Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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 I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Absolutely dead wrong, as proven by reality. It is not just a theoretical wrongness, it is a factual, actual wrongness.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I interrupt for 1 moment?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Minnesota for his courtesy in allowing this time for me when I would otherwise be presiding. I wanted to respond to the remarks that preceded Senator Franken's remarks, remarks by Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, suggesting that the military's investment in green technologies was an unwelcome imposition on them, and against their wishes, by outside political forces and on the basis of outside political considerations. I just held a hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee on the subject of our Defense Department's investment and interest in alternative technologies. We had witnesses from all of the services, and the testimony was pretty clear and diametrically opposed to the point of view just expressed by the Senator from Oklahoma. I can certainly appreciate the enthusiasm of my friend from Oklahoma for fossil fuels since fossil fuels are a big home State industry in Oklahoma. But the testimony at the hearing was that the military was pursuing alternative fuels for reasons of its own, for reasons that related to protecting the troops, to be more efficient and to protect the strategic posture of the United States around the world. Perhaps the most striking testimony they gave was that over 3,000 American soldiers gave their lives between 2003 and 2007 protecting our fuel convoys in Iraq. When we get in theater and we have a heavily fossil-fuel-based military presence, the price we pay for that is paid in the blood of soldiers who die protecting the fuel convoys--3,000 young men and women between 2003 and 2007. So to the extent we can do things like the Cooley company in Rhode Island and invest in tents that have their own solar capture built right into the fabric so that the cooling within the tent in the blazing heat of the Middle East can be done without having to truck that fuel in and without having to cost those soldiers their lives--that is not something that is being imposed on the military; that is something they very much want to accomplish as part of their core mission. In Newport, RI, the Naval War College has a facility, and they are building wind turbines there. They are building wind turbines there because they have calculated that over time they will save money by putting up those wind turbines compared to buying electricity. It is not an imposition from outside. It is not some green agenda coming from Washington or anyplace else. It is the Newport Naval Station saying we save money for our budget by doing this. And when we save that money, we can put it into these other uses such as fighter aircraft, tanks, bullets, bandages, and boots. The third piece of testimony had to do with the strategic posture of the country internationally, which is something the military is concerned with in a very deep and profound way. They made a couple of points. The first was that the less dependent the United States is on the international oil market, the fewer vital interests we have to risk shedding our blood and spending our treasure to protect. So it is in our national strategic interest to get off of our fossil fuel dependency and into a broader portfolio of energy sources. The second is the emerging dangers of climate change, in which we are immersed all around us if we look at the obvious evidence in front of our faces, which creates profound risks for social and civil unrest and violence in other parts of the world as things change, as estuaries flood and are no longer productive agriculturally, as relatively dry areas turn to desert and can no longer sustain life, as the great glaciers in the high mountains dissipate and change the flow patterns of rivers on which economic life for individuals depends. All of those things create conflict and strife, and the American military is aware that where there is conflict and strife abroad, very often they are called in, and they feel the responsibility to try to avoid that. I take time every week to speak a little bit about climate change for a number of reasons. As I said, there are a lot of folks in Washington who would like to ignore this issue and it is presently being ignored, which is unfortunate and, in fact, shameful. The messages about climate change we are getting are coming through loudly and clearly and we ignore them at our peril. Every week for the past 15 months, as the Presiding Officer knows, I have distributed in our weekly caucus an update on some of latest climate science bulletins, the news that is fresh that week. This week the stories are that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in the weather statistics for the month of April 2012 reported warmer-than-average temperatures engulfing much of the contiguous United States during April with the nationally averaged temperature at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above average and the third warmest on record. Warmer-than-average temperatures were present for a large portion of the Nation for April. Six States in the central United States and three States in the Northeast had April temperatures ranking among their 10 warmest in history. Above-average temperatures were also present for the Southeast, upper Midwest, and much of the West. No State in the contiguous United States had April temperatures that were below average. April 2012 came on the heels of the warmest March on record for the lower 48. January to April 2012 was the warmest such period on record for the contiguous United States with an average temperature of 45.