Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I rise today, along with my senior colleague Senator Reed, to mark the last day of Father Brian Shanley's tenure at Providence College, where he has served as president for 15 years. Father Shanley is the longest serving president in the history of Providence College and the only native Rhode Islander to have had the role. A graduate of Providence College himself, Father Shanley has led the Catholic liberal arts college--the country's only higher learning institution run by the Dominican Friars--through a decade and a half of change. He has greatly increased P.C.'s national profile and overseen major capital improvements to the campus, all while ensuring the school remains true to its principles and a good neighbor in the Elmhurst section of Providence. Father Shanley created a College of Business to expand the school's offerings beyond its signature liberal arts curriculum and a Center for Global Education to foster opportunities abroad for students. He has taken strides to increase diversity by investing in financial aid, transitioning to a test-optional admissions model, and recruiting students and faculty from different backgrounds. And, of course, P.C. has cultivated a national reputation for its stellar basketball and hockey programs with Father Shanley at the helm. I would like to add on a personal note how cordial and gracious Father Shanley has been in all my dealings with him and with Providence College in his tenure. It has been a true pleasure to work and interact with him. I wish Father Shanley the very best in his well-earned retirement. Go Friars!

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this week we consider a measure for permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and for our national parks. I would support this measure joyously if there were a similar program for America's coasts and bays and oceans. As it is, I support this measure but with a heavy and frustrated heart as, once again, the urgent needs of coastal communities go unaddressed. Put bluntly, the Land and Water Conservation Fund massively favors inland and upland States and projects, as indicated by the prevalence of advocates for it here on the floor from landlocked States. It fails to meet the needs of coastal communities. Over the past decade, for every dollar the fund sent to inland States, per capita, coastal States just got 40 cents. The imbalance against coasts gets worse if you factor in that there is greater coastal than inland economic activity, and the imbalance against coasts worsens further when you factor in that much of the Land and Water Conservation Fund's spending in coastal States is for upland, inland projects. Coasts and saltwater are not treated fairly. The upland freshwater imbalance is not justified, and we ought to make it right. Look at Rhode Island. People from around the Nation and around the globe visit our wonderful beaches and beautiful Narragansett Bay, and they drive a huge amount of our economic activity. In 2018, Rhode Island's Commerce Corporation reckons 25 million people visited our State, supporting $100 million in State and local tax revenue and over 86,000 jobs. In total, travelers to Rhode Island generated $6.8 billion in our economy. Our coast attracts that economic activity. It is a big deal for us. Rhode Island isn't alone. Over half of Americans live in a coastal county. Nearly 60 percent of the Nation's gross domestic product derives from coastal counties. According to the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association, ``more than twice as many people visited America's coasts as visit State and national parks combined; consequently 85 percent of all tourism related revenue in the U.S. is generated in coastal States where beaches are the leading attraction. Beach tourism supports 2.5 million jobs, $285 billion in direct revenue and . . . $45 billion in taxes annually.'' For all that, the Land and Water Conservation Fund gives 40 cents to coastal States for every dollar that it sends to inland States. That 40 cents is per capita, not adjusted for the great coastal economic activity and greater coastal tax revenue, and it doesn't adjust for upland uses in coastal States. Coasts are overlooked. I wish it were just the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Look at the inland-to-coastal disparity in the Army Corps' Flood and Coastal Storm Damage Reduction Fund. Over the past 10 years, the Corps has spent out of that fund, in various years, between 19 and 120 times more on inland work than it has spent on coastal work. Let me repeat that: $19 to 1 coastal dollar was our coast's best year and 120 inland dollars to 1 coastal dollar was our worst. Coastal communities are exposed to storms, to sea level rise, to shifting fisheries, to all manner of other conservation and infrastructure challenges, but across the decade, they received less than 3 pennies out of each dollar spent from an Army Corps program that has ``coastal'' in its name. This persistent and unfair imbalance against coasts ignores the massive and unique risks that coastal communities, coastal features, coastal infrastructure, and coastal economies now face. Look at the dire warnings of coastal property value crash. Freddie Mac, which is not an environmental group, has estimated that somewhere between $238 and $507 billion worth of coastal real estate will be gone, below sea level, by 2100. Freddie Mac warns about that: ``The economic losses and social disruption [of that] . . . are likely to be greater in coastal than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.'' Are we listening? Along the east coast, the First Street Foundation estimates property values already took a $15 billion hit due to sea level rise. The Providence Journal, using First Street and Columbia University data, reported that Rhode Island lost over $44 million in relative coastal property value from 2005 to 2017. First Street data show that Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island lost a combined $403 million during that stretch. Hundreds of millions of dollars are gone already, and the worst is yet to come. Look elsewhere along the coast. Do you want to know why Senator Cassidy is so motivated? His entire Louisiana coast is in a declared state of emergency. A recent headline from the Times Picayune said: `` `We're screwed': The only question is how quickly Louisiana wetlands will vanish, study says.'' That Tulane University study says sea level rise will flood 5,800 square miles of Louisiana coastal wetlands. The report concludes: ``This is a major threat not only to one of the ecologically richest environments of the United States but also for the 1.2 million inhabitants and associated economic assets that are surrounded by Mississippi Delta marshland.'' That is obvious, but are we listening to Senator Cassidy? In Florida, coastal communities already see flooded streets on sunny days. Researchers project over 2\1/2\ feet of sea level rise in the next 40 years affecting 120,000 Florida coastal properties in or near rising seas. Some studies say Miami Beach's iconic South Beach has 2 decades left. Communities in southern Florida are considering abandoning public infrastructure to the sea because of the sticker shock of protecting it. Fish, manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, and other sea creatures have washed up dead on Florida beaches due to toxic algae as the oceans there warm. The iconic Everglades are imperiled Who is listening? In North Carolina, the Outer Banks face erosion and sea level rise such that the National Parks Service warns that swathes of the area will be inundated. As the Outer Banks wash into the sea, there go millions of annual visitors, thousands of local jobs, and a local economy worth over $250 million. Over 5,500 homes in coastal Texas are projected to flood in the next decade. These homes are worth $1.2 billion. Coastal South Carolina, just since 2017, has been hit by four different billion-dollar hurricanes. The list of what our coasts are facing goes on and on, and the projected losses are enormous. Here is Moody's Investor Service's warning for coastal communities issuing bonds: The growing effects of climate change, including climbing global temperatures, and rising sea levels, are forecast to have an increasing economic impact on U.S. State and local issuers. This will be a growing negative credit factor for issuers without sufficient adaptation and mitigation strategies. I would like to ask my colleagues, if you are a small community on the coast, where are you going to go to get sufficient adaptation and mitigation strategies for Moody's? Where are we in helping those communities? Here is the Union of Concerned Scientists: ``By the end of the 21st century, nearly 2.5 million residential and commercial properties, collectively valued today at $1.07 trillion today, will be at risk of chronic flooding.'' Chronic flooding makes those properties uninsurable and unmortgageable, which is one of the reasons for Freddie Mac's warning about a coastal property value crash. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is not listening. Our coastal public lands and resources, like coastal private property, face enormous peril, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund virtually ignores that peril. That is why I am offering a commonsense, bipartisan amendment--not a spoiler amendment, not a partisan amendment, not a ``gotcha'' amendment, not a poison pill. It is a commonsense, bipartisan amendment. My amendment takes nothing away from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It leaves the Land and Water Conservation Fund and its upland bias intact. It separately provides coastal revenues dedicated from offshore wind and renewable energy development to support coastal States, coastal resiliency, coastal infrastructure, and coastal adaptation. Unless we do this, millions of dollars in offshore wind energy revenues will bypass coasts and go straight to the Federal Treasury, unlike offshore oil and gas energy revenues, which go in significant part both to Gulf Coast States and, ironically, to the predominantly upland and inland projects of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Don't get me wrong. I don't begrudge our landlocked colleagues their funding. I do begrudge them refusing me the opportunity to add something for coasts. There should be a coastal and saltwater program to balance the upland and freshwater bias of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Our landlocked colleagues are wrong to stop this amendment. It does them no harm. The situation along our coasts is dangerous and worsening. Let me repeat that. The situation along our coasts is dangerous and worsening. I am going to vote for this bill, but I will do so, as I said, with a heavy and frustrated heart. I will continue pushing as hard as I can for the day when we get parity for coastal communities because what we are doing here by refusing this amendment is both shortsighted and unfair. This is not my first rodeo on this subject. I have to tell you that I am sick to death of people telling me: You are right; we need to do something for coasts. And then, as soon as the Land and Water Conservation Fund passes, they are gone--``zippo,'' vanished. My environmental friends say: You are right, Sheldon. Just help us on this, and we will help you with coasts. And then you don't. My colleagues say: You are right, Sheldon. Just help us on this, and we will help you with coasts. And then you don't. And now, by making the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent, we are permanently baking in its inland and its upland bias, and there is nothing added for coasts, and everyone is saying: Yes, you are right, Sheldon, but just help us on this, and we will help you with coasts. Well, my friends, bitter experience tells me otherwise. But you will have my vote, and you will have my help to protect your inland and fresh water resources, as we should, and we from coasts and saltwater States will, again, have to await our day. Today is not our day in coastal States. Today is not our day, but maybe one day--and one day soon, I pray--all this talk will finally turn into action for our coasts. A sense of decency and a sense of urgency would both seem to demand that. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today to tell the hopeful story of the Boustany family, Lebanese immigrants who arrived in Providence, RI, 100 years ago next month. The family's history exemplifies the extraordinary contributions that generations of immigrants have made to American life. The Boustany family's journey began in Deir al-Qamar, Lebanon, a village southeast of Beirut. Life in Lebanon was difficult in those days. The people of Deir al-Qamar had seen it all: war, famine, pandemics, and even swarms of locusts. Michel and Yahout Boustany lost eight children to difficulties in childbirth and illnesses, and a ninth was tragically kidnapped. The surviving members of the grief-stricken family resolved to leave their native country to start a new life in a land of opportunity. Getting to America wouldn't be without heartbreaking setbacks. The departure was delayed 6 long years due to World War I. Sadly, Michel passed away unexpectedly not long before the family was to make the voyage. Yahout, and two of her sons, Francis, age 11, and Frem, age 17, resolved to carry on with the plan to emigrate. The Boustany family left for the first leg of the journey from Beirut on a Fabre Line steamship bound for Marseille, France. In Marseille, they boarded Fabre Lines' SS Providence on its maiden voyage to Providence, RI. The family landed at the Port of Providence in June 1920. According to an article printed the following month in Providence Magazine, the SS Providence was welcomed by Rhode Islanders with great fanfare, as it was the largest steamship that had ever traveled up Narragansett Bay. From there, the family boarded a train to Lafayette, LA, where Yahout's two oldest children had already settled. The Boustany family thrived in America. The children grew up, started families, and became successful entrepreneurs and respected leaders in their community. The first generations passed along their Catholic faith and an exceptional work ethic to their children and grandchildren who would go on to find success of their own in many pursuits. Members of the family have become civic leaders, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and so on. Among them is Vicki Kennedy, an accomplished lawyer and the widow of a giant of the Senate, Ted Kennedy. Vicki is a dear friend to many of us in this Chamber. Dr. Charles Boustany, a retired heart surgeon and former Congressman from Louisiana, is also one of the family. June 17, 2020 marks 100 years to the day members of the Boustany family first set foot in Providence. Prior to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, their descendants had been planning to travel to Rhode Island to celebrate the centennial of their family's beginning in America. Now, they are considering other ways to mark the anniversary remotely as a family. The Boustany family represents the very best of us: hardworking, generous, and community-minded. I wish them well as they celebrate this joyful occasion.