Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here, once again, to sound an alarm about carbon pollution's damage to our oceans and to our climate. It is past time for Congress to wake up to our responsibility as elected officials and as stewards of this planet. The alarm has been sounded by the scientific community which overwhelmingly warns about the effects of our carbon dioxide emissions on our atmosphere and oceans. Our defense and intelligence communities warn of the threats posed by climate change to national security and international stability. Economists recognize the distortion of energy markets that overlook the true cost of carbon pollution, and government accountants now list climate change as a threat to our fiscal stability. Today, as we enter the Passover and Easter season and as Catholics the world over celebrate the selection of a new Pope, we turn to voices of faith. They too call upon us. They call upon us to heed the moral imperatives of protecting creation and seeking justice for all people. They call upon us to reflect on our faith, on our relationship to our world and each other and on our responsibility to future generations, and they call upon us, as President Obama reminded us in his inaugural address, to ``preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.'' I lay no claim to religious authority, but I must believe this: Something that harms others, something that disturbs God's creation, something that stands on lies and greed--protecting that must not be consistent with God's will. In his 2010 World Day of Peace message entitled ``If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation,'' Pope Benedict XVI called upon the faithful: . . . [t]o protect the environment, and to safeguard natural resources and the climate . . . while at the same time taking into due account the solidarity we owe to those living in the poorer areas of our world and to future generations. In his inaugural mass this morning, Pope Francis said: Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political, and social life, and all men and women of good will: let us be ``protectors'' of creation, protectors of God's plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment. As early news reports indicated, the new Pope chose his papal name Francis out of respect for Saint Francis's sense of obligation to God's creation. He noted in one of his very earliest comments that our relationship with God's creation is not so good right now. Of course, the Pope is not the only one. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, also reminds us to remember those most affected by climate change: Climate change is much more than an issue of environmental preservation. Climate change constitutes a matter of social and economic justice. In the United States, hundreds of evangelical leaders signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative statement which declares: ``Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action.'' The Hindu Declaration on Climate Change affirms that ``the dire problems besetting our world will all be magnified manyfold by the predicted impacts of climate change.'' Buddhist leaders, including the Dalai Lama, urge both individual and institutional transformation to confront what they call ``the gravest challenge that humanity has ever faced: the ecological consequences of our own collective karma.'' As Rev. Fletcher Harper of the interfaith coalition GreenFaith explains, all faith-based communities have a spiritual connection to the natural world. For example, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the internationally respected Egyptian Islamist, sees this connection as central to a faithful life. I will read: If we take seriously our role as God's deputies on Earth, not just by benefiting from the environment, but by preserving it and ensuring that other communities and generations will have the same possibilities to drink clean water, breathe fresh air, and live in a world that is in harmony with itself and with ourselves, we may hope to be among those who are beloved to God due to their care for his creation. For many, faith compels work toward fairness and justice for all living beings, regardless of nationality or social status, and encourages us to consider the effects of our actions on future generations. For many individuals all over the world, the fight against climate change is a moral call. As Americans, we have a tradition of calling upon our own deeply held spiritual convictions to address our society's greatest moral challenges. People of faith are answering that call, from major denominational governing bodies down to local parishes and synagogues. Representative Henry Waxman and I, as part of our work on the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, recently wrote to 300 groups to ask for their views on actions the Federal Government could take to reduce carbon pollution and strengthen our resiliency to climate change. A number of those organizations which answered are religious organizations. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record excerpts of letters from six of these groups.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the Senator.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, may I take this opportunity to thank Senator McCain for his call to our consciences on the massacres in Syria by the tyrant Assad. I thank him for his reminder to us all that in the case of moral emergencies, those with the ability to act have the duty to act, and I thank him for his efforts to call us to that duty. While he is here on the floor, I would like to also take this chance to join in the warm remarks from colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this 40th anniversary of his release from captivity in North Vietnam--an anniversary that could have come a good deal sooner had he not been so courageously stubborn in refusing to leave his comrades in captivity. Order of Procedure Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess following my statement until 2:15 p.m. and that the first-degree amendment filing deadline be at 3 o'clock today.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask that I be recognized when the senior Senator from Arizona has finished his remarks.

