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I draw the Senator's attention to this graphic my office has prepared which reflects certainly my recollection. When I came to the Senate, I want to say there were at least five Republican- sponsored climate change bills floating around. Senator John Warner, a Republican of Virginia, had one; Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, had one; Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona actually ran for President on a strong climate change platform; Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, was working with Senator Kerry on one; Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican of Tennessee, had one. So there was a regular heartbeat of activity in this body on climate change, a bipartisan heartbeat of activity. Then, pow, came Citizens United 2010, and it has been flatlined since. It is the power of money unleashed into our politics, and nobody plays harder and nobody plays rougher and nobody plays meaner with the power of money than the fossil fuel industry that Scott Pruitt serves.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Through the Chair, I would inquire of the distinguished Senator from Hawaii whether, in addition to the concern about pollution that crosses borders when it flows down rivers or that crosses borders when it comes out of smokestacks and floats across State borders into other States, is there not also a supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution that puts Federal law ahead of State law where there is a conflict? Are there not means and manners by which a Federal official could either pretend or actually believe or try to impose a Federal rule in a way that interferes with the rights of States that wish to protect themselves more than the fossil fuel-friendly Administrator and inhibit their ability to do so?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. With respect to delay for delay's sake, when a judge finds that the emails can be made available and the judge finds today that the emails can be made available by Tuesday and the attorney general has kept them bottled up for more than 750 days, it would seem that the accusation that delay for delay's sake does not belong with the Democratic minority on this issue. Would it not be a badge that would fit rather well on the attorney general from Oklahoma?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for another question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. There you go.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The Senator from Hawaii is a very kind as well as a very distinguished individual, and he is willing to spot Mr. Pruitt's sincerity in the way he goes about his business. I am a skeptical New Englander, and I think Mr. Pruitt looks a little bit too bought and paid for to spot him that same degree of sincerity. But to the question of the Federal and the State role, to the extent that it was Mr. Pruitt's position that the EPA should not be on the front line, that it is actually up to the States to bear the bulk of this burden and to be on the front line and enforce environmental laws and protect their Senators, what about the conduct of the Oklahoma attorney general's office might give us some pause as to his sincerity in this being a federalist question in which the power to regulate should be enforced at the State level by strong attorney general enforcement as former attorneys general like myself know?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If there was a question in there.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. A question of Parliamentary order here. The time during the colloquy will continue to be charged to the Senator from Hawaii, correct?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I recall the facts of this correctly, not only did he shut down the environmental unit of the department of the attorney general, but in subsequent reporting you could not find a dollar allocated to environmental activities in the Oklahoma attorney general's budget. And he abandoned what his predecessor, Drew Edmondson, had been running, which was not just to have an environmental enforcement unit within the department of the attorney general, but also to have an environmental enforcement team that brought together Federal folks, State regulators, water officials, and put together the multiagency task force that prosecuted environmental cases--gone also. Finally, Drew Edmondson used to do an annual report, as I recall, on the successes of his environmental enforcement and his environmental task force, the multiagency group. That was gone too. In addition to all of those facts, what worries me a little bit--you know, one of the things we have to assess in this process is the credibility of the nominee. Are they going to tell you the truth in the nomination process? If they are not going to tell you the truth in the nomination process, you are probably going to get a lot of malarkey out of them down the road as well. He took the position that he actually had not gotten rid of the environmental unit. He said he had moved it into a new unit--the federalism unit--which, if you go to their own website and read about the federalism unit, it says it is an appellate. You don't do environmental enforcement at the appellate level; you do environmental enforcement at the trial level, and you do it at the investigative level. Further, if you read down, the word ``environment'' never appears in the general description of that unit. So it is not as if there is just one little wrinkle of the environmental unit kind of magically disappearing under this guy. Wherever there was any activity by the department of the attorney general with respect to the environment, he shut it down, zeroed it out, silenced it, finished it. I believe that is a pretty fair description of the status in Oklahoma.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Mr. President. There is a lot we don't know about Scott Pruitt. We know that thousands of emails between this man and the industry that he is supposed to be regulating as EPA Administrator have been suppressed by him for years. We know that just yesterday a court found that suppression of his emails unreasonable, an abject failure of his duties under the law to disclose. Those ought to be alarm bells for the side of the aisle that is forcing, jamming this nomination through. He told us he couldn't get these emails released for more than 2 years, and the court ordered him to release the first chunk Tuesday, just days from now; the second big chunk, 10 days from now. So clearly there has been some mischief here, when on the one hand this office pretends that it can't get the emails out for more than 2 years, and a court looks at the situation and says: No. You make them available Tuesday. That is not a sign of good things. No. 2, this is a guy who, as part of his political money operation--a political money operation that is heavily funded by big fossil fuel industry players about whose carbon emissions he will be making vital decisions as EPA Administrator. So far, his relationship with them has been to take their money and to be their lawyer. That is not a good start, either, for an EPA Administrator. Here is the other thing we don't know: We don't know about his dark money operation. The Rule of Law Defense Fund--the whole reason you set up something like that is to hide the source of money that you use in politics. That is why the entity exists. It is to take groups like this and launder their identities right off of them so that, when money shows up, for instance, at the Republican Attorneys General Association, it is not attached to Devon Energy; it is not attached to ExxonMobil; it is not attached to Murray Energy; it is not attached to the Koch brothers or to their front groups--Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity--it is not attached to the company whose billionaire president was his finance chairman for his campaign, Continental Resources; it is not attached to the Southern Company and to other big energy companies. It just comes out of the Rule of Law Defense Fund. The identity of the donor has been scrubbed away. It is an identity laundering machine. These are the relationships that are forged when you are asking people for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and $1 million a year was the budget for the Rule of Law Defense Fund. If you are asking for that kind of money from these people, it is elementary that the Senate should know about that, but our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have completely stonewalled this--zero inquiry into the dark money operation that this individual was allowed. Why is that? That is pretty unusual. Why were we not allowed to get these emails? Why were we told: Oh, you will have to line up behind everybody else in this FOIA line that I have maintained for 2 years. That was an adequate answer to the majority on the EPW Committee, but the judge who took a look at that same situation said: No, you get them Tuesday. If the chairman had said: No, you get them Tuesday, we wouldn't be having this problem. We would have seen them weeks and weeks and weeks ago. All of the pressure from the majority on this nominee has been to cover up this stuff. Don't let it in. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Move along. That is not right. That is not the way the Senate should behave. That is not consistent with our advice and consent responsibilities, and, frankly, it sets up Republican Senators. If and when it ultimately does come out that there is significant mischief exposed in those emails or if there are significant conflicts of interest created by that dark money operation, the Senate does not look great for having used its energy and effort in this nomination to cover that stuff up. There is a doctrine called willful blindness, which is the wrongful intention to keep oneself deliberately unaware of something. It is a culpable state of mind in criminal and civil law. That is the state of mind that is being maintained by the majority with respect to this individual, and one has to wonder why. Why are there these big things that we don't know about Scott Pruitt? It is not that we didn't ask. It is that we got told by the majority: Run along; it doesn't matter. You will have no support from us. We are going to clear this guy anyway. It doesn't matter if his answers to you make no sense. It doesn't matter if his answers aren't truthful. It doesn't matter if his answers put you at the end of a long FOIA line when this is the Senate's advice and consent process. None of that matters. Just by one point of evaluation, the difference is that, when the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works looked at this, they said: Run along; nothing here. We are not interested. Don't show us a single email. And the judge looking at it said to get them out Tuesday--a local State judge. Since when is the double standard in which Senators are deprived of seeing highly relevant evidence? What is being covered up and why? Who is pulling the strings around here so that these obvious questions don't get answered when you put it side by side with a State court proceeding that asks the same question and the questions get answered like that. Something is rotten in Denmark. It hasn't fooled Rhode Islanders. My correspondence is running about 50 to 1 against Scott Pruitt. Over 1,000 Rhode Islanders have written in against him. Let me just read a couple of their communications with me. This is from Amanda Tarzwell: As a member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, I urge you to do all you can-- ``All you can,'' she says-- to block Mr. Pruitt's nomination as the head of the EPA. My grandfather, Clarence Tarzwell, worked for the EPA and opened the EPA lab in Narragansett. Narragansett is a Rhode Island town. It is located on Tarzwell Drive in his honor. He is now deceased, but I believe in the work he did and the necessity to protect our environment and continue to work on climate change. Please do everything you can to urge your fellow committee members on both sides of the aisle to do the same. Thank you. On the next, her name is right in the letter. So I will read it: I am a 23-year-old woman with a bachelor of science degree in wildlife and conservation biology from the University of Rhode Island. I am writing to respectfully demand you vote ``no'' on the approval of Scott Pruitt for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. It is extremely clear that Pruitt is the WRONG choice to head the EPA. As someone with an extensive education in environmental sciences, conservation, wildlife and plant biology, chemistry, and physics, I am deeply concerned with Pruitt's capabilities. A climate change skeptic, with no formal science-based education, Pruitt has zero concept of what it takes to make informed decisions about the current and future stakes of our environment. Rhode Island is leading the country in many environmental fields, such as renewable energy, environmental protection, and sustainable agriculture and aquaculture. We cannot allow a climate change skeptic, with a love affair with fossil fuels, to make important decisions regarding our precious environment and those working hard to protect it. I urge you to vote no on the approval of Scott Pruitt for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Catherine Hoyt wrote in: I have a special concern for the upcoming vote on the EPA Director, Scott Pruitt. I know you are on the Committee for Environment and Public Works so you are more informed than most people-- Although, as I just explained, we are deliberately underinformed in some very telling ways-- and I trust that you are unlikely to vote contrary to the interests of our beautiful and environmentally unique coastal State. Among other things I do, I am a sailing instructor in Edgewood, in Cranston. Cranston is another one of our municipalities. I have been sailing in the Upper Bay for about 10 years. Even in that amount of time, the bay is noticeably cleaner. The water is clearer, and there are more birds and fish and crabs and other creatures that signify, through my direct experience, that the environment is healthier in the Upper Bay. My anecdotal evidence is also confirmed by scientific reports from URI-- The University of Rhode Island-- over the summer that Narragansett Bay is cleaner now than it has been in 150 years. Wonderful. I would be very sorry to see that trend reverse. I am old enough to remember what it was like before the EPA, and I do not want to go back to smog-filled skies, polluted waters, and tragedies like Love Canal and Woburn's poisoned well water. I am sure that, if it were not for the EPA and groups like Save the Bay--which is a local environmental organization-- that the Upper Bay would have become more toxic and polluted due to industrial use, sewage, rainwater runoff, pesticides, and road salt. What is more, I believe that the EPA regulations have been good for business. Because pollution is, ultimately, wasteful and counterproductive, and clean businesses often are efficient and, therefore, more successful businesses. Look at the careful reutilization of materials by companies like Apple, who are investing in the future and their profitability by going further than required. They are nearly cash neutral at this point. Some of that is through buying carbon credit, but, clearly, they are not afraid of being environmentally responsible. As a concerned citizen of Rhode Island and America, regarding President Trump's nomination for head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, I believe deeply that this is not the person for the job, that there is nothing in his background that suggests he has any interest in protecting American citizens and their health and environment from harm. I have never written any of my congressional Representatives in my many, many years on this planet until today. I remember the air quality in Rhode Island in the late sixties and through the seventies-plus. Those visible brown clouds, especially in the summer, as pollution and smog drifted from New York or Connecticut towards Rhode Island. I remember the pollution in our beautiful Narragansett Bay. I see the changes ocean rise has already effected. Climate change is real, and it is scientifically accepted across the world. I am deeply troubled by Mr. Pruitt's statements and legal actions he has instigated against this Agency. I am asking you to take a stand for the health of the citizens of Rhode Island and the American people. Please vote no when the votes are called for Mr. Scott Pruitt's nomination. Here is the last one I will read: As a retired Federal scientist, meteorologist, I am deeply concerned that the EPA continue to be an agency that makes decisions about our environment that are based on the best science available. Scott Pruitt has a record of supporting policies that are pro-business at the expense of the environment despite what the science shows. How can he possibly be considered as the voice that will fight for clean air and clean water? Despite excellent progress over my lifetime, pollution continues to be a major problem for the air we breathe and the water that sustains us. Please join the voices on the Hill that block the appointment of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator. Thank you. I wish we could block the appointment of Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator. It is really rare to see a nominee for a Federal agency who is as unqualified--indeed, as disqualified by conflict of interest--as this individual. As for the idea that he is being jammed through just as thousands of emails are going to be released about him--between him and his big funders and the groups that they funded him through--something is wrong. This is not the way the Senate should behave. The people on that side--in taking all of this mystery, all of this mischief, all of the emails, all of the dark money--who are being asked to vote are being told: Don't even look at that. I can promise you that if the shoe were on the other foot, Republicans would be clamoring for emails. This is a grim day for this Chamber--what we are doing here, knowing of this man's record, knowing of his record of shutting down the environmental agency in his home State while attacking the environmental agency of the Federal Government while pretending that his concern is federalism; right? He has pretended that he thinks that the enforcement responsibility shouldn't be at the Federal level, that it should be down at the State level. But if that were even remotely sincere, he wouldn't have shut down his own office's environmental enforcement unit as the attorney general of Oklahoma. The common thread here is that he doesn't want any environmental enforcement at the Federal level and he doesn't want any environmental enforcement at the State level. He shut down the unit. He zeroed out the budget. He gave us a bunch of soft soap about how actually he moved the environmental unit into something called a federalism unit. But if you look at his own website for the federalism unit, the word ``environmentalism'' or ``environment'' doesn't appear. It is news that that is his environmental enforcement section, because it doesn't say so on his own website. That was an invention just for the hearing. When you look at his own budget, the amount he budgets for environmental enforcement disappears. It has gone to zero. When you look at the Environmental Enforcement Task Force that his office's environmental unit had participated in under the previous attorney general, Drew Edmondson, that has disappeared too. He has gotten rid of every element of environmental enforcement that he controlled at the State level, while taking money from all of the big polluters, while having the CEO of Continental Resources--a billionaire--as his fundraising chair. He took money from the fossil fuel industry through all of these different entities--through his leadership PAC, Liberty 2.0; through his campaign, Pruitt for Attorney General; through his super PAC, Oklahoma Strong PAC--sorry, that is his leadership PAC, and Liberty 2.0 is his super PAC--through the Rule of Law Defense Fund, which is his dark money operation. By the way, whatever the attorney general needs is a dark money operation. Really? Through the Republican Attorneys General Association, which he raised money for, and who knows what else. This guy is fully fossil fuel funded. And in his entire career, he has dedicated himself to getting rid of and attacking environmental enforcement wherever he finds it--at the State or Federal level. You can't beat shutting down the environmental unit in your own office. So that is what we are looking at. When you look at that combination and throw in the secrecy about the dark money operation and this mad rush to get this guy through before the week is out in which these emails come out, it stinks. What we are doing here is a deliberate act of sabotage of the orderly and honest operation of an agency of our government. We are putting in a person who can demonstrably be shown to be incapable of and disqualified for those duties. I think that is actually not a bug in this program; that is the feature. That is the feature because these same forces