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the warnings are serious. They come from some of our foremost financial experts. So let's walk through what we have in store if we keep sleepwalking through the climate crisis. As I said, warning No. 1: coastal property value crash. Freddie Mac, not an environmental organization but a giant mortgage company, warned that rising sea levels will prompt a crash in coastal property values that will be worse than the housing crash that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. First Street Foundation found that rising seas have already caused $16 billion in lost property values in coastal homes from Maine to Texas. Moody's, the bond rating agency, warned that climate risk will trigger downgrades in coastal communities' bond ratings. BlackRock--the biggest asset manager in the world--estimated that, by the end of the century, climate change will cause coastal communities annual losses that will average up to 15 percent of local GDP with the hardest hit communities, obviously, hit far worse. Hello, Florida. Warning No. 2: a carbon asset bubble crash. The Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Bank of Canada, and the European Central Bank--all backed by top-tier, peer-reviewed economic papers--all warn that fossil fuel assets are dramatically overvalued on fossil fuel companies' books, that these assets are actually uneconomic and will become stranded, and that the resulting ``carbon asset bubble'' crash will swamp the world economy. How bad is it? It is called systemic financial risk. Systemic financial risk is finance speak for risk to the entire economic system. Do you remember the 2008 financial crisis? Bad home mortgages blew up more than mortgage companies; they caused a brutal economic recession, and millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, and their retirement savings. We are still recovering from that collapse. That is a systemic financial crisis, and the warnings are that this one will be worse. In my recent letter, I looked at the more recent warnings. Here is the Bank for International Settlements' recent Green Swan report. The title is a reference to the metaphor of a black swan--an unpredictable event with calamitous consequences for the economy. Below is what my letter to the Banking Committee quoted from this Green Swan report. Page No. 1 warns: ``[c]limate change could . . . be the cause of the next systemic financial crisis.'' From page No. 65: ``Central banks, regulators and supervisors have increasingly recognized that climate change is a source of major systemic financial risks,'' and ``climate catastrophes are even more serious than most systemic financial crises.'' Again, from page No. 1: ``Exceeding climate tipping points could lead to catastrophic and irreversible impacts that would make quantifying financial damages impossible.'' Let's slow down and do that one again: ``Exceeding climate tipping points could lead to catastrophic and irreversible impacts that would make quantifying financial damages impossible.'' As a little aside here, it is an odd coincidence that the report's language of ``catastrophic and irreversible'' mirrors President Trump's warning in a New York Times ad in 2009 that the consequences of climate change would be catastrophic and irreversible--the same words, ``catastrophic and irreversible.'' This was said by Trump in 2009 and was written in the Bank for International Settlements' Green Swan report just 2 months ago. Back to the Green Swan report, on page No. 3: ``The complex chain reactions and cascad[ing] effects associated with both physical and transition risks could generate fundamentally unpredictable environmental, geopolitical, social and economic dynamics.'' Fundamentally unpredictable economic dynamics? Fundamentally unpredictable social dynamics? Again, on page No. 1: ``climate-related risks will remain largely unhedgeable as long as system-wide action is not undertaken.'' Back to page No. 3 again: Like the black swans from which the report derives its title, the ``physical and transition risks are characterised by deep uncertainty and nonlinearity, their chances of occurrence are not reflected in past data, and the possibility of extreme values cannot be ruled out''--the possibility of extreme values. Another big warning that I quoted in my letter to the Banking Committee came from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. In his open letter to CEOs, Fink echoes the Green Swan warning, writing: ``[c]limate change has become a defining factor in companies' long-term prospects.'' As a result, ``we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance,'' one that is ``compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.'' Folks, BlackRock is the biggest asset manager in the world. When its CEO speaks of a fundamental reshaping of modern finance and a shaking of its core assumptions, that is serious stuff. In my letter, I cite other recent warnings of this systemic financial risk, all since I distributed the binder, many just this year. Here are a few instances. In December, the Bank of England proposed climate stress tests for corporations under its regulatory supervision. We started bank financial stress tests after the 2008 mortgage crisis, and central banks are starting to do the same for the climate crisis. In January, massive management consultant McKinsey--again, not a green group but, presumably, a pretty smart group--warned that climate change could ``make long-duration borrowing unavailable, impact insurance cost and availability, and reduce terminal values.'' Climate change could ``trigger capital reallocation and asset repricing,'' which is finance speak for the fundamental upheaval of our economy. January: The World Economic Forum puts out its Global Risks Report that identifies the five most likely global risks facing the world over the next 10 years. Five for five, every single one of them was climate related--all five. Finally, from the Stanford business school's Corporations and Society Initiative is a report that warns ``the financial risks from climate change are systemic''--there is that word again, ``systemic''--that these risks are ``singular in nature,'' like the green swan-black swan warning, and that ``[g]lobal economic losses from climate change could reach $23 trillion--three or four times the scale of the 2008 Financial Crisis.'' Pause for a moment, and recall the agony of the 2008 financial crisis. Losses in the stock market wiped out nearly $8 trillion. Housing values cratered; retirement savings vanished; and Americans lost jobs, lost homes, and lost nearly $10 trillion in wealth. Global economic growth went negative. We all went home to States where we witnessed extraordinary human suffering. Three or four times that? The Stanford report is telling us that we are courting financial peril-- systemic risk--the likes of which we cannot imagine. Climate change is a natural force. It has blown carbon dioxide levels way outside what humankind has ever experienced. It is depositing the equivalent of four Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs of excess heat per second into our oceans--per second--and it is an economic bomb positioned beneath our economy, its detonator ticking down steadily. We have a chance to defuse the bomb. With all of these warnings that I have described in this binder and that I have described in my letter to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs comes a clear description of the solution: Government must act. Here are the solutions that I quote in my letter to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. On page No. 66 of Green Swan: End ``[t]he procrastination that has been the dominant modus operandi of many governments for quite a while.'' By the way, here, it really hasn't been procrastination; it has been obstruction. It has been obstruction by the fossil fuel industry, its money, and its minions. Clearly, we haven't done anything serious about it, so that has to end. On page No. 2 of the Green Swan: ``The most obvious ones are the need for carbon pricing and for systematic disclosure of climate-related risks by the private sector.'' It is, indeed, obvious to people in the financial sector. It is only not obvious to us because fossil fuel money swirls all around this place, trying to convince us that the obvious isn't true. Yet BlackRock CEO Fink's letter echoes that call for carbon pricing. He says, ``carbon pricing [is] essential to combating climate change.'' So we have the warnings, and we have the solutions. We have everything except the will to act. The reason we don't have the will to act is because we have dark money, political predators controlling our behavior in ways that are deeply, deeply inappropriate. Assume that these warnings are correct. When this blows, Senators who didn't help us act will have to come up with a better excuse than: Well, we weren't warned--because we were warned. We have been warned over and over and over again. We have been warned by experts. We have been warned by major financial institutions. We have been warned by the custodians of our economy, the central banks. Colleagues, you have the warnings in your inbox. When this blows up, when coastal property values crash, or when the carbon bubble bursts, or worse, when both happen--nothing says both can't happen--it is not going to look good to say: Yes, I was warned, but, you see, my political party is funded by the fossil fuel industry so naturally I did nothing. That is how you lose the privilege of representing people. It was a bit of a tempest in a teapot. It happened in Rhode Island 28 years ago, but I have lived through this. We had a financial crisis in Rhode Island in 1991. I was working for the Governor, who came in to have to clean up that horrible mess, and I was there for the following election after the financial crisis hit. The legislators who slept through the warnings lost their jobs in a tidal wave of popular outrage. In the subsequent election, the 1992 election, more than one-third of Rhode Island's General Assembly was either voted out or didn't even bother running again. There was a movie, when I went to law school, about the Harvard Law School. I think it was called ``One L.'' They brought in the freshman class of the One L class, and the crotchety old dean looked at them all and said: A third of you are going to be gone before you graduate because this is so demanding. Look to your right. Look to your left. One of you will not be here at graduation. When this thing blows, that is going to be a ``Look to your left. Look to your right. One of you won't be here afterwards'' moment here in the U.S. Senate. You think people are mad now, wait until this hits. Wait until these warnings come true, and they know you were warned. Wait for that. It is time to wake up. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today for ``Time to Wake Up'' speech No. 258 and my increasingly battered chart here to urge colleagues in the Senate to wake up and see the looming danger we face from climate change. Just look at the recent climate effects in our Southern Hemisphere. The most devastating wildfires anyone can remember have ripped across Australia, burned more than a fifth of Australia's forests, destroying thousands of homes, killing an estimated 1 billion animals, and making a day of breathing air in Sydney like smoking 37 cigarettes. In the ocean off Australia, there are new warnings that the Great Barrier Reef--a Wonder of the World visible from space--is doomed. The warmest temperatures ever were recorded in Antarctica--a 70- degree day when the average February temperature would be 33 degrees. Here is the Thwaites Glacier. Here on Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, scientists drilled through 2,000 feet of ice, down to the ocean water below, and discovered water 2 degrees above freezing. With 70 degrees above and 2 degrees above, it is a melting sandwich. Losing that glacier would trigger almost 3 feet of sea level rise, and that glacier is going. Sea level rise brings me to the crash warnings that are the subject of this speech, crash warnings that are flashing throughout the economy. Sea level rise connects to these crash warnings because some of these crash warnings revolve around sea level rise in its crashing coastal property values. Other warnings are of a crash in what economists call the carbon bubble. I have a binder of these warnings that I put together, and I sent this binder to every Member of the Senate in February of 2019. Every Senator has all of the warnings that are compiled in that binder. I have a letter, too, that follows up on the warnings in that binder-- just about the warnings that have emerged since February of 2019--in fact, mostly just from this year. I sent this letter to all of the members of the Senate Banking Committee because the economic crashes that are warned of are within the Senate Banking Committee's jurisdiction, and that committee has the responsibility to be the distant early warning system for the rest of us in the Senate about these warnings. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, dated February 6, 2020.