Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I have the happy occasion to actually pass a law. It is one that I have been working on for some time. So I have taken the opportunity to come to the floor to actually move it through myself. Yet, before I do that, there are a considerable number of thank yous that are in order. The first and foremost thank you is to Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, who chaired the subcommittee hearing that first moved this issue before the Senate in a bipartisan fashion within the Environment and Public Works Committee. It was a really important thing for Senator Sullivan to have done. In part, it solved the problem between the Environment and Public Works Committee and the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee over jurisdiction in this area. We are very fortunate that Senator Sullivan served both as the chairman of the relevant Environment and Public Works Committee and also of the Fisheries Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee so that he was in a position to negotiate with himself over jurisdiction and, obviously, come to a happy conclusion. I thank Senator Inhofe, who was an early sponsor of this legislation. He attended the hearing. I will confess that when Senator Inhofe came to our hearing on the Environment and Public Works Committee on an environmental matter, I was not convinced that it was a positive turn of events for the bill, but Senator Inhofe could not have been more gracious and took a very strong interest in this piece of legislation. He was an original cosponsor, so I thank him as well. I thank Senator Murkowski. In her being from Alaska, she joined Senator Sullivan. Alaska has a terrific problem with the issue that we are addressing. The issue at hand is marine plastic debris--the plastic waste with which we are filling the ocean. In Rhode Island, we do beach cleanups whereby people go up and down the beach and pick up the plastic trash that has washed ashore. We do those with trash bags. In Alaska, they do those with front-end loaders, dumpsters, and barges, because Alaska faces the Pacific, and there is far more plastic waste and trash in the Pacific. The worst sources for plastic waste and trash are Asian countries, which have terrible upland waste disposal infrastructure. It ends up in the creek, and it ends up in the river, and it ends up in the sea. So Alaska has had a terrific role. Senator Murkowski's role was as my coordinate on the Oceans Caucus. She helped to make sure that the Oceans Caucus--a group of 38 Senators--supported this. It was a very bipartisan group, so that provided some added oomph to all of this, if that is not too informal a word to use on the Senate floor. I also thank my original Democratic cosponsor, Senator Booker. A lot of people have had a hand in this, and there were a great number of sponsors. I appreciate all of them for their support in all of this. We have had an interesting time because the bill actually passed the Senate before, but when colleagues saw something moving, they wanted to put things on it. So a few pieces have been added from the House side that relate to maritime safety and a Coast Guard Center of Excellence, which we welcome onto the bill and appreciate now that we have the chance to finally pass it. I also thank Adena Leibman, of my staff, who has just been very persistent and thorough about making this happen and has worked very well with staff members from the offices involved in having helped to coordinate all of my activities with the Oceans Caucus. She has done a really exemplary staff job. As the Presiding Officer knows, the common description of Senators around here is that we are walking constitutional impediments to the smooth and orderly operation of staff. While Senators may disagree with that from time to time, Adena Leibman certainly does a smooth and orderly operation of staff, and I appreciate her. Senator Sullivan could not be here. We had hoped to be able to do this together, but I do express to him my very, very strong appreciation for what a really wonderful partner he has been in all of this. Not only are we excited to pass the Save Our Seas Act, but we are already working on SOS 2.0. Just today, in the Environment and Public Works Committee, we held another hearing on marine plastics--this one at the full committee level, led by Senator Barrasso. So I owe Senator Barrasso a thank you. I find it interesting that at today's hearing, the two leading Republicans on the committee who were there, at the top--Dan and I are more junior--were Senator Barrasso and Senator Inhofe, both of whom were present, both of whom were productive and helpful, and both who suffer this terrible disability of living in landlocked States. They don't actually have a coast. Yet they have been helpful in moving this forward. We also had a terrific coalition of business and other interests. You have seen the reaction around the world to know how this problem has suddenly emerged onto the national and international stages, and I think we are really in a terrific position, after we pass this bill, to move on, I hope, with equal bipartisanship and alacrity, and pass our Save Our Seas 2.0. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3508, introduced earlier today by Senator Sullivan and me.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Presiding Officer. Bravo to all who participated in making this possible. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as I rise for my 220th ``Time to Wake Up'' climate speech, there is abundant evidence that meaningful action on climate change in the United States is unlikely. We have a President who, against all the evidence, claims that climate change is a Chinese hoax. This is the same President who announced last year that he was pulling the United States out of the international Paris Agreement. This is the same President who installed the theatrically corrupt Scott Pruitt, who owed his entire political career to the fossil fuel industry, to lead, of all things, the Environmental Protection Agency. When Pruitt's endless string of scandals finally proved too much even for this epically swampy administration, President Trump then made a coal industry lobbyist the Acting EPA Administrator. The fundamentally rotten bargain at the heart of today's Trump politics is that his party is essentially bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry. This is why you see Republicans seeking to freeze voluntary fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars. If consumers pay more at the pump to fill up, fine--what matters is that the oil companies get to keep pumping. This is why the Republican Clean Power Plan doesn't really reduce carbon emissions. In fact, the EPA's own numbers show that the replacement plan will result in poorer health for Americans, including 1,400 additional deaths a year, but what matters is that the coal companies sell coal. Republicans even plan to weaken standards on methane leaks. It doesn't matter that methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. What matters is that the oil and gas industry doesn't have to spend any money to prevent those leaks. So there is lots of evidence that meaningful action on climate change in this country is unlikely. Yet on Friday I attended the Global Climate Action Summit, organized by California Governor Brown, to keep up progress reducing carbon emissions and fighting the effects of climate change. At the summit, States, cities, Provinces, and companies from around the world--indeed, foreign nations--made new announcements about climate change and to reduce carbon emissions. Governor Brown himself signed a law requiring 100 percent of California's electricity to be carbon-free by 2045 and committed that California would be carbon- neutral by the same year. Plus, there is that satellite to measure carbon emissions. New Jersey announced plans to install more than 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind. States and cities in India announced plans for thousands of electric buses, cool roofs, and solar-equipped public buildings. IKEA, the furniture store, announced that all of its delivery services will be zero emissions by 2025. That is just a small sample of the new commitments--evidence of the determination of Governors, mayors, CEOs, investors, and NGOs to combat climate change despite the failure of Republican leadership in Washington. But if we are to have any hope of keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius--or better yet, 1.5 degrees--we are going to need leadership here. We are going to need a Federal price on carbon. That is why last week's announcement from the Climate Leadership Council was so important. The CLC has been working with former Republican Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for a $40-per-ton carbon fee and return all of the money raised by that carbon fee to American families in the form of a dividend. This plan shares a lot of similarities with the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, which I introduced with Senator Schatz of Hawaii. The CLC plan is supported by many corporations, business leaders, and former Republican officials. Last week, the CLC announced that its $40-per-ton carbon fee would result in emissions reductions substantially better than our present national targets. The CLC also found that 56 percent of Americans-- including majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans-- support it. Seventy-one percent of millennials support a carbon fee, which shows that carbon pricing is coming. The only question is how soon. Americans intuitively understand that it makes sense to impose a fee on something we want less of, whether it is carbon emissions or cigarettes. When the revenues from those fees are returned to the American people, it is better still. Last week's climate summit featured a discussion on carbon pricing organized by the business community. The fossil fuel industry and its array of front groups will, of course, attack any effort to put a price on carbon emissions. So having companies like Gap, Exelon, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Steelcase speak out in favor of carbon pricing was a good start. When the business community shows broad-based support for carbon pricing, it will be very difficult to argue that it is bad for business, but let's remember that the fossil fuel companies bring heavy artillery to this fight. Washington State has a carbon fee ballot initiative right now, which has provoked Big Oil to spend $20 million to defeat that initiative, including companies that claim they support a carbon price. Among the donors are BP, Phillips 66, and others that have contributed over $3 million each to oppose the carbon price initiative. So against that Big Oil blowback, it would sure be nice if Washington State's corporate leaders stood up on this. Starbucks, after all, has a whole web page about climate change and has committed to purchasing 100 percent renewable energy. Amazon has a web page on its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, and it, too, is aiming to go to 100 percent renewable. Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest people, is investing in clean energy, along with another corporate icon of Washington State, Microsoft's Bill Gates. In fact, Microsoft is hard at work reducing carbon emissions in its operations. It even has an internal carbon price to encourage reductions in carbon pollution. Boeing has a web page cataloging its efforts to combat climate change by making its airplanes more efficient. So where are they when it comes to their own home State's plan to actually do something about climate change? As we have seen so often here in Washington, DC, as well, it is radio silence. The interesting thing is that Big Oil is actually tiny compared to Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, and the rest of the tech companies, Wall Street banks, insurance companies, consumer goods companies, retailers, and food and beverage companies that all claim to care about climate change--tiny. The difference is that Big Oil shows up. It shows up here in Congress. It funds its armada of front groups and trade associations and phony think tanks to steer Republicans here in Congress away from anything limiting carbon pollution, just like it is showing up right now in Washington State to kill an initiative that would limit carbon pollution. Here is the problem: The good guys aren't showing up. They don't show up here in Congress, and they are letting Big Oil outgun them even in Washington State. In my experience, if you don't show up to the game, you don't win. It is as simple as that. That is the message I took to last week's summit. I truly appreciate business leaders who talk about the dangers of climate change and the value of carbon pricing. I truly appreciate business leaders who work on reducing carbon emissions within their corporate footprint. But it also matters what you do in the public arena. Show up to fight for the policy you already espouse. Show up here in Congress and in Washington State. Challenge Big Oil rather than forfeit the game before it even begins. This is a fight. There are hydraulics in politics. If no one pushes back, the only team on the field will win. Well, we can't keep having the fossil fuel industry win this fight because we will all be losers in their win. We have to win, but to do that, we will need companies talking a good game to actually show up on game day. It is not just time to wake up. It is time to show up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, amazingly, this report comes from the same Energy Department currently pushing coal bailout proposals, but that is what you get from helpless, weak leadership from this administration that will not face up either to the scientific reality of climate change or the economic reality of energy markets. FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has just finalized a rule for energy storage that could spur as much as 50 gigawatts of additional energy storage across the United States, and that could be a conservative estimate if renewables prices keep along those trajectories we showed before. That FERC rule on energy storage, by the way, is unanimous and bipartisan. The ISO system operators, like ISO- New England, are doing their best to remove obstacles that had kept renewables from competing fairly in capacity auctions and dispatch decisions. This is saving consumers money. It was reported by Utility Dive that during the July heat wave in New England, distributed solar, which can reduce demand during peaks, saved customers some $20 million. This is reliable stuff out in Iowa, where Midwestern is the ISO. They figured out the algorithms to treat wind as reliable baseload power, and the FERC storage rule will further enable this transition. As you can imagine, the fossil fuel industry is not letting this go without a fight. They are up to their usual political mischief to try to protect their $700 billion annual subsidy that they get from polluting for free. Their shady tactics are just as would be expected. Start with the fossil fuel industry. They put in front of them the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers to screen what is really the dirty fossil fuel industry. Those two groups put in front of them some fake consumer group called the Consumer Energy Alliance, and that fake Consumer Energy Alliance put in front of it something called Kentuckians for Solar Fairness, all in an effort to fight rooftop solar for individuals in Kentucky. That is the kind of nonsense the fossil fuel industry gets up to to try to defend itself. But despite that, you can't stop progress. You can't deny costs. You can't win against energy that is cheaper, reliable, and carbon-free. It is time for us to wake up, throw our weight into clean energy, and move forward into the future, rather than let the fossil fuel industry condemn us to a dirty past. With that I yield to my colleague, Senator Smith.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am delighted to be joined today by my colleague Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota. Both my home State of Rhode Island and her State of Minnesota are heavily involved in the booming renewable energy sector. President Trump has called climate change a hoax, but no matter how much his administration may try to prop up the old, dirty, dangerous, polluting fossil fuel industry, there is no denying the clean energy revolution. The rapid growth of renewables has been underway for decades, but it has really accelerated in the last several years. It took global wind and solar developers 40 years to install the first 1 trillion watts of power generation. A recent estimate from Bloomberg found that the next trillion will be installed within 5 years. That is 40 years for the first trillion and 5 years for the second. Part of the reason is that lower costs of renewables mean that building out the second trillion will cost half as much as the first trillion. This chart shows the year-to-year costs of generating energy from wind, from Lazard. Since 2009, the costs for onshore wind have dropped by two-thirds. Onshore wind costs are down two-thirds in basically a decade. Here is the same chart for solar power. Utility-scale solar costs have dropped 86 percent over the same time period. ``In some scenarios,'' writes Lazard, ``the full lifecycle costs of building and operating renewables-based projects have dropped below the operating costs alone of conventional generation technologies such as coal or nuclear.'' When you look at the drop in solar costs compared to other resources, you see how dramatic the change has been. This graphic is from the World Economic Forum. The renewable industry in America has grown to 3.3 million jobs--more than all fossil fuel jobs combined. AT&T has been a leader in this, adopting the World Wildlife Fund's Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles and signing up under that for 220 megawatts from an Oklahoma wind farm and 300 megawatts from a Texas wind farm, one of the largest corporate renewable purchases in history. So, congratulations, Texas and Oklahoma, for the new home State renewable energy jobs, and AT&T, for your leadership. In Rhode Island, the Governor's 2018 Rhode Island Clean Energy Industry Report has shown that clean energy jobs have risen by 2 percent since 2014, bringing over 6,600 new clean energy jobs and bringing us to nearly 16,000 Rhode Islanders working in clean energy, and it is projected to continue to grow. We lead also on energy efficiency, ranking third on the American Council for an Energy- Efficient Economy's 2017 scorecard. In Senator Smith's State of Minnesota, the public utilities commission has required since 1993 that there be a social cost of carbon standard for new infrastructure at $43 per ton of carbon emitted. Minnesota leads in being a State whose public utility commission is factoring the cost of carbon into its decision making rather than making the general public pay for what the carbon-producing utilities should be paying for. Other States are powering forward. I saw Mr. Bennet on the floor. His State of Colorado Public Utilities Commission just unanimously approved an Xcel Energy program to build out a cleaner energy mix and retire older fossil fuel units. Specifically, they are going to retire 660 megawatts of operating coal, close it down, and replace it with $2.5 billion in new renewables and battery storage. The initial request for bids brought in a flood of new renewable energy proposals below the cost of existing coal and natural gas facilities. Now, here, because of the politics, political funding, Citizens United, and all the trash that is unleashed in our politics, there is a sharp political divide on climate change and renewable energy brought to you by our fossil fuel friends. But out in the real world, some of the most Republican States are actually at the forefront. The Department of Energy last week released a report showing that Texas is leading the Nation in generation, with over 22 gigawatts of wind capacity. Right behind them are Oklahoma and Kansas, with more than 5 gigawatts of installed wind capacity. Just over 6 percent of the nation's electricity in 2017 was wind nationally, but if you go to Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, they all have more than 30 percent of their power coming from clean wind power. Oklahoma is at 32 percent. Kansas is at 36 percent. Iowa is at 37 percent. South Dakota is at 30 percent, and North Dakota is at 27 percent. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the Department of Energy reports printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for 1 minute, I would like to make a unanimous consent request that at the conclusion of Senator Portman's remarks, I be recognized, and that at the conclusion of my remarks, Senator Smith be recognized.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Portman.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the swearing in of the Rhode Island Legislature early next year will close a remarkable story of a great Rhode Island family. State Senator Paul Fogarty is retiring after 20 years in office. The Fogarty family of northern Rhode Island will have represented nearly 80 years of public service. Paul was elected in 1998 to fill the State senate seat that was previously held by his brother, Charles Fogarty, Jr. A master plumber by trade, Paul rose to become the chairman of the senate labor committee. Like his brother Charlie, Paul had served on the Glocester, RI, town council before serving in the legislature. Charlie Fogarty got his start in State government working as an aide to Governor Joe Garrahy in the late 1970s. While a State senator, he served as both majority whip and senate president pro tempore. He was elected Lieutenant Governor twice, in 1998 and in 2002. He is remembered for starting a Christmastime tradition, Operation Holiday Cheer, which delivers care packages of Rhode Island mementos to servicemembers deployed overseas. In 2006, Charlie won the Democratic nomination for Governor, narrowly losing to the incumbent. He returned to government a few years later to run the State department of labor and training, where he cracked down on unemployment fraud. In 2015, Governor Gina Raimondo appointed Charlie director of the Rhode Island Department of Elderly Affairs. Under his leadership, the State expanded support for Meals on Wheels, and he played an important role in the State's successful repeal of the tax that seniors paid on their Social Security benefits. Charlie retired earlier this year, after four decades of service to the people of Rhode Island. Paul and Charlie's cousins shared the public service gene. Ray Fogarty was a State representative from Glocester for 10 years. He would go on to find and lead the Rhode Island Export Assistance Center at Bryant University's John H. Chafee Center for International Business. Ray's brother Edward Fogarty was an accomplished lawyer, with whom I worked in the State house. He worked as an arbitrator in the Rhode Island Superior Court and clerked in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. However, Ed will best be remembered for his work serving as legal counsel to the speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, to the senate majority leader, and later to the senate president. Ed retired in 2013 and sadly passed away in 2017. Charlie Fogarty credited his parents with teaching him that ``public service was a public trust.'' Indeed, he and brother Paul followed in their father's footsteps. Charles Fogarty, Sr., had been a State senator from Glocester before them and served for a time as director of the Rhode Island Small Business Administration. Paul and Charlie's uncle was Congressman John Fogarty, who represented Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives for more than a quarter century. John was a bricklayer and president of Rhode Island's International Bricklayers Union local No. 1 before being elected to Congress at age 27. From his post on the Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare, Mr. Public Health, as he became known, championed the expansion of health research in the United States. During his tenure, the National Institutes of Health grew from a small agency with only three named institutes--for cancer, heart, and dental research--to a larger and more sophisticated operation with institutes devoted to research on mental health, allergy and infectious disease, neurological disease, arthritis and metabolic disease, child health and development, and general medical sciences. As subcommittee chairman during the passage of the Social Security amendments of 1965, John Fogarty was one of the key supporters of the legislation that created the Medicare and Medicaid Programs. John served until his death in 1967. Dr. Howard Rusk wrote in the New York Times, ``No one in the history of this country has done more to promote more and better health services, more and better health facilities, and more and better health research than Representative Fogarty.'' In Rhode Island, no fewer than five health and educational facilities have been dedicated in John Fogarty's name. The deep commitment of the Fogarty family to the public welfare, instilled across generations, has been borne out in countless ways. Paul's son Brendan Fogarty even worked as a State senate page during high school and college. For now, there will be no Fogartys in State government. Our State and our Nation are all the richer for their passion and dedication to public life. Rhode Islanders are grateful for the lasting legacy of the Fogartys of Glocester.