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 5.4 degrees above the long-term average. Twenty-six states, all east of the Rockies, were record warm for the 4-month period, and an additional 17 States had temperatures for the period among their 10 warmest. These rising temperatures can lead to a number of concerns. For instance, snowpack, and thus drinking water, could be drastically reduced in California and surrounding western States. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography presented a study to California's Energy Commission last month explaining that the warming of 1.5 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit between now and midcentury will reduce today's snowpack by one-third. By 2100, at those temperatures snowpacks would be reduced by two-thirds. That makes a big difference to the agricultural communities that depend on that water downstream of those snowpacks. Meanwhile, Science Daily reported yesterday that ozone and greenhouse gas pollution such as black carbon are expanding the tropics at a rate of .7 degrees per decade. Said the lead scientist, climatologist Robert J. Allen, assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside: If the tropics are moving poleward, then the subtropics will become even drier . . . impacting regional agriculture, economy, and society. People are noticing the changes around them. Outside of the Halls of Congress--where we have blinders on to this obvious issue--regular people see the changes, and they are concerned about them. The United States Geological Survey recently polled more than 10,000 visitors to the Nation's wildlife refuges, hunters, fishermen, and families alike, and found that 71 percent of those polled said they were ``personally concerned'' about climate change's effects on fish, wildlife, and habitats. Seventy-four percent said that working to limit climate change's effects on fish, wildlife, and habitats would benefit future generations. These special interests who deny that carbon pollution causes global temperatures to increase--and who have such a profound and maligning effect in this Chamber--deny that melting icecaps will raise our seas to dangerous levels, denying that all of these visible changes are taking place. The myth that these special interests propagate in the face of so much evidence is that the jury is still out on climate change caused by carbon pollution so we don't have to worry about it or even take precautions. This is false. It is plain wrong. Virtually all of our most prestigious scientific and academic institutions have stated that climate change is happening and that human activities are the driving cause of this change. They say it in powerful language, particularly for scientists who are specific about what they say and guarded in the way they say it. The letter said: Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple, independent lines of evidence-- And here is the final crescendo-- and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. That is an awfully nice way to say it, but in a nutshell they are saying anybody who disagrees is making it up. These are serious organizations: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, American Society of Agronomy, and on and on. It is not just them. It is also the military services--as I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks--it is also the intelligence organizations of the country, it is also most of our electric utilities, many of our biggest capitalists and investors, and of course it is our insurance industry that has to pay for the damage that ensues. A recent article said: The worldwide insurance is huge, three times bigger than the oil industry. Right now these companies are running scared. Some are threatening to cancel coverage for homeowners within 2 miles of the coast where hurricanes are on the increase, and in drying areas of the West where wildfires have wreaked havoc. Marsh and McClennan, one of the largest insurance brokers, called climate change ``one of the most significant emerging risks facing the world today,'' while insurance giant AIG has established an office of environment and climate change to assess the risks to insure us in the years ahead. The industry's own scientists are predicting that things could get a lot worse in the years ahead. I am indebted to the Presiding Officer, the junior Senator from Minnesota, for the following observation, which is that 97 percent of the climate scientists who are most actively publishing accept that the verdict is in on carbon pollution causing climate and oceanic changes. The example he and I have discussed--and I can't help, since he is presiding right now, referring to it again--we are being asked in this body to ignore facts that 97 percent of scientists tell us are real. Now, translate that into our personal lives. What if a child of ours was sick and we went to a doctor and said: Is there something I need to do about it? Is there a treatment that is necessary? What is the deal here? And we got an opinion, and then we said: I am going to be a cautious, prudent parent because a treatment might be expensive. I want to make sure I am going down the right path, so I am going to get a second opinion, and the parent gets a second opinion. Then the parent got a third opinion. You are a really prudent parent, and you got a third opinion. Let's say you kept going. You got a fourth opinion, a fifth, a 15th, a 45th, a 75th, a 95th--you got 100 opinions. People would think that was a little odd, but never mind. And then let's say that 87 percent of those professional opinions came back saying: Yes, your child is ill and needs this treatment. Would you then responsibly say: The jury is still out on the question of why my child is sick. Let's not take any action now. These 97 percent of the doctors might be alarmists. We don't really want to go there, and, after all, it will cost money to buy the medicine. Would any responsible parent do that? No. It is a ludicrous