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, Shakespeare's great play ``Hamlet'' began with the phrase: Something is rotten in Denmark. Well, something is rotten in Congress, and what is rotten in Congress is dark money. Citizens United--perhaps one of the most foolish decisions ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court--opened unlimited spending into our politics, which benefits whom? It benefits those who have unlimited money to spend and a motive to spend it in politics. That is not a group of people whose voices were not being heard here already. That is the favored group. But Citizens United opened the door for them to spend unlimited money, and then the Supreme Court failed to police its own decision. Its own decision said this unlimited spending was going to be independent of candidates and transparent to the public. Well, they are 0 for 2. It has been a decade, and they have never even tried to enforce the basic predicates of their decision. It is a shameful, shameful effort by the Court. Now, as a result, we have throughout our politics this dark money tsunami of slime. How bad is it? These groups have spent $4.5 billion since Citizens United--$4.5 billion trying to influence Congress. Do you think they were doing that in the public interest? Of course not. Do you wonder why bills die here in the legislative graveyard of the Senate? Take a guess. Outside groups--these phony-baloney front groups for these big special interests--are now outspending candidates in races. In fact, in the decade after Citizens United, outside groups outspent candidates in 126 different congressional races. And it is a very small group of people behind it. The top 10 donor households gave a combined $1.1 billion to these front groups. Do you think they were looking out for the public interests? Dream on. Who are the big spenders of this dark money? National Rifle Association; Americans for Prosperity, which is the Koch brothers front group; Crossroads GPS, which is Karl Rove's front group; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the champions of climate denial and obstruction. Do you want to know why we are not getting things done around here? It is because billions of dollars are being spent secretly by special interests to shut things down, and it is creeping now even into the courts. The Federalist Society, which is picking our judges, is at the center of a $250 million dark money network. A group that ran the campaigns against Garland and for Gorsuch and then afterward for Kavanaugh got an individual $17 million donation for each of those two campaigns. It is actually probably the same donor, which means somebody out there anonymously gave $35 million to determine the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, and we don't know who that is. We don't know what business they have before the Court. As I said, Hamlet begins with ``something is rotten in . . . Denmark.'' Something is rotten in Congress, and the rot is creeping over to the Supreme Court, and it is dark money, and it is the patriotic and decent thing to do to extirpate this menace. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here today for the 267th time to call this Chamber to wake up to the threat of climate change. My chart here is getting a little dog-eared with use. Let me dive right in with a report from over 30 years ago that was presented to a major conference here in Washington, DC. On the very first page of this report it says: Increases in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other key gases . . . that are opaque to portions of the infrared spectrum result in the ``greenhouse effect'' or global warming. When short wavelength infrared radiation from the sun warms the earth's surface, and this heat is later radiated from the earth, some gases in the atmosphere are not transparent to the longer wavelength re- radiation, the heat does not escape, and the atmosphere becomes warmer, much as does the interior of a greenhouse. That is a flawless description of climate change. I wonder who wrote it. Well, let me continue. After some hedging about the state of the science and the uncertainty surrounding how much climate change could be attributed to humans at that point in time, this same report delves into the expected effects of climate change on our planet. It reads: There is qualitative agreement among prognosticators that sea levels will rise, wetlands will flood, salt water will infuse fresh water supplies, and there will be changes in the distribution of tree and crop species and agricultural productivity. Wow. That is really accurate. That is all the stuff we are actually seeing happen right now. Gosh, I wonder who wrote that. Let's continue on through the report. A significant rise in sea levels will flood now habitable land in some countries. . . . Developed countries may be able to protect their cities, at least for some years, by building levees and dikes at a considerable cost to avoid major displacements of people and their economic bases. We are also seeing that. Impressive--whoever wrote this report really got this quite accurately 30 years ago. Let me go on with the report: These same actions will affect wetlands and it may not be possible to protect both coastal and wetland areas. Once you have built your dike, it pushes water out into wetland areas. The report says: Flooding will intrude into water supplies, such as coastal cities (e.g. Miami and New Orleans) . . . . Wow. Who wrote this? This is good. It continues: Changes in temperature patterns will affect natural ecosystems by altering the distributions of species, and affecting forestry and silviculture. Under various scenarios, commonly harvested species will move north and try to grow in different soil types. Ranges of particular species are likely to change because trees in the southern part of the present range may die off much more quickly than they can propagate further north . . . . This is all stuff we are seeing now--all predicted 30 years ago in this report. Wow. I wonder who wrote it. I will continue quoting the report: Similarly, crop lands will change. In present farm areas, there will be greater reliance on irrigation. The stress will depend on changes in precipitation patterns, which is now difficult (at best) to predict. Grain production will move north and productivity may fall because of differing soil types. Global warming could expand the northern range of livestock disease and pests . . . . Still quoting from this report: Global warming will affect snowfall patterns, hence melt, and affect water supplies. Most of California's water supplies are from snow melt and if snow is reduced to rain, or melts quickly during the winter, water supplies in the summer will be less than now. Wow. Thirty years ago they predicted all of that. That is really impressive. Fast forward to today, and that is exactly what we are seeing. All of it is underway already. Sea level rise is already happening. The tide gauge in Naval Station Newport, in my home State of Rhode Island, shows over 10 inches of sea level rise over the last century. Temperatures are up globally, with some areas measuring increases well above 2 degrees Celsius. Wildlife and plants are indeed shifting away from the equator, like the maple trees whose range is creeping out of the United States toward Canada. And, of course, we have seen water tables continue to drop as temperatures rise and snowpack dwindles. Wow. This report was so accurate. Who wrote it? Well, let's look for a minute at the prescriptions that the report lays out. What should we do about this problem it describes so accurately? Those prescriptions are pretty good for 30 years ago, too. Here is what its authors reckon typical, sensible governments would do in response to climate change: (1) Reduce the emissions of CO2 by reducing the use or mix of fossil fuels; (2) Reduce the emissions of potential pollutants; (3) Improve energy efficiency; (4) Ban or restrict the manufacture of certain chemicals; and (5) Seek to affect the natural emissions of key chemical compounds. Wow. Indeed, governments around the world have adopted these policies. There are dozens of carbon pricing regimes in place, including in some of our biggest global competitors, like the program China is rolling out this year. There are comprehensive energy efficiency programs and bans on climate-damaging chemicals like HFCs and global efforts to harness natural processes like growing trees to sequester carbon. That is really good prescription, whoever wrote it. This rigorous analysis was so good that its authors eagerly thrust it into the hands of political leaders here in the United States. Not only did the authors present it to the Symposium on Industrial Development and Climate Change in May 1989, but they submitted it to the U.S. House of Representatives at a hearing on the same day. In the hearing, the authors condemned the House committee on climate-related legislation and expressed support for ``coordinat[ing] federal research and national global climate change policy efforts.'' So who was it? Who was this sensible, forward-thinking group that lauded a smart bill 30 years ago that was designed to prepare us for climate change? Who was it over 30 years ago who presented all of these sound findings and recommendations to international business leaders and to Members of Congress? Who was it? Hold your breath. It was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce--the biggest, most powerful trade group in Washington and one of the biggest obstructors of climate action in Washington today, according to the nonpartisan watchdog Influence Map. Here is a chart showing the big corporate players in Washington on climate. The good guys are over here on the green side, and the bad guys are over here on the red side. The worst is that climate miscreant, Marathon Petroleum, that is busy messing around with electronic vehicle taxes and messing around with vehicle fuel efficiency standards. Yet, right here, lined up with Phillips 66, the Southern Company, and Marathon Petroleum, is--boom--the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is way over on the far side of climate obstruction and denial. As Influence Map's Dylan Tanner testified last fall, ``The U.S. Chamber of Commerce . . . is likely the most authoritative voice of American business,'' and it has been one of the most ardent opponents of climate action. It is just gross. The chamber knew about this problem early on. It took its own sound climate report to business leaders and to the U.S. Congress in the 1980s. It described then what we are seeing now. It described then what it has denied since then. It made recommendations that we are still pushing for now. It was poised back then, in the 1980s, to be a part of the solution to climate change--to get onto this problem early before it metastasized into the climate crisis we experience today. Instead, here is what the chamber did: It opposed one comprehensive climate bill after another in Congress. It opposed them all--the bipartisan cap and trade bill in 2005, the Energy Policy Act. The chamber sent out a Key Vote Alert signal that whoever voted in favor of the bill could face an onslaught of political attacks in the next election. That is another feature of the chamber's climate obstruction. It runs TV ads against candidates who might do something about the climate. Here are some hot moments from some of its climate attack ads: If we were to do anything about climate change, obviously, you would be freezing in your bed, wearing your coat while in a sleeping bag with your covers. Clearly, you would have to cook your breakfast over candles, in a tin can, and you would have to walk to work. That is its crooked, political electioneering image of what doing something about climate change would mean for Americans. There is its logo, proudly, on that whole pack of lies. In 2007, the chamber ran political TV ads against climate legislation, making all of those threats: People would be prevented from heating their homes. People wouldn't be able to drive to work. People would cook over candles. Then, in 2009, the chamber led the charge against the Waxman-Markey bill. The chamber tanked Waxman-Markey, and since then, the Republicans in Congress have refused to hold hearings on, to mark up, to debate, or to vote on any legislation that proposes a policy framework for economy-wide reductions in carbon pollution. We have a lost decade, in significant respects, thanks to the misbehavior of the chamber of commerce--the largest, most powerful lobbying force in our country. The chamber doesn't just try to beat climate action in Congress; the chamber also has fought climate action in the courts, and it has fought climate action in the agencies of the executive branch. Here are some lowlights of chamber mischief: In 2010, the chamber sued the EPA and sought to overturn the finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. Disabling the endangerment finding would cripple the EPA's ability to regulate carbon under the Clean Air Act. When the courts rejected the chamber's lawsuit, the chamber became central command for corporate lawyers, coal lobbyists, and Republican political strategists who devised the legal schemes to fight climate regulations. This produced another chamber lawsuit to block the Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon pollution from powerplants. Of course, once President Trump took office, the chamber switched from defense and obstruction to offense and began attacking Obama administration rules that limited carbon pollution. The chamber even funded the phony report that President Trump used as his justification for leaving the Paris accord. That is the contribution to this of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It authored 30 years ago the report that I read from. It made the recommendations 30 years ago about fixing this problem. Then it turned into this climate obstruction, political monster. Worst of all, the chamber has been fighting science itself. It actually proposed putting the evidence of climate change on trial in what its own officials branded as the ``Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century.'' The chamber said the trial ``would be evolution versus creationism.'' Of course, the chamber has been the 800-pound gorilla in elections that every Member of Congress and candidate for Congress knows all too well. The 2010 Citizens United decision allowed what we call outside groups, anonymous groups, to spend unlimited sums on electioneering activities. In the wake of that decision, the chamber has funneled, roughly, $150 million into congressional races--$150 million. This makes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce the largest spender of undisclosed