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am very grateful to my colleague from New Mexico, Senator Udall, for joining me today for my 218th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech. Senator Udall is a formidable advocate for conserving public lands and protecting endangered species--helping to ensure that future generations will inherit a healthy and beautiful planet. These lands and creatures Senator Udall fights so hard to protect are under direct attack from the current administration and the heavy hand of industry that guides it both through regulatory rollbacks and other efforts to weaken protections for special places and special wildlife. These species and places are also under siege from the consequences of climate change. Just last week, both the Washington Post and The Atlantic reported on a recent study in the prestigious journal Science. The titles of their articles were foreboding--``Climate change could render many of Earth's ecosystems unrecognizable'' from the Washington Post and ``No Ecosystem on Earth Is Safe from Climate Change'' from The Atlantic. The study looked at historic vegetation and temperature records to predict how global warming will transform our world. Dr. Stephen Jackson, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the lead author, told The Atlantic: Anywhere on the globe, the more you change climate, the more likely you are to see major ecological change. Having this kind of change occur at such a massive scale in such a short period of time is going to create unprecedented challenges. Dr. Dorothy Peteet, a researcher with NASA who commented on the article, said: ``There are notable effects of climate change we are seeing today . . . and they will probably be much more exacerbated in the future.'' From the mountains to the sea, from the North Pole to the South, climate change is wreaking havoc on our natural systems and the living creatures that rely on them for survival. A study from Global Change Biology earlier this year found ``a strong association between rapid climate warming and declines of bird and mammal populations . . . showing that population declines have been greatest in areas that have experienced most rapid warming.'' Birds are often seen as sentinels of an ecosystem's health and are especially vulnerable to climate change. In particular, migratory birds, some of which travel thousands of miles each year to breed, rely on a delicate balance of temperature cues and food availability to successfully make their impressive journeys. Here on the east coast, Delaware Bay enjoys an annual visit from the rufa red knot, a bird with a body not larger than a teacup but whose wings carry it on a more than 9,000-mile journey from Tierra del Fuego on the southern tip of South America to the Canadian Arctic. After spending the summer nesting in the north, they make their return trip back south to winter in the Southern Hemisphere. On the northward journey, the red knots make a straight leg from the coast of Brazil to Delaware Bay. Think about that. These tiny birds take off from the coast of Brazil, and they fly all the way to Delaware Bay. They lose as much as half their body weight on this arduous trip, but Mother Nature provides a bounty for them upon their arrival. Delaware Bay is the largest horseshoe crab spawning area in the world, and each May, millions of horseshoe crabs take part in a mating ritual that predates the dinosaurs. Each female horseshoe crab can lay up to 90,000 eggs, and horseshoe crab eggs make excellent fuel for little birds relishing a pause in their long journey. But warming waters and shifting seasons threaten to knock the timing of both species' cycles out of whack. If the environmental signal comes too early or too late and these little birds fly all that way and they get to Delaware Bay and the horseshoe crabs aren't there, that will shake the species. Predictability in seasonal changes affects the survival of much of the world's wildlife. In 2014, the National Audubon Society published a comprehensive review of how climate change would affect the ranges of nearly 600 North American bird species. More than half of the species studied are at risk of losing more than 50 percent of their current range to climate change by 2080. Around a quarter of the species studied could see their range shrink that much by 2050. Mr. President, may I interrupt my remarks for a moment? I see the minority leader on the floor. If he seeks recognition, Senator Udall and I have time to do a pair of climate speeches. I am more than happy to interrupt and have him do what he needs to do. I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the leader's remarks, I be recognized and resume my remarks and that at the conclusion of them, Senator Udall be recognized.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as I resume my remarks, we head westward to the tallest peaks of the Rockies, where, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Northern Rocky Mountains have been warming more than three times as fast as the global average over the past 100 years. A 2014 Union of Concerned Scientists report warned that the Rocky Mountains will ``become even hotter and drier,'' which will lead to increased wildfire, reduced snowpack, and declines in the keystone trees that define the Rocky Mountain forests. A recent study by U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University researchers found that species like the pygmy rabbit, wolverine, Canada lynx, and snowshoe hare, which have specific habitat requirements, will be particularly vulnerable. Some mountain amphibians are even at risk from a harmful, invasive fungus that thrives in warmer temperatures. The increased spread of disease and invasive species is a recurring theme of climate change. Animals and plants that are already stressed from depleted food and changing temperatures are more susceptible to disease, and stressed ecosystems leave openings for invasive species to move in and take over. After hitting U.S. shores in the early 2000s in wood packing material, the invasive and injurious emerald ash borer has spread to around 30 States and has destroyed tens of millions of ash trees in its wake. In July, my Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management discovered this invasive species in our State. We look seaward from Rhode Island, and coastal States like ours are facing a red menace in their waters--the harmful algae blooms known as red tide. Florida is battling a devastating toxic algae bloom that has, according to Quartz, ``killed masses of fish, 12 dolphins, more than 500 manatees, 300 sea turtles, countless horseshoe crabs, [and] a whale shark'' as of August 22. Those were just the ones whose bodies came ashore. Locals and tourists alike are greeted with decaying marine life along the docks and beaches and with air that is tainted with the algae's toxins. Quartz writes that this year's ``red tide in Florida doesn't just make the issue of global warming visible; it's an all-out sensory onslaught.'' Though algal blooms occur annually in Florida, this year's bloom is a harbinger of the shifting reality of climate change. The Washington Post notes: ``As air and ocean temperatures increase, the environment becomes more hospitable to toxic algal blooms.'' In addition to these warmer water temperatures, climate change also spurs heavy downpours, which wash more fertilizer from farms and lawns into the water, providing nutrients that spur the growth of the algae. Sea level rise expands the area of shallow coastal waters, where warm temperatures and ample sunshine bolster growing algae. The oceans are experiencing ``marine heat waves.'' According to a recent review in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, these extended periods of elevated sea-surface temperatures ``have caused changes in biological production, toxic algal blooms, regime shifts in reef communities, mass coral bleaching, and mortalities of commercially important fish species, with cascading impacts on economies and societies.'' That is ``science-ese'' for a pretty tough formula for coastal communities. Indeed, a marine heat wave is responsible for the dramatic coral bleaching that occurred in the Great Barrier Reef, killing about half of the reef since 2016. In recent weeks, San Diego recorded its highest seawater temperature, around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, since measurements started in 1916. The Nature study attributed 87 percent of modern marine heat waves to human-caused climate change. They warn that these heat waves ``will become very frequent under global warming, probably pushing marine organisms and ecosystems to the limits of their resilience and even beyond.'' Couple these extreme heat spells with ocean acidification, deoxygenation, and changes in ocean circulation and currents, and you are looking at a perfect storm for coral reefs, fisheries, and ocean wildlife. Marine and atmospheric heat waves are also contributing to the rapid opening of Arctic sea ice. The iconic images of starving polar bears have brought this concern home for many, but sea ice also provides protection for narwhals, hosts algae that feed Arctic cod and whales, and provides an interstate highway of sorts for wolf and fox populations. This ice is the crux of the Arctic ecosystem, and it is falling apart. For the first time since scientists started monitoring the Arctic's sea ice in the 1970s, the waters north of Greenland are breaking through the usually permanently frozen ice cover. Until now, this area had been assumed to be the Arctic ice's stronghold--the strongest and oldest ice plane in the Arctic. But spikes of warm temperatures earlier this year allowed the weakened ice to be pushed from shore, leaving it vulnerable to wind and waves. Dr. Walt Meier, with the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, called this loss of sea ice ``a pretty dramatic indication of the transformation of the Arctic sea ice and Arctic climate.'' A researcher with the Norwegian Meteorological Institute put it even simpler, calling it ``nice and scary.'' I will now yield to my friend the Senator from New Mexico in the hopes that at some point this body will find the sense and the courage to address this problem as we see its manifestations from north to south, from pole to pole, and from the depths of the sea to our highest mountaintops. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I look across the Senate and see Senator McCain's desk silent, draped in black, under a vase of white roses, and it breaks my heart. I am here to say my farewell, and I have a bit of a predicament, which is that I am a very ordinary man, here to try and give tribute to a very extraordinary man. John McCain was an extraordinary man--extraordinary in his suffering and resilience, extraordinary in his ideals and principles, extraordinary in his courage and devotion, and extraordinary, too, in the devotion he engendered. We met when I was a new Senator and he already a legend. His battles for campaign finance reform and against corrupting earmarks were legendary. He could make a point here on the Senate floor with legendary drama and punch and declarative force. He could also be unreasonable, and he took a completely unreasonable liking to me. Our politics did not match. I could offer him nothing. Yet he befriended me, and, as so many colleagues know, John's friendship was a treasure. John showed courage in many ways, but he showed real courage in friendship. When an attack was mounted on one of Hillary Clinton's staffers, he came straight to the floor to defend her publicly. When someone attacked the character of Senator Obama at a political event, he said: No, I know him. He is a good family man. Loyalty attracts loyalty, and John was loyal. We traveled a lot together--to Afghanistan and Iraq, to Munich, Mali, Mongolia, and Macassar, to many, many places but, most poignantly, to Vietnam. My dad served 5 years in Vietnam. He told me about his colleague, Admiral McCain, whose son was a POW, who had been shot down and wounded terribly but refused early release. As a boy, I went with my father to Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon the night our POWs returned from captivity. John had left straight from Hanoi and did not pass through Tan Son Nhut, but I witnessed how frail and ill and pale and battered his fellow POWs were as they clamored out of the helicopters into the glare of the TV lights. I was ready to revere any man who had been through that, and to find that this man was so friendly and cheerful and feisty and irreverent-- that put me irrevocably into the McCain fan club. I noticed I was not alone. One telling measure of a man is his staff. John attracted people of exceptional talent and ability, who became so devoted they would walk through fire for him. John attracted the admiration of foreign leaders, not just from great powers but from remote and struggling countries. When we traveled in Libya, John was received like Lafayette. He had been there when it counted, when freedom there was in the offing. He was beloved in Ukraine. He had spoken at the Maidan when freedom there was in the offing. He spent an icy New Year's Eve with Ukrainian troops on their frontline. In Vietnam, John was revered. I don't know any celebrities, but I do know what traveling with a celebrity is like because I have traveled with John McCain in Vietnam. The statue that stands in Hanoi by the lake where he was shot down calls him an air pirate, but he was treated everywhere as a hero. And you had to know he liked the air pirate thing. Wherever we went in the world, he wanted to meet with prisoners, with the opposition, with whoever was pursuing freedom for their country. John McCain was America's most vigorous and loyal ambassador of freedom. He was fiercely proud that one place he was not welcome was Russia. Putin had banned him. ``No more holidays in Siberia,'' John laughed. Mark my words, one day even Russia will turn toward freedom, and when it does, John McCain will be revered there. John made a big difference in a great many ways, but the one I want to close with is the Senate. Senators are often stuffy. John was not. If there was ever a Senator entitled to take himself seriously, it was John. Yet he didn't. He effervesced the stolid Senate, to the occasional annoyance of some of our colleagues. Here, too, John engendered lifetime loyalty and affection and respect. Lindsey and Joe and Kelly were his great amigos--none greater than Lindsey, but many of us loved him well. Millions of Americans saw John McCain give the famous C-SPAN thumbs down that put an end to repeal and replace. They probably did not see what happened next. Having just cast what was a devastating vote for many of his colleagues, he went back to his seat. From my seat here across the Chamber, I saw John's colleagues gently start moving toward him. They may have hated his vote, but there was nevertheless this gentle flow of bodies moving to stand around and near him. His friend Dan Sullivan of Alaska was one who came down from the back row just to stand near John in the aisle. Hate the vote; love the man. This place can be complicated. John could be annoying. In Munich, accepting an award for John, his beloved Cindy said: ``I love him--most of the time.'' His temper could be explosive. I read once of a man nicknamed for a South American volcano because he ``constantly fumed and regularly erupted,'' and I thought of John. He loved a good fight and was eager to pile in. ``A fight not joined is a fight not enjoyed,'' he would say. An extraordinary man is not a flawless man, and in his full humanity, John gave the rest of us mortals hope. You need not be perfect to try to be extraordinary. Well, he was extraordinary. I think we all found in him qualities of affection, principle, courage, and drama that were extraordinary. And at the end of the day, as compass needles turn toward true north, you knew where he would be pointing. I will quote some of his last public words here: Though the true radiance of our world may at times seem obscured, though we will suffer adversity and setbacks and misfortune--never, ever stop fighting for all that is good and just and decent about our world and each other. I will never forget and will always treasure our friendship, but what I will revere is the way John McCain pointed true north at what was good and just and decent about our world and each other. His hero, Robert Jordan, in ``For Whom the Bell Tolls,'' said, as he died, ``The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.'' We hate very much, John, that you have had to leave it. God bless you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am very happy to join my colleagues to express our view of how pathetic this new Clean Power Plan replacement rule is and how it really makes fools of huge portions of the American people. For farmers who are out there facing drought and floods like they have never seen before as our weather extremes expand, this makes fools of them. This makes losers of them. For people who live near our forests or work in our forests or enjoy using our forests, and for the people Senator Merkley just spoke of, for those downwind from our forests when they burn--they are made a laughing stock by this new rule. The wildfires that are tearing through our forests are expanding both in season and severity. In some States, where there used to be a wildfire season, there isn't a season any longer. Any time could be wildfire time. This is all new and unprecedented. For hunters, for fishermen, for skiers, for outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds, the changes that are happening to the species and the weather patterns that folks have come to rely on are damaging. This plan ignores all of it. Its harm to coastal communities is particularly important to Rhode Island and to the Presiding Officer's home State of Louisiana. We have coastal communities facing dramatic sea level rise. We are seeing new risks for local communities from storm surge as well as from sea level rise. We are seeing great American cities filled with seawater on bright, sunny days just because high tide and sea level rise combine to bring flooding into what once was dry land. All of these concerns are made a mockery of by this phony EPA rule. Even if you are not a farmer or even if you don't care about or live near forests, even if you have no interest in the outdoors, even if you don't live on or visit the coast, you are a part of the American economy, and the American economy is going to take a whack from our failure to do right by the environment and from our failure to win the transition to a low-carbon economy. We are all involved in this together, and we are all, in that sense, made losers and made a mockery of by this ridiculous rule. The only other thing I would add is that we are a country that has for a long time been proud of our reputation and example. One of our Presidents said that the power of our American example has always mattered more in the world than any example of our power. Well, what an example we are setting now, the only Nation in the world not to participate in the Paris Agreement. Even the Syrians got in, for Pete's sake, and here we are, strange outliers. We try to compete in the international contest for the way that people live, putting forward our American system of government and our American way of life. Our American system of government is not looking so good right now on this question, and as the inevitable march of climate change and deep climate havoc continues, our failure to act is going to look worse and worse. People are going to ask questions, and we don't have good answers for those questions. The truth is, the reason we are not doing anything about this is the corrupt influence of the fossil fuel industry, period, end of story. I was here during the years when we had bipartisan activity in the Senate on climate change. There were multiple bipartisan bills floating around. There were bipartisan hearings. In fact, the first climate change hearing in the Senate was chaired by Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island. All of that came to a shuddering halt in January of 2010, when the five Republican judges on the Supreme Court gave to the fossil fuel industry a pearl beyond price: the Citizens United decision that allowed unlimited political spending by big special interests--unlimited--and it took the fossil fuel industry about 2 minutes to figure out how to make that hidden dark money political spending. The result has been the absolute shutdown of bipartisanship as the fossil fuel industry has moved to exercise full dominion over a once great Republican political party. I see the majority leader on his feet, from which I deduce that he may seek the floor, in which case, as a courtesy, I am most inclined to yield it to him. Is that the case, Mr. Leader? Does the leader seek the floor?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I will take a minute to conclude my remarks and then yield to Senator King of Maine, who I believe will be followed by Mr. Van Hollen of Maryland. The rule we are looking at is basically about 98 percent Scott Pruitt, if you look at the timing. Scott Pruitt had one of the most disgraceful tenures in any Cabinet position in the history of the United States. To the extent I have anything good to say about him, it is that he wasn't very good. The EPA, following the direction of the fossil fuel industry, lost over and over again as its phony sham activities, rulings, and regulations were challenged in court. What we saw over and over again was the process at the EPA was a sham; that the review of public comment was a sham; that the legal analysis they had to go through was a sham. As a result, they came up with rules, regulations, and policies that were a sham. Once you expose some of that stuff in court, where people have to tell the truth, discovery has to happen, you see documents, and you get judges who are not in tow to the fossil fuel industry, it doesn't look so good. I think probably our best hope for this phony-baloney dirty power plan that Pruitt 98 percent put out--and the new Administrator, I guess, we should give him 2 percent partial credit--is it is not likely to last very long. It is not likely to survive judicial scrutiny. It, like so much else the EPA has done in this administration, is completely fossil fuel-funded, phony, and a sham. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am so grateful to join my colleague today, Senator Warren, to discuss the financial and economic risks that are posed by climate change. You have just heard the Senator from my neighboring State of Massachusetts lay out a powerful case. Given the gravity of these risks and given our recent experience of the 2008 financial crisis, we should be doing everything we can to prevent another economic meltdown. We know exactly what we need to do to mitigate these economic threats. We need to transition from polluting fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. We can do this simply by giving renewables a fair market chance against the gigantic public subsidies on which the fossil fuel industry float. Put a price on carbon emissions so the price of the polluting product reflects its pollution costs to society. That is the economics 101 answer. The problem is that fossil fuel behemoths are desperate to duck the costs of their pollution. They want to protect this massive market failure. Why do you suppose they are the biggest special interest political force in the world? It is to do that work. Look over in the House, where just recently an army of fossil fuel lobbyists and front groups pushed through an industry-scripted resolution and declared, falsely, that pricing carbon would be bad for the American economy. All but eight House Republicans voted the way the industry instructed--for a resolution that was, for them, politically correct in a polluter- obedient kind of way but was factually false. Today, in my 217th ``Time to Wake Up'' climate change speech, I am going to relate recent testimony by a respected Nobel Prize-winning economics professor, Joseph Stiglitz. Unlike all of that cheap political chicanery around the House resolution, Professor Stiglitz' report was presented under oath and was subject to cross-examination. Fat chance the climate deniers would ever let themselves get cross- examined under oath. Truth is kryptonite for them. Stiglitz' report came out in Juliana v. United States--a case in which the