that have been behind Scott Pruitt all his life, as he has fought all environmental enforcement--State and Federal--are awfully powerful in this Chamber as well, and they are obviously calling the shots at the White House, where a nominee like this would come from. We are in the process of deliberately sabotaging the orderly and honest operation of an agency of the U.S. Government, not at the behest of a foreign power but after a special interest--the biggest and, in my view, the foulest special interest in the world today--the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry has become so big and so powerful and so mercenary that it has decided its best investment is no longer in oil fields or coal seams or fossil fuel processing plants, but in acquiring a controlling interest in the Government of the United States. And it turns out we come pretty cheap. According to the International Monetary Fund, we give the fossil fuel industry a subsidy every year in the United States alone of $700 billion. That is a more valuable prize than any drilling rights or any mining lease. To protect it--to protect $700 billion a year--acquiring a controlling interest in the U.S. Government is a bargain. One fossil fuel front group spent $750 million in the last election. That is a 1- to-1,000 payback--a 1,000 times ROI--each year that they keep the $700 billion subsidy if they keep plowing $700 million a year into politics to produce results like this nominee for EPA. You get benefits once you have acquired that controlling interest. Only one Republican has publicly taken a stand against Scott Pruitt, the most compromised and corrupted nominee in memory, with huge holes of secrecy still around his relationship with the industry he is supposed to regulate--nobody else, just the one. No Senators from States whose big cities are flooded by rising seas on sunny days, no Senator from States whose historic native villages are washing into the sea, no Senators from States who are losing ancient forests to pine beetles and wildfires, nor from States whose farmers see unprecedented extremes of flood and drought, and whose home State universities assign responsibility for those new extremes to climate change caused by carbon emissions from companies like these--none from the States whose fisheries are imperiled by warming and acidifying seas--no one. There is just that one Senator. How well this industry is succeeding. This EPA nominee may be compromised and corrupted, but he is compromised and corrupted by the fossil fuel industry. So there is no talking about it on that side. Everybody just studies the ceiling tiles when the subject comes up. Nobody will help us find out about the thousands of stonewalled emails with his fossil fuel industry patrons. Nobody will help us inquire into the nominee's fossil-fuel-funded dark money operation. Nobody challenges his nonsense answers in the confirmation process. He answered, he answered; let's move along, let's move along. The dark hand of the fossil fuel industry is all over this nomination. This is the wolf being deliberately inserted into the lamb fold. It is from the fossil fuel money that fueled his politics-- unknown fully because we refuse to shine the Senate's light into his dark money operation--to the thousands of emails between him and his fossil fuel industry patrons, only a fraction of which have been brought to light throughout our confirmation process, and which were only uncorked after his office was sued--not because of any effort on the other side in the confirmation process--to the fossil fuel front groups that have come out supporting this nominee and are spending millions to push him through. Think about that. These groups are funding ad campaigns to push this guy through. Obviously, they have expectations about how well they are going to be treated by him. Through all of that, the sting of this industry's influence is profound. Just reflect on that last point. A dark money operation is being cranked up by polluters to ram the EPA nominee through. Here is a headline: Energy executives, secretive nonprofit raise money to back Pruitt. New group warns that EPA nominee's confirmation ``is not a certainty'' and millions of dollars are needed for the fight. There would have been a time when it would have been disqualifying when polluters were raising millions of dollars needed for a fight to ram through an EPA nominee. This is conflict of interest in plain day, but it is a conflict of interest with the right folks around here, I guess, and so we don't consider it conflict of interest any longer. Whom do you suppose most of the dark money is? Well, we don't know, because it is dark money. But who is it usually? Well, the fossil fuel industry, the Koch brothers, and their front groups. And what do you suppose they want to spend millions of dollars for? What could be better for them, the biggest polluters on the planet, than a little minion to run the EPA as Every Polluter's Ally.'' In any sane world, the fact that all this dark and dirty money is being spent to ram through an EPA nominee would be disqualifying all by itself--but not here, not now, not in a Congress that is so compliant to the fossil fuel industry that this alarm bell doesn't even register. Fossil fuel front groups sent a joint letter of support for their little minion Pruitt. Here is the letter with all of these various groups who I think are united in their dependence on fossil fuel money. Here is the legendary Heartland Institute. They are that classy group that compared climate scientists to the Unibomber. That has been their contribution to the discussion about climate change. Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans For Tax Reform, groups from the State Policy Network--why don't these folks turn up somewhere else? They turn up in the research of academics who are actually studying the climate denial operation--because it is an operation. You can follow the money from the fossil fuel industry out into an array of front groups--front groups by the dozen--whose whole purpose in life is to make them look like they are not fossil fuel industry front groups. So they have names like the Heartland Institute or the George C. Marshall Institute, which, by the way, has nothing to do with George C. Marshall or his family. They just took the name because everybody knows what a respected individual George C. Marshall was. They just took the name and went to work phonying up the climate change debate under the name of George C. Marshall. That is a pretty shameful act when you think what George C. Marshall did for this country, but these are not people for whom shame has much effect. If you look at Dr. Brulle's analysis--he is one of the academics who looks at this array of front groups that are fossil fuel funded--this group of people, of entities that signed the letter for this guy--they show up here too--small world. Well, I wonder whom they thought that letter would convince? I don't think they expected it would convince many Democrats. Many of us on the Democratic side have gone to the floor of the Senate to call out these fossil-fuel-funded, dark-money-driven front groups, as the fossil-fuel- funded, dark-money front groups that they are. So I don't think Democrats are very plausible targets for that letter. So why the letter? Well, my view is that this was done because everyone in this building knows that the Koch brothers' political operation is behind all of these groups--many wiggly tentacles of the same fossil fuel polluter Hydra. Behind this letter is the same Koch brothers political operation that warned Republicans of the political peril--not my word, their word--that Republicans would be in if they crossed this industry, of ``how severely disadvantaged''--another quote from the industry books--``they would be if they dared to do anything on climate change.'' That is what this letter is. It is a signal. It is the political mailed fist of the Koch brothers in a front-group glove giving its marching orders. In any sane and normal world, this letter by itself from all these polluter front groups would be disqualifying, but it appears this body will obediently turn the Environmental Protection Agency of our government over to the minion of the polluters to join an administration dead-set to destroy science with politics. It is like everyone on the other side has been sworn to secrecy while this happens in plain view. This is a heartbreaking speech for me. I perhaps need to start with a little personal background to explain. Last year, we commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, boys across America rushed to sign up for the service of their country. My father and my uncle were two of those boys. Both became pilots in the Pacific theater. My dad was a Marine Corps dive bomber pilot; my uncle was a carrier-based Navy fighter pilot. My uncle was killed over the Philippines. Actually, he was under John McCain's grandfather's command--small world--but I doubt that Admiral McCain knew who Ensign Whitehouse was. My father came home from the war, and he served our country all his life, first as a CIA officer and then as a decorated career diplomat. I believe he won every award the State Department has to offer, and he served in difficult, challenging, poor, and war-torn countries his whole life. At the end, he came out of retirement to set up Special Operations Command in the Pentagon for President Ronald Reagan. I was raised in that life. We were often in dangerous and war-torn places, and we were surrounded by American families who faced the discomforts, the diseases, and the dangers of those far-away postings because to them something mattered. Something mattered to take your family to a place where, if your child was sick, there was no decent hospital. Something mattered to take your family to a place that if your child was bit by a dog, there was a good chance the dog was rabid. Something mattered to take your family to places where the electricity wasn't reliable, the water wasn't clean, the people weren't friendly, and diseases abounded. These folks didn't talk about it a lot. Today, a lot of people wear their patriotism on their sleeve. It was not really a topic of conversation, but it was a thread through their lives that showed that in their choices something mattered. They didn't wear their patriotism on their sleeves; they lived it. The American Government that they served and that my uncle died serving was, to them, an ideal. Did America sometimes fall short of that ideal? Sure. But I will tell you what: Every other country in the world knew the difference between America and everybody else. We stood out for what we stood for. Across