donations on congressional races--the largest spender of what we call dark money on congressional races. If you dare cross the chamber or don't subscribe to its climate denial-climate obstruction point of view, you risk its running an ad against you like this ad, which was run against a U.S. Senate candidate in Pennsylvania in 2016. This is toward the end of the ad, and the theory of the ad is that the candidate is so determined to tax energy that she is going to tax the energy of these women's children who are running around on a playground. Here are two moms on a playground who are watching their children run around, and the setup is: Oh, wow. How energetic Johnny and Billy are. Oh, but don't you know? The Senate campaign is going to tax their energy. ``Run, Jimmy. Run'' is the punch line. Classy. So what gives? How did the chamber go from being the sensible climate realist to the hardened climate obstructor? The answer is pretty simple--fossil fuel money. As Influence Map's Dylan Tanner told us at our hearing, big trade groups like the chamber tend to adopt the lowest common denominator positions on climate of their most oppositional members. For the chamber, that lowest common denominator is Big Oil and other fossil fuel giants. Fossil fuel uses the chamber as its tool to defend--at all costs-- what the International Monetary Fund estimates as being a $650 billion subsidy in the United States. That was the number estimated by the IMF for 2015--a $650 billion subsidy to fossil fuel for getting away with what economists call negative externalities--shoving their costs on other people. If you believe in market economics, those negative externalities should be baked into the cost of the product, but they don't want that. They want the public to bear the cost so they can sell their products cheaper. That is a subsidy, and it is a $650 billion subsidy every year. So giving the chamber, let's say, $150 million to spend is chump change against $650 billion. That is exactly what the chamber does. It lets itself be used by fossil fuel interests to deliver this message. What about the rest of the chamber's members? Not everybody in the chamber is a fossil fuel company. Big tech, what about you guys? You have companies in your ranks who claim to care a lot about the climate. Google, for instance, has the company motto: ``Don't Be Evil.'' Google warns its investors that climate change threatens its operations, that its ``systems are vulnerable to damage or interruption from natural disasters [and] the effects of climate change (such as sea-level rise, drought, flooding, wildfires, and increased storm severity).'' Google also tells investors that ``[c]limate change is one of the most significant global challenges of our time'' and that it has a goal to reach 100-percent renewable energy for its operations. Google even signed the Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles and the American Business Act on Climate Pledge. Yet Google also funds the chamber's anti-climate crusade. I don't know about my colleagues, but Google does not come to my office and say: Hey, you need to do something good on climate. Google has a million issues it lobbies us on, but they are not on climate change. On climate change, it supports the chamber of commerce, and the chamber of commerce is our adversary. Look at the big food and beverage companies. They have crops--a supply chain of grain and fruit and vegetables. They have crops that the chamber's report of 30 years ago told us would be affected by climate change. Those crops are the bread and butter--the supply chain--of these big food and beverage companies. Where are they? Many food and beverage companies say they understand the threat of climate change. Pepsi signed the Ceres BICEP Climate Declaration and the Prince of Wales's Corporate Leaders Group Trillion Tonne Communique. Those were both important commitments to climate action. There is Pepsi's rival, Coca-Cola. Coke says it plans to reduce CO2 emissions by 25 percent and that to do so will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain and make comprehensive carbon footprint reductions across its manufacturing processes, packaging formats, delivery fleet, refrigeration equipment, and ingredient sourcing. Yet both Coke and Pepsi fund the chamber of commerce's denial and obstruction operation, and they fund the American Beverage Association--their little beverage trade association--which, in turn, runs more money to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. What is the net result here in Congress of all of that? You have two companies that actively reduce their carbon emissions and enthusiastically, publicly, support good climate policy, but in Congress, through their funding of the chamber, they take the position of opposing climate action here in Washington--the place where it really, really counts. Decades ago, one of most powerful political forces in Washington, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, knew climate change was coming. It wrote that report. It described how global warming happened. It described what the consequences were going to be in the oceans, in the agricultural sector, across our country. It made regulations as to how to head it off. It understood the risks. It knew. It knew what we needed to do to head off the worst consequences and, even back then, supported legislation to help us prepare. Then, in came the fossil fuel industry. The chamber will not tell us how they are funded. I could tell you right now how this all worked except that the chamber will not disclose how it is funded. But it sure looks as though floods of fossil fuel money came in and bought the chamber, caused it to change its position on the facts of climate change, caused it to change its position on the consequences of climate change, caused it to change its position on what we needed to do to head off climate change. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce let itself be bought by the fossil fuel industry. And thanks to the greed of that one-member industry, the fossil fuel folks, and thanks to the indifference of the others--thanks to the indifference of the tech sector, the indifference of the ag sector--we still have yet to act, 30 years later. At the close of the chamber's report is a really telling quote from the satirical comic strip ``Pogo.'' ``Pogo,'' in a legendary cartoon from when I was about as young as the pages here, says: We have met the enemy, and it is us. The chamber quotes that at the end of its report: ``We have met the enemy, and it is us.'' Well, that was an observation about what was going wrong with the planet and how it was our emissions that were causing it. We have met the enemy; we see this danger; we understand it; and we are the cause of it. It is us. But at the same time, it is also like a preconfession by the chamber: ``We have met the enemy, and it is us.'' For 30 years, the chamber has been the enemy. Since Citizens United, it has been an implacable enemy. They have been wrong on climate. They knew it 30 years ago; they know it now. We need to fix this, and we need corporate America to extract itself from the thrall of the evildoers in its midst, and we need to solve, at last, this problem. So time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I come to again raise an alarm about the massive carbon pollution that we are dumping into our natural world and to tell the stories of two ocean creatures that are suffering from that pollution. Now, we may mock or ignore these creatures--these lesser creatures so far down the food chain from us--but we are fools to ignore the message of what is happening to them. Matthew 25:41 admonishes, ``as you did it to one of the least of these . . . you did it to me.'' So we ought not mock and ignore these lesser species because they also have a lesson for us, a warning. If we keep up what we are doing to them, it will soon enough be we who suffer. As Pope Francis warned: Slap Mother Nature, and she will slap you back. Let's start, before we get to the two species, with an overview. First, it is not just these two species. Science writer Elizabeth Kolbert has warned that we have entered a sixth great extinction--the first and only great extinction in humans' time on the planet--and that this great extinction is driven by manmade pollution and climate change. Scientists from around the globe have just issued one of the most comprehensive reports ever on Earth's biodiversity, and the head of that panel, Sir Robert Watson, summarized its findings this way. I quote him here: The overwhelming evidence . . . presents an ominous picture. The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide. The legendary David Attenborough warns that we face what he calls ``irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies.'' He says: ``It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies.'' In all of this, we need to remember our oceans. Oceans are warming and acidifying and literally suffocating ocean species as oxygen dead zones expand. Earth's oceans warm at the rate of multiple Hiroshima explosions' worth of heat per second--per second. They acidify at the fastest rate in at least 50 million years. They are also fouled with our plastic garbage and polluted by runoff from farming and stormwater. Our oceans' warnings are loud and clear and measurable. They are chronicled by fishermen and sailors and measured with thermometers, tide gauges, and simple pH tests that measure acidification. It is this acidification that takes me to these two species. The oceans are absorbing around 30 percent of our excess carbon dioxide emissions, and they do that in a chemical interaction that takes up the CO2 but acidifies the seawater. Don't pretend there is any dispute about this. Acidification is a chemical phenomenon. You can demonstrate it in a middle school science lab. You can demonstrate it with your breath, an aquarium bubbler, a glass of water, and a pH strip. In fact, I have done so right at this desk. Here is the first species pictured--the tiny pteropod. It is an oceanic snail about the size of a small pea. It is known as the sea butterfly because it has adapted two butterflylike wings that can propel it around in the ocean. Acidifying waters make it harder for pteropods and a lot of other shelled creatures to grow their shells and develop from juveniles to adults. Researchers in the Pacific Northwest have reported what they called ``severe shell damage'' on more than half of the pteropods they collected from Central California to the Canadian border. These images show the pteropod's shell when the creature's underwater environment becomes more acidic--not good for pteropods. Maintaining their shells against that acidity requires energy--energy that would otherwise go into growth or reproduction. So acidification makes it harder for species, such as the pteropods and other shell creatures at the base of the oceanic food chain, to survive. Who cares? Who cares about the lowly, humble pteropod? Who cares about some stupid ocean snail? Well, for one, salmon do. Half the diet of some salmon species in the Pacific is pteropods. Salmon fisheries support coastal jobs and economies across our Pacific Northwest. Offshore fishing in the United States is a multibillion dollar industry connected to hundreds of thousands of livelihoods. If you care about our fisheries industry, you should care about the humble pteropod. An entire food chain stands on its tiny back, and we are in that food chain. Move up the food chain a little, and you find another creature facing peril from acidification--the Dungeness crab. You see this crustacean on ice in your local fish market. It is an important commercial catch along our west coast. In 2014, the last year the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission did a comprehensive report, the Dungeness catch was worth $170 million. It is Oregon's most valuable fishery, and it is important also for Washington State and for California, where annual landings run between $40 and $95 million. Up north, in 2017, Alaska's commercial landings of Dungeness crabs totaled more than 2.1 million pounds. Last month, marine scientists reported that acidified oceans are dissolving the delicate shells of Dungeness crab larvae. The acidic environment is not just damaging the shells but also damaging the larvae's mechanoreceptors, the hairlike sensory organs that crabs use to hear and feel and make their way around the sea. The damage to the crabs is bad news, but worse is that we are seeing it now. Scientists thought hardy Dungeness crabs wouldn't be affected by acidification for decades. Richard Feely, senior NOAA scientist and coauthor of the study, reports that these ``dissolution impacts to the crab larvae . . . were not expected to occur until much later in this century.'' The sentinel implications for the entire ecosystem are grave. If the Dungeness are feeling the effects of ocean acidification now, what other creatures are feeling those effects too? Another lead author of this study said: ``If the crabs are affected already, we really need to make sure we start to pay much more attention to various components of the food chain before it is too late.'' These concerns about the Dungeness crab and its happening too soon echo what scientists actually said of early findings about the pteropod. Oceanographer William Peterson, who is the coauthor of an early study on the pteropod, said: ``We did not expect to see pteropods being affected to this extent in our coastal region for several decades.'' So we are way ahead of schedule in terms of what scientists have predicted for ocean acidification outcomes for these foundational creatures in our ocean ecosystem. Together, the pteropod and the Dungeness crab send a common message, one echoed by a Rhode Island fishing boat captain who told me: ``Sheldon, things are getting weird out there.'' And they are getting weird faster than expected. The rapid ocean acidification that we are measuring now and that we are causing now with further carbon pollution is nearly unprecedented in the geological record. Scientists look back to try to find historical analogs for what is happening. The closest historical analogs scientists can find for what they are seeing now in the oceans go back before humankind. There is no analog in human time. You have to go back before humans existed, back into the prehistoric record, back to the