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I rise today, as I have at least two dozen times in the past year, to say again that it is time for us to wake up to the stark reality of the climate changes carbon pollution is causing. Elected officials bear a responsibility every once in a while to escape the grip of the polluting special interests and to act in the interests of regular Americans. We need to wake up and start talking about the negative consequences, the harms of climate change. We need to wake up and mitigate--take steps to protect ourselves--and adapt to the consequences that are already hitting our coasts and our forests, our cities and our farms, our economy and our way of life. But, of course, the climate deniers and the polluters do not want that. The deniers want to prevent discussion of climate change altogether. In the past few years, in this body, climate science has become a taboo topic. I watched, when my back was out in the last few days, one of the Harry Potter movies on television. Lord Voldemort was called ``He-Who- Shall-Not-Be-Named'' in those Harry Potter stories. Well, carbon pollution is the ``Pollution Which Shall Not Be Named.'' Climate change--the harm that is caused by that pollution--is the ``Harm That Shall Not Be Named.'' The obstructionists want to squelch any discussion of the ``Pollution Which Shall Not Be Named'' so as to let big polluters continue dumping carbon and other greenhouse gas into our oceans and atmosphere. Take, for instance, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created in 2007 as a forum for confronting the economic and security challenges of our dependence on foreign fuels. When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2011, they disbanded that committee. End of discussion. Between May 2011 and December 2012, our colleagues in the House of Representatives, Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush, who were the Democratic ranking members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power, wrote 21 letters--21 letters--to Chairmen Fred Upton and Ed Whitfield requesting hearings on climate change. To date, there has been no response, no hearings. End of discussion. House Republicans have tried to prevent the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture from funding their climate adaptation plans--commonsense efforts to preserve our resources, protect our farmers, and save taxpayer dollars. But, no, end of discussion. I am sad to say that it is not just the House of Representatives. In the Senate, in the Environment and Public Works Committee, Democrats have been informed that there will be opposition to any legislation that mentions climate change. It is one thing to want to oppose any legislation that does anything about climate change. This is a further step. The mere mention of climate change is enough to provoke Republican opposition. End of discussion. The taboo is being applied elsewhere in this Chamber. Just this week a Republican Senator demanded that the following language be stricken from a noncontroversial Senate resolution. We pass resolutions here in the Senate all the time by unanimous consent. A Republican Senator said: No, I am going to withhold my consent. I am going to deny the ability of the resolution unless this offending language is removed. What was the offending language? I will quote: [W]omen in developing countries are disproportionately affected by changes in climate because of their need to secure water, food, and fuel for their livelihood. This body unanimously approved identical language in the last Congress, but today that mention of climate change in an otherwise noncontroversial resolution draws automatic Republican opposition. Again, end of discussion. And they are not just trying to squelch the legislative branch. In the executive branch, they have tried to defund salaries for White House climate advisers and withhold U.S. funds from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Again, end of discussion. Now, you might think that in these efforts to attack funding, at least they are motivated by a desire to cut spending. But then what would be the motivation behind House Republicans blocking a no-cost restructuring of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would have created a National Climate Service that is akin to the National Weather Service--a simple reorganization that would have centralized information about climate change, information which is in high demand by State and local governments and by the business community? Again, the purpose is obvious: try to end the discussion. I would remind my colleagues who are trying to silence this discussion with political power that history teaches, quite plainly, that in contests between power and truth, truth always wins in the end. The Inquisition tried to silence Galileo, but the Enlightenment happened anyway, and the Earth does still spin around the Sun. Chris McEntee, who is the executive director of the American Geophysical Union, said: Limiting access to this kind of climate information won't make climate change go away. And