Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am very grateful to be joined by the senior Senator from Louisiana on the floor today. I think this is about 240 in my series of ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches, and this is the first time we have a bipartisan presentation on the floor, which is significant to me. I had the great pleasure of visiting Louisiana last month to see firsthand how a combination of decreased sedimentation, erosion, subsidence, habitat degradation, and rising seas are threatening Louisiana's coastline. I was joined by Congressman Garret Graves, former Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority chairman, and I thank the Congressman for sharing his time and expertise of Louisiana's coastal issues. I have also enjoyed working with Louisiana's junior Senator on coastal resiliency efforts, and I look forward to continuing that work. Senator Cassidy and I share home States that are lively, diverse, coastal, proud, and a little bit eccentric and that have great food. There is a lot in common between Louisiana and Rhode Island. Like Rhode Island, Louisiana's coast drives the State's economy and has shaped the State's history and culture. Coastal Louisiana is home to around 2 million people and is responsible for over a quarter of the continental United States' fisheries landings. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Louisiana's wetlands today represent about 40 percent of the wetlands of the continental United States and about 80 percent of the losses. Coastal wetlands are critical habitat and nurseries for commercially important fisheries and other wildlife. They also improve coastal water quality and buffer against storm surge, flooding, and other storm effects. Across the United States, we have lost ground. About half of our original wetlands in the past 200 years are gone. That is significant, and the scale and speed of wetland loss in coastal Louisiana is almost impossible to comprehend. From 1932 until 2010, the State lost nearly 1,900 square miles, or 25 percent, of its coastal land. All the red is land lost from 1932 to 2010. Between 1985 and 2010, the State was losing ground, about a football field's worth, every hour. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike caused the loss of more than 300 square miles of wetlands. I saw firsthand what Louisiana's shredded coastline looks like from the air. The Mississippi River is one of the most heavily managed rivers in the world and is certainly one of the most important rivers in the world. A combination of flood prevention and irrigation interventions upriver have cut off the tap of sediment that used to flow naturally to Louisiana's wetlands. Now erosion outpaces natural rebuilding. Though erosion is a natural phenomenon, oil and gas development exacerbates the problem. The dredged tracks left in the marsh by exploration and pipelines accelerate erosion, and here you see photos we took from our little airplane of some of those dredged channels. Strong storms, ratcheting up in strength on warmer ocean waters, thanks to climate change, also take a heavy toll on these vulnerable marshes, and you can see how these have been just washed out by the sea down here as well, again, looking out from our little aircraft. Thank you, by the way, to SouthWings for sharing their aircraft with us so we could fly and see this. On top of sediment loss, the Louisiana coastline is also sinking at around one-third of an inch each year due to the natural movement of the Earth's surface, and oil and gas development probably accelerates that process. Then, there is sea level rise. Louisiana's Coastal Planning and Restoration Authority estimates as much as 2.7 feet of sea level rise by 2050. Tulane University researchers concluded that current sea level rise estimates for Louisiana are actually probably too conservative, as the tide gauges used to track sea level rise don't accurately account for the fact that coastal marshes are sinking at the same time. So these current sea level rise projections don't fully express what the relative sea level rise is expected to be. Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana undertook the daunting task of assembling a Coastal Master Plan. This 50-year, $50 billion plan identifies 124 projects aimed at maintaining 800 square miles of land over time. Experts there hope to reduce over $150 billion in damage by 2067 through a combination of hard infrastructure, restoring shoreline and barrier islands, diverting sediment, and protecting structures by doing things like flood-proofing and elevating them. The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which led the development of this master plan, looked at three potential scenarios for the next 50 years. It considered changes in precipitation, sea level rise, subsidence, and storm frequency and intensity. We will look at the medium scenario. Under the medium scenario, the Coastal Authority expects more precipitation, over 2 feet of sea level rise, stronger though less frequent storms, and a continued slowing of subsidence. The agency then modeled what the coastline would look like 50 years out under these medium conditions with and without this $50 billion investment. Without the $50 billion investment, all that is red is lost to the sea. With the investment, there is still a lot of red lost, but these green areas show areas that are saved, and if you live in one of these green areas, hunt in one of these green areas, and have a business in one of these green areas, it is pretty darn important to you to see that they are saved. Louisiana is at a point of no return, where the forward march of sea level rise and stronger storms will continue to erode the State's shore. Although Louisianians are faced with this discouraging future, I was very impressed by the optimism of the Louisianians I met. I spoke with Governor John Bel Edwards, with CPRA Chairman Chip Kline, CPRA Director Bren Haase, and Deputy for Coastal Activities Megan Terrell and had dinner together with many of them and Senator Cassidy to discuss implementation of this Coastal Master Plan. The Governor, who has said that ``climate change is real; I do not deny it,'' is committed to implementing the Coastal Master Plan. The price tag is hefty, but the potential losses to Louisiana are much greater. I also went to Baton Rouge and met with Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome. While I was there in Baton Rouge, the Mississippi was steadily climbing the levees that protect the city. These are the handrails for the steps down to the Mississippi River, and, as you can see, it was high enough that it was not only over the steps but over the handrails. By March 21 of this year, the number of days at or above flood stage in Baton Rouge was on track to set new records. The mayor pointed out that getting the help communities need to prepare for severe but unnamed storms can be difficult, which is why I so appreciate working with Senator Cassidy on ways to improve our response to coastal resilience, both of ours being Coastal States. Following the release of the fifth National Climate Assessment back in November, Mayor-President Broome said: After the 1,000-year rain event of 2016 in my city, I have been paying close attention to credible projections for future events. . . . the combined impacts of sea level rise and storm surge in the southeast have the potential to cost up to $60 billion each year in 2050 and up to $99 billion in 2090; that level of impact cannot be dismissed or put off for the next generation to deal with. Baton Rouge is home to Louisiana State University, the LSU Tigers, and the impressive Center for River Studies. This is the main room at the Center for River Studies. This is an enormous physical model of the Mississippi River through which actual water runs and through which they can put small, sort of simulated sediment to model sediment flow, and these projectors on the roof can project down onto the surface to show various models and to provide all this color. So that is actually like a flat movie screen with projectors on the surface, which is three-dimensional in the sense that they built a model of the Mississippi River through it. It is an amazing educational tool, and it lets researchers at LSU and at the Army Corps of Engineers and others better understand the sediment dynamics in the Mississippi River. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a terrific article by the legendary Louisiana Pulitzer prize-winning outdoor columnist Bob Marshall.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you very much. It is not often that the distinguished ranking member on the EPW Committee gets to say he is from a bigger State and give his advice in those terms. I appreciate that we from Rhode Island were able to give him this moment. I also want to thank him for his leadership in trying to fight for strong fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for our automobiles. The story of what is going on cannot be properly understood without understanding the oil industry's role in all of this. They are up to their usual mischief. Our offices obtained a draft letter to the Deputy Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, urging her to weaken the auto emission standards. Well, we were able to look at the metadata on this document, and guess who wrote it. It was written by one of Marathon Petroleum's in-house lobbyists. Marathon shopped this letter, which their lobbyist wrote, around to Members of Congress, convincing several to send similar letters in favor of weakening the standards. We took those letters, and we ran them through plagiarism software, and this is what we got. The red text is the text that is identical to the language of the Marathon lobbyist's letter. The black is where, in this case, Members of the Pennsylvania delegation added a little local information about Pennsylvania. It is an 80-percent match in the plagiarism software to the letter written by the Marathon Oil company lobbyist. Marathon and the oil industry weren't just recruiting Members of Congress to copy their lobbyist language into letters to the Trump administration; they got their trade associations involved as well. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association lobbied, for instance, to weaken the standards, according to their lobbying disclosure reports. It is always better to have your trade association do your dirty work. What company really wants the public to know it lobbied to lower fuel economy standards so that consumers could pay more at the pump? It is not a good look. In addition to cranking up its trade associations, the fossil fuel industry also cranked up its constellation of front groups that it has developed and funded over the years to kill laws and regulations that would reduce the carbon pollution that is driving climate change. The industry launched those front groups against the fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission auto standards. These front groups provide a veneer of fake public support for the oil industry's anti-climate campaign. Take Americans for Prosperity, for instance. It is a lovely, benign- sounding name. Who could possibly be against prosperity? Yet, in reality, Americans for Prosperity is a front group that is funded by the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers, whose company, by the way, also lobbied against the standards. Americans for Prosperity doesn't disclose its donors. It is a secretive organization. So what little we know about its funders comes thanks to the hard work of a few muckraking, investigative journalists. We do know that both ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel industry's flagship trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, give the AFP money, and they give them big money. Since the Citizens United decision, the AFP has spent about $70 million on Federal elections. It is throwing its weight around. To oppose the auto standards, the AFP created an elaborate online deception campaign that was centered on this petition against the standards. Unfortunately, for them, the public was not buying its nonsense. Despite an onslaught of online advertising, only 231 people signed up. It looks like no one wanted to spend more on gas and that no amount of fossil fuel lies could convince them otherwise. FreedomWorks is yet another front group that has received millions in funding from the Koch brothers and fossil fuel interests like the American Petroleum Institute. It also started an online campaign against the standards, and that, too, bombed. There is a word for this stuff. It is called astroturf. It is fake grassroots. Real grassroots organizations don't need tens of millions of dollars from fossil fuel front groups. Real grassroots organizations thrive on the engagement and the passion of citizens, not on millions in special interest, dark money. In having flopped at astroturfing, the oil industry organized its front groups to write directly to Trump administration officials and lobby them to repeal the standards. Here is one of these letters, and a dozen phony front groups signed it. Like I said, they built a constellation of these phony front groups, and a dozen signed this letter. These groups together have received--like I said, mostly of secret money--a minimum of $196 million from fossil fuel industry interests, including from the Koch brothers, API, ExxonMobil, and Chevron. This $196 million did a lot of talking, for this letter found its way to an eager audience in the Trump administration, which is stuffed with fossil fuel lobbyists and flunkies. So they gave the oil industry exactly what it wanted--a proposal to freeze the auto emission standards and to challenge California and other States, like mine, our authority to set our own standards. What is strange about this is that this proposal isn't what the auto industry says it wanted. Once the oil industry jumped into the fray, the auto industry let Big Oil take over, or it got shoved aside by Big Oil. Big Oil barged in and got exactly what it wanted--weakened standards that would allow it to sell--hold your breath here--up to $1 trillion in extra gasoline. For a mere expenditure of $196 million through these 12 phony front groups, they got to sell $1 trillion in extra gasoline. That is how you make big money--by renting out the U.S. Government. That, by the way, is $1 trillion that comes out of consumers' pockets and goes into Big Oil's. No wonder Big Oil is hiding behind front groups. In the press, unnamed auto industry lobbyists have complained that the proposed freeze isn't what they asked for. Well, that is not good enough. Auto industry executives need to step up and tell President Trump and Secretary Chao and Administrator Wheeler that their oily proposal is not acceptable. This car rule saga that we have seen play out is a microcosm of the climate change problem that we face. The fossil fuel industry, through its armada of phony front groups, fights to defend its own massive sales and massive, massive taxpayer subsidies for its product. The IMF has estimated that the fossil fuel industry receives a $700 billion-- with a ``b''--annual subsidy in the United States alone. So it has every incentive to spend whatever it takes to control things in Washington, like giving $196 million to these front groups. Meanwhile, the rest of corporate America, including car companies that claim to support reducing carbon pollution, just don't show up. One side lobbies Congress against climate action, and the other side doesn't show up. One side spends tens of millions on attack ads against candidates who support climate action, and the other side doesn't show up. One side pours hundreds of millions of dollars into trade associations and phony front groups, and the other side doesn't show up. The result is entirely predictable--money talks, unfortunately, around here, and big money commands. Things would change a bit if the rest of corporate America would challenge the fossil fuel industry's money and influence to help our colleagues on the other side get something done on climate change. I close by pointing out that democracy and the free market are the twin pillars of our American example. What does it say for them as institutions when one industry--the fossil fuel industry--can simultaneously capture our democracy and pervert the free market with its massive subsidies? It is not a good story. America's strength has always been our example. Our inaction on climate change--one of the foremost challenges of the world--sullies our American example. For the good of our country, for the good of those institutions, for the good of our American example, it is time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in 2002, as Rhode Island's attorney general, I launched an organization aimed at helping Rhode Island's healthcare system reduce waste and improve care for our patients. The first hire at the new Rhode Island Quality Institute was Laura Adams. Convincing her to join us as president and CEO was our extremely good fortune. As Laura steps aside from those duties, I come to the floor today to recognize her many contributions to our healthcare system, in Rhode Island and nationwide, and to wish her well in her next adventure. Lowering costs and improving quality in our healthcare system is, to say the least, a vital purpose. The Rhode Island Quality Institute was established to tackle some of the main drivers of America's healthcare problems, to improve health and advance the quality and value of care in Rhode Island. Under the leadership of Laura Adams, that mission achieved national recognition. As Laura prepares to leave, the institute's innovation and expertise is helping improve care around the country. Laura got off to a very strong start. In 2002, the RIQI collaborated with Surescripts to pioneer a first in the Nation, end-to-end electronic prescribing system. Today, Surescripts has scaled up to every state in the country, with virtually every prescriber using it. In 2007, Child Magazine pointed to the State's uptake in e-prescribing as a key reason for ranking Rhode Island first overall on its list of the ``Safest Places in the Nation to Raise a Child.'' Laura then turned to another big challenge for our healthcare system: hospital-acquired infections. In 2005, with Laura as Principal Investigator, RIQI launched the Rhode Island Intensive Care Unit Collaborative to identify ways to reduce the incidence of infections among ICU patients. By 2012, Rhode Island ICUs had shown significant improvement on several key types of infections. In 2004, Laura and RIQI joined the Rhode Department of Health to apply for Federal funding to build an ambitious, innovative statewide health information exchange. RIQI took the lead building and maintaining the resulting system, CurrentCare. It took tremendous technical expertise to confront the complex governance, business, privacy, and security challenges involved. Laura, with the assistance of a talented lawyer, Linn Freedman, proved more than equal to the task. A 2017 analysis shows that CurrentCare returns millions of dollars in savings to our healthcare system. Over the course of the development of CurrentCare, RIQI became the only organization in the country to win all three major health information technology grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, bringing in a total of $27 million to Rhode Island. Federal agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology awarded RIQI substantial Federal grants to tackle difficult specialized challenges. RIQI has been recognized by government and healthcare leaders, chambers of commerce, and leading business publications for its numerous innovations. It has also been consistently recognized as one of the best places to work in Rhode Island. In the process, Laura has won national acclaim. This year, a leading national hospital publication placed her on their list of ``Female Health IT Leaders to Know'' for her ``significant contributions to health IT advancements, leading large teams, initiatives and companies focused on improving patient care.'' She has delivered hundreds of keynotes and presentations in 48 States and a dozen foreign countries. She has been named a cochair of the National Academy of Medicine Health Data Trust Initiative Steering Committee, and she has been appointed to numerous professional and corporate boards. Laura Adams has poured her considerable talent, experience, and dedication into making the Rhode Island Quality Institute a national leader in health innovation and transformation. I thank her for years of service to Rhode Island and to our healthcare system nationwide.