prehistoric great extinctions, back when marine species were wiped out and ocean ecosystems took millions of years to recover. That is the historical analog that best matches our current direction. In his encyclical ``Laudato Si,'' Pope Francis, who is a trained scientist himself, reflected on what he called ``the mysterious network of relations between things'' in life. In that mysterious network of relations between things, the pteropod and the crab larva give their lives to transmit food energy from the microscopic plants they eat, which would be of no use to us, up to the fish that consume the pteropod and larva--fish, which we, in turn, consume--all in that great mysterious network of relations between things. What is happening to these two species is more than just an event. It is a signal. It is a signal of a looming global ecological catastrophe. Lesser species, species that we may mock or ignore, can sometimes be sentinels for humans, like the legendary canaries taken down into coal mines. When the sentinels start to die, it is wise to pay attention. What happens when, in our arrogance and pride, we refuse to heed the warnings from creatures so humble as the pteropods or crab larvae? Well, remember why Jesus was so angry with the Pharisees. What was their sin? Their arrogance and their pride blinded them to the truth. The Senate, this supposedly greatest deliberative body, has blinded itself to the devastation fossil fuels are unleashing on our Earth's mysterious network. We careen recklessly into the next great extinction. Pope Francis says: Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right. Indeed, we have no such right. So I come here today to challenge us to see the damage we have done-- the damage we are doing now, today, to this mysterious network of life, this mysterious God-given network of life that supports us. I challenge us also to turn away from dark forces of corruption and greed-- specifically, the fossil fuel industry forces that have deliberately, on purpose, crippled our ability in Congress to stop their pollution. I close by challenging us to heed the message of the humble creatures sharing this planet with us--the least of us, who share God's creation. They suffer at our hands, and in their suffering they send us a message, a warning, that we would do well to hear. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Would the Senator accept a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, just for the reference of everyone, I believe the majority leader is going to come in for his closing script. When he does, that will end whatever little colloquy we will have had here, and I will then do my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech. In the time that it takes the majority leader to get here, I am interested in hearing the Senator from Maryland say that the White House--our White House--the President of the United States--is a massive roadblock to protecting the integrity of our upcoming election from foreign interference. How does that make sense? Why would it be an American President who doesn't want to defend the integrity of an American election from foreign interference?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes. In fact, even the Mueller report showed that there was considerable Russian activity and support in the election that made Donald Trump our President. They couldn't prove an ongoing conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian election interference effort, but they confirmed that there was a Russian election interference effort. If I recall correctly, they confirmed that the Trump campaign was witting of it, just not conspiring with it, just not directly engaged with it. So I don't know. Perhaps it is just the hope that, perhaps, he will get elected again with foreign interference and that he doesn't want to close off that option, but it is a little bit odd for the President of the United States not to take the protecting of the security of the American election more seriously.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. He did say it very strongly.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate the concern of the Senator from Maryland on this, and I wish him success with his legislation.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is February 12, and I am here to remark on an anniversary and tell a story. It is quite appropriate that Senator Leahy should be here on the floor with me because he is a great friend of Vietnam and has done great work in the U.S.-Vietnam relationship. We are about to be joined by Senator Carper, who flew as a Navy pilot in Vietnam. This story goes back to February 12, 1973. February 12, 1973, was the day that our POWs were freed in Vietnam. I told this story to Dan Sullivan when we were having dinner together a few months ago. He said: Sheldon, you should tell that story on the Senate floor and put it in the Senate Record. So, at Dan's suggestion, I am here today. What happened on February 12, 1973? Two things happened. The first was that the prisoners being held in North Vietnam were released at the Hanoi Airport and were delivered into U.S. custody, and that went quite smoothly. The North was organized, for the prisoners were there, and the planes were there. Our prisoners, who were released from North Vietnamese custody on that day--this one will look familiar to many of us here; he was our colleague John McCain--climbed aboard their aircraft and went to the Philippines for medical treatment. Down at Tan Son Nhut Airport, in Saigon, things were a little bit different. Huey helicopters had been sent off to the rally point at Loc Ninh, where our helicopters were to pick up 27 American prisoners of war who had been held by the Vietcong, and that did not go smoothly. The helicopters took off. The military aircraft, with their hospital insignia, were waiting at Tan Son Nhut for our soldiers and Foreign Service officers to come out. Actually, the longest held POW in the group who was going out to the Tan Son Nhut Airport was a Foreign Service officer who had been held for more than 7 years. They were all waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, and there were disagreements and uncertainties and suspicions. So the day on which the POWs were supposed to return and go to Tan Son Nhut wore into evening and then into night. While everybody was waiting, there were some dignitaries there. This was the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam at the time, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker. This was the Deputy Ambassador. This was the first time a U.S. Embassy had two Ambassador rank officials. It was because the operation was so big in Vietnam. The Deputy Ambassador was a guy named Charles Sheldon Whitehouse, who was my father. Because he was there and because I was visiting--one of a very small group of dependents who was in Vietnam at the time--I was there. I was on the field at Tan Son Nhut during that long day as we waited for the prisoners to come out and as we tried to get intel on what was holding things up, on why the helicopters were not bringing them back. The day became night, and they brought out huge klieg lights that lit up the field. I can still remember the bright insects flying around in front of the lights, against the dark sky, in the hot night, on the hot tarmac of the airport. We waited and we waited and we waited, and we did not know when this was going to happen or what had gone wrong. Then, late into the night, we finally heard the familiar ``toka, toka, toka, toka'' coming--the sound of the helicopters--which every person who spent time in Vietnam during that conflict remembers very, very well. Pretty soon, they came close enough that you couldn't just hear them--you could see them. You could see the red belly lights flashing on the helicopters. What happened is something that I will remember always. Obviously, after many years like this, memories can fade a little, but I think I have this right because it struck me very much at the time. The helicopters came in, and they hovered in a row over the airfield. Now, anybody who knows helicopters knows that the easiest thing to do is to fly them forward. It is harder to hover the helicopter than it is to fly it forward, and it is harder to hover a helicopter near the ground, because of the variations in the ground effect, than it is to hover it up high. What is very hard, which shows a mastery of helicopter piloting, is to be able to hover low above the ground in traffic, with other helicopters around that are beating the air and making it difficult to stay in place. So here came these helicopters. They lined up, one behind the other, at a hover--maybe 4 or 5 feet off the ground. You could hear the whine of the engines, and you could hear the beating of the rotors. The air was all kicked up by the wind that they had put up, but those pilots held that position. I have never spoken to any of those pilots, but I took it as their last salute to their prisoner-of-war friends as they brought them out to freedom and, ultimately, home. This was their way they could show their skills and salute these men who were coming home. Then all at once--it must have been by a signal on the radio--all of the helicopters--and I remember maybe 8 or 10 of them--settled down at once to the landing. All of the skids hit the pavement. They all wobbled a little bit and then settled. The engines kept roaring for a minute. Then, on another signal, all of the engines shut off. You could hear them wind down, and you could hear the blades slow down, and you could hear the quiet fall over the Tan Son Nhut airfield. Out of those helicopters came these spectral men--these pale, undernourished, often ill men. One had to be carried out on a stretcher. One of them was photographed while greeting Ambassador Bunker. How glad he must have been to have seen a U.S. Ambassador. I don't know that there has been any time in the history of the U.S. Foreign Service when anyone has been more happy to see a U.S. Ambassador than these men who came off those helicopters were to see our Ambassador of Vietnam and to know that they were on their way home. With Ambassador Bunker and my father was also Fred Weyand, who was the MACV commander--the overall commander--of U.S. Forces. One of the legendary Vietnam reporters, named Fox Butterfield, wrote about this evening in a story in the New York Times, and he closed out the story in this way: After the freed men had boarded the plane for the flight to Clark [Air Force Base], General Weyand put his arm around Gen. John Vogt, the commander of the Seventh Air Force. They stood looking at the [departing hospital] plane. ``It's the greatest day we've ever had in Vietnam,'' General Weyand said. I had the chance to share that day. I had the chance to see what those remarkable helicopter pilots did in that final salute to their colleagues. I thank Dan Sullivan for urging me to come to the floor and tell that story on this February 12 anniversary of their freedom. I yield the floor.

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 here again, as the Senate returns to regular business, to call us again to respond to the threat of climate change. Here on the floor today, things seem back to normal. The floor is empty. We have a Senator instead of a Chief Justice in the chair. The quorum calls descend between the speeches. Our new pages are figuring out the nonimpeachment routines of the floor. Outside of the Senate, things are anything but normal. The threat of climate change worsens by the minute. Carbon emissions continue to rise globally. We hurtle toward calamity. Yet we do not act. What is stopping us? The biggest, most powerful, most motivated force preventing climate action is the fossil fuel industry, and, of course, it would be. The fossil fuel industry reaps the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. The International Monetary Fund estimates the global subsidy for fossil fuel in the trillions of dollars every year. In the United States alone, the fossil fuel industry got a $650 billion subsidy in 2015, according to the most recent report from the IMF. That is about $2,000 from every woman, man, and child in the country. You wrote the check, and they will spend big bucks to defend that subsidy. In fact, to maintain their grip on that subsidy, fossil fuel companies deploy lots of propaganda on the American people. They swamp us in advertising. The game isn't just to sell you more gas. It is much bigger than that. Professor Robert Brulle of Drexel University--now in Rhode Island at Brown University--together with his coauthors, wrote a recent article, ``Corporate Promotion and Climate Change,'' looking at oil companies' carefully crafted public relations campaigns deployed way back since legendary muckraker Ida Tarbell chronicled the greed and cruelty of the Standard Oil Company. To offset their reputation for greed and nastiness, ``fossil fuel companies have attempted to burnish their image in various ways,'' Brulle and his colleagues write, ``[including] contemporary multimedia promotional campaigns . . . to project the corporation as a positive, responsible, and legitimate social actor.'' Hah. The public began to catch on to the harms of industrial pollution in the 1960s and 1970s, and Big Oil deployed public relations campaigns to stem the public opinion tide. One example Brulle uses is Mobil Oil, pre-ExxonMobil merger. In 1970, Mobil began buying space on the opinion page of the New York Times. They called these things advertorials--not advertisements, not editorials, but advertorials. They ran in the same section as real opinion pieces. Every Thursday, those ads promoted Mobil's image as a good corporate citizen and boosted its public policy priorities, like reduced regulation of Mobil's operations. Meanwhile, Mobil worked hard to place rosy ``earned media'' stories on airwaves and in print. ``Between 1975 and 1977 alone, Mobil representatives appeared on 365 TV shows, 211 radio shows, and gave 80 newspaper interviews,'' the study authors observe. I will pause to note some good news, which is that, just recently, The Guardian announced that it will no longer accept advertising that props up fossil fuels like oil and coal. The Guardian urged its colleagues in the media to do the same. Acting chief executive Anna Bateson and chief revenue officer Hamish Nicklin said in a statement: ``Our decision is