proposition, and that is just how ludicrous the proposition is that climate change is not real. The underlying facts are ancient ones. The guy who discovered that climate change is caused by the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, John Tyndall, discovered this in 1863, at the time of the Civil War, 150 years ago. This is not a novelty. This is old established science, and it has become clear since then that there is a change that is happening. We pump out 7 to 8 gigatons a year. A gigaton is a billion--not a million, a billion--metric tons. We pump out 7 to 8 billion metric tons a year of carbon dioxide, and that adds to the carbon load in the atmosphere. This isn't something that is a theory, it is something that is a measurement now. For 8,000 centuries mankind has existed in an atmospheric bandwidth of 170 to 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide--170 to 300--for 8,000 centuries, 800,000 years. We have been an agricultural species for about 10,000 years, to give my colleagues an idea. For 800,000 years we were picking things off of bushes. Our entire history as a species falls essentially in that 800,000 years. All of our development as a species has happened in the last probably 20,000 years. So it has been a long run in that safe bandwidth of 170 to 300 parts per million. We have shot out of it. We are at 390 parts per million and climbing. The record in history as to what happens on this planet when we spike out of that range is an ominous one. It is a bad trajectory. It takes us back to massive ocean die-offs that are in the geologic record. So this is something we need to be very careful about and we need to take action. The suggestion that it is not happening is false. The suggestion that we can wait it out is imprudent, reckless, and ill-advised. And the notion that our professional career military who have lost 3,000 men and women defending fuel convoys in Iraq are engaged in trying to get off fossil fuels because of some outside political agenda that they don't share is a preposterous allegation to make about the men and women who run our military, who make these decisions for our military, and who are seeking to defend the soldiers out in the field against these consequences. With that, I yield the floor, once again thanking the distinguished Presiding Officer for allowing me this time, and I would have otherwise been sitting there and presiding. So with appreciation to Senator Franken, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I wanted to confirm the order of proceeding would be Senator Franken is going to speak and then I will speak for a few moments after Senator Franken. I know the Presiding Officer is to be excused very shortly.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask consent I follow Senator Franken. We will see to it the Presiding Officer is relieved timely, at 4 o'clock.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Eight minutes just about works, from the math.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the chairman, Senator Conrad, for his leadership on this important issue. I would note for the record that with the conclusion of Senator Toomey's remarks, following Senator Reed, I think for the first time in the history of the Senate we had back-to-back presentations by two separate Senators who were graduates of LaSalle Academy in Providence, RI--noteworthy, perhaps, in Rhode Island. I did note in his remarks his references to the magnitude of this challenge, to the full-blown crisis he perceives, to the completely unsustainable nature of our outward debt, that this is too big and too important not to address, and that this is the single most pressing problem our country faces--all of which might lead one to conclude that this would be the most important thing they would pursue. Yet we know it is less important to them to address our debt problem than it is to protect oil and gas subsidies for Big Oil at a time when their profits are unprecedented; it is less important than protecting tax loopholes that allow high-income individuals to incorporate themselves and avoid paying FICA taxes; it is less important to them than protecting special tax rates that allow people making $100 million a year to pay a lower tax rate than a family making $100,000 a year. So it seems that when you actually look at practice--what their priorities are--this isn't quite the priority they claim it is. I agree there are other priorities we face as a country. This July, unless we move quickly, student loan interest rates will double, which will hurt our economy, our growth, and it will hit families across this country. We brought forward a plan to keep those rates down, but our colleagues filibustered it. Our Nation's highway program will expire next month, jeopardizing millions of jobs. We voted overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis to reauthorize the highway bill and move forward on it, only to have our bipartisan highway bill stalled by House Republicans. Republicans may talk about jobs, but they are busily stalling the most important jobs bill we have. That stalling and delay will cost jobs because of the summer building season in so many of our States. One thing that has not been urgent has been to pass a budget. Why is that? Well, it is because we already have one. This whole exercise today rests on a false premise. The false premise is that we have no budget. Last summer Congress passed and the President signed into law the bipartisan Budget Control Act, which sets binding discretionary spending levels for a decade and establishes budget levels for the current fiscal year and next, which our appropriations committees are now working under--Republicans and Democrats together. But you would not know this when listening to Senate Republicans. Instead of focusing on real issues, where real jobs are at stake, they are wasting a day of floor time on extremist tea party budgets. They