shareholders and directors of corporations should consider what it will mean for the corporations that used their power to suppress the truth once that truth becomes inescapable, once it is undeniable and the denial campaign is seen as a fraud. This Republican policy of climate change denial is alive and well at the State level too. In 2010 Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli used his powers of office to harass former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann and 39 other climate scientists and staff. As a UVA grad, I am proud that the university fought back against this political attack on science and on academic freedom. Said UVA: [The attorney general's] action and the potential threat of legal prosecution of scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer-review standards send a chilling message to scientists engaged in basic research involving Earth's climate and indeed to scholars in any discipline. Such actions directly threaten academic freedom and, thus, our ability to generate the knowledge upon which informed public policy relies. The victim of this harassment, Professor Mann, was more blunt. He called out this witch hunt as ``a coordinated assault against the scientific community by powerful vested interests who simply want to stick their heads in the sand and deny the problem of human-caused climate change, rather than engage in the good faith debate about what to do about it.'' I would note that the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Attorney General Cuccinelli's so-called investigation groundless. But that was not enough for obstructionists in Virginia. Last year the Republican Virginia Senate struck from a joint resolution titled ``Requesting the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to study strategies for adaptation to relative sea-level rise in Tidewater Virginia localities''--they struck from that title the phrase ``sea-level rise'' both in the title and again in the text of the resolution. News outlets reported--get this--that this was because ``sea-level rise'' was believed to be a ``left-wing term.'' Add ``sea-level rise'' to the ``Harms Which Shall Not Be Named.'' In North Carolina, you can still say ``sea-level rise,'' but you cannot predict it or plan for it. That is because last year North Carolina's Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill requiring, as a matter of law, that North Carolina coastal policy be based on historic rates of sea-level rise rather than on what North Carolina scientists actually predict. This means that even though North Carolina scientists predict 39 inches of sea-level rise within the century, North Carolina, by its own law, is only allowed to prepare for 8. King Canute would be so proud. Further down, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources wrote a report more than a year ago on the risks climate change poses to the Palmetto State, but it was never released to the public. The State newspaper managed to obtain a copy of that study. The report calls for South Carolina to prepare for increases in wildlife disease, loss of prime hunting habitat, and the invasion of non-native species. But to Republicans, these are more ``Problems Which Shall Not Be Named.'' In South Dakota, the Republican legislature, in 2010, even passed a nonbinding resolution calling for teaching in public schools that relies on a number of common and thoroughly debunked climate denier claims--in short, bringing climate denier propaganda into public high school science classes. Who might be behind this concerted effort to make climate science and climate change taboo subjects--``Problems Which Shall Not Be Named''? Well, look at ALEC, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, which peddles climate denier legislation and undermines local and national efforts to protect against climate change. Look at ALEC's board of directors, comprised of lobbyists from ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and Koch Industries. Look at the array of bogus denial organizations propped up to create doubt in this debate. Against this tide of propaganda and nonsense stands States, including Rhode Island, that already cap and reduce carbon emissions. Nineteen States have climate adaptation plans completed or in progress. Thirty- one States have a renewable and/or alternative energy portfolio standard. Twenty-three States require State buildings to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED standards. The obstructionists may be well funded by the polluting special interests, but the majority of the American people--the vast majority of the American people--understand that climate change is a very real problem. They want their leaders to take action. Americans want their leaders to listen to the climate scientists. They want us to plan and to prepare, to limit, to mitigate, and to adapt to the changes that are coming. Here in Congress it is long past time to move forward with meaningful action. That is why I am working with several colleagues to establish a fee on carbon pollution. As I said in my remarks last week, the idea is a simple one. It is basic market 101, law 101, and fairness 101. If you are creating a cost that someone else has to bear, that cost should be put back into the price of the product. The big carbon polluters should pay a fee to the American people to cover the cost of their dumping their waste into our oceans and air. It is a cost they now happily push off onto the rest of us, allowing them an unfair and improper market advantage, in effect to cheat against rival energy sources. The deniers want to make this the problem which shall not be named. But I am here to name it, as are many others. I am here to shame them if I can, if shame is a feeling a big corporation can even have. I am here to see to it that we wake up and that we get to work. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would like to add to the remarks I made a moment ago about climate change to respond to some statements that have been made recently on the Senate floor on this subject. As those of us who are advocates in the cause of doing something about climate change know, the polluters and their advocates have an advantage: They only have to create doubt, they only have to create debate in order to create delay and allow the polluters to continue making money at the expense of the rest of us. That means the arguments, frankly, don't have to be true; they just have to be made. Then they can say there is still debate, then they can say there is still controversy, both of which are self-fulfilling prophecies. But they are not real, and some of what has been said is pretty flagrant. One of the lead Senate deniers came to the floor the other day to challenge President Obama. President Obama said this in his State of the Union Address: But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods--all are now more frequent and intense. My denier colleague quoted him. And to quote my colleague, he said-- referring to the President: The President said, yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is that the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. That is just flat wrong. So why don't we just take a look and see where the President got his information so we can put this into some perspective. The President got his information from NASA. Maybe people in this body are more capable than NASA at dealing with scientific things, but when you consider that NASA has put an explorer on the surface of Mars, I think they are entitled to some credence about basic science. And they agree--in fact, Reto Ruedy, a program manager at the Goddard Institute, has laid out the actual years. Some of these are statistical ties because they are equally hot. The No. 1 and 2 hottest years, according to them, are 2010 and 2005. The No. 3 through 8 hottest years are 2007, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2009. The 9th through 12th hottest years recorded are 2012, 2011, 2001, and 2004. If you go to the 13th year, it is 2008. The 14th and the 15th are 1997 and 1995. All of the 15 hottest years on record are 1995 and thereafter. The top 12, all have happened 1998 and thereafter. It is not just NASA's data set that confirms this. NOAA also looks at the same information. They come at it a little bit differently--and they do have a difference. I will concede that. NOAA considers 2012 to be the 10th warmest year on record instead of the 9th. That is the difference between NASA and NOAA. And we are talking about records going back to 1880, so it is a broad data set. If you look at NOAA's data, it actually shows that 14 of the past 15 years were the hottest on record. Ditto the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Of course, as many of us know, in political life there is a group out there called Politifact that takes a look at claims that are made in the public debate and politics, and they assign them ``true'' to ``pants on fire.'' They looked at the President's claim that the 12 hottest years on record have come in the last 15 years. They gave the President a ``true.'' Indeed, they said: Obama was actually overcautious in his statement, so we rate his statement true. So we have one denier--a Senator--against NASA, against Politifact, against NOAA, and against the National Center for Atmospheric Research. I think it is pretty clear who has the facts on their side. This is the other statement that was made: I don't think anyone disagrees with the fact that we actually are in a cold period that started about 9 years ago. Let's look at the facts. This is the temperature data. The green represents the actual data. The red line is a statistically derived mean of all that information. It is something that is done mathematically. It is not amenable to argument; it is not amenable to debate. You can do it using different methods, but it is clear from that data set that we are in fact in a warming period, not a cooling period. So how do you get to say that in 9 years we are in a cooling period? Well, if you go back a few years here, you see there are some high points, and if you pick just those high points and then you go forward 9 years, you can draw a graph that goes down. But you have to be very careful how you pick your points to create that illusion. You can actually do it, if you want, repeatedly in the data. You could pick this point and have it go down. You could pick this point and have it go down. You could pick this point and have it go down, and this, and this. For each one of those points, you could say: Well, during this period, it was actually a cold period. It was actually a cooling period. But when you look at the actual information and when you look at the statistically driven mean that cuts through all the data, it is pretty clear that to try to look at it this way is playing tricks with the data. It is playing games and trying to fool people. It is twisting and distorting the data. I think that is a less-than-honest application of these facts. So if that is the sort of misleading statistical trick the polluters and their advocates have to resort to, that is just another reminder that it really is time for us to wake up and get to work on this. There is no credible scientific debate over what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans, and it is pretty darned clear that it is warming--and warming pretty fast. I appreciate the opportunity for this clarification. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Politifact article that I referred to in my remarks be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I understand there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that H.R. 933, which was received from the House and is at the desk, be placed on the calendar.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2 p.m. on Monday, March 11, 2013; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; and that following any leader remarks the Senate be in a period of morning business until 5 o'clock p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that following morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session under the previous order.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am informed that at 5:30 p.m. on Monday there will be at least one rollcall vote on confirmation of the Taranto nomination. We hope to begin consideration of H.R. 933, the continuing appropriations bill received from the House.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent the resolutions by agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid on the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration en bloc of the following resolutions which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 71, S. Res. 72, and Res. 73.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Monday, March 11, 2013, at 5 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 9 and 17; that there be 30 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote, without intervening action or debate, on the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and that the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am back to again urge my colleagues to wake up to the stark reality of climate change. We often hear in this Chamber colleagues extolling the virtues of the marketplace. Indeed, a fair and open marketplace is the cornerstone of our economy. Markets work--not perfectly always but better than any other mechanism. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, one might say that markets are the worst form of setting prices and exchanging goods, except all of the other methods that have been tried. But markets only work when they are fair. Markets are not fair if the price of goods does not take all the costs into account. A grocery store, for instance, has to pay to have its garbage removed. It has to build that garbage removal into its prices. And that is the right thing. That is the market working. If that grocery store can recycle or compact or composite its trash and make removal cheaper and lower its prices, then that is right too. That is the market working. But if a second grocery store down the street breaks the law and throws its garbage into the park next door and then competes with lower prices, that is not a market in proper operation. That is not a fair market. That is just one person cheating another. If a factory makes a product and treats its waste, that is part of its cost. That is good. That is how it is supposed to be. If the factory can figure out how to treat its waste more efficiently and lower prices, terrific. That is also the market at work. But a factory down the river that breaks the law by dumping its waste into the river may have better prices as a result, but that is not a fair market. The value of open and fair markets is lost when people cheat, when they offload their costs onto the general public. The garbage in the park, the waste in the river--the grocery store down the street and the factory down the river--does not reduce costs; businesses just offloaded them onto their neighbor, onto the rest of us. They may actually have even made it more costly for everyone, but they have managed to impose that cost on the public. There is even a word for these offloaded costs. They are externalities, the harms that are caused that are external to the company. This is not complicated. It is econ 101. It is also law 101. Seventy years ago a soda bottle exploded and injured the hand of a waitress named Gladys Escola. Ms. Escola sued the bottler. The court decision has been in most every law student's first-year classes ever since. In a famous concurrence, Justice Traynor ruled in the case of Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Company that the cost of Ms. Escola's injury should fall on the bottler. His logic was simple and clear: They made the bottle. If they did not have to pay for the injuries exploding bottles caused, they would just keep making exploding bottles. If you made them responsible for the exploding bottles they made, they would have a big incentive to improve their bottles and everyone would be safer. As Judge Traynor said 70 years ago, ``Public policy demands that responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the hazards.'' This idea that you shouldn't be able to offload your costs and have the park, the river, or Ms. Escola's hand pay the price is not new, and it is not unusual. Frankly, we see it in our own lives. It is also fairness 101, as well as econ 101 and law 101. You may not rake your lawn and throw the leaves over the fence into your neighbor's yard. The principle is the same--they are your leaves, and you clean them up. What do soda bottles and yard work have to do with climate change? The very same principle applies. We now know how much harm carbon pollution is causing. We see the costs all around us in storm-damaged homes, flooded cities, in drought-stricken farms, raging wildfires, in dying coral and disappearing fish, in shifting habitats and migrating diseases, in changed seasons and rising seas, in vanishing