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for my usual climate speech. The Presiding Officer has seen this increasingly battered poster many times before. We have had an interesting period in the Senate recently with respect to climate change, and I would like to take a moment to comment on it. Before I do that, I think it is important to kind of frame the backdrop of what is going on and why this matters. This is the measurement of carbon dioxide levels on Earth. This goes back 400,000 years--no agriculture, no wheel, a long, long time ago. We see, over time, this recurring pattern in which CO2 levels stay between 180 and 300 ppm. You can go back and people can see that these are--there are temperature shifts that correlate with these CO2 levels. We know this--I saw Senator Brown from Ohio here. We know this because people have gone out--including two scientists from Ohio State. They have gone out to glaciers in the farthest and highest reaches of the planet, and they have drilled out cores of ice that go back tens of hundreds of thousands of years, and they are able to figure out, from the characteristics of the ice of that period, what the CO2 concentrations were--that and a lot of other data as well. This is very well scientifically established. It is a little bit hard to see because it gets lost in the 0 year line, but this is what has happened. This is the highest level ever right there--highest historic CO2 level. We shot up to here. We are actually over 400 ppm, and the range was 180 to 300. Do the math. Between 300 and 180, that is 120 ppm range, and now we are almost, by that full range, out of that range. That is an extraordinary anomaly in the entire history of the species--in fact, before our species. So the idea that this has all happened before, that the climate is always changing, that is factual and scientific nonsense. Anybody who says that is either uninformed or should be ashamed of themselves because it is not always changing up to 400-plus ppm. It just isn't. We have no experience of that ever. We do know that as these CO2 levels go up, the planet warms. We have known that since Abraham Lincoln was President. When Abraham Lincoln was riding around here in his top hat, scientists had begun to understand about greenhouse gases and what that did. So there is nothing new in this. The science is totally established, and this is unprecedented in human history and before. Here is where it comes home to roost for me. This is a map of the northern part of my State. This is the lower tip of our capital city, Providence. Over here is Bristol and Warren. Here is Warwick. This is Narragansett Bay. This is the top of Prudence Island. Here is the Mount Hope Bay. If you can see, all the parts that you see here as blue, all of that is now land. All of that is now land. It has people's homes on it. It has people's businesses on it. It has some of our public recreation facilities on it. It is all predicted to disappear by the end of this century if we don't get our hands around this climate change problem. We don't have until the end of the century to stop it because like a giant oil tanker, you can put all engines in reverse, you can shut off engines, it is still going to have a lot of carry because of the momentum that has built up. This, where we are right now, is going to create effects for a long time. We have way less until the end of the century to act. The newest studies say we have about 12 years, if we really want to get ahead of this. There has been some interesting stuff said on the Senate floor recently. Tell it to the people whose homes are going to be gone. This isn't just a political debate. There are lives, there are people's homes, and there are people's businesses that are at stake. We had a big appearance by 13 Republican Senators led by the majority leader, and they all came to the Senate floor to make fun of the Green New Deal or at least the Koch brothers' phony cartoon version of the Green New Deal. Out of the 13, 12 mentioned a fanciful $93 trillion cost that the Koch brothers have come up with. So basically the purpose was to come to the floor, make fun of the Green New Deal, and pretend it is going to cost $93 trillion. Very few could even use the word ``climate change.'' Imagine that. There were 13 Republican Senators coming to the floor to talk about climate change, and all they want to do is make fun of the Green New Deal, mock it, pretend it is going to cost $93 trillion, and then go away as if these people's homes didn't matter and as if this weren't serious to people who are looking at this. The news report that I have just seen on the $93 trillion says this: When it comes to the $93 trillion estimate for the Green New Deal, created by its critics, the answer is found in a network of interlinked groups: a think tank, its political arm and a super political action committee. Add a web of secret donors, and eager lawmakers-- The 13 of them-- and you have the blurry outlines of an echo chamber that propels an unverified claim into the orbit of Washington politics. I am sure that is all good fun, but this is pretty serious, from my point of view. It actually got worse after that. A Senator from Utah came to the floor with a lot of jokes about rocket launchers, velociraptors, tauntauns, and 20-foot seahorses carrying Aquaman around. By the way, if you are looking at having your constituents' homes disappear underwater, jokes about Aquaman are not funny, not funny at all. Train seahorses--give me a break--jokes about cows. ``Critics,'' he said, ``will chastise me for not taking climate change seriously.'' Well, yes, I am here to do exactly that because it is darn serious to most everybody and particularly to my home State. So jokes about Sharknados just--I would say this: You might disagree with me about climate change, and you might not want to do anything about climate change, but, by God, I think if there is one thing we owe each other in this body, it is sincerity, and to come to the floor with an insincere bill that is designed to fail is demeaning to the whole body. To come to the floor and make jokes, when our own national scientific agencies are warning of these harms about all of this, it is just fundamentally wrong. Let me talk about the Senator's home State a little bit because one of the things I have done is paid my colleagues the sincere compliment of going to many of their States to look into what is going on with climate change. Let me review what I have said about Utah because I went there. What I have learned--I gave a speech before I went in based on research that I did. I gave another speech when I came out based on what I heard in Utah. Going in, I knew the average temperature had already increased 2 full degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Utah. The 2 degrees centigrade we are worried about for the globe, it is already there in Utah. There are actually spots in Utah where the temperature has risen as much as 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit. There are significant trends in river and stream flooding and also the highest drying trend in rivers and streams in Southern Utah as the system comes unhinged. Lake Powell in Utah, when I was ready to leave, was about half full, which is kind of a big deal because Salt Lake City gets 80 percent of its water supply from snowpack in the Uinta and Wasatch Mountains. Local predictions were that water managers in Utah would no longer be able to depend on the historic data about snow melt and river flow because the change is so complete that the old data isn't germane any longer. There have been wildfire studies led by Dr. Philip Dennison of the University of Utah connecting climate change to the wildfires that take place out there. In fact, Utah State has entire courses of study teaching students about climate change--how to predict it and how to fight back. Utah State has its own climate action plan. It has an active climate center. The University of Utah has an active sustainability center. Students and researchers work there to address climate change. Each year, the University of Utah publishes an annual report on climate change. I am sure that is all just so amusing to my colleague from Utah. Mayors are engaged in Utah, including the mayor then of Salt Lake City. Mayor Ralph Becker took first place in the Mayors Climate Protection Center rankings. I can only imagine how amusing that was for the senior Senator from Utah to yuck it up about that. His ski areas--Alta, Canyons, Deer Crest, Deer Valley, and Park City--all signed the BICEP coalition's Climate Declaration in support of taking national action on climate change. I bet that really cracked him up. The Park City Foundation in Utah was predicting a local temperature increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075, which they said would cause a total loss of snowpack in the lower Park City resort area. It kind of takes the fun out of skiing when there is no snow in Park City. A retired pediatrician named David Folland, who is the coleader of Salt Lake Citizens Climate Lobby, wrote there is an actual solution: ``Placing a fee on carbon sources and returning the proceeds to households would create jobs, build the economy, improve public health, and help stabilize the climate.'' I hope my colleague from Utah has a chance to go talk to this retired pediatrician and hear from him just how amusing all of this climate change stuff is. Republican Presidential candidate John Huntsman, who has served Utah as Governor, wrote a New York Times op-ed piece back then titled ``The G.O.P. Can't Ignore Climate Change.'' Well, it is getting to the point where we are pushing them enough. They can't ignore it so much. Their fallback, I guess, is to make fun of it. That is really, really helpful. Here is what he wrote: The fact is that the planet is warming, and failing to deal with this reality will leave us vulnerable and possibly worse. Hedging against risk-- He said-- is an enduring theme of conservative thought. An enduring theme of conservative thought, up until it bumps up against the enduring theme of Republican fundraising from the fossil fuel industry. So then I went out there and had a chance to meet with the folks from the Utah ski industry. During the last season, they told me they had nearly 4\1/2\ million skiers and snowboarders and that almost 1 in 10 jobs in Utah is in tourism. They market themselves as having what they call the Greatest Snow on Earth, and they pointed out that according to the EPA, average temperatures had already risen 2 full degrees Fahrenheit there over the past 100 years. I visited with Ski Utah and with a group of professional skiers from the group, Protect Our Winters, who want to see the mountaintops and the ski slopes that give them their recreation and give them their living, in many cases, protected and saved. The scientists at the University of Utah, including meteorologists Leigh Sturges and John Horel, were predicting that there would be more rain and less snow