our agencies of government, for decades, many Americans have worked quietly and honorably to advance that American ideal. At the heart of that ideal is a duty, and the duty is to put country first, to put the American people first, even before your own families's comfort and safety. That honor and that duty running through the lives and service of millions of public servants are the core heartstrings of American democracy. Into that government, this Trump administration has nominated as Administrator of the EPA, a tool of the fossil fuel industry, a man who demonstrably will not take his government responsibilities seriously because he never has. He has never taken EPA's responsibility seriously. He has done nothing but sue them. He has never taken his State's environmental responsibility seriously. He has shut down the enforcement arm that his office had. He will represent with the biggest conflict of interest in history a polluting industry whose regulation is actually now the EPA's primary public duty. This isn't some fringe question of conflict of interest about some question that may emerge. This is the biggest stinking conflict of interest I think we have ever seen in this body about the issue that is at the center of the Environmental Protection Agency's responsibilities. With the most important task before the EPA being to control carbon emissions before we push this planet over the climate cliff, the industry in question will now rule the regulator. Well, this hits home. I have fishermen in Rhode Island who need honest environmental policy to protect our seas. ``It is not my grandfather's ocean,'' they have told me. ``Things are getting weird out there,'' people who have fished since childhood have told me. Moreover, Rhode Island is a downwind State from the midwestern smoke stacks and a downstream State from out-of-state water pollution. Rhode Island needs a strong EPA to enforce clean air and clean water laws from harm starting outside our boundaries. My attorney general has not shut down his environmental unit, and my department of environmental management is doing our best to keep Rhode Island clean and livable. But they can't do much about out-of-state polluters. That is where the EPA comes in. For a man who so plainly disbelieves in and deprecates the EPA's mission, it is an alarming picture for Rhode Island. We are a coastal State, and a small one. We don't have a lot to give back to rising seas. I have to say, I am sick of having to comfort people whose homes have been washed away into the sea. This is a picture I took not too long ago. Colleagues who have been here for a while might remember this individual. He was the Governor at the time, but he was my predecessor in my seat in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee. His father served here with enormous distinction for many, many years and was actually a Republican chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee who cared about the environment. He was an environmental Republican leader. These are houses that have washed into the sea as the result of a storm. Sea level rise has raised the level of the ocean so that storms throw their water farther in, and they take little houses like these that have been beachfront houses for many years and they just pull them into the ocean. I spoke to the lady who I think owned that house. She was, I would say, in her seventies. She had childhood memories of that house. It had been her grandparents', and she would come to visit as a little girl. What she remembers as a little girl is that she would come out of that house, and in front of the house was a little lawn big enough to put up a net and play volleyball or badminton. Across from their lawn was a little road, just a sand-and-gravel road, but it allowed cars to come down and park near the beach. On the other side of the road was a little parking area where the cars could pull in. Beyond the lawn and the road and the parking area was the beach. Her memories of the beach were of sunny days with the sun beating down on the sand, and she would get across the lawn and across the road and across the parking lot, and then she would just have to scamper as fast as she could on her little feet across the hot sand. She described to me remembering what a long run that felt like for her to rush down to the ocean where she could put her feet into the cool Atlantic waters and swim. That beach, that parking area, that road, that lawn, and now her house are all gone. These are the things that are happening in my State that the Republicans in this building could not care less about--could not care less about. The math is obvious: When you add heat into the atmosphere, the ocean absorbs the heat. Indeed, the ocean has absorbed almost all of the heat of climate change. God bless the oceans because if it weren't for them, we wouldn't be worried about hitting 2 degrees' increase in temperature. We would be worried about hitting 30 degrees' increase in global temperature. Because of all the heat that has been piled up, it has gone into the oceans 93.4 percent. That is like setting off more than two Hiroshima nuclear bombs in the ocean every second. Every second. Think of the heat of a nuclear explosion of the level that destroyed Hiroshima. Think of the--whatever it would be--terajoule of heat energy that gets set off by a nuclear explosion. Our oceans are absorbing heat. If we measure over the last 20 years how much heat they have absorbed, they are absorbing heat at the rate of multiple Hiroshima nuclear explosions happening in the ocean every second for 20 years. We wonder why Senator Cantwell was talking about strange things going on in the oceans. We wonder why my fishermen are saying it is getting weird out there. But when all that heat goes into the oceans, there is a law called the law of thermal expansion. That is not the kind of law we debate around here. That is one of nature's laws. That is one of God's laws. That is one of the laws of physics and chemistry that we so ignore around here because we are paying attention to the laws of politics and the ``golden rule'': Who has the gold, rules. But these are laws that we don't get to repeal or amend. What they are doing is swelling the seas with that heat. On top of that, in comes the water from melting glaciers and there is your sea level rise, 10 inches of sea level rise that we have measured at Naval Station Newport, to the point where we face scenes like this: a man in a kayak going down in front of the Seamen's Church Institute in Newport, RI. This is not water in the ordinary course. This is a place where tourists walk. That is a storefront with water coming through the doorway. This was the storm surge, the tide, that came in with Sandy-- which missed us, by the way. We have a Coastal Resources Management Council that defends our shores, and our University of Rhode Island and Coastal Resources Management Council work together to see what is coming. They have developed new computer tools to determine which houses are going to be lost in what kind of storms, how often this scene is going to have to repeat itself in Rhode Island. We are anticipating 9 feet of sea level rise by the end of this century. My colleagues may think that is funny, that this is all sort of an amusing hoax we can talk about, but any State whose coasts are threatened with 9 feet of sea level rise, any representative of that State has a responsibility to come here and fight to try to defend that State. When the adversary is the big special interests that is causing that and that has mounted the vast campaign of lies I talked about earlier to try to cover it--it is $700 billion in subsidies every year--then that is an adversary worth going after because that is a dirty and wrongful adversary. When their representative is going to run the EPA, that is a disgusting state of affairs. If Rhode Island had to suffer this to save our country for some great goal, if Rhode Islanders had to go off to war again like my father and uncle and Rhode Islanders have since the first battles in Portsmouth, RI, the Revolutionary War, we would saddle up--sign us up--to take on whatever we need to defend this great country, but don't ask us to take a hit like this to protect a big special interest. The arrogance and the greed of the fossil fuel industry and the dirty things it is willing to do to advance its interests knows no bounds. It lobbies Congress mercilessly against any action on climate change, and it has for years. It runs a massive political electioneering operation of dark money and false attacks to prevent any action on climate change, and it has for years. It operates that giant array of front groups, a multi- tentacled, science-denial apparatus to put out streams of calculated misinformation. It does this all to protect what that International Monetary Fund report identified as a $700 billion annual subsidy. What would big corporations do to protect $700 billion? Well, we are finding out. For years, the fossil fuel industry has been deliberately sabotaging the honest and orderly operation of the legislative branch of America's government to protect its subsidy. With this appointment, it would be able to corrupt and sabotage the EPA. I use the word ``corrupt'' because this is indeed the very definition of corruption in government. This is government corruption in plain view. In the Supreme Court decision Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce, here is how the U.S. Supreme Court described corruption. The Court described it as ``the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas.'' Back we go to this network of false front operations, established by immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of a corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public support for the corporation's ideas. We got some interesting polling recently. The George Mason University went out recently and conducted a poll of Trump voters. What did Trump voters think? It turns out that more than 6 in 10 Trump voters support taxing and/or regulating the pollution that causes global warming. In general, Trump voters were asked: Which of these two approaches to reducing the pollution that causes global warming do you prefer? Well, 16 percent said: I don't know; 21 percent said: Do nothing; but 13 percent of Trump voters said: Tax pollution; 18 percent said: Regulate pollution; and 31 percent said: Tax pollution and regulate pollution. That adds up to more than 6 out of 10 Trump voters thinking that the pollution that causes climate change should be taxed or should be regulated or should be taxed and regulated. When you go back to the Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce definition of corruption and look at the section that says that the policies pushed by the massive aggregations of wealth accumulated with the help of the corporate form want to go one way and the public wants to go another way and the corporate powers' views have little or no correlation to the public support for the corporation's political ideas, well, heck, we know Democrats support doing stuff about climate change. It turns out Trump voters do too. The public is actually happy to get something done. It is this mess that is stopping us. It is groups that spend $700 million in a single election to influence Congress that is the problem, not the American public. Teddy Roosevelt described corruption this way. He described corruption as a sinister alliance between crooked politics and crooked business, which he said has done more than anything else for the corruption of American life against the genuine rule of the people themselves. If you look at the influence of Big Business--particularly the fossil fuel business--it has been something else around here. I was elected in 2006. I was sworn in, in the Senate, in 2007. When I was first here in those early years, there was a Republican climate bill floating around the Senate virtually all the time. My recollection is that there were five Republican cosponsored climate bills during my time there. Susan Collins did a climate bill with Senator Cantwell; Senator John Warner of Virginia, Republican, did a bill with Senator Lieberman; Senator Graham worked on a bill with Senator Kerry; Senator Lamar Alexander had a bill of his own; and Senator McCain supported climate legislation and ran for President of the United States on a strong climate change platform. And then came 2010. Then came a decision called Citizens United, which the fossil fuel industry asked for, expected, and immediately acted on when it came out, and it said to the big special interests: Go for it, boys; spend all you want in politics. We five Republican appointees to the Supreme Court are going to make the comically false finding that nothing you can do with unlimited money could possibly ever corrupt American democracy or could possibly even be seen as corrupting by the American public. Of course, that is such hogwash that right now the Supreme Court is viewed by people who have been polled on this question as not likely to give a human being a fair shake against a corporation. If I remember correctly, the numbers were 54 to 6. In a polling group of 100, 6 Americans believe they could get a fair shot in the Supreme Court against corporations and 54 believed they could not get, as human beings, a fair shot in the U.S. Supreme Court against a big corporation, but with the big corporations at the Supreme Court, the fix was in--not a great place for the Court to be when by 9-to-1 American human beings think they can't get a fair shot in front of that Court against a corporation. They did deliver, and they delivered Citizens United and opened the floodgates. The next thing out there was groups like Americans for Prosperity, the front group for the Koch brothers, Donors Trust, which launders away the identity of big corporations like ExxonMobil, and all of these other front groups we looked at earlier, and they are spending immense amounts of money. The result is, if there was a heartbeat of activity on climate change with Republicans before Citizens United, it has been a flat line since. That has been the story behind this. Not only has dark money poisoned our conversation about climate change, this guy actually ran his own dark money operation. His Rule of Law Defense Fund, a 501(c)4 organization that does not disclose its donors have been linked to the Koch brothers, who run one of the biggest polluting operations in the country, but we don't really know. We don't really know. It has been kept absolutely quiet. There is a black hole of secrecy around this nominee's dark money operation; whom he raised it from, what the quid pro quo was, what he did with it. Not allowed to know. Move along. Move along. It doesn't matter. This is a test. This is a test of the Senate. Will this nominee ever tell us exactly what his relationship with the fossil fuel industry is? Will we get these emails in time to make an informed decision before his nomination is rammed through one step ahead of the emails that the judge said had to be released? I can't get over the fact that this guy covered up the emails for 750-plus days for more than 2 years and a judge said: No, get them out Tuesday. And they are going to get them out Tuesday. The second chunk, you have 10 days to get them out. He sat there in our committee and acted as if this was some huge terrible task that he couldn't possibly get done; that with 2 years to do it, he couldn't get a single email out. By the time of our hearing, zero of those thousands of emails had come out. A judge took a look the same situation and said: Do it Tuesday. And they are doing it. We have been so deliberately stonewalled, and it has been so painfully and plainly made clear by what the judge has ordered. We are not passing this test of how a Senate should act. President-Elect Trump promised to restore genuine rule of the people themselves. Remember, Teddy Roosevelt's quote that the sinister alliance between crooked politics and crooked business has done more than anything else for the corruption of American life against the genuine rule of the people themselves. President Trump promised to restore genuine rule to people and themselves, and yet it is looking more and more like shadowy and industry-funded groups will really run our government. This is a test also for the rest of corporate America. A lot of corporate America has good climate policy. Most of corporate America has good climate policy, but when are they going to stand up about an EPA Administrator who is the minion of the fossil fuel industry? What will Coca-Cola say to the Georgia Senators? What will Walmart ask of its Arkansas Senators? What will VF Corporation urge its North Carolina Senators to do? How will Rio Tinto advise its Senators from Arizona? All these companies have taken important stands on global warming. Why not now? Let's talk about the due diligence that a nomination like this should get, particularly the due diligence about climate change that the present urgency demands. I wondered what due diligence my colleagues have done to assess the reality of climate change before making this fateful and foul vote. The fossil fuel fox is on its way to the henhouse now, and I challenge the colleagues who will have put him there: Have you gone to your home State university for a briefing on climate science to understand what your own universities are teaching? This nominee, Mr. Pruitt, never had. When we met in my office, he didn't even know who Berrien Moore was. Berrien Moore is the dean of the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. He is a nationally renowned climate scientist. Before this nominee and I met in my office, for all this nominee's years of litigation against doing anything about climate change, he had never bothered to go to his own University of Oklahoma and find out from there, his home State expert, what climate change was, how it worked, and what it meant. Why not? The most logical answer is because he didn't care to know. He had already chosen sides and had been richly rewarded for doing so, although we don't know exactly how richly, since his dark money operation is still a secret, protected by the Senate Republicans who are shoving this nomination through. Here is what Mr. Pruitt would have found out if he had bothered to go to the University of Oklahoma to ask the dean about climate change. The dean of the University of Oklahoma's College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences has said: ``On the increasing strength of earth sciences, we can now state that global warming is `unequivocal.' '' The fact that the planet's warming and the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and the fact that it is increasing in the atmosphere and that increases in the atmosphere due to humans--about those things? There is no debate. He has said: We know precisely how fast CO2 is going up in the atmosphere. We have made a daily measurement of it since 1957. We have ice-core data before that. He continued: We know without any question, that it has increased almost 40 percent since the industrial revolution, and that increase is due to human activity primarily fossil-fuel burning. Those are the words of the dean at the University of Oklahoma, who is the expert in this subject. And Mr. Pruitt had never bothered to actually ever ask him. The fossil fuel industry had told him all he needed to know, and that is going to be a continuing problem with him as EPA Administrator. I thought to myself, have any of the Senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee, who voted for this nominee out of committee, done any better? Which Senator on that committee has been troubled to go for, say, half a day, to their own home State university and get a briefing on climate science? As I have said, this matters to Rhode Island because we are a downwind State. We have had bad air days where little kids and seniors and people with breathing difficulties are supposed to stay indoors in the air conditioning, not go outside. We are seeing warming rising, acidifying seas along our shores, hurting our fishermen, causing those families to lose those coastal homes I showed. And the hits are just going to keep on coming. A child born today at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, RI, can expect to see upward of 9 feet of sea level rise raging on Rhode Island shores in her lifetime, according to the University of Rhode Island and our State agencies. Well, it seems to me the least a downwind State like Rhode Island might expect is some modicum of due diligence by colleagues who are blocking action on this subject. At the University of Rhode Island, the due diligence is very clear. URI is working with Rhode Island fishermen to help predict the harm from warming and acidifying seas and figure out what that means for our fisheries and our agriculture. The Senator is from a State that has very distinguished fishing and agriculture himself, and I am sure his home State universities are doing similar research. URI and our State agencies are drilling down to generate fine local data on sea level rise and storm surge, and we are starting to be able to predict, with specificity, which homes are likely to be lost in storms, which roads will become inaccessible in coming decades, what plan B is necessary to