plaintiffs were children who sued the U.S. Government for violating their constitutional rights through a knowing failure to protect them from the costs of unlimited carbon emissions. Here is what Stiglitz' testimony states: [The U.S. Government's] continuing support and perpetuation of a national fossil-fuel based energy system and continuing delay in addressing climate change is saddling and will continue to saddle Youth Plaintiffs with an enormous cost burden, as well as tremendous risks. Obviously, when Stiglitz talks about ``youth plaintiffs,'' his testimony actually covers all of the children and future generations who will bear the terrible, foreseeable costs of climate havoc. In particular, Stiglitz notes that ``rising sea levels will lead to massive reductions in property value,'' just as Senator Warren and Freddie Mac have warned, and children and future generations will have to ``bear the enormous cost of relocating the people and infrastructure that are now on this [inundated] land.'' Of all places, the State of Kentucky has a report that warns that its population might rise because people will have to flee coastal States. Even the leader's own State recognizes this coastal problem. This testimony echoes other warnings that I have related in recent speeches about this looming coastal property value crash--warnings we hear from sources as diverse as Freddie Mac, as the Union of Concerned Scientists, through insurance trade publications, and now from this Nobel Prize-winning economist. Peer-reviewed research also shows a gap emerging between coastal and inland property values, which is what you would expect as an early warning signal. Stiglitz' report, however, isn't doom and gloom. It actually shows that economic gains result from a wise transition to sustainable energy sources. Stiglitz writes: Retrofitting the global economy for a climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth. . . . Climate policies, if well designed and implemented, are consistent with growth, development, and poverty reduction. The transition to a low carbon economy is potentially a powerful, attractive, and sustainable growth story, marked by higher resilience, more innovation, more livable cities, robust agriculture, and stronger ecosystems. Think about that. The fossil fuel industry and its phony front groups have cooked up a phony hobgoblin of economic harm, which just so happens to protect the industry they serve at the expense of everyone else. Here is a Nobel Prize-winning economist telling us that shifting to renewable energy would actually help us grow the economy. The need for this transition is also echoed in the warnings, which I have spoken about and which Senator Warren just so eloquently spoke about, of a carbon bubble and crash. Why is it that the clean energy economy grows? The same reason the economy grew when we went from horse and buggy to automobile or landline to cell phones. The key word is ``innovation.'' As Professor Stiglitz says, we get more innovation as we manage this transaction. Renewable energy, electric cars, battery storage, carbon capture, energy efficiency, low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels--these are technologies of the future, promising millions of great jobs. The question is whether these will be American technologies and American jobs or whether China, Germany, Japan, and other countries will win the transition to a low-carbon economy. Growth will not just come from new jobs; it will come from lower costs. Stiglitz notes this: ``Many energy efficiency technologies actually have a negative cost to implement.'' Now, you have to be an economist to use the phrase ``negative cost.'' Negative cost, obviously, is ``economics-ese'' for ``that's a good thing.'' The reverse case is the Trump administration's recent decision to freeze fuel economy standards for cars. That is a bad thing. It will cost American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars more at the pump. It is no surprise that all of that extra cost for consumers in gas money goes to Big Oil, which has the Trump administration obediently in its pocket. Stiglitz's testimony estimates the total benefits to the U.S. economy from shifting away from fossil energy sources at around $1 trillion by 2050--$1 trillion by 2050. As I said, a $1 trillion negative cost is a good thing. It is a really good thing, and if we weren't completely in tow to the fossil fuel industry around here, we would be striving for it. Stiglitz recommends the policies to get us to that low-carbon economy. First, he says we must put a price on carbon. He testifies that putting a price on carbon could be beneficial to the economy all by itself. He says: [A] carbon tax . . . could substitute for other more distortionary taxes. If governments made such a substitution, the aggregate cost of curtailing carbon emissions could be even less than zero, providing net benefits to the economy. Second, he testifies that we must end the enormous, gigantic subsidies we grant to the fossil fuel industry. Here is what he says: The full amount of post-tax subsidies in the U.S. [to the fossil fuel industry] has been estimated at nearly $700 billion per year, more than half of the Federal government's forecasted deficit for the next fiscal year. Eliminating all fossil fuel subsidies (implicit and explicit, many of which go to large corporations) could, therefore, both curtail fossil-fuel production, through forcing companies to bear more of the true costs of fossil-fuel production, and substantially reduce our national deficit in one fell swoop. For the record, Stiglitz adds that ``equity would also be improved with corporations paying more and individuals, such as Youth Plaintiffs and Affected Children, benefiting.'' Of course, around here, corporate interests get better service than the American people, so that observation doesn't count for much, but there it is. There is one last bit of Stiglitz's testimony that is important. I quote him again: ``The more time that passes, the more expensive it becomes to address climate change.'' Time is not our friend. This doesn't get better or go away. Every day we delay is a missed opportunity. Every day we delay bears a cost, and we have been delaying--we are good at that--for decades. James Hansen appeared before this body 30 years ago--three decades ago--to sound the alarm about climate change in a hearing called by Senator John Chafee. Stiglitz cites a 40-year-old report--four decades--to President Carter that subsidies to the fossil fuel industry were stifling competition from solar. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has jerked Congress's chain to keep anything from happening. Even now, their mischief is visible in the hobgoblin about economic harm. By the way, it is not just Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz who says that pricing carbon emissions would be a good thing. Economists across the political spectrum agree. Just last month, economic researchers at Columbia University found that even if you look only at the pure economic effects, a carbon fee is a winner. Here is a $50-per-ton carbon fee, and here is a $75-per-ton carbon fee, and both show growth compared to the status quo in the economy. You have to roll them back through the payroll tax, which is something we can do, to see this added growth effect from a carbon fee. Remember, this growth--that is only the tax effects. This doesn't count the health benefits of a cleaner planet; this doesn't count the environmental benefits of a healthier planet. Both are huge. They are not even counted here. This is just the tax effects. These carbon pricing ideas are a winner on their own, and it becomes a win-win-win when you add the environmental and health benefits. So who are we going to believe, the front groups paid by the fossil fuel industry? If there were Olympic medals in having a conflict of interest, these phonies would take the gold. Unfortunately, you would have to hose off the medals platform afterward. On the other side, you have actual experts, honest experts--the ones cited by Senator Warren, the economists I have mentioned here today, and many others--who all agree. They are all saying that we need to act now. They are all telling us that failure to act puts us in harm's way for serious economic disruption. They are all telling us that pricing carbon and ending fossil fuel subsidies will actually be a boon to the economy. Our choice is clear. Going with the corrupt guys is not a good look, not when the day of reckoning comes. And warnings are more and more widespread and clear that a day of reckoning draws nigh. So if you want, go with the oddballs and the fossil fuel flunkies, not the Nobel Prize winners; go with the scripted disinformation, not the sworn testimony; go with the industry protecting a $700 billion subsidy, not the actual scientists; and good luck looking your grandchildren in the eye. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, because the time between now and 11:30 is to be shared between me and the ranking member on the Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, I ask unanimous consent that when Senator Wyden appears, I yield the floor to him; that at the conclusion of his remarks, I be recognized to conclude my remarks; and that in the Record, my remarks be consolidated after Senator Wyden's remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is terrific to be joined here today by my colleague from Oregon, Senator Wyden, to address some of the devastating effects of a changing global climate from the shores of Rhode Island and our beautiful Narragansett Bay to the forests of southern Oregon. Rhode Island is looking at losing significant territory to storms and sea level rise. Oregon is seeing ancient forests go up in smoke. For most of the country, this summer has been a scorcher. July was nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit above average, and, before that, the contiguous United States experienced its hottest May and third hottest June on record. It is oceans too. Just last week, the Rhode Island organization Save the Bay recorded ocean surface temperatures in Little Narragansett Bay, off the coast of Westerly, RI, at nearly 80 degrees Fahrenheit--the highest in over a decade of data and, perhaps, the highest ever in Rhode Island's history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released its report ``State of the Climate in 2017.'' The 500 scientists from 65 countries who contributed to this peer-reviewed report, which was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, reported ominous records broken: the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, a new high; heat in the upper ocean, a new high; sea level rise, a new high; sea ice coverage in the Arctic and in Antarctica, both new all-time lows and all headed in the wrong direction. Out West, the NOAA report called out 2017 as an extreme western wildfire season that burned over 4 million hectares. The total costs of $18 billion tripled the previous U.S. annual wildfire cost record set in 1991. Right now, in the summer of 2018, blazing temperatures and drought conditions have contributed to wildfire outbreaks worldwide in the U.S., Canada, Australia, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The raging Mendocino Complex fire recently became the largest wildfire in the history of the State of California, the previous record being last year's Thomas fire. Mr. President, I again want to thank the distinguished ranking member on the Finance Committee, and I salute his years of passion on environmental issues and in the defense of his State, which is now suffering so many fires. We actually have an answer to the question that Senator Wyden proposed rather rhetorically--why this is happening out in the Mendocino fires, for instance. The assistant deputy director of Cal Fire, Daniel Berlant, who is at the state department of forestry and fire protection, has said this: ``Let's be clear: It's our changing climate that is leading to more severe and destructive fires.'' Climate change has doubled the area consumed by forest fires since 1984. According to a report by Climate Central, ``[c]ompared to the 1970s, the annual average western U.S. wildfire season is now 105 days longer, has three times as many large fires (larger than 1,000 acres) and sees more than six times as many acres burned.'' Not only are these fires becoming larger, they are becoming more dangerous. They burn hotter and more intensely. They spread more rapidly and shift unpredictably, putting firefighters at risk. A 