based on the decades-long efforts by many in that industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments around the world.'' Welcome to our experience here in the Congress. As we have seen here in the Congress, the fossil industry companies have done that with dark money, they have done that with raw political muscle, they have done that through fake science, and they have done it through advertising campaigns. So bravo to The Guardian for shutting off that spigot of fossil fuel nonsense. I hope American media outlets follow suit. Dr. Brulle then turns to recent decades. Using spending figures from 1986 to 2015, he and his scientists find that corporate promotional spending for the five major oil companies in the United States-- ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron-Texaco, BP, and ConocoPhillips--totaled nearly $3.6 billion. That is an average of $120 million per year, and the trend is upward. After $35 million in spending in 1996, from 1997 to 2004, annual spending rose to an average of $102 million per year. Then Brulle and his team chronicled that spending averages leaped again between 2008 and 2016 to an average of $217 million per year. These spending figures themselves are pretty eye-popping, but what is important here is the patterns of spending. Brulle and his coauthors write: The bulk of this spending . . . corresponds to the increased public and congressional attention to climate change in recent years. Not unexpectedly, the major oil companies spent $315 million in 2010 alone, which is when the highest possibility of binding climate legislation occurred. That is no coincidence. Here in this building, something was occurring that the fossil fuel industry saw as a threat. Brulle and his colleagues continue: This high level of corporate promotional spending took place in response to the legislative battle from 2009 to 2010 over the House of Representatives' passage of the Waxman- Markey climate bill and the subsequent Senate consideration of the Kerry-Lieberman climate legislation. This pattern shows Big Oil's purpose: to block climate action in Congress. While we are talking about that period, right over there in the Supreme Court, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, on behalf of their Big Oil funders, urged the Supreme Court to open up our politics to unlimited special interest spending, and the five Republican Justices on that Court, led by Chief Justice Roberts, did. From that decision forward, we have seen a disaster in the Senate on climate legislation. Before that decision, we had four or five bipartisan climate bills going in the Senate at any given time. We had a Republican candidate for President--John McCain--who campaigned for President on a strong climate platform. But right after that decision came out, right after the fossil fuel industry got handed that huge new hammer to knock any dissent on climate out of the Republican Party, they did so. We have had a lost decade since then. So it is not just their advertising, but their PR spending certainly helped the fossil fuel industry block the Waxman-Markey bill and obstructed efforts since to solve the climate crisis. Another study by Professor Brulle just last month chronicled the full sweep of this industry's fight against climate legislation. Brulle describes how this polluting industry used ads, webs of phony front groups, bogus science, and that massive Citizens United political and PR artillery to fend off any meaningful action by Congress. Professor Brulle breaks this process down to its component parts; one, shaping the direction of research efforts into nonthreatening areas; two, concealing information about the harmful aspects of a corporate product; three, attacking scientific findings and the scientists who produce research that threatens corporate interests; four, packaging their own carefully constructed interpretations of the science to appear legitimate; and, five, aggressive efforts at spinning the media to promulgate favorable press. A typical example of the first tactic is oil company ads touting research and investments in alternative low-carbon fuels or renewable energy. For instance, we have seen ExxonMobil ads touting ExxonMobil's research into algae biofuels, and we have seen BP ads touting renewable energy under its label ``Beyond Petroleum.'' ``Badly Polluting'' would be a better term. So how much do these renewable investments represent? According to Reuters, Exxon will spend roughly $30 billion this year--$30 billion this year--in capital expenditures. That is Exxon's capital budget. Investments in green technologies round to zero percent of Exxon's 2020 capital expenditures. You see the ads, but that investment, they call it, rounds to zero percent of ExxonMobil's capital investments. BP will spend more than $15 billion in capital expenditures. Its renewable energy investments is 3 percent--3 percent--of that. I challenge Exxon to disprove that it spent more on advertisements touting its renewable investments than it does on the renewable investments themselves. These investments are a prop for an advertising campaign, like the Potemkin villages that were built for the czar when he was taken out of Moscow to go see how happy the peasants were, and they built phony villages near the railroad with dressed-up peasants to dance and wave at the czar so he wouldn't know that revolution was coming and that fury and anger raged through his country. This is a TV version of a Potemkin village. You go through National Airport right now, you will see the most foul nonsense up on the walls of that airport designed to convince people passing through National Airport at our Nation's Capital that these companies are responsible about climate change. People walking in forests looking natural, the phony-baloney investments designed to prop up ad campaigns, they are immense in the PR space. You can see why the Guardian will not take this poison any longer. For decades, these ads blared these phony articles at the newspapers. Their paid-for pundits populated the talk shows, just as the fossil fuel companies polluted our atmosphere and our oceans. While they did this, they knew better than anyone what they were causing. Back in 1982, Exxon projected that by 2019, atmospheric CO2 would reach between 390 and 420 parts per million. Sure enough, as 2019 drew to a close, guess where carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was. It had just crossed 410 parts per million. They predicted this, and they were right. But instead of acting on what they knew, they rammed all this public relations nonsense--this has been the atmospheric carbon dioxide climb. But instead of reacting to this in a responsible way and trying to really do something with renewable fuels, they did fake renewable investments to prop up advertising campaigns to convince the public that they were on it. These are the phrases right now from the American Petroleum Institute: We are on it. Don't worry. Don't get mad. Don't get involved. We are on it. And then they shower this body with money and with threats, powered up by Citizens United from the five Republican judges across the street there. Not only did Big Oil correctly model this increase in CO2 in our atmosphere that their product would cause, they also understood what this meant. They predicted the hotter temperatures. They predicted the melting ice sheets. They predicted the rising seas that Louisiana and Rhode Island are so menaced by. They predicted the massive damage that climate change would cause. Exxon knew its business was ultimately toxic to our planet. And the Exxon CEO who led them through this, the craftsman and CEO of so many of these campaigns of lies, now sits happily on the board of J.P. Morgan--J.P. Morgan which claims to be seriously and sincerely interested in climate response. J.P. Morgan, a major investor that has been warned over and over again by now more than 30 sovereign banks of the danger of an economic crash from this carbon bubble popping--they give the man who led this campaign of lies sanctuary and fees on their board. So what is the purpose of spending all that money? The reason Big Oil spends billions on its ads is to implant favorable perceptions of fossil fuels into what Robert Brulle calls the ``collective unconscious,'' and it does that to support its other great influence project, which is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and on elections to control the politics of climate change and to ensure that Republicans block any serious efforts to limit carbon pollution. That is a scheme that deserves infamy, and it is a scheme being perpetrated as I speak, right now, today. Right now, the American Petroleum Institute--the largest trade association for the oil and gas industry--has a seven-figure ad campaign called ``We're On It.'' They run ads on the internet, on TV, and on billboards--the ones I mentioned all over the DC airport-- designed to fool the public and policymakers that the oil and gas industry is ``on its'' carbon and methane emissions problem. Not only are they not on it, they are cheating about even reporting their methane leaks. This is an ad in the Washington Post's ``Energy 202'' newsletter just last week. It reads: ``Let's create climate solutions together.'' Content from the API. Seriously? What a joke. API, the same trade association that is furiously lobbying against efforts to control methane pollution from oil and gas facilities don't even want to report it fairly. When Trump got in, job one was to take down the methane leakage reporting regulation that was coming. They are lobbying for expansion of offshore drilling, and they are lobbying against any price on carbon to offset that $650 billion subsidy, and they want to create climate solutions together? It is unreal--unreal. Let's take a walk back into history. In 2006, here in Washington, in the U.S. district court, a judge named Gladys Kessler wrote a long, long opinion--well over 100 pages. It was a commanding opinion, and it was an opinion that was upheld afterward by the U.S. court of appeals. It was an opinion in relation to a case that had been brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. Department of Justice had sued the tobacco industry, and they had asked Judge Kessler to find the tobacco companies' PR efforts fraudulent and to order them to knock it off. They were committing fraud. Stop it. You are lying to people, enough already. In her opinion, Judge Kessler found in favor of the U.S. Department of Justice. Indeed, she found the tobacco companies' fraudulent PR campaigns to have amounted to racketeering. It was a civil racketeering lawsuit. I will quote her decision here. She said the tobacco industry ``coordinated significant aspects of their public relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared objective--to . . . maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public.'' So swap out ``cigarettes'' and plug in ``fossil fuel,'' and you have described exactly what big oil companies do: coordinate their public relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared objective to maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for fossil fuel through a scheme to deceive the public. What the fossil fuel industry is doing is precisely the conduct that was racketeering activity when done by the tobacco industry, but don't expect Bill Barr's Department of Justice to pursue any type of legal action like that. The fossil fuel industry is too strong, and the fix is too far in. This is all rotten stuff. It is gross. It is banana republic behavior. It is not what we expect here in the United States of America. It is on us. It doesn't have to be this way. We can stop it. We have the power here in the Senate to shake off the malign influence of a desperate and greedy industry and actually tackle the defining issue of our time, like Americans should. So let's have a real debate on a real climate change bill. Let's surprise the world and pass something big and bold. Let's wake up to the threat of climate change and get ahead of its consequences before the situation becomes irretrievable. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, may I say that it is a pleasure to speak to the Senate with the new Senator from Georgia presiding for the first time, at least, that I have had this occasion. Well, here we are. The impeachment outcome is settled, as it was from day one. In my view, the facts are clear, the conduct impeachable, and the obstruction unprecedented. In my view, this impeachment process ran into a partisan wall, and the Senate's part was to deny the American people the most basic elements of a fair trial: witnesses and evidence. Alexander Hamilton, years ago, warned us of what he called the ``greatest danger'' in impeachments, ``that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.'' In my view, that danger has met us. As a boy I often sang a hymn with the stanza that ``to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.'' In my view, the Senate chose the wrong side. We are obviously going to disagree about a lot here, so let me focus on two thoughts that perhaps we can agree on. One is that what we have done here should carry little weight as precedent. Politics cast very long shadows over this proceeding. This was not our finest hour, by any stretch, and much of what was said and done here should not be repeated, let alone treated as precedent. I hope history treats this episode as an aberration, not a precedent. Too many things that are right and proper had to be bent or broken to get to the preordained result, and too much of what was said by White House counsel was not only wrong but disgraceful. The presentation in this Chamber by White House counsel was characterized by smarminess, smear, elision, outright misstatement, and various dishonest rhetorical tricks that I doubt they would dare pull before judges. Knowing that we were a captive and silent audience, knowing the outcome was predetermined in their favor, and grandstanding for a TV audience, particularly an audience of one, they delivered a performance that leaves a stain on the pages of the Senate Record. Perhaps there will be consequences for some of their conduct in our Chamber. The conduct of White House counsel in the Trump impeachment trial raise grave concerns. A staunch Republican friend, who is an able and eminent lawyer, emailed me about a White House counsel