also plan to force a vote on what they describe as the ``Obama budget.'' I plan to vote against all of the motions to proceed for the simple reason that we already have a budget in place that we voted on and agreed to for next year. Today's votes are nothing more than a Republican attempt to promote a radical and unwelcome agenda of slashing middle-class programs while protecting and enlarging tax giveaways for the ultrarich. Let's make no mistake about what this would do to middle-class families. The House Republican budget would start by cutting taxes for big corporations and the ultrarich, adding $4.6 trillion to our national debt. To pay for these extra tax cuts, the Republicans would decimate programs on which regular American families at some point in their lives come to rely. They start by ending Medicare as we know it. Beginning for workers who retire in 2023, the House Republican budget would make it a voucher system, which, according to the nonpartisan CBO, will add an estimated $6,000 in annual out-of-pocket costs for each retiree by 2050. In Rhode Island, the average annual Social Security benefit is about $13,600. It is hard to imagine how future seniors living on a fixed Social Security income will be able to maintain health care coverage with that kind of extra cost dropped on them individually. At the same time that they would slash Medicare, the House Republican budget gives those making over $1 million per year an average tax cut of over $150,000. If you are getting older or you are a working family and you are going to need Medicare one day, you will get an end to Medicare as we know it. If you are making over $1 million, you get an average tax cut of over $150,000. Those are not real priorities for the people I represent in Rhode Island. It doesn't stop there. They repeal the affordable care act, which would reopen the doughnut hole. The affordable care act has helped nearly 15,000 Rhode Islanders save an average of $554 each last year just by closing the doughnut hole partway, and soon it will be all the way. That made a difference to people such as Olive in Woonsocket, whose husband fell into the doughnut hole last July. Thanks to the new law, they saved $2,400. Under the House Republican budget, they would be stuck paying that $2,400 as an out-of-pocket cost to the big drug companies. The radical House budget would slash funding for Pell grants, and it would increase interest on student loans. We have all heard people say here that they don't want to encourage the increase in student loan rates we are facing. But while they say that, they, of course, are filibustering our effort to do that. In their budget, they build in the increase in the interest rate. So they speak from two notions. The House budget requires only $1 trillion in additional and unspecified cuts, and that will be Draconian. Senator Paul's budget, which we may take up today, would also slash middle-class programs, including Social Security. He includes an eventual 39 percent cut to Social Security benefits and would end Medicare for all seniors in 2014. If you want to put an end to Medicare in 2014, the Paul budget looks like a really great opportunity for you. But that is not what I think anybody really wants in this country. I think almost every American wants to see Medicare strengthened and supported. We should move on from this unnecessary budget messaging exercise and resume our work to keep student loan rates down and support good-paying highway jobs--bills that are being delayed that we need action on now. When we turn to a real debate about deficit reduction, I hope my colleagues will unshackle themselves from the tea party and put forward a budget that doesn't put Big Oil subsidies ahead in priority of taking care of our real budget problems. They have to get over putting the priorities first of protecting Big Oil subsidies. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would like to address a slightly different topic, which is the continuing conference on the highway bill. We passed a very good highway bill in the Senate. We passed it on time for the March 31 deadline when the highway trust fund was going to expire. We passed it in bipartisan fashion, with 75 Senators supporting it. We passed it after it came unanimously out of the Environment and Public Works Committee with the support of the chairman, Senator Boxer, and the ranking member, Senator Inhofe. We passed it after a very open and transparent floor process in which around 40 amendments were agreed to either by vote or agreement, and it has the support of everybody from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to labor, from the pavers to the environmentalists. So it is a good piece of legislation. It was done right. The problem is that it is running up against a time deadline. As my director of transportation tells me, if we delay this too long, he has to start dropping projects off of this summer's highway work period because the time is slipping away as we dawdle here in Congress on this bill. It is not just the Rhode Island Department of Transportation saying this. Standard & Poor's Global Credit Portal has a report, ``Increasingly Unpredictable Federal Funding Could Stall U.S. Transportation Infrastructure Projects.'' It says within the report: As the construction season begins in the northern half of the country, this continuing uncertainty in funding could force states to delay projects rather than risk funding changes or political gridlock come July. So we need to get this done, and I have heard at this point that the House Republican conferees intend to hold the conference on this bill through late June, and if we do that, that will cost jobs in America, that will cost jobs in Rhode Island, that will cost jobs around the country because our transportation directors are going to have to take work scheduled for the summer and postpone it, and that is a very unfortunate turn of events. It