get emergency services to communities when flooding bars the way, and what water and sewer and other public infrastructure is at risk. These are all now the daily questions of Rhode Island coastal life, thanks to climate change, and our University of Rhode Island is at the forefront of studying that. Of course, URI is not alone. You can go to every State university and find climate change concerns. They just understand this stuff. They are not actually just learning climate science, they are teaching about climate change. It is astonishing that Senators from those States will not listen to what their own universities teach. Let's call the Republican roll of the Environment and Public Works Committee, all of whom voted to suspend the committee rules to jam this fossil fuel industry minion through to the Senate floor as Administrator of the EPA, notwithstanding the black hole of secrecy around his dark money dealings with the polluting fossil fuel industry, and notwithstanding his years of stonewalling dozens of Open Records Act requests, including the one that has just been ordered to be disclosed by the judge today--thousands of emails. Let's see what our Environment and Public Works Committee colleagues, who cleared the way in committee for this nominee, would find at their home State universities, if they looked. Chairman Barrasso could go to the University of Wyoming, where he would find the University of Wyoming Center for Environmental Hydrology and Geophysics reporting: ``Many of the most pressing issues facing the western United States hinge on the fate and transport of water and its response to diverse disturbances, including climate change.'' He would find University of Wyoming scientists publishing articles on ``The effects of projected climate change on forest fires' sustainability'' and the University of Wyoming awarding university grants to study the effects of climate change on pollinators, on water flow, on beaver habitat, and on whitebark pine growth, all work being done sincerely at the University of Wyoming on climate change. Next down the line, we come to Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma. The senior Senator from Oklahoma could also go, of course, and consult Dean Moore of the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. But if he really wanted to dig in, he could also go over to Oklahoma State and get an update from Oklahoma State Professor Riley Dunlap, who has written in a peer review and scientific journal: ``Climate science has now firmly established that global warming is occurring, that human activities contribute to this warming, and that current and future warming portend negative impacts on both ecological and social systems.'' ``Portend negative impacts on both ecological and social systems''-- that is science-ese for it is going to hurt people, as we Rhode Islanders already see all too plainly. Oklahoma State's Professor Dunlap goes on to write something more. However, he goes on to say: There has been an organized ``disinformation'' campaign . . . to generate skepticism and denial . . . to ``manufacture uncertainty,'' . . . especially by attacking climate science and scientists. Wow. Huh? And he goes on: This campaign has been waged by a loose coalition of industrial (especially fossil fuels) interests and conservative foundations and think tanks-- Look at that. He seems to be agreeing with Dr. Brulle at Drexel University-- that utilize a range of front groups and Astroturf operations [to manufacture that uncertainty]. That is the research that Senator Inhofe would find at Oklahoma State. That organized disinformation campaign that Professor Dunlap reports on and the massive political muscle operation that supports it explains a lot of what goes on around here. And if you cross-reference the entities that Professor Dunlap puts into that organized disinformation campaign, you will find them on the record supporting this nominee. He is the nominee of the organized disinformation campaign. And that is because, behind this whole mess of a nomination, is the fossil fuel industry. Let's go back to the Environment and Public Works Committee and continue down the row on the majority side. We come next to Senator Capito. Senator Capito from West Virginia could go to West Virginia University, where the Mountaineers could show her their mountain hydrology laboratory, which tells us, ``Climate change has important implications for management of fresh water resources.'' These include, ``that the highlands region in the central Appalachian Mtns. is expected to wet up.'' As warmer air, which carries more moisture, leads to what West Virginia University is calling ``intensification of the water cycle,'' the laboratory warns that, ``the implications of this intensification are immense.'' West Virginia University's Wildlife Conservation Lab publishes regularly on climate change effects, and one of West Virginia University's climate scientists, Professor Hessl, has been recognized by West Virginia University as West Virginia University's Benedum Distinguished Scholar. West Virginia University even sends people all the way to China to study climate change. Some hoax. Onward. My friend, Senator Boozman, is next in the line. His home State University of Arkansas has actually signed onto both the first and second university president's climate commitments. And the University of Arkansas has undertaken what it calls an aggressive and innovative Climate Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help prevent climate change. The University of Arkansas explains the need to reduce greenhouse gases, particularly including carbon dioxide and methane. It is because these gases' ``absorption of solar radiation is responsible for the greenhouse effect.'' Explaining further, the University of Arkansas describes that the greenhouse effect ``occurs as these gases are trapped and held in the Earth's atmosphere, gradually increasing the temperature of the Earth's surface and air in the lower atmosphere.'' A University of Arkansas scientist predicts ``that the spread of plant species in nearly half the world's land areas could be affected by global warming by the end of the century.'' On down the EPW row is my friend Roger Wicker from Mississippi. Down in Mississippi, the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss, actually has an Office of Sustainability. The Ole Miss Office of Sustainability is there ``to further the university's efforts to combat global climate change.'' Believe it or not, Ole Miss is another signatory to that University Presidents' Climate Commitment just like Arkansas. It is moving toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions. By the way, so is the University of Southern Mississippi. The director of the University of Mississippi's Center for Hydroscience and Engineering explains why this matters. Human influence and greenhouse gasses are the dominant causes of the increase in global average temperature of the earth. The impacts are observed in rising sea levels, precipitation patterns, hydrologic regimes, floods and droughts, and environmental processes. He continues. We must reduce our carbon footprint and take the necessary steps to reduce our vulnerability to future climate change impacts. From the University of Mississippi. Also, at Ole Miss, anthropology professor Marcos Mendoza warns that ``climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing global society in the 21st century.'' Let me say that again--from Ole Miss. ``Climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing global society in the 21st century.'' But the fossil fuel machine is going to see to it that we put a climate denier into the EPA Administrator's seat. So let's stay in Mississippi and go over to Mississippi State University, where several professors contributed to the American Society of Agronomy's report, ``Climate Change and Agriculture: Analysis of Potential International Impacts.'' The forward to that volume states that ``the threat of global climate change due to anthropogenic modification of the atmosphere--the so-called greenhouse effect--could potentially be one of the major environmental problems of our time.'' Down on the gulf, all three Mississippi universities are working together with Sea Grant, on what they call a climate team to assess ``the risk of environmental, economic, and societal impacts from rising sea levels and storm surges.'' My friend who is presiding knows well the effects in the gulf. When you are looking at the risk of environmental, economic, and societal impacts from rising sea levels and storm surges, you have something in common with Rhode Island as well. Let's go on to Nebraska from where Senator Fischer hails. The University of Nebraska has published extensive reports on what they call ``Climate Change Implications for Nebraska.'' One University of Nebraska report leads with this blunt sentence: ``Climate change poses significant risks to Nebraska's economy, environment, and citizens.'' Well, Nebraskans, it turns out, agree. The University of Nebraska has published research that ``most rural Nebraskans believe the state should develop a plan for adopting to climate change, as do 58 percent of Nebraskans 65 and older.'' So even the elder Nebraskans by 58 percent believe it, and nearly 70 percent of young Nebraskans, from 19 to 29 years old. On the science, the University of Nebraska reports the following: Is there debate within the scientific community with regard to observed changes in climate and human activities as the principal causal factor? The short answer here is no, at least certainly not among climate scientists; that is, scientists who have actual expertise in the study of climate and climate change. Let me repeat that again from the University of Nebraska. Is there debate within the scientific community with regard to observed changes in climate and human activities as the principal causal factor? The short answer here is no, at least certainly not among climate scientists; that is, scientists who have actual expertise in the study of climate and climate change. The University of Nebraska goes on. For more than a decade, there has been broad and overwhelming consensus within the climate science community that human-induced effects on climate change are both very real and very large. As to scope of those effects, the University of Nebraska warns: The magnitude and rapidity of the projected changes in climate are unprecedented. The implications of these changes for the health of our planet and the legacy we will leave to our children, our grandchildren, and future generations are of vital concern. The University of Nebraska has even published what it