2015 study in The Solutions Journal found that, as compared to 1990, fires are now larger, three times as many homes are burning, and around twice as many brave firefighters are losing their lives. The Federal Government's ``Climate Science Special Report,'' released late last year, warned that years without large fires in the western United States will become what they called ``extremely rare.'' Years without these large fires will become ``extremely rare.'' The Environmental Protection Agency warns that unless we curb our greenhouse gas emissions, ``climate change is projected to dramatically increase the area burned by wildfires across most of the contiguous U.S.'' The Agency estimates for the western United States a more than 40-percent increase in the area burned by wildfires by 2100, and the amount of land in the Southwest burned each year by fires, including Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, could go up by as much as 140 percent. These more frequent and more ferocious wildfires are leaving permanent scars on America's landscape. Ordinarily, wildfires are part of the natural lifecycle of a healthy forest, but, as Senator Wyden said, these are not our grandfather's wildfires. The intensity, frequency, and scale of the infernos we are now seeing reflect nature out of whack. Instead of clearing dead trees and groundcover to make room for healthy trees and rebirth of plant life, these superstrong wildfires are simply destroying these ecosystems. The National Wildlife Federation's 2017 report, ominously titled ``Megafires,'' says: ``If hot enough, extreme fires can even sterilize the soil by killing subsurface seed banks that normally aid in post- fire recovery.'' Some native environments are permanently lost to charred landscapes and invasive species. A 2017 study reported in the journal Science found that ``thanks to climate change, areas ravaged by wildfires may never recover, wiping out entire ecological communities forever.'' This review of areas ravaged by wildfires showed that ``the proportion of sites with no regrowth almost doubled after 2000`` as compared to the 1980s or 1990s. Of course, the consequences of these fires to human life are dire. Fourteen people died in last year's wildfires in California, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Utah. The risk doesn't end with the flames. After last year's devastating fire in California, when rain finally returned to the area, but without trees and other plants to hold the soil in place, the downpours unleashed torrents of mud, rocks, and debris, killing more than 20 people. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 25 to 30 people die each year in postfire floods and mudslides. As Senator Wyden mentioned, air pollution is another consequence of these wildfires, and it can spread far beyond the burned-out site of the fire. Hundreds of miles downwind, air can become unhealthy and even hazardous. I remember visiting Saskatchewan with Senator Graham and seeing skies there clouded from Oregon's fires. Last month, air in the northwest took the title of ``worst in the nation''--not what they were looking for--with officials recommending that residents wear masks when venturing outdoors. Children, pregnant women, and people with breathing difficulties were told to actually leave town, to leave the area. Wildfires unleash an especially harmful air pollutant: tiny particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter. For comparison, an average human hair is around 70 microns wide. So we are talking about very small particles circulating in the air. Because they are so small, they are easily inhaled and can lodge deep in the lungs and even enter the human bloodstream. Exposure to them has been associated with asthma, heart attack, stroke, and some cancers. Emerging research even links this nasty pollutant to premature births. A researcher at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, CO, told Science magazine that wildfire smoke is ``one of the largest problems facing air quality and climate issues going forward.'' According to a 2016 study in the journal Climatic Change, wildfires were to blame for more than two-thirds of the bad-air days in the western U.S., with unhealthy levels of particulate matter. Smoke and pollution from western wildfires get picked up by the jet stream and can be carried 3,000 miles across the United States, all the way to our east coast, contaminating air throughout the country with noxious particulate matter, methanol, benzene, ozone, and other toxins. This image shows the plume of smoke from west coast fires over here spilling across the country last September. NASA reports that when airborne contaminants are drawn down to ground level, as happened in Iowa last summer, wildfires can trigger air quality warnings hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. The scourge of these wildfires in Senator Wyden's home State and throughout the West is one of the most dangerous symptoms of carbon pollution and climate change. His Oregon constituents see this devastation firsthand. Senator Wyden has helped to rush additional resources to Federal firefighting agencies to step up the response to these exploding wildfires. I thank him for joining me here today as we implore our colleagues to recognize what is going on. If you don't believe me, simply go to your own home State universities and ask them. Whether it is Alaska's, Texas's, Oklahoma's, Rhode Island's, or Oregon's universities, they will tell you. This is stuff that is so clear that it is taught in your home State universities. Yet here in the Senate, we continue to indulge the pretense that we don't know what is going on. Well, it is climate change, plain and simple, as we careen toward what could be an irreversible shift in our climate, changing our Earth into what one recent report called a ``hothouse.'' Yet here we are, the great Congress of the United States, stuck in dirty fossil fuel politics, fiddling under the Capitol dome while the western United States burns. I thank my distinguished friend from the great State of Oregon for joining me here today. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the big oil companies--particularly Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron--want us to believe they have turned over a new leaf, that they are finally in favor of climate action. All four of them claimed to support the Paris Agreement, and Exxon, Shell, and BP all claim to support putting a price on carbon emissions--a price that would reflect the costs of the damage climate change inflicts on the environment, the economy, and public health. For example, this is on Exxon's website: ``ExxonMobil believes a revenue-neutral carbon tax would be a more effective policy option than. . . .'' and it lists other options. ``A properly designed carbon tax can be predictable, transparent, and comparatively simple to understand and implement.'' So it looks as if they are supporting a properly designed carbon tax, but is that support for pricing carbon emissions real, or is it just PR, just greenwashing by companies desperate to improve their images? Well, Senator Schatz and I introduced a carbon price bill in 2014 to put a fee on products that produce carbon dioxide emissions, and we have reintroduced it in every Congress since. If the oil companies really supported putting a price on carbon emissions, you would think they might have come to see us, the authors of that carbon price bill. You would think that if the oil companies really supported putting a price on carbon emissions, they might have supported our bill or lobbied other Senators to support it or even come to us to say: You know, we would like to support your bill, but you need to change this or that. Well, they have done none of that. Despite their public-facing pronouncements on a carbon fee or tax, as they call it, we have had no visits from oil company representatives to our offices to work on this bill, no support for our bill--or any other--no lobbying to help or amend our bill. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the giant trade associations these oil companies fund--the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers--are all working hard to ensure that Republicans oppose carbon pricing and, indeed, any proposals to reduce carbon emissions. Look what the big oil companies do when the prospect of getting a carbon fee on the books looks real. This fall, voters in Washington State will vote on a ballot initiative that would initially put a price on carbon. It would price carbon emissions at $15 per ton. Who is funding the campaign against this carbon price initiative? You guessed it, the oil companies, the very same oil companies that claim to support a carbon fee. Already, Shell, BP, and Chevron have pledged to pour dollars into a super PAC created by the Western States Petroleum Association, which is another trade association that fronts for them to oppose this carbon pricing initiative. The oil companies are backing the opposition in Congress also. In the House, Majority Whip Steve Scalise got wind that some of his Republican Members were working on carbon fee legislation. He introduced legislation stating that pricing carbon emissions would be bad for the economy. Guess who Scalise's most generous donors are. You guessed it, the oil and gas industry. The industry has given his campaign more than $1.1 million, far more than any other industry has given him. The oil and gas industry has also given his PAC $1.5 million. Again, far more than from any other industry. As they say, follow the money. Then, where were the big oil companies on Scalise's resolution? Not one opposed it. In fact, when contacted by the press, Exxon, BP, and Shell all declined to comment on the Scalise resolution, but they noted their general support for carbon pricing. When you look at what the big oil companies actually do on carbon pricing proposals, their general support for carbon pricing begins to look purely hypothetical--or hypocritical. ``General support'' probably gets them a little good PR, fools the unwary, and I guess it lets their executives hobnob with movers and shakers at cocktail parties in Davos or at home at their golf clubs, without having to bear any shame for disgraceful behavior on climate change. This phony general support is also belied by the climate denial infrastructure the oil companies have set up and funded for years. They have underwritten dozens of climate-denying front groups over the years. Guess what. Their front groups sprang into action to support the Scalise anti-carbon pricing resolution. It is a neat little trick. You say you support carbon pricing, and then you deploy an armada of front groups that you funded over the years to make sure the thing you claim to support never comes to pass. On July 9, 18 of these phony front groups wrote to House Speaker Paul Ryan urging him to bring the Scalise resolution up for a vote. This letter asserts that pricing carbon emissions would harm the economy, citing a bogus study from the fossil fuel industry-funded National Association of Manufacturers. By the way, I work pretty well with the manufacturers in my State, and there isn't a manufacturer in my State that subscribes to the National Association of Manufacturers' climate-denying, anti-climate action policies. Somebody somewhere is interjecting themselves so the national organization has become the tool of the fossil fuel industry, but that is not recognized in Rhode Island. It is not so easy to follow the money behind all these phony front groups that wrote this letter. They and their donors are all very secretive about that. After all, it ruins the purpose of a phony front group if everyone can see the fossil fuel hand in the phony-front-group glove. Enterprising reporters and researchers have been able to shine a little light into this dark money den. Let's see how much money these front groups have received from the four major oil companies, from the American Petroleum Institute, and from trusts and foundations associated with the fossil fuel magnate Koch brothers. American Energy Alliance, the top one there: Koch-connected organizations gave the American Energy Alliance at least $1.7 million. A sister organization that shares both the management and the office space of this phony front group received at least $160,000 from Exxon. ALEC: Koch-connected foundations gave ALEC at least $600,000. We know Koch Industries is also a donor, but we don't know how much it has given. We know Exxon gave at least $1.6 million before announcing this month