has nothing to do with the merits. Unfortunately, the House was not able to pass a highway bill of any kind, which is unfortunate because it is not the most complicated task. It is something we have been doing for decades around here. They couldn't get that done, and so what they have done now is gone to conference on the Senate bill without a bill of their own, and this appears to be causing delay. So I am here to urge that we all encourage the House Members of the highway conference committee to expedite their work as much as they can. Apparently there is a 2-week period that the House is taking off, and if it is delayed by 2 weeks so that Members can go home, I don't think that is a profitable use of our time. There is a great deal of loose talk around here about jobs. We have even had bills that didn't relate to jobs called jobs bills because of gimmickry in the title. But this is a real jobs bill. This is 3.9 million jobs for the country, and it is 9,000 jobs for Rhode Island, as calculated in years of work--job years. We are just wasting that if we don't get this done on time. So if people really want to do something about jobs, they can get the highway bill moved along rapidly so that the work can be done in this summer work session. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2 p.m., on Monday, May 14; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of Proceedings be approved to date; the morning hour be deemed expired and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use until later in the day; and that the majority leader be recognized; further, that when the Senate resumes legislative session following the votes on the Russell and Tharp nominations, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2072.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Monday, May 14, 2012, at 4:30 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 570 and 571; that there be 60 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time the Senate proceed to vote, without intervening action or debate, on the nominations in the order listed; the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am informed that it is the majority leader's intention to resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 2072, the Export-Import Bank reauthorization bill on Monday. At 4:30 p.m., there will be an hour of debate on the Russell and Tharp nominations. At 5:30 p.m., there will be up to three roll call votes on confirmation of the Russell nomination, confirmation of the Tharp nomination, and the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2072, the Export-Import Bank bill.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I will take a moment to recognize the significance of that measure. I know the Presiding Officer, in his many years as attorney general of the State of Connecticut, became keenly aware of the sacrifices our law enforcement officers are too often called upon to make to protect our communities. In the State of Rhode Island, we recently lost a Providence police officer who was killed in the line of duty. So it is a somber and important act that we take. I ask unanimous consent that this resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to S. Res. 456, submitted earlier today.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of H.R. 4967, which was received from the House and is at the desk.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 458, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. He says: A recently rediscovered 1981 paper, written by NASA atmospheric physicist Jim Hansen and others, has been analyzed and found to be impressively accurate about the course of climate change since its publication. The 10-page paper . . . which was published in the journal Science, had been overlooked for decades when researchers Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Rein Haarsma from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, uncovered it and began scouring its contents. The paper's impressive prognostication is the best kind of vindication for Hansen, who has suffered more than his share of the slings and arrows from climate deniers in the media . . . He concludes: The complex world of climate science rarely enjoys such clear and simple validation. When such opportunity presents itself, we owe it to ourselves to make some noise about it. With appreciation to Jim Hansen, how the actual science has borne him out over the past 30 years, and with respect for the predictions he makes, we should as soon as we can begin to address ourselves to this problem. Jim is not alone. An array of scientific organizations wrote us all a letter back in October of 2009 whose conclusion is pretty clear and stark in scientific language: Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gasses emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer reviewed science. We act as if it is something new, but, in fact, it is not. The determination that carbon dioxide would warm the planet as it increased its concentration in the atmosphere was figured out around the time of the American Civil War by an Irish scientist who worked in England named John Tyndall. What Tyndall discovered we have proven to be true, as since then we have dumped gigaton after gigaton of carbon into our atmosphere, loading it up to the point now, as I said before, that we are well outside the bounds that have protected our species for 800,000 years on this planet. The scale of what 8,000 centuries means is perhaps best measured against the time that scientists now believe man first began to engage in agriculture, first started scratching the earth and putting seeds into the ground. Before then, we were primarily hunter-gatherers, leading a very primitive life. So we have gone from beginning to scratch the earth and plant things to be, 10,000 years later, the species we are. We lived within this bandwidth of 170 to 300 parts per million for 8,000 