at major Utah ski resorts under different climate change scenarios. Rain at a ski resort is not a good thing, and with this many jobs in Utah, you would think somebody from the Utah Senate delegation might be willing to take this seriously and work in good faith toward a solution. Ski Utah's 14 resorts would certainly like that. They got together and sent a letter last year to the Governor of Utah asking the State to take action on climate change. Salt Lake City's letter went out too. Salt Lake City's drinking water, 70 percent comes from snowpack melt. When the snowpack goes away, so does that captured supply of water serving the city. The State, when I was there, was experiencing abnormally dry conditions. I went out to the Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve that was run by The Nature Conservancy. You go out there, and you walk on boards over the marsh because, you know, it is marsh. It is wet. It is spongy. It is hard to walk through. Not then. It was dry as a bone. We were walking over it, but there was absolutely dry soil underneath. The Salt Lake itself has shrunk. The lake's volume has fallen by nearly half since Utah's early pioneers reached its shores in 1847. The lake's surface is down 11 feet. That has left roughly half of the former lake bed dry and exposed. The Salt Lake, for which Salt Lake City is named, is drying up. I guess that is another reason for a lot of yucks here on the Senate floor from the senior Senator from Utah. There is a bird--I know here in Mammoth Hall, where we care mostly about big interests and big money, it may seem ridiculous to talk about a bird. There is a bird called Wilson's phalarope. It flies a 3,000- mile migration from the Patagonian lowlands up to the Great Salt Lake. As the Great Salt Lake shrinks, it is going to find that it doesn't have a destination. It is going to be a little like the red knot flying from Brazil straight through to Delaware. Imagine how long taking an airplane flight from Brazil to Delaware would be. Now imagine you are a bird that is about this high, and you have to fly all that way yourself in a straight shot. They do that. Here is this wonderful Wilson's phalarope, and its lake is drying up. All that dust from the dried-up lake bed is now a contaminant, compromising air quality in Salt Lake City, which now gets an ``F'' from the American Lung Association for both ozone and particulates. The Salt Lake City mayor then was Jackie Biskupski. She had pledged to transition the city to 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2032. I will tell you, I met with scientists from Brigham Young, Utah State, and the University of Utah, and there was no doubt about climate change. There was nobody yucking it up about climate change. There were no jokes about tauntauns and Aquaman. This is something they take very seriously. It is entitled to be taken very seriously. I will close by referring to some of the comments I found over the weekend from members and in some cases leaders of the Mormon Church, the Church of Latter-day Saints. Here is the official statement by Mormon Women for Ethical Government on Environmental Stewardship and Climate Change: The consequences of maintaining the status quo of carbon emissions and the resulting rate of global temperature change are dire and include major shifts in patterns of weather, fire, and hydrology; large-scale impacts on biodiversity; and disruption to human systems, including agriculture and food supplies, migration, national security, and economies. . . . We urge governments, institutions, and businesses to boldly mobilize in pursuit of creative and radical strategies that will effectively curb climate change and dramatically reduce carbon emissions. I urge the Senator from Utah to read that and to listen to those constituents. G. Michael Alder wrote--I guess in the Ensign on an LDS Church website--``about the environmental damage caused by such man-made problems as acid rain, excessive carbon dioxide and other chemicals in the atmosphere, deforestation, and the pollution of our oceans, lakes, and streams,'' saying that ``as a result, serious, mostly unintended changes are taking place in the air, water, and land around us. . . . The evidence is mounting that we are doing ourselves and our mortal home serious damage. . . . A continued increase in carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, produced by our vast consumption of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels, appears to be responsible for a general increase in temperature worldwide. . . . That increase threatens possible major changes in climate around the world, potentially causing drought in some areas and greater rainfall in others. . . . The studies showed that the greatest global temperature increase has taken place in the last decade. Carbon dioxide and trace gases produced by our industrial societies were considered to be the cause.'' Well, they are. In fact, they are unanimously considered to be the cause by the responsible science community. The last thing I will read is an address given by Elder Steven E. Snow of the Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during a panel discussion that occurred Wednesday October 10, 2018, at Utah State University. He begins by agreeing with his mountain fellow Utahans about Utah's fresh powder snow, calling it, again, the ``greatest snow on earth,'' at least according to Utah's license plates. He goes on to say: It causes me much grief when I look outside my window and see a hazy inversion or when I hear consistent reports of Utah's poor air quality. I am concerned for the families affected by wildfires and for the schoolchildren forced to stay indoors because of smoky skies. No jokes. He is concerned. He goes on: Algal blooms are breaking out in Utah's lakes. We are experiencing unusually dry seasons and record-breaking warm winters. He cites another church leader, President Dallin Oaks, and quotes him: These are challenging times, filled with big worries: wars and rumors of wars, possible epidemics of infectious diseases, droughts, floods, and global warming. He goes on to say, quoting a commentary on MormonNewsroom.org, that ``the creation groans under the weight of recklessness and indulgence.'' Here is the sentence that stuck with me: ``Climate change is real, and it's our responsibility as stewards to do what we can to limit the damage done to God's creation.'' Making jokes about that will not limit the damage we are now doing to God's creation. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this week the Senate conveyor belt of President Trump's judicial nominees grinds on. So far, the President and the Senate leader have an unprecedented pace in confirming Federal judges, especially powerful Federal appellate judges. They seem to have no higher priority. What is a little weird about this is that nearly 90 percent of Trump's appellate judges and both of his Supreme Court Justices are members of the so-called Federalist Society. On the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas all are members. Now, that is a little weird. What is really weird is that through this Federalist Society vehicle, big, special interests are picking Federal judges. In effect, there are three Federalist Societies. The first one most lawyers know from law school. It is, for the most part, a debating society made up of like-minded aspiring lawyers drawn to conservative ideas and judicial doctrine. They organize seminars and invite academics, judges, and attorneys to speak. That is terrific--no problem there. The second Federalist Society is the parent organization of the campus debating society--a sort of highbrow think tank seeking to further conservative and libertarian judicial principles. It convenes fancy forums with conservative legal luminaries, from Supreme Court Justices to big-name politicians, to renowned legal scholars. It issues newsletters and produces podcasts and policy recommendations. Through this, they hope to ``reorder priorities within the legal system'' and create a network of members ``that extends to all levels of the legal community.'' I disagree pretty strongly with the system of law they are trying impose, and their funding is suspiciously obscure, but this debate is a fine thing to have--so no objection there either. Then there is the third Federalist Society. This one doesn't have much in common with the law school debating society, and it certainly doesn't operate like your run-of-the-mill Washington think tank. This Federalist Society is the nerve center for a complicated apparatus that does not care much about conservative principles like judicial restraint or originalism or textualism. This Federalist Society is the vehicle for powerful, commercial, and industrial interests that seek not simply to ``reorder'' the judiciary but to acquire control of the judiciary to benefit their interests. This third Federalist Society understands the fundamental power of the Federal judiciary to rig the system in favor of its donor interests and, as the Kavanaugh confirmation so clearly illustrated, is willing to go to drastic lengths to secure that power. I am here today to talk about that third Federalist Society. The story of the third Federalist Society is partly the story of a man named Leonard Leo, the society's executive vice president. Mr. Leo is now the most influential person shaping America's Federal judiciary. Don't be surprised if you are listening and you have never heard of him. He has never been elected. He is not accountable to any voter. Instead, he is the front man for interests that want to use the Federalist Society and its surrounding network of front groups and PR shops and think tanks to acquire control over our courts. Renowned court watcher Jeffrey Toobin describes Mr. Leo as ``Trump's subcontractor on the selection of Supreme Court Justices.'' More accurately, Mr. Leo is the subcontractor for a network of big corporate interests and front groups. In the summer of 2016, it was Leo who delivered the list of potential nominees to fill the vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia and the blocking of Merrick Garland. It was Mr. Leo who was involved in the Trump transition, helping to conduct outreach to potential Supreme Court picks, including Neil Gorsuch. Mr. Leo even orchestrated a $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration. The role of the Federalist Society has been confirmed by President Trump's own legal counsel, Don McGahn. McGahn told a Federalist Society gathering in 2017: Our opponents of judicial nominees