it was cutting ties with ALEC. The American Petroleum Institute gave at least $88,000, while Chevron gave at least $20,000. Shell and BP also used to fund this front group--we don't know quite how much they gave--before they quit in 2015. American Commitment received at least $21 million from Koch- affiliated organizations. The Competitive Enterprise Institute: Exxon gave at least $2 million. Koch-affiliated organizations gave at least $5.2 million. Americans for Limited Government received at least $5.6 million from Koch-affiliated groups. The so-called National Black Chamber of Commerce: Exxon gave at least $1 million. American Petroleum Institute gave at least $75,000. Koch- affiliated organizations gave at least $25,000. Americans for Tax Reform: API, the American Petroleum Institute, gave at least $525,000. Koch-affiliated groups gave at least $330,000. The Caesar Rodney Institute: Koch-affiliated groups gave at least $50,000. The Caesar Rodney Institute is part of the larger so-called State Policy Network, which itself is funded by the Koch organization. FreedomWorks has received at least $2.5 million from Koch-affiliated groups and at least $130,000 from the American Petroleum Institute. The Heartland Institute--there are some beauties--Koch-affiliated groups gave at least $7.1 million, and Heartland got at least $730,000 from Exxon. This is the group, by the way, that has compared climate scientists to the Unabomber--a real classy group. I can see why the others would want to associate with them. The National Center for Public Policy Research received at least $445,000 from Exxon and at least $300,000 from Koch-affiliated groups. The Energy & Environment Legal Institute--here is another beauty-- received at least $500,000 from Koch-affiliated groups. Energy & Environment Legal Institute, by the way, is a particularly creepy group whose function is actually to harass legitimate scientists. That is actually what they do. Another super classy group. You can understand why they would all want to be affiliated with them. Western Energy Alliance is an oil and gas industry trade association. The group's website promises its fossil fuel members that it will ``actively influence regulatory actions and legislation on behalf of your business.'' It is no mystery who is behind this group, but, as usual, funding details are hidden. The Cornwall Alliance's funders are secret. When I tell you a bit more about it, you can see why they would want to be secret. I can tell you, I have seen this bogus front group turning up constantly on the climate denial oddball fringe, with other front groups funded by Big Oil. What is more, the Cornwall Alliance's founder doesn't believe in evolution, thinks that tornadoes are a punishment from God, and, quite despicably, believes AIDS is a punishment for being gay--a really great guy for Speaker Ryan to be taking advice from and a great company for all the rest of these groups to be keeping. CO2 Science received at least $100,000 from Exxon and $280,000 from Koch-affiliated organizations. The Mississippi Center for Public Policy received at least $340,000 from Koch-affiliated organizations and is also a member of that Koch- funded so-called State Policy Network. The Institute for Liberty received at least $1.8 million from Koch- affiliated organizations. That is a grand total of over $54 million from Big Oil and their climate denial allies in the Koch network, and that is the minimum. That is what we know. That is what has leaked through the darkness. Because all these groups and donors are so secretive about their clandestine funding network, we know the total is, if anything, much higher. Of course, a sophisticated political operative like Speaker Ryan recognized that these were phony front groups and blew this letter off in order to pursue the people's serious business before the House. Actually, no. What did Speaker Ryan do? He agreed to bring the Scalise resolution to the floor for a vote, of course. With his caucus essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry, how could he have said no? Money talks, and big money commands. With the resolution heading for a vote, the front groups reappeared-- this time, 41 strong, the whole fossil fuel front group armada was deployed--with a letter to all House Members. I don't want to go through the list again and add the new groups and which received funding from Big Oil and which from the Koch network and which from both, but suffice it to say, almost all of them have been funded by the oil industry and/or the Koch network or are otherwise tied to them. This is the web of denial my Senate colleagues and I have come to the floor to call out before. With this type of orchestrated lobbying campaign by the fossil fuel front groups, passage of the Scalise resolution was assured. Indeed, only six House Republicans had the courage to vote against their fossil fuel overlords. Instead of listening to, say, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz or the researchers at Columbia University and serious think tanks who study this stuff or the dozens of blue-chip companies that all say pricing carbon emissions would be good for the economy, House Republicans listened to these phony fossil fuel-funded front groups, including the group that equated climate scientists with the Unabomber and the group founded by the guy who thinks evolution is fake news and AIDS is punishment for being gay. How low will you go when your big donors whistle? We just saw. The resolution was rammed through the House. The failure of the U.S. Congress to act on our climate crisis is a failure of American democracy. When untold tens, even hundreds of millions of special interest dollars slosh through our political system, what voice do the citizens of Rhode Island have or the citizens of Florida or Louisiana who are also confronting ever-rising seas caused by climate change? When corporate dark money rules and phony front groups get more political respect than Nobel Prize-winning economists--on matters of economics, no less--what chance is there for reason and truth in this body? The fossil fuel industry and its trade associations and front groups have taken the Republican Party hostage and, with it, our American democracy. It is corruption in plain view, and history's judgment will not be kind. It is seriously, urgently time for us to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank Senator Wyden. Mr. President, it is great to be here to have a birthday party to celebrate Medicare and Medicaid, which are the kinds of huge successes for a nation that don't happen very often, but they sure did happen in America. And what a change it made when Medicare and Medicaid were there to support American families. There is scarcely an American family today who doesn't to some extent depend on Medicare or Medicaid. We have planned our lives around the safety and security of those programs, and we have avoided enormous human suffering by virtue of those programs. Of course, coming from a small State as I do, it is very important for us in Rhode Island to celebrate our role in this important legislation because one of the original authors of the Medicare bill was Representative Aime Forand of Cumberland, RI, who served over in the House for 22 years. He served with great distinction. He was passionate about healthcare and about building this program. He was one of the original groups of the Members of Congress who got together and designed the Medicare Program. When it came time to pass it in 1965, it was Rhode Island Congressman John Fogarty of Providence who was then the chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health, Education, and Welfare. So between one of the original authors of the legislation and one of the key chairmen supporting the legislation, there was a lot that Rhode Island did to accomplish these wonderful goals. It gives me particular pride as a member of the Rhode Island delegation to come here for the Medicare-Medicaid Senator Wyden birthday party. I am very glad to have the chance to do it. These programs provide health insurance coverage to over half a million people in my State. That is half the State. Without it, so many lives would be changed for the worse. Nationally, it is a little bit over 130 million Americans. When you consider the families who get the protection of having a family member covered, as I said, it is virtually all of us. Obviously, it is seniors. Rhode Island has a lot of seniors whom we treasure and whom we love having Medicare and Medicaid being there for, but it is also people with disabilities, children, pregnant women, veterans, and people fighting substance abuse disorders. It is a broad population. Medicare and Medicaid do their jobs well. They do their jobs efficiently. They do their jobs humanely. They do their jobs with super-low overhead compared to their private sector competition, and they do it in a very reform-oriented way. It is CMS that is leading the accountable care organizations process that was one of the great achievements of the Affordable Care Act. It is the providers, the doctors, who are in those accountable care organizations who are redesigning care in ways that are wonderful for their patients. I will briefly discuss the example--because I am so proud of it and mention it all the time--of Coastal Medical, which is one of our biggest provider groups in Rhode Island. It is a doctor-run accountable care organization. What they did is they signed up early on--what they called Pioneer ACOs. The deal was this: We will take some of the risk of how our patients run up costs in the system, and we will share if we can make money back for you. Now, in the bad old days of managed care, when insurance companies tried to do this, they went in and said: Well, you can't have that, and we are cutting you off on this, and we are not paying you, and we just hired 50 people to make sure that your claim never gets settled. They just, basically, pushed back on paying for things. That is not the way the doctors work in the ACO process. They have done things like hire social workers, pharmacists, and home visitors. What they have done is to take their patients and to decide they are going to help make them healthier. They are going to have social workers make sure they get the benefits they need. They are going to have home care workers go to their homes to see what they can get done at home. They use electronic monitoring and testing so they can keep better track of the reports and keep better track of people's care. They engage with their patients. What we have seen--because a lot of people I know in Rhode Island get their healthcare through Coastal Medical--is a lot of really happy patients. Now you can call at 2 in the morning when you are sick, and at Coastal Medical, you will get a live nurse who will talk you through what is going on and help you decide if you actually need to go to the emergency room or not and get you in quick, first thing in the morning, if you don't go to the emergency room and they still want to see you and check you out. So, for the patients, this has been an incredible boon. They feel so much better cared for, and they are, in fact, healthier. That comes back to all of us here because--guess what--in the time that Coastal Medical has been doing this, it has lowered the cost of care, year over year, for its patients--$700 per patient. When we were passing the Affordable Care Act, we used to talk about how we were going to bend the healthcare cost curve down. We are not bending the healthcare cost curve down at Coastal Medical; we are actually dropping healthcare costs. It is actually below where it was. It is not just not accelerating so fast. That is the kind of leadership that Medicare and Medicaid and CMS support. This is a really terrific and exciting program in so many ways, not just in terms of humaneness, not just in terms of security for American families but also in terms of leadership and in helping us continue to develop a healthcare system that we can be very proud of. I am delighted to serve on the Finance Committee under the leadership of our ranking member, and I thank him for convening us on this terrific birthday. I would only propose that when we do this again, there be cake. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for the now 214th time to urge that we wake up to the effects of carbon pollution on the Earth's oceans, atmosphere, and climate. One obstacle to action on the threat that we face from climate change, however, is the manufactured doubt that so often surrounds this issue. We find this manufactured doubt a fossil fuel industry product-- just as oil and gas are fossil fuel industry products--flowing even from the editorial page of one of our Nation's leading publications, the Wall Street Journal. Whenever the issue is harmful industrial pollutants, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has a long record of misleading its readers, denying the legitimate science, and even ignoring its own news reporting, all to shill for the polluting industries. A pattern of science denial repeats itself in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal on environmental issues--issues such as acid rain and depletion of the ozone layer and now, and for years, climate change. This editorial page has persistently published editorials against taking action to prevent manmade climate change. In June 1993, the editors wrote that there is ``growing evidence that global warming just isn't happening.'' In September 1999, the editorial page reported that ``serious scientists'' call global warming ``one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.'' If that is what they are saying, I suspect that what those scientists are serious about is the money they get from the fossil fuel industry. In June 2005, the page asserted that the link between fossil fuels and global warming had ``become even more doubtful.'' This was June 2005, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page was questioning whether there is a link between fossil fuels and global warming? Even more recently, a December 2011 editorial said that the global warming debate requires what the page called ``more definitive evidence.'' I guess having essentially all the serious scientists in the world lined up on this is not serious enough. In October 2013, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal warned that in addressing climate change, ``interventions make the world poorer than it would otherwise be.'' I guess if the world of Exxon shareholders is your world, then it does make it poorer, but in any real world, that just ain't so. You would think that as the evidence mounted over the past several decades, the Wall Street Journal editorial page would have at some point woken up and begun to publish editorials based on real science and data. To put it mildly, that has not been the case. Instead, the editorial page has doubled down on climate denial. Just last month, the Journal published a piece titled ``The Sea is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change.'' This piece is riddled with readily fact-checked scientific errors, and it ignores all the legitimate science on climate change and sea level rise. Not surprisingly, the author of this article, Fred Singer, is a notorious and longstanding climate denier who has for years been affiliated with or funded by the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, and others. He has been funded by a rogues' gallery of climate denial front groups that have themselves been funded by ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers' network. Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Andrea Dutton--both actual legitimate climate scientists--wrote a response to the Wall Street Journal. Their article, titled simply ``Water's Rising Because It's Getting Warmer,'' directly addresses the factual problems with Singer's piece. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. In response to Singer's claim that ice sheets are getting bigger, the actual climate scientists wrote: No, ice is not accumulating on Earth--it is melting. No, Antarctica isn't too cold for melting--warming oceans are eroding the ice from beneath, destabilizing the ice sheet. And no, legitimate scientific conclusions are not reached in op-ed pieces, but through careful peer-reviewed research. Climate denial, by the way, tends to avoid peer review like the plague. It goes straight to FOX News, straight to hearings, and straight to the talk shows, because there it gets the audience it wants without having to face the rigor it would not survive. Singer also erroneously claims that sea levels are not rising due to warming temperatures. In response, Drs. Mann and Dutton explain: That research shows that sea levels are rising and human- caused climate change is the cause. Don't take our word for it; help yourself to the mountain of scientific literature showing as much. When water warms, it expands. When ice warms, it melts. To deny these facts is not just to deny climate change. It is to deny basic physics. But in the spirit of climate denial, there is very little that these denialists won't say. The Trump administration's own ``Climate Science Special Report,'' issued by the Trump administration, found that ``it is virtually certain that sea level rise this century and beyond will pose a growing challenge to coastal communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems.'' The ``Climate Science Special Report'' will serve as the scientific backbone for the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which is due later this year. The authors list is a who's who of top university scientists--many from universities in the home States of Senators here in this body--and experts from NOAA, the EPA, NASA, our National Labs, and the National Science Foundation. By the way, those NASA people have a rover driving around on Mars. They may know a little something about science. The report is backed by the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Commerce, Interior, and State--in all, 13 Federal Agencies and Departments. Or you can believe the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and its phony baloney fossil fuel-funded scientists. The Journal actually continued its climate denial spree in June, publishing another piece titled ``Thirty Years On, How Well Do Global Warming Predictions Stand Up?'' In this one, Patrick Michaels and Ryan Maue argue that Dr. James Hansen's 1988 climate change warnings were overestimated. Well, let's start by pulling the curtain back on these two characters who wrote the piece. You will quickly see that they are, to put it politely, aligned with the fossil fuel industry. Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow at the Koch-founded and Koch-funded Cato Institute. Michaels at one point admitted that 40 percent of his funding came from the fossil fuel industry. His coauthor also joined the Koch-funded Cato Institute last year. Believe it or not, yes, the fossil fuel industry still pays for this nonsense even as fossil fuel CEOs claim to recognize: Climate science is real, and we support a carbon fee. That, of course, being the latest chapter in the fossil fuel industry's long and ongoing campaign of fraud--now pretending that they support a carbon fee, when all of their political apparatus is dedicated to opposing the very result they claim to seek. Thirty years ago, Hansen's testimony outlined three scenarios. Remember, this was 1988. The first scenario was a business-as-usual projection with accelerating emissions, yielding 1.5 degrees Celsius warming by 2017. The second scenario showed drastic emissions cuts, yielding 0.4 degrees Celsius warming by 2017. Hansen proposed a middle scenario of continued but not accelerating emissions, resulting in 0.84 degrees Celsius warming by 2017. In his testimony, Dr. Hansen stated that the middle scenario was the most likely. Michaels and Maue claim that the scenario with the least amount of warming turned out to be correct, and therefore Hansen was wrong, and therefore climate models can't predict climate change. Unfortunately for them, the facts are otherwise. Hansen's analysis projected that global surface air temperatures would increase by approximately 0.84 degrees Celsius between 1988 and 2017 in his middle scenario, the one he said was most likely. Once you account for the effects of a slight cooling that resulted from the success of the Montreal Protocol in phasing out chlorofluorocarbons, Hansen's projected warming is 0.6 to 0.7 degrees Celsius by 2017. That, in blue, is the adjusted Hansen projection. I don't think you can fault him for not predicting the Montreal Protocol that happened after his prediction. It is fair to adjust his prediction for the Montreal Protocol and the effect of reduced chlorofluorocarbons. Once you do that, it shows that observed temperature in red tracks pretty darned well with his projections. If that were my work, I would be pretty proud of it. Here it is 30 years later, and we are off by a gap that my finger can cover on the graph. Michaels and Maue did not bother to mention that Hansen also predicted which parts of the globe would warm more quickly than others. Thirty years ago, he calculated the Arctic would warm faster, and there would be more warming over landmasses than over the oceans. All of these things are happening. Even Hansen's early climate models were accurate and reliable. And global warming is proceeding, just as the scientists have warned. As the Wall Street Journal editorial page continues to publish its fossil fuel-funded nonsense--stuff that is written by pseudoscientists, funded by the industry with a massive conflict of interest about this question--it has been 30 years since the warnings of Hansen. Despite all of the evidence that has piled up, consistent with his warnings, despite the regular litany of current events driven by climate change now, Congress has been taking no action. We have been stilled by the forces of the fossil fuel industry. The real irony here is that the Wall Street Journal claims to be the news source for businesses and financial investors. Off the editorial page, out in the real world of business and finance, real decisions are being made by real executives, backed by real money. Are they buying what the Wall Street Journal editorial page is selling? No. No, indeed. They are telling their clients and their companies: You must take climate change seriously, and you must take carbon pricing seriously. In the real world, businesses are demanding better climate policies and investors are demanding better reporting of climate risk. The giant investment firm BlackRock led a group of major investors and broke the back of ExxonMobil's opposition to answering to its shareholders about climate change. They are demanding this. Many companies are even setting their own internal price on carbon to account for the real- world costs of climate change. The business community and the investment community are acting because they know climate change is real, is affecting their prognosis for their companies, and carbon pricing is a key part of the solution. Increasingly, economists and financial regulators warn that we are actually hurtling toward an economic disruption--that we need to prepare for a possible crash of what they call the carbon bubble. This carbon bubble collapses when fossil fuel reserves, now claimed as assets by the fossil fuel companies, turn out to be useless as renewable energy sources grow more competitive, and those useless assets become what are called stranded assets. How much gets stranded? A publication by economists in the journal Nature estimated the following impacts in a 2-degree Celsius world: ``stranded assets . . . around 82 percent of global coal reserves, 49 percent of global gas reserves, and 33 percent of global oil reserves.'' Imagine that--82 percent of global coal reserves gone, wiped off the balance sheets; 49 percent of global gas reserves gone, wiped off the balance sheets; and 33 percent of global oil reserves gone, wiped off the balance sheets because they are no longer economically producible. Is this nuts? Even the Bank of England in an official statement has warned that investments in fossil fuels and related technologies may ``take a huge hit.'' At some point, there has to be a grownup in the room. The fossil fuel industry, obviously, is not capable of being that grownup. They still pay for denial and obstruction. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page is obviously no use. That page is still yapping on the industry's leash. There is some good news. This week, two House Republicans, at long last, introduced a bill that would put a price on carbon emissions. But we still await one Republican in the Senate, just one--anyone who will face up to this problem, who will stand up for science, who will acknowledge what their own home State's universities are teaching and take some real action. Climate denial is a dangerous and ultimately doomed game, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page should know better. It is time to wake up.