argument, calling it ``the most shocking thing I have seen a `serious' lawyer say in my entire legal career.'' He referred to Professor Dershowitz, but the conduct of White House counsel in this matter has indeed been shocking far beyond the excesses of Professor Dershowitz. In some cases, we do not know who pays them. Mr. Sekulow is evidently anonymously paid, with dark money, through a mail drop box. Who is he working for here? Does his secret benefactor create a conflict for him? We should know. Among them are lawyers who appear to have grave professional conflicts. They represent the President although they are fact witnesses to conduct charged in the impeachment. This concern was brought to their attention by House letter on January 21, 2020, putting them on notice. They ignored the letter. The House argued that members of the White House counsel team actually administered a massive cover-up, using extreme and unprecedented arguments to protect a blanket defiance against congressional inquiry into alleged Presidential misdeeds, with the intent to hide evidence of those misdeeds. There is new evidence that counsel were not just fact witnesses, but present at meetings in which the scheme at issue was advanced, and the misconduct alleged was confessed to, by the President. Being present during the commission of the offense and witness to an overt act in furtherance of the alleged scheme is more grave than being a mere fact witness. This needs further inquiry, but it raises the question of actual participation in the crime or fraud or misconduct at issue, which would waive their attorney-client privilege. They have not been candid about the law. They have argued over and over that they will delay the Senate proceedings by litigation in United States District Courts if we allow witnesses or subpoenas, mentioning only once, in their pretrial brief, the case of Walter Nixon v. United States, where the Supreme Court save the federal Judiciary ``no role'' in senate impeachment proceedings, warning ``that opening the door of judicial review to the procedures used by the Senate in trying impeachments would `expose the political life of the country to months, or perhaps years, of chaos,' '' the very delay White House lawyers have threatened. Further investigation may reveal whether various counsel made, or permitted co-counsel to make, arguments at odds with facts to which they were witness, thereby deliberately misleading the Senate. For a lawyer to participate in or be immediate witness to criminal or impeachable wrongful activity; and then practice as a counsel in matters related to that criminal or impeachable or wrongful activity; and then conceal from that tribunal what they knew about that criminal or impeachable or wrongful activity, and even affirmatively mislead that tribunal about the misconduct as they witnessed it, would be attorney misconduct of the gravest nature. In light of these problems, one recurring argument by White House counsel takes on new meaning. In an often conflated argument, White House counsel insisted that no crime was alleged in the House of Representatives' Articles of Impeachment and that there was no crime committed. If, as recent evidence suggests, at least one White House counsel was present at and participated in a meeting in furtherance of the scheme at issue, the argument that the scheme was not criminal is deeply self-serving. That self-serving nature is precisely why counsel under that sort of conflict of interest should not appear in proceedings addressing conduct which they witnessed, which they aided or abetted, or in which they participated. White House counsel used their time before us to smear non-parties; to present virtual political commercials; to misstate, exaggerate or mislead about legal propositions; to misstate, exaggerate or mislead about factual propositions; to misstate, exaggerate or mislead about House managers' arguments; and to float conspiracy theories and unsupported political charges to the public audience. In some cases, arguments are deeply unfair: for instance, calling secondary witnesses' testimony hearsay and secondhand at the same time they are blocking the direct witnesses' testimony. It was in sum, a sordid spectacle, one that few if any courts would have tolerated. They came into our House, and dirtied it. So enough of my professional disgust with their performance, but let us agree that this ought not be precedent. Let us also agree on something else. There is one particular argument the White House made that we should trample, discard, and put out into the trash: the notion that a U.S. district court can supervise our Senate impeachment proceeding. I truly hope we can agree on this. As a Court of Impeachment, we are constituted at the Founders' command. The Chief Justice presided in that seat at the Founders' command. We convened as a body at the Founders' command. And at the Founders' command, the Senate--the Senate--has the sole power to try all impeachments. Every signal from the Constitution directs that we try impeachments and no part of the Senate's power to do so is conferred anywhere else in the government. It is on us. The President's counsel proposed that they may interrupt the Senate's trial of impeachment, delay the Senate's trial of impeachment, in order to go down the street to the U.S. district court to litigate our trial determinations about evidence and privilege--determinations in our proceeding. There are three arguments against that proposition. The most obvious one is the Constitution. The Constitution puts the trial in the hands of the Senate sitting as a Court of Impeachment and makes no mention of any role for any court to supervise or pass on the Senate's conduct of this trial. It is simply not in the Constitution. The second argument is the improbability--the improbability--that the Founders would convene the U.S. Senate as a Court of Impeachment, bring the managers of the U.S. House of Representatives over here to present their charges, put the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court into that chair to preside over the trial, give the Senate the sole power to try the impeachment, and then allow a defendant to run down the street to a district judge and interrupt the proceedings. That idea is contrary to common sense as well as constitutional order. The impeachment provisions of the Constitution were adopted by the Founders in September of 1787, after that long, hot summer in Philadelphia, and ratified with the Constitution in 1788. The Judiciary Act establishing lower courts did not pass until 1789. It is hard to imagine that the Founders meant the proceedings and determinations of our Senate Court of Impeachment to be subject to the oversight of a judge down the road from us whose office did not even exist at the time. The Founders in the Constitution put this squarely on us. No one else is mentioned. It is our ``sole Power.'' It is the duty of the Chief Justice under the Constitution to preside over the trial. It is his duty to make appropriate rulings. And it is on us to live with that, unless--as we may--we choose to overrule the Chief Justice as a body, by recorded vote, and live with that. We run this trial--the Senators, the Senate--no one else. We are responsible to the people of the United States to run this trial. We were trusted by the Founders to live up to those responsibilities. When we sit as a Court of Impeachment, it is all on us. The Founders put it squarely on us. We took that job when we took our oaths. That means we control the trial rulings, the timing, the evidence determinations, and the privileges we will accept. We can accept the rulings of the Chief Justice or we can reverse them, but it is our job. Previous impeachments record the Senate making just such rulings. Never has the Senate referred such a ruling to a court. Indeed, in Walter Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224, a 1993 decision, the Supreme Court held that Federal courts have no power to review procedures used by the Senate in trying impeachments, that it was a nonjusticiable political question, and that ``the Judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments.'' The Supreme Court in that decision even foresaw the delays that White House Counsel threatened us with and saw them as an argument against any judicial role. The Court said that ``opening the door of judicial review to the procedures used by the Senate in trying impeachments would expose the political life of the country to months, or perhaps years, of chaos,'' and the Court immediately went on to particularly highlight that concern with respect to the impeachment of a President. It would have been nice if White House Counsel, when they were in this Chamber arguing for their threatened delays, would have addressed this Supreme Court decision. The Constitution, common sense, and our impeachment precedents all put the responsibility for a Senate trial of impeachment squarely on us. We should not--we should never--shirk that responsibility. This has been a sad and sordid moment for the Senate. It has done harm enough. Let it not provide any credit to this false White House argument, and let this not be precedent for future Presidential misconduct. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. Chief Justice, on my own behalf and on behalf of Senators Blumenthal, Booker, Coons, Klobuchar, Leahy, Markey, Peters, and Udall, I send a question to the desk.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk, and because my question references an earlier question, I have attached that earlier question as a reference to provide it to the Office of the Parliamentarian in case it should be of interest.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the publication Grist did an article recently about climate change with a bunch of images. I grabbed a few of those images, and I have added a few in this speech because they give a pretty good overview of the mess that we are in on climate change. Right now, the most devastating wildfires anyone can remember are ripping across Australia. Here, you see an iconic kangaroo going by a building up in flames. Those Australian fires have destroyed thousands of homes. They have killed an estimated 1 billion animals--get your head around 1 billion animals killed--and they have made a day of breathing the air in Sidney, Australia, the equivalent of smoking 37 cigarettes. In fact, I read in the news that in a tennis championship in Australia today, one of the competitors withdrew because the air was so bad that she couldn't finish her match. Why is this going on? According to the Australia Bureau of Meteorology, Australia has warmed by about a full degree Celsius over the last century. That means a longer, hotter fire season, which loads the dice in favor of extreme winds and heat and bushfire, as they call it in Australia. Why did it warm in Australia? The cause could not be more clear. This is the measurement of carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, going back hundreds of thousands of years--100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, and 800,000 years. That is way back. There was no agriculture then, no wheel then, and, for sure, no Twitter--nothing. Over time, we have seen this steady range of atmospheric CO2 levels, running between about 180 and--here is the cresting out--just under 300 parts per million. So it is 800,000 years, all between 180 and 300 degrees. That is a 120-degree range. We are now out of that range by more than the entire range itself. We are out by more than 120. This chart goes up to 400 parts per million. We are literally off the chart right now at 410 parts per million. Of course, this is connected to heat. That is not news. The graphics here were compiled by Clayton Aldern and Emily Pontecorvo of Grist. So let me take this opportunity to thank them. This next chart shows the increase in carbon dioxide just in the last decade. This is from 2010 to 2019. If you took the previous graph, which is in here somewhere, this is just the tiniest little slice at the very edge of this--just 10 years out of 800,000. That is like one eighty-thousandths of that graph, that tiny little sliver. In that tiny little sliver, here is what has happened. It has gone from below 390 parts per million up to 410. We hit the magic 400 back in about 2013 for the first time right here with this dot. That was a big deal. The measurement came from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Never, ever, ever before in human history, over those hundreds of thousands of years, had we seen 400 parts per million, and in just the last decade, it shot up by all this. In fact, in the last 7 years, it shot up more than 10 parts per million. We know something about what happens as these CO2 levels go up. We know that the planet warms. That is not news. We have known that since Abraham Lincoln was President. When Abraham Lincoln was riding around Washington in his top hat, scientists had already begun to write about and understand the link between greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and global warming. Heck, even Exxon scientists knew about this decades ago, and their scientists warned the company about this in reports that we now have. Of course, Exxon did the wickedest possible thing with that information, which was to bury it, deny it, and try to convince the public that the opposite was true. There is nothing new in any of this information. The science is totally established, and that level is unprecedented in humankind's history. As a result--guess what--things have started to go haywire. This chart shows the cost of annual billion-dollar disasters in the United States, the disasters that cost us $1 billion each. There is a very clear trendline that draws through this, and it is climbing upward. If you don't believe me, ask an insurance company, ask a reinsurance company. Now, bear in mind that these costs, the cost of natural disasters, are just one of the big economic threats from climate change. We have warnings about coastal property values crashing. Those come from Freddie Mac, of all places. We have warnings about the carbon bubble crashing. Those come from the Bank of England and many other sovereign banks. We have warnings about insurance markets and about the bond safety of coastal communities. In fact, those numbers--the numbers of the cost of natural disasters--are actually pretty