calls ``Key Climate Change Data for Nebraska.'' This is the list: Temperatures have risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1895; frost- free season has increased 5 to 25 days since 1895; very heavy precipitation events have increased 16 percent in the Great Plains Region; projected temperature increase of 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, low-emissions scenario, or 8 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit, high-emissions scenario, by 2100; projected summer of 2100 will have 13 to 25 days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit; number of nights over 70 degrees Fahrenheit will increase by 20 to 40 by 2100; soil moisture is projected to decrease 5 to 10 percent by 2100; reduced snowpack in Rocky Mountains equals reduced streamflow in our rivers; increasing heavy precipitation events; increasing flood magnitude; increasing drought frequency and severity. That is the University of Nebraska's list of coming attractions to Nebraska from climate change. On to Kansas, where Senator Moran would learn from Kansas State University about climate change's effects on agriculture in his home State. Kansas State University Professor Charles Rice, Distinguished Professor of Agronomy, working with the National Science Foundation is using ``climate modeling tactics to predict the effects of climate change in the Great Plains, and to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies for agriculture in the region,'' to help meet what Kansas State calls ``one of the grand challenges of the 21st century: evaluating and predicting the biological and ecological consequences of accelerating global climate change.'' Kansas State brought the executive director of agricultural giant Cargill to talk about climate change. News reports describe what the Cargill executive stated; that ``climate change is real and must be addressed head-on to prevent future food shortages.'' Specifically, the Cargill executive said that ``U.S. production of corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton could decline by 14 percent by mid-century and by as much as 42 percent by late century.'' This is a senior corporate executive in one of our leading agricultural companies, warning of a 14-percent decrease in these essential crops by midcentury, and as much as a 42-percent decrease by late century. From an agricultural standpoint, the executive said, ``We have to prepare ourselves for a different climate than we have today.'' Maybe that is why Kansas State calls evaluating and predicting the biological and ecological consequences of accelerating global climate change one of the grand challenges of the 21st century. Let's head out to South Dakota, where Senator Mike Rounds would hear from South Dakota State University about climate change on the Dakota Plains. South Dakota State's Leffler Lab calls climate change ``the signature challenge of the 21st century.'' So let's bear in mind, we have the Kansas State University calling climate change ``one of the grand challenges of the 21st century.'' We have South Dakota State's Leffler Lab calling climate change the ``signature challenge of the 21st century.'' We have an EPA nominee who is a climate change denier, wrapped so tight with the fossil fuel industry, you can't tell where one ends and the other begins, and he has the support of the Senators from Kansas and South Dakota. It is a riddle. South Dakota State scientists are not just saying that climate change is the signature challenge of the 21st century, they are out studying climate change around the globe. From the Upper Ghanaian forests of West Africa to the West Antarctica ice sheet. South Dakota State University Professor Mark Cochrane is working with the U.S. Forest Service to determine ``how a changing climate impacts forest ecosystems'' and reported that ``forest fire seasons worldwide increased by 18.7 percent due to more rain-free days and hotter temperatures.'' The South Dakota State University News Center has reported that season-shifting climate changes ``are all being affected by warming from an increase in greenhouse gases due to human activity''--``all being affected by warming from an increase in greenhouse gases due to human activity.'' South Dakota State University even brought in Harvard Professor and ``Merchants of Doubt'' author Naomi Oreskes, saying that her work ``has laid to rest the idea that there is significant disagreement in the scientific community about global warming.'' Somebody needs to translate between South Dakota State University and this EPA nominee. So on we go to Iowa, continuing down the Environment and Public Works Republican roster, where Senator Joni Ernst could hear from an Iowa State University professor who told a United Nations conference not long ago that ``climate change was already affecting Iowa farmers. This is not just about the distant future,'' he said. Iowa State has published extensive reach and I will just quote the title of it. ``Global Warming: Impact of climate change on global agriculture.'' Iowa State's prestigious Leopold Center views climate change not merely as warming, but as a ``worsening destabilization of the planet's environmental systems.'' Climate change is not just warming, it is a ``worsening destabilization of the planet's environmental systems'' and yet the good Senator voted to move this climate-denying industry tool forward to be our EPA Administrator. A worsening destabilization of the planet's environmental systems, they call it, that will create ``an aggravated and unpredictable risk that will challenge the security of our agricultural and biological systems''--``aggravated and unpredictable risk that will challenge the security of our agricultural and biological systems.'' That is Iowa State talking. They conclude: ``The scientific evidence is clear that the magnitude of the changes ahead are greater, the rate much faster, and [the] duration of climatic destabilization will last much longer than once thought.'' Now we come to the end of the row of the Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee. As an Alaskan, Senator Dan Sullivan would get double barrels from the University of Alaska, first about climate change and second about ocean acidification. ``Alaska is already facing the impacts of climate change,'' the University of Alaska reports. This question of ``facing the impacts of climate change'' matters enough to the University of Alaska that, on global warming, the university has stood up the Alaska Climate Science Center. The Alaska Climate Science Center has been established to help understand ``the response of Alaska's ecosystems to a changing climate.'' The Alaska Climate Science Center of the University of Alaska is charting the recordbreaking, year-over-year warming in Alaska, analyzing temperature trends, and receiving awards for ``modeling and evaluating climate change impacts in the Arctic.'' ``One thing for sure,'' the center says, is that the climate ``will continue to change as a result of various natural and anthropogenic forcing mechanisms.'' Then there is the other climate change punch coming at Alaska, from the sea. In addition to its Alaska Climate Science Center, the University of Alaska is serious enough about this to have also stood up an Ocean Acidification Research Center to address what it calls ``growing concerns over increased acidity in the ocean and the impacts this phenomenon will have on Alaska's marine ecosystems''--``growing concerns over increased acidity in the ocean and the impacts this phenomenon will have on Alaska's marine ecosystems.'' Alaska's seafood industry is an enormous asset to Alaska's economy, and it depends on Alaska's marine ecosystems. Well, the University of Alaska's Ocean Acidification Research Center warns that ocean acidification ``has the potential to disrupt this industry from top to bottom''--``to disrupt this industry from top to bottom.'' The Ocean Acidification Research Center identifies the culprit of this phenomenon as ``the transport of CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean.'' Indeed, as we have loaded up the atmosphere with more and more CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, the ocean has actually absorbed chemically about a third of that CO2. In addition to all that heat I mentioned earlier that the ocean had absorbed--more than 90 percent of the added heat--it actually absorbed one-third of the carbon dioxide. Of course, when carbon dioxide interacts with seawater, there is a change that takes place. Indeed, why don't we see about doing a demonstration of that change. It will take a minute to get that organized. While we are getting that organized, let me continue. Here is a description--thank you to the University of Maryland for the graphic--of how atmospheric carbon dioxide turns the ocean acidic. When you add additional CO2 to the atmosphere, at the surface, where it meets the sea, there is a chemical exchange, and the CO2 can be absorbed by the ocean. As I said, one-third of it has been. That dissolved carbon dioxide joins with the water chemically, and it creates carbonic acid. The carbonic acid, in turn, creates bicarbonate ions, hydrogen ions, and carbonate ions, and those ions interfere with the makeup of marine creatures, which make their shells out of free carbon in the oceans, and some of those effects are pretty apparent. This is the shell of an ocean creature called a pteropod. It is at the base of a great deal of the ocean food chain. There are studies off the northwest coast that show that more than 50 percent of this creature have experienced what the scientists who them caught them and studied them called severe shell damage. Here is what happens when you expose them to high concentrations of acidified seawater, higher than usual. That is what it looks like day 1. That is a healthy shell. Fifteen days later, it is starting to gray. Thirty days later, beyond just starting to gray, it is starting to actually come apart. And by 45 days, the shell is a wreck. That is not an animal that is capable of surviving. So let's see how this works. This is a glass of water, and I have just put 20 drops of a pH test into it. That shows what the acidity is of the water. As you can see, it has turned the water rather blue, which matches roughly this level of pH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to continue with this little demonstration.