frequently claim the President has outsourced his selection of judges. That is completely false. I have been a member of the Federalist Society since law school, still am, so, frankly, it seems like it's been in-sourced. Ha-ha, so funny. The Federalist Society does more than pick the judges. They prepare them. They study the prospective nominees and the Senators who will ask them questions. They gather murder boards for nominees to practice for confirmation hearings. Mr. Leo is proud of this operation. During the confirmation hearing for Justice Neil Gorsuch, Leo told Toobin, with considerable satisfaction: You know, the hearings matter so much less than they once did. We have the tools now to do all the research. We know everything they have written. We know what they've said. There are no surprises. In the Judiciary Committee, we see the result over and over-- meaningless committee hearings where nominees parrot empty words about applying law to fact and respecting precedent. Then, once confirmed and on the bench, those nominees deliver dependably for the partisan and corporate donors behind this Federalist Society operation. It is bad enough that judicial selection has been outsourced--or insourced--to a partisan private entity. Worse is how nontransparent this all is. It is hard to find out who is behind it. It is a very nontransparent problem, but here is what we have been able to piece together. The evidence is that the Federalist Society is funded by massive, secret contributions from corporate rightwing groups that have big agendas before the courts. In 2017 the Federalist Society took $5.5 million via an entity called DonorsTrust. DonorsTrust has as its sole purpose to launder the identities of donors to other groups so that Americans don't know who the real backers are of the groups. It is an identity removal machine for big donors. Through the hard work of investigators, journalists, and researchers, we have learned that the Koch brothers are among the largest--if not the largest--contributors to DonorsTrust. The Federalist Society's total annual budget is about $20 million. So this $5.5 million in funding, laundered through DonorsTrust, provides more than a quarter of its entire budget. Other shadowy corporate and rightwing organizations also donate millions to the Federalist Society. In 1 year, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a rightwing trust, gave over $3 million to the Federalist Society. Koch Industries, several other Koch-network foundations and trusts, and nearly a dozen wholly anonymous donors have given over $100,000 each to the Federalist Society. Tax documents from 2014, uncovered by the New York Times, show a donation of more than $2 million from the Mercer family, the secretive donors who helped start Breitbart News and bankrolled the Trump campaign. How do we know that these groups have a big agenda before the courts? We know that because they also fund a fleet of front groups that file so-called amicus briefs before courts signaling what results the big donors want. The Kochs, the Bradleys, the Mercers, and their ilk spend millions to pursue an anti-regulation, anti-union, and anti-environment agenda, and they use the Federalist Society to stock the judiciary with judges who will rule their way. The Federalist Society, as a 501(c)(3) organization, is supposed to stay out of politics. The Judicial Crisis Network is a 501(c)(4) organization which can, and does, get involved in politics. The Judicial Crisis Network is led by a disciple of Leonard Leo's, a former clerk for ultraconservative Justice Clarence Thomas. The Judicial Crisis Network has been described in conservative circles as ``Leonard Leo's PR organization--nothing more and nothing less.'' When it comes time to muscle a judicial nominee through Senate confirmation, the Judicial Crisis Network swings into action. Media campaigns, attack ads, and big spending--that is the Judicial Crisis Network's world. Like its Federalist Society partner, the Judicial Crisis Network gets massive sums of dark money, and it spends massively too. It spent $7 million on campaigns to block Merrick Garland from getting a hearing on his nomination to the Supreme Court, and it spent $10 million to support the nomination--blockade enabled--of Neil Gorsuch--and $7 million and $10 million--and it received one anonymous donation of $17.9 million. One donor gave $17.9 million to this operation to influence our judiciary. I will say that we need to know who that donor was. Because we are in the minority, we are going to be spurned and rejected if we try to get that information. On the House side, where they have the power of subpoena, we need to pursue that. It ought to be public information when one donor can spend nearly $18 million to influence the selection of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Judicial Crisis Network then got $23 million from something called the Wellspring Committee. You will have to forgive some of this because it is very obscure. These are peculiar groups that aren't involved in any ordinary business or regular activity. The Wellspring Committee is a Virginia-based entity with ties to--you guessed it--Leonard Leo, and the Judicial Crisis Network then promised to spend as much on the Kavanaugh nomination as they had for Gorsuch. Add to this mix of peculiarly funded and obscure organizations the BH Group, a shell corporation that gave $1 million to Donald Trump's inaugural. The BH Group received over $1 million in something called consulting fees in 2017 from something else called the Judicial Education Project. Who is Judicial Education Project? The Judicial Education Project is--guess what--the 501(c)(3) side of the Judicial Crisis Network. Why does a shell corporation give money to the Trump inaugural and also serve as a consultant to a legal organization fighting for the confirmation of specific Justices? What consulting did they do? Was there any consulting done at all? Great questions. Leonard Leo probably knows the answer. In 2018, he told the Federal Elections Commission that the BH Group was his employer. While this apparatus may be complex and difficult to track, its goal is simple. Don McGahn explained it succinctly: ``Regulatory reform and judicial selection are . . . deeply connected.'' Translated, that means that the Federalist Society's goal is to pack the judiciary through judicial selection with judges who will deliver what is called regulatory reform, an extreme anti-regulation, anti-union, anti- environment agenda for those corporatist Federalist Society funders. Let me give you two examples. The Senate just confirmed Neomi Rao to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Rao comes right out of the deep bog of special interest dark money. Her bio appears on the Federalist Society website, along with the list of 26 times she has been featured at Federalist Society events--26 auditions, as one might describe them. This is a person confirmed for the DC Court of Appeals who has never been a judge. She has never even tried a case. What has she done? She served as the Trump administration's point person for tearing down Federal regulations as head of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Among her greatest hits was taking one of Scott Pruitt's proposed regulatory rollbacks for the climate-change driving- gas methane from the oil and gas industry and tipping that regulation even further in favor of fossil fuel polluters. Out-Pruitting Scott Pruitt for the fossil fuel industry is hard to do. That may have been another audition for the court. Rao also funded the so-called Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, which is devoted to conjuring ways to roll back as many regulations affecting these corporations as possible and is funded by these same secretive groups. I asked Ms. Rao about the funders of her center at the Scalia Law School. She claimed in her answers--and, by the way, I will add that these were questions for the record--written questions that she had time to consider, review, and respond to. This was not a surprise attack of an unprepared witness at a hearing. She had weeks to answer. She claimed in her answers that, to the best of her knowledge, her organization had not received any money from the Federalist Society, from Koch Family Foundations, or from anonymous funders. Well, that was simply not true. A Virginia open records request revealed that an anonymous donor and the Charles Koch Foundation donated $30 million earmarked specially for her organization. Guess whose interests she has been conveyed onto the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to protect. Now consider the case of Kisor v. Wilkie, a case currently before the Supreme Court. It hasn't gotten much attention. On its face, it is about an obscure administrative law doctrine, but Kisor has been described as a ``stalking horse for much larger game''--whether administrative agencies can continue to have the independence they need to regulate in the public interests. At stake could be the power of the EPA to protect our air and water, of the Department of Labor to continue to protect workers in the workplace, and of the Securities and Exchange Commission to protect investors against financial fraud. Many corporations hate regulation. The problem is regulations are pretty popular. Politicians may talk about cutting redtape, but their constituents really like clean air and clean water. They want safe workplaces and the peace of mind that their investments are sound. That is where judges like Neomi Rao and cases like Kisor come in. For decades we have operated in a system where Congress passes laws and administrative Agencies fill in the details and implement those laws using their regulatory power and their time, patience, and expertise to deal with complex problems. It has worked extremely well. Cases like Kisor, however, slowly chip away at that system, shifting more and more power from expert regulatory agencies to courts and to courts filled with more and more judges like Neomi Rao. The Daily Beast influence reporter Jay Michaelson wrote: Sometimes thought of as a legal association, the Federalist Society is actually a large right-wing network that grooms conservative law students still in law school (sponsoring everything from free burrito lunches to conferences, speakers, and journals), links them together, mentors them, finds them jobs, and eventually places them in courts and in government. Within this Federalist Society is this operation I have described, funded by dark money and designed to remake our judiciary on behalf of a distinct group of very wealthy and powerful, anonymous funders. Add to that the dark money funding the so-called Judicial Crisis Network. Add to that the dark money funding the amicus briefs telling these judges what to do. Then look at the outcomes when the Federalist Society-selected appointees get a majority on the court. It is not a pretty sight. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate the comments of my distinguished chairman on the Environmental Works Committee about carbon capture technology, and I am wondering what part of the carbon emissions problem he thinks carbon capture will solve, because leaders of the carbon capture technology sector have said it is their vision to capture 1 percent--1 percent--of carbon emissions. What I conclude from that is that carbon capture technology is important, but to rely on it at the expense of the course of action that we really need is profoundly misguided.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am interested in the other 99 percent. Cloture Motion