centuries. To veer outside of it is significant and hazardous. I am delighted that Mr. Hansen, despite all the abuse that has been heaped on him, continues his work. I hope the time comes when we start to listen to the voice of what our planet is telling us, the voice of what our scientists are telling us, the voice of what our children are telling us, and not just the voice of what the lobbyists for the polluting industries--particularly the oil and gas industries--are telling us. Frankly, the lobbyists for the polluting oil and gas industries are not telling us the truth. They are not telling us the truth. The truth is becoming increasingly apparent, and the problem is that as time goes by you can reach tipping points that are irrecoverable. It would be really tragic for us to look back and think, if we had been able to act on time, if we had listened on time to the signals of our Earth, our planet, the signals that are plainly in our face, we could have made a world that was better and safer for our children. But, instead, in our folly, in our greed, in our willingness to listen to the falsehoods of these polluters, we shot past that point, and there is no way to recover it now.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The article begins with two simple sentences: ``Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening.'' He talks about the dangers of the Canada tar sands and what that means for us if we go ahead with that project. His conclusion is this: If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate. Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. He looks at the recent extreme weather that people--not only across the country but across the world--have been noticing. He concludes: We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events--they were caused by human-induced climate change. So the risk we face is a real one, and we are actually seeing it begin to happen in present time. He says: The tar sands contain enough carbon--240 gigatons--to add 120 parts per million to our atmosphere. As I have said before on the Senate floor, we have lived for 8,000 centuries within a range between 170 and 300 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere. That is the bandwidth within which the human species has lived on this planet, and we have gone rocketing out of that bandwidth in recent years. We are now at 390 parts per million out of a bandwidth, for 800,000 years, between 170 and 300 parts per million. The tar sands would add 120 parts per million to that. That would take us to 510, if my math is right. Tar shale--a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States--contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. This shows the folly of what Dr. Hansen describes: . . . as a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling. Jim Hansen is somebody who is worth listening to. He has been writing about this now for more than 30 years, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a posting by Neil Wagner entitled ``Hansen Had It Right in 1981 Climate Report.''

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to speak about the ongoing and deliberately overlooked problem of carbon pollution and what it is doing to our planet. In the context of these remarks, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article entitled ``Game Over for the Climate,'' written by Jim Hansen and published in yesterday's New York Times.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, earlier this week, the conference committee on the surface transportation reauthorization--more commonly known as the highway bill--met for its initial meeting. In the opening remarks that were made on Tuesday, it was encouraging that there seemed to be a general agreement on how important that Transportation bill is to our Nation. As I will describe later, it is 2.9 million jobs that are associated with this bill. I should be specific and say 2.9 million jobs a year, since those jobs do not extend for eternity. But it is the most important piece of jobs legislation we could consider. I appreciated hearing from the Senator from Utah about the jobs concern of his energy proposal. Those are real jobs, they are immediate jobs. They are jobs that everybody understands, building our roads, highways, and bridges. These local construction jobs are not only important in and of themselves, but they also help to maintain the transportation infrastructure that lowers the cost of goods and helps our economy across the board. We have had to close a bridge where I 95 crosses over the Blackstone River in Pawtucket. It is reopening. In the meantime people have to drive around 295. That costs time and fuel for shippers--and delays. It was an economic cost. This is the real jobs bill that we can do something about. It is pending right now in conference. So it is imperative not only that the conference get this bill done but that they get it done as soon as possible. Why do I say that? Well, there was a deadline of March 31 to get a new bill done, and the House of Representatives, unfortunately, did not pass a highway bill by the March 31 deadline. So on the eve of the expiration of that deadline, they passed an extension, and we are operating under that and a subsequent extension right now. The effect of that is not good for jobs. State departments of transportation and the private sector companies that provide the services that rebuild our roads and highways cannot make long-range plans when funding is based on short- term extensions. Particularly in this economy, our States, our counties, and the companies that do this business simply cannot afford to extend themselves on contracts and on work where they do not know that the highway funding is going to be there to backstop them when it comes time to make the payments. In many instances, for many products, a short-term extension actually requires the underlying construction project to