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is a very simple bubbler that anybody with an aquarium will recognize. All you simply do is you put the bubbler in. I produce carbon dioxide as I exhale. So I am exhaling one breath into this same glass. I will do one more. It was not even a full breath, but there it is. It used to match that color; do you remember? Now look at what color it matches. Just breathing carbon dioxide through the water has changed its pH and has made it more acidic. I can do that right here with a breath. It is happening on a global scale, as the interaction between the atmosphere and the oceans transports CO2 into the oceans. When that happens, the same chemical effect that we modeled here takes place, and the oceans become more acidic, and the effects continue to be damaging. The previous shell that I showed was the pteropod, a humble creature, but an important creature in the food chain. It is actually called the ocean butterfly by some because its snail foot has been transformed by God's law of evolution into an oceanic wing that allows it to fly in the seas. This is an oyster. The Senator's State of Louisiana does a lot of work with oysters, as does Rhode Island. Again, exposing oyster larvae to ocean water with heightened levels of acidity--day 1, day 2, day 4, and then we see exposure to acidity. Here is what a healthy larva looks like; here is what one exposed looks like. Here is what the healthy one looks like; here is what the exposed one looks like. Here is a healthy one; here is one exposed. You will see that the healthy larva is growing day after day. It is getting bigger. It is going to become an oyster. Somebody is going to have a great oyster stew some day with that oyster with any luck. This one is shrinking and deforming, and the reason is that the little creature is trying to take the carbon out of the ocean to make its shell--the calcium. And because of those ions that I pointed out, it is bound up, and they can't get it. So they deform this way. When you are at a point where more than 50 percent of ocean pteropods are experiencing severe shell damage, if you are not paying attention, you are going to take a big punch. Now I know around here we don't give a darn about God's creatures as being God's creatures. I probably sound funny to some people talking about a funny little creature in the ocean called a pteropod. The things we care about here are things that we can monetize because this is Mammon Hall. This is the temple where gold rules. These little creatures are a little bit away from the gold. But who cares about the pteropod? I will tell you who cares about the pteropod. Salmon care about the pteropod, and people care about the salmon, and Alaska has a pretty good salmon fishery. The Pacific Northwest has a pretty good salmon fishery. If you drop out the pteropod from the bottom of the oceanic food chain because it can't grow because the ocean has acidified, there is a big collapse to take place. As scientists would say, the upper trophic levels fall as the lower trophic levels collapse. So this is serious. As I went through all these different Republican Environment and Public Works Committee Senators' home State universities, maybe you could say that all those home State universities are part of the climate change hoax that our President is so pleased to tweet about. If so, my colleagues really ought to call their home State universities out about that. If they think their home State universities are in on a hoax, I think it wouldn't be right, and they ought to call out their home State universities. If the home State universities are part of a big old hoax, say so. Say so. But if all of my Republican colleagues' home State universities right down the line on the Environment and Public Works committee aren't in on a hoax, if what they are doing is good science, why not listen to them? Why not listen to them? What is the dark star in this firmament that causes the real science from the home State universities of these Senators to warp and twist around as it comes to this body? What is the power? What is the force that is causing every single one of these home State universities to be ignored by their home State Senators? Let me go back and review very briefly what they said. Home State universities of the Republican Senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee warn of ``pressing issues'' related to climate change. That is Wyoming--pressing issues. Assert that the science of climate change is ``unequivocal,'' ``without any question.'' That is from Oklahoma. Foresee ``immense'' implications related to climate change. That is West Virginia. Making anti-greenhouse gas ``climate commitments'' to fight climate change. That is the University of Arkansas. Warn that ``climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing global society.'' That is Mississippi. Find the ``significant risks'' from climate change to be ``of vital concern.'' That is Nebraska. That is the one that had the hit list of coming attractions from Nebraska of climate change Describe climate change as ``one of the grand challenges of the 21st century.'' That is Kansas. Call climate change ``the signature challenge of the 21st century.'' South Dakota. Predict ``aggravated and unpredictable risk'' from climate disruption. That is Iowa. Prepare for fisheries risk that could shake the State's seafood industry ``from top to bottom.'' That is Alaska. Right down the row of Republican Senators who voted for this climate denying nominee, you have home State universities that say the opposite, that say that it is real, that it is beyond scientific debate at this point, that its effects are here, that its effects are worsening, and that it is going to shake industries like the fishing industry from top to bottom and create significant risk and disturbances in agriculture. But not one of those Senators stood up against the nominee who is the shameless tool of the industry that is causing all that harm. So I have to ask, how does that end? If you listen to what all your home State universities are saying, this is a pressing and immense grand challenge. This greatest environmental threat--it doesn't go away. This is truth measured by science, God's and nature's truth, and truth always demands a reckoning. If we listen only to the fossil fuel industry as it lies and prevaricates and propagandizes and disassembles and does all its nonsense to protect its all-important right to pollute for free, how do we expect this turns out in the end? Do you think these acidifying shells give a red hot damn what a fossil fuel industry lobbyist says? They are responding to laws of chemistry and nature that we don't get to repeal or amend. Let me make one last point in closing, as I saw Senator Carper here, our distinguished ranking member, and I am sure he wants to speak. Our Republican friends claim to support market economics. They are big on how you have to trust the market. You shouldn't regulate. Markets are the way to go. Market economics is the most efficient tool for allocating resources. Market economics are how we create wealth. Actually, I agree. So let's look at market economics. What I believe and what economists say on all sides of the political spectrum is that it is market economics 101 that for the market to work, the harm of a product has to be built into the price of a product. The fossil fuel industry, the dark star of our politics, absorbing and bending all of this home State information, absorbs and bends even conservative market principles so that they disappear here in Congress, at least wherever those principles conflict with what appears to be our first principle: the well-being and the power of the fossil fuel industry. The fact that Senators do not hear or do not care about this science from their home State universities tells you all you need to know about the brute political force of the fossil fuel industry here in Congress. (Mrs. ERNST assumed the Chair.) Let me go back just a moment to something I said earlier, since we have been joined by the Senator from Iowa at this fine early hour in the morning. Just before she arrived, I was talking about Iowa State. Since she is here, I will go back to those remarks and to the Iowa State University professor who told a United Nations conference not long ago that climate change is already affecting Iowa farmers. ``This isn't just about the distant future,'' the Iowa State scientist said. I noted that Iowa State has published extensive research on, and I quote Iowa State University here, ``global warming, the impact of climate change on global agriculture.'' Iowa State has a center called the Leopold Center, which perhaps the Presiding Officer can confirm is a fairly prestigious institution within the University of Iowa. Iowa State's Leopold Center ``views climate change not merely as warming, but as a worsening destabilization of the planet's environmental system.'' I hope the distinguished Senator from Iowa will review Iowa State's view that this worsening destabilization of the planet's environmental system will create, and I quote Iowa State University again, ``aggravated and unpredictable risks that will challenge the security of our agricultural and biological systems'' and consider their conclusion: ``The scientific evidence is clear that the magnitude of the changes ahead are greater, the rate much faster, and the duration of the climatic destabilization will last much longer than once thought.'' Let me close, while we wait for Senator Carper, who is nearby, with my final exhibit. This is a page from the New York Times in 2009. It is a full-page ad that was taken out in the New York Times in 2009, and it reads: Dear President Obama and the United States Congress, tomorrow leaders from 192 countries will gather at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to determine the fate of our planet. As business leaders, we are optimistic that President Obama is attending Copenhagen with emissions targets. Additionally, we urge you, our government, to strengthen and pass U.S. legislation and lead the world by example. We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. Please don't postpone the earth. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet. Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet. That is the text of this advertisement in the New York Times in 2009. And guess who signed it. Donald J. Trump, chairman and president; Donald J. Trump, Jr., executive vice president; Eric F. Trump, executive vice president; Ivanka M. Trump, executive vice president; and the Trump Organization. I will close with the sentence from this New York Times advertisement, signed by Donald J. Trump, that ``the science of climate change is irrefutable and our failure to act will have consequences that are catastrophic and irreversible.'' President Trump's words, not mine. I yield the floor.

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