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I will speak very briefly. Rhode Island is a coastal State, and we are now looking at maps that our coastal agency, the local university, and the scientists at NOAA tell us will create a new face of Rhode Island in the decades ahead if we don't address climate change. We turn into an archipelago. We lose enormous amounts of waterfront, and as a small State, frankly, we don't have a lot to give back to the ocean. This is deadly serious for us. I join in my colleague's sense of offense that the other side thinks this is something funny. This is not funny for Rhode Islanders; this is deadly real. You may disagree with us, but the one thing that, I think, we are owed on this subject is sincerity, but there is nothing sincere about the vote that is going to be held on the Green New Deal. This is a vote that will be based on a cartoon version of the Green New Deal that was cooked up by the Koch brothers, who have their oily hands all over this mess, and it was instructed by the fossil fuel mouthpiece of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. It took only days for the majority leader to hop up and do the bidding of these farces. We are owed better than this. If you disagree with our measures, fine. Have one of your own. We have five or six different bills and strategies that we are willing to work on. This is the time to be serious, to be sincere, and to quit mocking a concern that across the board is recognized as real. In fact, there is not a Republican here who can't go to his home State university and be told about the truth of climate change. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is my great honor and pleasure to be joined on the floor today by my senior Senator from Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed. We are here today on the Senate floor to speak about the perils that climate change poses to America's national security. I am going to frame my remarks around a fact and a proposition. The fact, as reported in the 2017 climate science report, is that the oceans of the world are absorbing more than 9 zettajoules of heat energy each year. The proposition is one that I think most of us agree with--that America is and remains the world's indispensable Nation, exceptional and exemplary. Let's unpack that fact a little bit. More than 9 zettajoules of heat energy go into the ocean every year. First, what is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is sextillion joules, or 10 to the 21st power joules. That is a lot of zeros. More practically, 9 zettajoules is around a dozen times humankind's total annual energy consumption. More kinetically speaking, the added heat in our oceans is equivalent to four Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs exploding in the oceans every second--every second. So every minute, 240 Hiroshima blasts in the ocean--in the time of my remarks, probably 3,000 Hiroshima explosions-- with the oceans capturing all of that heat energy. Let's go back to the proposition that America is the world's indispensable and exemplary Nation. Years ago, Daniel Webster probably said it best, describing the work of our Founders as having ``set the world an example.'' His was not a unique vision of America. From Jonathan Winthrop at the beginning to Ronald Reagan recently, we have called ourselves a city on a hill, set high for the world to witness. From President Kennedy to President Obama, inaugural addresses have noted that the glow of our ideals ``light[s] the world.'' President Clinton argued that ``[p]eople the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power.'' When Daniel Webster said that our Founding Fathers had set the world an example, he went on to say this: ``The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it should be proclaimed that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell''-- meaning the death nail--``of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.'' How does the fact of 9 zettajoules and the proposition of America's role relate to each other? First is the climate chaos mankind will increasingly have to bear. A recent study published by Nature found with 99.9999 percent confidence that Earth is warming due to human activity. I could give you any number of risks, such as global sea level rise or increasing wildfires and droughts or the unprecedented CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere. All of this affects human health, human agriculture, and human economy, and all of these risks also have national security consequences. Through the years, America's national security experts could not have made it much plainer. Fifty-eight former military and national security leaders sent this letter this month to President Trump warning that ``[c]limate change is real, it is happening now, it is driven by humans, and it is accelerating.'' They went on to say that the administration's denial of climate science will ``erode our national security.'' They warned that the effects of climate change are already being ``used by our adversaries as a weapon of war,'' citing ISIS's control of water during climate change-exacerbated drought. This letter urges President Trump to ``drop the politics, and allow our national security and science agencies to do their jobs.'' They are not alone. The Pentagon's 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review described climate change as a ``global threat multiplier,'' warning that ``the pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world.'' Former admiral Samuel Locklear, as head of U.S. Pacific Command, warned in 2013 that climate change was the biggest long-term security threat in his area of operation, noting the need for the military to organize for, as he called it, ``when the effects of climate change start to impact these massive populations.'' ``If it goes bad,'' he said, ``you could have hundreds of thousands or millions of people displaced and then security will start to crumble pretty quickly.'' A recent survey of nearly 300 Active-Duty and veteran servicemembers found that 77 percent ``consider it fairly or very likely that military bases in coastal or island regions will be damaged by flooding or severe storms as a result of climate change.'' In response to a provision championed by Rhode Island Congressman Jim Langevin in the House and by Senator Reed in the Senate, the last NDAA bill instructed the Department of Defense to provide a report examining the effects of climate change on the military. Of 79 DOD installations evaluated, 53 currently experience recurrent flooding, 43 are experiencing drought conditions, 36 are prone to wildfires, 6 are seeing desertification, and 1 is dealing with thawing permafrost. That is what is happening now. In 20 years, the DOD predicts, an additional seven installations will experience flooding, five more will see drought conditions, and seven will see wildfire risks. Of course, all of those risks will get worse. This report failed to list the top 10 most vulnerable installations and ignores the Marine Corps, but it nevertheless warned that ``[t]he effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to Department of Defense missions, operational plans, and installations.'' The national security ties to climate change begin with our military. A second point. Henry Kissinger once told me that the great revolutions of the world have always come from what he called a ``confluence of resentments.'' I have not forgotten that phrase since he used it, a ``confluence of resentments.'' The poorest on the planet, those who live closest to the land, who lead subsistence lives, will suffer most the brunt of the coming change, and they will resent it. It is human nature. If you divide the world into three groups, you can call one group the very poorest, who will starve when, for instance, their fisheries collapse. The middle group is distressed when fisheries collapse but has the resources to find alternative food sources. At the top, the fish in our air-conditioned supermarket may cost a bit more and come from a different part of the ocean, and we may drive home in our air- conditioned SUV with a slightly larger grocery bill, but that will be it for us. The first two groups will resent it when they feel the pain caused by the SUV crowd. If you turn that pain up high enough, good luck defending with those injured people the parliamentary democracy and market capitalism system that brought this on. The injustice will amplify the resentments. My final point. How does America fare as the exemplary Nation through all of this? Well, very badly. Democracy and capitalism are the hallmarks of our country, and the failure of those institutions to address climate change will not be a good story. Worse than the failure is the reason for it. The climate denial apparatus that has won unseemly influence in Congress now will surely lose the test of time. The consequences of climate change are determined by laws of chemistry, of physics, and of biology. Those laws can't be repealed or wished away. Propaganda can manipulate people and passions and politics, but it has no effect on the immutable laws of nature. So the fossil fuel industry's denial apparatus will ultimately be exposed as a fraud and a scandal, and history will lament and condemn it as one of the great American frauds and scandals. History's judgment will come harshly, and it will fall harshly on an American democracy that let itself be overborne by this apparatus. James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, warned of ``moments in public affairs when the people [can be] misled by artful misrepresentations of interested men.'' By that, of course, he meant people with a conflict of interest. He went on to say that misled people ``may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.'' We have certainly been misled by artful misrepresentations of the interested men of the fossil fuel industry. It may be hard for us in our world of air-conditioning, SUVs, and imported fresh fish to contemplate resentment and revolution, but the harms to the oceans of 9 zettajoules of heat--4.5 Hiroshima explosions worth of heat per second that we are adding to the oceans--those harms are on a collision course with our destiny as a city on a hill. We urgently need to show the world that market capitalism and democracy don't fail when presented with big problems if we are to head off a confluence of resentments that we are now making inevitable. With that, I yield to my distinguished senior Senator, Mr. Jack Reed.