be dropped. In Rhode Island, our State department of transportation, led by transportation director Michael Lewis, who is a very capable and experienced individual, has shown me their list of 96 major projects that they plan to do this year. But because of the uncertainty here on the highway bill, because the conference has not produced a result yet, because we are still operating under the extension, he says that about 40 of those projects may have to be shelved because until we get the bill done, he cannot count on Federal funds being there to help pay for them. So every day, every week that goes by without a highway bill costs us jobs. It does not just postpone the jobs, it actually costs us jobs. The at-risk projects range from things as simple as lane striping to road repaving to major bridge repairs. What they all have in common is that each one of those transportation projects means jobs for the construction workers who build them, the engineers who design them, and the companies that supply the materials. It is not just me saying this. Standard & Poor's recently published a report warning us that unpredictable Federal funding could stall our national transportation projects. A quote from the report: As construction season begins in the northern half of the country, this continuing uncertainty in funding could force states to delay projects rather than risk funding changes or political gridlock come July. Once a long-term authorization is approved, we believe it will provide an impetus for transportation agencies to reconsider high-priority projects that had been shelved because of lack of funding. But if the authorization is extended by even more continuing resolutions, such high-priority projects will remain in limbo. As time goes by, jobs evaporate. Continuing delays in transportation funding are putting this year's construction season at risk and are making it impossible for States to keep their construction projects moving. So it is not enough that we pass a highway bill out of this conference; it is imperative that we pass it soon. There have been enough delays already. We were supposed to have had it done on March 31, except that the House never actually passed a highway bill. The Senate bill, fortunately, provides a solid framework for action, and for rapid action. This Senate transportation bill, called MAP 21, first passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee last year, and it passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee on a bipartisan basis--indeed on a unanimous basis. There is not a lot that every member of the Environment and Public Works Committee agrees on. There is not a lot, frankly, that our chairman Barbara Boxer and our ranking member Jim Inhofe agree on. But we all agreed that this was an important piece of legislation and reported it out of the committee on a unanimous basis. Then the bill came to the floor. There were no fast tracks, no ``hide the ball.'' This bill spent 5 weeks on the Senate floor. There were a great number of amendments that were considered during that period of deliberation. I believe the total is at 40 which were accepted either by vote or by agreement. And after that long, open, transparent, robust, regular legislative process in which Republicans and Democrats both contributed, the bill passed with strong bipartisan support of 75 Senators. That is pretty unusual around here. MAP 21 is projected to save or create 1.9 million jobs. As I said, those are not jobs that last for eternity. The conjecture, I believe, is that they last for a year. This is 1.9 million jobs with a potential to create an additional million jobs through the increased investment in the TIFIA financing program, so a total of 2.9 million jobs. In Rhode Island, that means the bill is expected to save or create up to 9,000 jobs. If its provisions for projects of national and regional significance are incorporated in the final bill, and if funding is provided through our appropriations process, that number actually goes up, because some additional projects can be added that are overdue in Rhode Island for work. So MAP 21, the Senate highway bill, is a true compromise bill. It reflects the hard work of Chairman Boxer and Senator Inhofe, and it is a strong bipartisan signal from this body as to what our transportation bill should look like. Procedurally, the conference committee is reconciling this Senate bipartisan compromise bill with basically an empty envelope of a bill, a 90-day extension passed by the House, with an authorization to go to conference. Some controversial provisions were thrown in, unfortunately, that will make things more difficult and slower to get done, and more difficult and slower is not good when you are talking about passing the highway bill and the construction season is already beginning to get underway. The most acceptable action and the one in the best interests of our country, the one in the best interests of our economy, the one in the best interests of our infrastructure, the one in the best interests of jobs in these construction projects, would be for the conference committee to report out the bipartisan Senate bill without a lot of controversial riders so that we can get a long-term reauthorization signed into law while there is still a full construction season ahead and get hard-working Americans back to work rebuilding--as every American knows we need to do--our Nation's beat-up and decrepit transportation infrastructure. I am pleased the conference is off to a good start. I am sorry we had to wait this long to get to this point. It would have been nice to have had this done on March 31 when the deadline came. But now that we are here, I urge all of the conferees to come to a quick resolution that honors the extensive bipartisan work that went into the Senate bill which has gotten us to this point. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Shaheen.) The clerk will call the roll.