tiny so far compared to what is projected. What is projected is an estimated tens of trillions of dollars by 2100. One way this plays out is in my home State. This is northern Narragansett Bay. Here is Providence, our capital city. Here is Warwick. Over here is Bristol. Everything that is blue on this map is land today. On these blue parts people have homes; people have businesses; the State has infrastructure; there is economic activity; and, my God, there are memories. Well, the blue disappears. The blue disappears. The blue disappears at 10 feet of sea level rise. That is what this measures. This comes off a program called STORMTOOLS run by the Coastal Resources Management Council, our Rhode Island CZMA agency. Our State officials, based on the latest information from NOAA and from our University of Rhode Island and from the Coastal Resources Management Council, are preparing for scenarios up to 9 feet of sea level rise in Rhode Island by the end of the century--not storm surge, just bathtub-level sea level rise. Add in storm surge, and you not only get over 9 feet; you get over the 10 feet that is displayed here in this graph. The damage to my State is going to be very serious. The very map of Rhode Island will change because of this. Now, some of my colleagues think this is all funny, that this is something we can just yuck it up about and mock the science and call people alarmists when they take this seriously. It is deadly serious. In fact, a 2017 report from the real estate database company Zillow identified over 4,800 homes in Rhode Island with a collective value at over $3 billion that would be underwater by 2100 using only a 6-foot bathtub sea level rise figure--$3 billion just in my small State. That doesn't count the value of the memories. If you have a house near the shore, you very likely have family memories. Some of these places in Rhode Island go back generations--even small, small houses. People have had them. Their grandfather had them. They have memories. All of that is at risk to be lost. So don't think I am not going to fight about this just because somebody else thinks this is funny. The reason that is happening is the oceans are warming. When you warm water, it expands, so it rises--in addition, of course, to all the trillions of gallons pouring off of Greenland and other land-based icecaps. Look at how the ocean has warmed. The red is the 3-month average. It has more variation in it. The black is the annual average. The blue is the 5-year average that smooths it out a little bit more. The ocean is absorbing intense amounts of heat. I will tell you how much heat the ocean is absorbing. If you took the Hiroshima atom bomb and you captured all of its energy as heat--it produced light; it produced a variety of other things--the rate at which the ocean is warming is the equivalent--I usually use--of between three and four Hiroshima-sized nuclear detonations per second in the ocean--per second. So, in the time of this speech, there will be dozens, probably 100, Hiroshima-sized nuclear explosions' worth of heat that the oceans have to absorb. Today a new report came out that says that the number is actually five Hiroshima-sized explosions per second. As they measure it better, as they see it increase more, we are seeing that number. It is not just that they are warming. That would be bad enough. They are becoming more acid. They are becoming more acid because they absorb carbon dioxide at the surface. This is a chemical interface. This took away 90 percent of the extra heat that our fossil fuel emissions have caused, the absorption of the heat by the oceans. At the same time, while it was absorbing 90 percent of the heat, it was also absorbing 30 percent of the carbon dioxide. Imagine for a second if we were not an ocean planet. Imagine if we were a fully terrestrial planet and we didn't have the oceans to buffer this. You would have to add back that extra third of CO2, which would be a 50-percent increase on the lower base, and you would have to multiply by 10 the increase from heat. You put those two factors together--this is a very rough number, and the scientists on my staff would be mad at me for saying this, but maybe 15 times the result that we are seeing right now. We are experiencing a fraction of what we would face without the cooling and buffering oceans. Without our oceans, Australia wouldn't just be one location on fire; the whole planet would be a catastrophe. Those are the chances that we are taking. Why are we taking these chances? We are taking these chances because politicians don't dare say no to the crooked fossil fuel industry that profits from this mess. That is just the sickening political fact that we have to deal with here. That is steadily moving because the public is beginning to understand this. Notwithstanding a long and very, very expensive campaign of misleading propaganda by the fossil fuel industry, people are starting to catch on. These are the numbers--from 60 up to 72 percent--of people who believe that warming is happening. The number of people who are denying went from 20 percent down to 12 percent. Understanding is up. Denial is down. Ditto for that it is caused by us: 46 up to 59 percent, and 35 down to 30 percent denying. Understanding is up. Denial is down. So the other thing that is good that is happening behind these numbers is that Americans of a whole variety of persuasions actually favor the solutions that scientists and economists recommend to solve the climate change problem. Now, the fossil fuel industry, in its portfolio of lies, tells you that the remedies to solve climate change will be painful. That is just another fossil fuel lie, and Americans are catching on to that one too. An October 2019 Pew poll found that two-thirds of Americans want the Federal Government to do more to combat climate change. One thing that we are getting rid of in a hurry is coal. This represents the cumulative retirements of coal plants. Coal plants are phasing out, with 546 coal plants having closed in the United States since 2010, just in this last decade. In late 2019, Murray Energy became the eighth U.S. coal company in a year to file for bankruptcy. Coal plants anywhere are virtually unfinanceable. We have even seen operating, depreciated coal plants close because just operating that coal plant costs more than financing, building, and operating renewable energy facilities. That is good news for our safety and for our well- being. Here is our overall energy portfolio and where it has increased. Look at solar go. Ho, ho. Oh, my gosh. It is up about 1,000 percent. It is really, really rocking. The second biggest increase: wind. More are coming on as we begin to develop offshore wind. Fossil fuels still dominate. You can see this little inlay here--the transportation sector--but Americans are starting to buy more and more electric vehicles. Some really stunning new models are coming to the market. We are, of course, not doing anywhere near enough to encourage their adoption, which means we are likely to lose out, and we are doing this because rogue fossil fuel companies like Marathon Petroleum use political mischief to poke sticks in the wheels of vehicle fuel efficiency standards. What the fossil fuel industry likes to do is to blame China: Oh, we are not going to do anything because China has to go first. What they omit telling you is that, at the end of 2017, 40 percent of all the electric cars in the world were in China. In 2018, China manufactured nearly half of all electric vehicles worldwide. China dominates global markets for electric buses and for electric two-wheelers--scooters and so forth. You may recall that Exxon Corporation fabulously predicted to its shareholders--a prediction they have not yet corrected--that there would be zero electric buses by 2040. China is already operating 400,000. We are going to get run away from by China if we don't smarten up and compete. Here is more good news. The price of digging out and transporting and burning dirty fuels is high: nearly $110 for a megawatt hour of coal- fueled power. If you look, the most expensive are nuclear power plants; the next most expensive, coal; the next most expensive, solar thermal, which generates heat; the next most expensive, natural gas; and down here, the two cheapest by far are solar photovoltaic and wind. So we know where these markets are going, with just $40 per megawatt hour for solar photovoltaic compared to $110 for coal. Over the last decade, the average cost of solar dropped from $200 per megawatt hour to less than a quarter of that. The cost of wind power is down, and offshore wind is emerging. Battery storage now competes on price with gas-fired, peak-demand plants in many areas. Even with the massive subsidy that we all have to pay to prop up fossil fuel, renewables are starting to win on price anyway. If the price of wind, solar, battery storage, and other renewable technologies continues to drop, we could reach 100 percent renewable energy by the middle of the century, and we will need to if we are going to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe zone. In fact, here is what you see. The power sector's emissions are declining. There is a lot of work left to do in transportation--what you might call room for improvement there. There is a lot of room for improvement in industry and a lot of room for improvement in buildings and other. So there is work to be done here. Of course, these other sectors don't have much of an incentive to solve their emissions problem because it is still free to pollute. We continue to violate the most basic market theory about externalities, and we let these fossil fuel polluters pollute for free. When we let them pollute for free, it takes away any incentive in these other sectors to fix that problem--and, of course, that is goal 1 for the fossil-fuel industry. With a $650 billion-per-year subsidy, they are throwing everything they have politically at trying to protect that phony, non-market-based, unfair subsidy. And even with it, they are still losing. We could be doing better in all these sectors if we put a proper market-based price on carbon. So far they have won, if you can call not preparing for a looming calamity to be winning. Here is a quick summary of the lessons of the 2010s. One, the science is clear--we have blown by 400 parts per million. We are now in unchartered territory for the human species. Two, climate change is a massive threat to our economy, particularly with the danger of crashes coming soon in coastal property values and carbon assets. I just read the letter from BlackRock to CEOs and investors. BlackRock is one of the biggest investment companies in the world. They have warned of what they called capital reallocation. That means things are going to shift--happening as markets anticipate climate hazard-- things like facing the danger of coastal property value crashes or carbon asset value crashes. Those crashes create capital reallocation. I love the way economists talk. All the agony behind that, and they call it capital reallocation. Wrecking the world economy, they call systemic risk. Three, Americans are getting that climate change is a big problem. It is a big change. It is a big change particularly with young Republicans, who totally get it. Here is my challenge to my Republican colleagues in the Senate: Sit down with your own young staffers. Sit down with the young staffers in your own office and hear them out about climate change. You will see that there is a big generational divide. Four, coal is on the ropes. Experts predict huge stranded assets in gas and oil. Solar and other renewables are booming as they outcompete fossil fuel on costs alone. That is a genie even the crooked fossil fuel machine can't put back in the bottle. Of course, the fossil fuel industry is still up to no good, with its vast array of phony front groups so it does not look like it is them. They have names like the George C. Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute--a bunch of phony front groups filled with stables of paid liars emitting slimy rivers of dark money, polluting our politics as badly as their emissions pollute our planet. That hasn't stopped, and they should be held accountable. The 2020s are going to be tough, for sure. Australia is seeing the opening episode. I have an analogy that I will use as I close. I have spent time running rivers. I like running rivers. I like running rivers in inflatables. I like running rivers in kayaks. I have run rivers from the placid Rappahannock in Virginia to the mighty Colorado through our massive Grand Canyon and lots in between. One of the things about running a river that has big rapids is that the first thing you do is you look at the map and you learn where the big rapids are so you can stop, get safely to shore, and figure out whether you can navigate the rapids or whether you need to portage around them. Well, we had a map for where the rapids are on this. The scientists showed us. They told us. They warned us. But we ignored them. But not paying attention to what you are told on the science map is not your last chance. Going down the river, when you get closer, you can actually start to hear the falls, the rapids roaring up ahead of you. The wildfires, the flooding, the rising seas, the species relocating around the planet--if that is not a roaring for us to hear now from the planet about the dangers ahead, shame on us. It is enough for us to know that we are actually getting close to big trouble, and we still do nothing. Then there is a point on the river where it is your last chance. You have no choice as to whether you are going to miss the rapids or the falls ahead. You have ignored all the warnings. You have ignored the map. You haven't listened to the roar, and now you are close. Now you will have to paddle very hard to avoid the roaring rapids ahead. Nature's forces are pulling you inexorably toward the cataract. You will have to paddle for your life to avoid it. That is where I believe we are right now. I believe that as human kind, as a country, we have to paddle for our lives right now to avoid being sucked over the climate falls and into dangers that we don't want to see and that we don't want our children to have to see. Let's wake up here. Let's shake off the shackles of this crooked fossil fuel industry, and let's get paddling for our lives. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.