glaciers and melting icecaps. These are costs. In some cases they are economic costs. People lose money. The owner of a ski lodge, for example, losses money when the ski season gets shorter and shorter. In some cases they are personal costs, such as not being able to take your granddaughter to the stream near where you grew up because it is dried up or the beach island you used to explore as a kid because it is underwater. In some cases the cost is life-and-death. Powerful storms and severe heat waves take a deadly toll. These are real costs, and they come as a result of carbon pollution. These costs, however, are not factored into the price of the coal or oil that is burned to release the carbon. The big oil companies and the coal barons have offloaded those costs onto society. There is nothing inherently wrong with producing energy. There is nothing inherently wrong with bottling soda or running a grocery store. What is wrong is when you knowingly pass on the cost of your exploding bottle, your waste disposal, or your carbon pollution to everybody else. Oil and coal companies have been sending carbon pollution into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. When these industries started, the risks were poorly understood. Today they know better. They know what the harm is that they are doing, and they continue. When they lie and pretend those costs aren't out there--leaves? What leaves? There is no garbage in the park. Your hand is just fine, Mrs. Escola-- and when they pay people to lie and pretend those costs aren't out there, well, that is all just flat wrong. And when they do it with fat campaign contributions, slick lobbyists, and marauding super PACs, that makes it worse. That is dirty pool. It is a market failure. It takes unfair advantage of competing energy sources that don't pollute so much, and it makes the competition between them unfair. The big oil companies and the coal barons are no different than the grocery store dumping its garbage in the park or the factory spilling its waste into the river. They are not bearing the costs of their product, and they are cheating on their competitors. There is a right way to do it. They figured out how to do it the wrong way and have other people pick up the tab. When it comes to carbon pollution, economists can estimate the true cost of dirty energy. It is often called the ``social cost of carbon.'' The social cost of carbon includes the financial consequences of a change in climate, such as property loss, increased health care costs, and loss of productivity that come with heat waves, drought, heavy rains, sea-level rise, habitat shifts, ocean warming, and acidification. We recently learned from NOAA that their scientists predict that worldwide, the average summertime loss in labor capacity will double by 2050, as the climate warms and periods of extreme heat become more frequent and more intense, affecting labor-intensive outdoor work such as construction and farming. That is a social cost of carbon. Of course, certain costs can be hard to predict. How do you calculate the cost of an extinct species? What does it cost to leave to our children and grandchildren warmer, more acidic, less biodiverse oceans? These calculations may not always be perfect, but that doesn't make the costs any less real. For instance, in my home State of Rhode Island, the costs to our fishermen of these changes is very real. In the final tally, economists tell us that big carbon emitters are unloading a big cost onto the public and onto future generations. On average, estimates of the social cost of carbon are about $48 per ton of carbon dioxide--$48 per ton that these big businesses dodge and that we all pay for. Whatever the exact dollar amount, it is time for Congress to wake up and start discussing these very real costs. This is why I am working with several colleagues to establish a fee on carbon pollution. We hope to have a draft framework soon to start this discussion. The idea is simple: The big carbon polluters pay a fee to the American people to cover the cost of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans-- the costs they now push off onto the rest of us, giving them unfair advantage against their competitors. I am pleased to participate in an effort to determine how best to assess a carbon pollution fee, how to protect American manufacturers from overseas competition that is cheating, and how to protect middle- and low-income families. It has been recognized by Republicans and Democrats alike that a carbon pollution fee can reduce emissions and help make the market more efficient. Last month Senator Sanders and Senator Boxer introduced related legislation, and I commend them for their efforts. I also wish to commend Senator Boxer this week, as chairwoman on the Environment and Public Works Committee, for beginning a regular appearance on the floor to draw this Chamber's attention to the dangers of carbon pollution. I hope more colleagues will join us in this important discussion. It is economics 101, it is law 101, and it is fairness 101. We have had enough sleepwalking. We have had enough silence. We have been warned by our national defense and intelligence communities, we have been warned by the national academies, we have been warned by the Government Accountability Office, we have been warned by the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, and, of course, we are hearing from millions of concerned Americans. It is time for this Congress to wake up and to put a price on carbon pollution that matches the costs of carbon pollution. We won't get it done if we don't wake up to what is happening all around us. I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.