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for probably about 15 minutes, and should Senator Van Hollen from Maryland--who is scheduled to arrive--arrive, that I be able to engage in colloquy with him.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, there is now no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is caused by human activity, and that we must act now to avoid the worse of it. As science guy, Bill Nye, has said: ``Climate change is happening, it's our fault, and we've got to get to work on this.'' For too long we have seen the fossil fuel industry and its army of front groups use manufactured doubt, phony doubt, as their weapon of choice to obstruct any solution. Well, science studies things, and it even studies doubt. A scientific study published by Nature has found that the evidence of human-caused climate change occurring has now achieved what scientists call the five sigma level of certainty. What does that mean? This scientific standard means there is 99.9999 percent confidence that Earth is warming due to human activity. Put another way, there is a 1 in 3.5 million chance that human-caused warming is not occurring. To compare, you have a 1 in 15,000 chance that you will be struck by lightning in your life. You have a 1 in 100,000 chance of being born a conjoined twin, and you have a 1 in 3.5 million chance the fossil fuel industry's phony doubt about climate change is true. Yet, just one Republican has signed on to Senator Carper's resolution stating the basics--that climate change is real and caused by human activity, and Congress should take action now to address it. In an editorial last week--this one here--even the middle-of-the-road USA Today said climate change is ``a true crisis facing the United States and the world,'' that ``fossil fuel polluters keep using the atmosphere as a free waste dump,'' and, finally, that ``[t]he public is growing impatient.'' Well, last week, here on the Senate floor, we actually had something resembling a climate debate break out. It was a little weird. As a debate, it coughed and banged and sputtered, and we didn't really engage. Many of our Republican colleagues had a very hard time mentioning the actual phrase ``climate change.'' They found it impossible to talk at all about the costs of climate change--the floods, the fires, the rising seas, the worst yet to come. No one could mention the 1.5 degree centigrade limit that we need to meet. They mostly wanted to have fun bashing an imaginary Koch brothers- invented version of the Green New Deal. However, some did say that they accepted the science. In particular, I was happy to see the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee clearly accept that climate change is real, that it is caused by humans, and that we have a responsibility to do something about it. I appreciate that he pointed to the bipartisan work he and I have done on carbon capture and removal. I enjoyed working with him on that legislation, and I hope we can get its successor bill passed too. We just had a very good bipartisan committee hearing on it, but put those two bills together, and you are still nowhere near the scale of action that science demands. Our scientists report that we must aim for net zero carbon emissions by the middle of this century to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Carbon capture will be a part of that, but there is zero chance it alone will be sufficient, and any plan that falls short of that mark amounts to its own diluted brand of climate denial. Bashing the Green New Deal doesn't solve the problem. This is a good moment for me to interrupt my remarks because I see the majority leader on the floor. If I may, I will yield to him to close out the Senate and then have myself and Senator Van Hollen recognized at the conclusion of the majority leader's comments.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank Senator Van Hollen for joining me in this colloquy and for speaking today on the floor. I see the distinguished ranking member of the Finance Committee here. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Arsenic, too, is a naturally occurring substance, but you don't want too much of it.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I may, Madam President, I would like to remark on the figure that Senator Van Hollen used of the recent measurement in our atmosphere of a carbon dioxide concentration of 411 parts per million. Standing on its own, that may not seem particularly significant, so let's put that into context. NASA, which Senator Van Hollen mentioned and which has important facilities in Maryland, has been measuring this for a long time. By the way, I think NASA's scientists have demonstrated they know what they are talking about. They have rovers driving around on Mars right now, so they know what they are talking about. The scientists have gone back and determined what the carbon dioxide levels were on Earth over a period of 400,000 years. If you look back, there is a graph that NASA has that shows the carbon dioxide levels ramping up and down, up and down, over 400,000 years. For that entire time, the levels have stayed between 180 parts per million and 300 parts per million. That was the range within which the entire human species experienced our development--180 parts per million at the low and 300 parts per million at the high. At 411, we are now out of that range by almost the entire range. We are not out by a little; we are out of that range by a lot. Also, 400,000 years is a very long time. If you look at how long humankind has been farming--kind of the basic, organized activity of our species--the common view is that we really started farming about 12,000 years ago. Some people push that number further, more towards 20,000 years. We invented the wheel a little over 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. If you think about the first people who put seeds in the ground and planted farms, you only go back 12,000 to 20,000 years. If you think about the first people who rolled a wagon or a chariot on a wheel, you only go back about 5,000 years. This record goes back 400,000 years. They know it because you can go into ancient ice, and you can find bubbles of air from tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago, and you can test them. I have been to the freezer at Ohio State University, which is where they keep the cores they have drilled out of glaciers, and I have seen how they go back and do these micro measurements that let you know what the carbon dioxide levels were. So we are not off by a little, folks; we are off by a lot. When you consider the known scientific effect of carbon dioxide concentrations, we have known what it has done. This has been a greenhouse gas since Abraham Lincoln rode around in his top hat. This is not scientific news; we know this stuff. When you consider that we are that far out of the range that has made human life and development comfortable on this planet throughout the entire duration of our species--that we are out of that range for the first time in 400,000 years and are out of that range by an amount that is practically equal to the entire range itself--if that is not a signal for us to wake up and pay attention, I don't know what is. The fact that the fossil fuel industry can drown out that signal with its political signal in this body is astounding.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am now honored to yield the floor to my distinguished colleague from Maryland who has been working on this issue in the House before he came to the Senate and has become a real leader in our Senate caucus, Senator Van Hollen.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, when we yielded to accommodate the majority leader, I was talking about the episode on the Senate floor with the Republican Senators coming to bash the Green New Deal. I wanted to go on to say that the USA Today editorial--the one saying climate change is ``a true crisis facing the United States and the world''--also said this about the Green New Deal critics: Republicans in the White House and Congress are having a grand old time mocking the Green New Deal. . . . But the critics owe this and future generations more than scorn; they have an obligation to put better ideas and solutions on the table. So far we have not seen much from my Republican colleagues by way of better or, indeed, any solutions. Madam President, I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude and appreciation to Senators Murkowski and Manchin for the joint piece that they wrote in the ``Washington Post'' recently. I ask unanimous consent to have that article printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. So we get that my colleagues don't like the Green New Deal. Let's consider other proposals. We have lots of them on the Democratic side. We have had cap and trade. We have had ``keep it in the ground.'' We have had Green New Deals. We have had revenue-neutral carbon fee proposals. Senator Van Hollen, of Maryland, is here to discuss his ideas. We are ready here. Republicans said last week they wanted innovation to address climate change--great, me too. But you can't count on the innovation fairy to fly down and wave innovation fairy dust on the problem and make it go away. One of the reasons that Senator Barrasso's and my bipartisan carbon capture bill was necessary is because there was not enough innovation. There was not enough innovation because, quoting the USA Today article, ``fossil-fuel polluters keep using the atmosphere as a free waste dump.'' It is really hard to spur innovation when there is no revenue in the business model. So our bill put revenue in the business model. We did it in the form of tax credits. But the big driver for developing innovation and for developing innovative, new technologies would be a price on carbon, just like Senator Schatz and I have in our American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act--a revenue-neutral, border-adjustable carbon fee. This bill passes all the major Republican tests. It is a market solution that fixes a market failure. It does not grow government or regulation, and it does not put American industry at a disadvantage against foreign competitors. It will drive innovation: Put a $50 per ton price on carbon emissions, and every polluter paying the price has an incentive to spend up to $49 per ton on solutions. That is how you get innovation. This carbon pricing idea has support from a swath of senior Republican officials, including seven Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, six current and former Members of Congress, four EPA Administrators, three Secretaries of State or Treasury, two Chairs of the Federal Reserve, and one Congressional Budget Office Director--all Republicans. Some of these Republicans were members of a group of prominent economists, including 27 Nobel Prize winners, who recently published this statement in the Wall Street Journal editorial page supporting just the kind of carbon fee model that is the basis of Senator Schatz's and my legislation. Since then, over 3,500 U.S. economists have signed this statement, and that is because it is pretty obvious how you have to solve this problem, once you want to. Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis has been very active in this area. He said of our carbon fee proposal: ``Democrats . . . have offered Republicans an olive limb, not just an olive branch.'' We are trying to reach out. We are trying to get to yes, and that olive branch will remain extended as long as it takes. If you think all of our bills are no good, come up with something better, for Pete's sake. Give it a try. I am ready to work with Republicans on passing a carbon fee or other climate change legislation. I think I have proved that by working in a bipartisan fashion. But when Republicans will not propose anything and will not agree to anything--even an olive limb offered to them--then, that is a pretty strong sign that there is something more going on than objections to a Green New Deal. If you don't like the Green New Deal, tell us what you do like. Go the carbon fee route. Go ``leave it in the ground''--whatever. But please, let's get together and solve this problem. As USA Today said, ``the American people are getting impatient.''

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I understand that the majority has the floor, and so I will be very brief. I have enormous regard for Senator Blunt and for those who have spoken already. I just want to say that, for the people who say we want to have a discussion about this issue, we are so eager to have a discussion about this issue. I come here every week hoping to have a discussion about this issue, and I would love to have a discussion about this issue. I would love to have hearings in the Environment and Public Works Committee about a climate bill. I would love to have people working together to solve this problem. I will say that Senator Schatz and I have a piece of climate legislation that is not this one, but it does have the support of seven Republican former chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, six current and former Republican Congressmen, four former Republican EPA Administrators and Secretaries of Treasury and State, two former Republican chairs of the Federal Reserve, and one former Republican CBO Director. A Republican congressman referred to that bill as not just an olive branch reaching out to Republicans but an olive limb reaching out to Republicans. I hope we can emerge from this with a real conversation about real bills, and in the context of that, we will be very interested to know what the Republican proposal is to deal with climate change. I yield the floor. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I appreciate the courtesy of my distinguished colleagues.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in California, several counties and cities are suing the big oil companies to hold them liable for the damages that climate change is causing to the infrastructure out there. As judges consider these cases, one thing they will be asked to keep in mind is Big Oil's history of deception and lies. A group of scientific experts filed this friend-of-the-court brief out in the Ninth Circuit, carefully charting that history, that pattern of deception and lies. The group of scholars and scientists chronicled how the fossil fuel companies had actual knowledge of the risks of their products and had taken ``proactive steps to conceal their knowledge and discredit climate science'' while at the same time taking steps based on that science to protect their own assets from the impacts of climate change. It is a 51-page document, so let me cut to the chase. Big Oil knew for a very long time that the production and burning of fossil fuels would be disastrous for the planet. Yet they did everything in their power to confuse the public, undermine the scientific evidence of the dangers, and prevent action to stave off this worldwide problem. The brief makes a fascinating read. Here are some highlights. Way back in 1959, when I was a kid and Dwight Eisenhower was President, Columbia University held a symposium attended by oil industry executives to mark the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry. At that event, the legendary Dr. Edward Teller, a physicist, warned the industry about global warming. He said: [A] temperature rise corresponding to a 10 percent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. . . . [T]his chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe. In 1959. A few years later, in 1965, at the American Petroleum Institute's annual meeting, API president Frank Ikard briefed the Big Oil trade group on a report from President Johnson's Science Advisory Committee that predicted significant global warming by the end of the century, caused by fossil fuels, and warned that ``there is still time to save the world's peoples from the catastrophic consequence of pollution, but time is running out.'' The American Petroleum Institute, 1965. API then commissioned a Stanford Research Institute report on the climate problem which was made available to its membership in 1968. The report said: [R]ising levels of CO2 would likely result in rising global temperatures. . . . [T]he result could be melting ice caps, rising sea levels, warming oceans, and serious environmental damage on a global scale. Then, in 1969, Stanford produced a supplemental report for the American Petroleum Institute. As the authors of this brief tell the Ninth Circuit, ``The report projected that . . . atmospheric CO2 concentrations would reach 370 [parts per million] by 2000--exactly what it turned out to be.'' That was 1968 and 1969, very clear warnings that have come to pass. Big Oil did not just rely on the American Petroleum Institute to do its research on climate change. Ed Garvey was an Exxon scientist at the time. Mr. Garvey said: By the late 1970s, global warming was no longer speculative. Did you get that? ``By the late 1970s, global warming was no longer speculative,'' said the Exxon scientist. The issue was not were we going to have a problem, the issue was simply how soon and how fast and how bad was it going to be. Not if. Indeed, Exxon did a lot of climate research, and they understood the science well. A 1979 internal Exxon study found that: [The] increase [in CO2 concentration] is due to fossil fuel combustion . . . and the present trend of fossil fuel consumption will cause dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050. Meanwhile--back to the American Petroleum Institute--they had put together a task force on what they called the CO2 problem. In 1980, Dr. John Laurman told this API task force that ``foreseeable temperature increases could have major economic consequences [and] globally catastrophic effects.'' The American Petroleum Institute, 1980. Back at Exxon, Roger Cohen, the director of Exxon's Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences Laboratory, warned in 1981--the next year--about the magnitude of this problem. [I]t is distinctly possible that [Exxon's planning] scenario will later produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth's population). In 1982, Roger Cohen reiterated his warning: Over the past several years a clear scientific consensus has emerged regarding-- This is 1982-- the expected climatic effects of increased atmospheric

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, our Democratic leader has set three plain and very obvious questions about fossil fuel-burning carbon emissions and climate change that should be easily answered by every single Member of the Senate, and the fact that this is a problem is a clear indication of fossil fuel influence in this body--the regrettable extent of fossil fuel influence in this body. It was not always this way. Here is a letter that a number of us came to the floor to talk about yesterday. The letter was written December 23, 1986. There had been hearings on climate change in the Environment and Public Works Committee, and a bipartisan group of Senators wanted some answers. They wrote this letter to what then existed, an Office of Technology Assessment for the Congress, inquiring about how serious they felt this was and what could be done about it, signed by Senator Stafford, Senator Chafee, Senator Durenberger, and three Democrats in 1986. I do not believe that a Republican Senator could be found to sign this letter today. I got here in 2007, and for that year, and in 2008 and 2009, we had multiple bipartisan climate bills being discussed in this body. Over and over again, there were a Democrat and Republican who got together and worked to try to solve the climate problem--more than a decade ago. We have seen bipartisanship on this issue. We have even seen, in 2009, this New York Times full-page advertisement signed by Donald J. Trump, which said that the science of climate change is ``scientifically irrefutable.'' Those were his words, not mine, in 2009, which said that if we don't act there would be ``catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet''--his words, not mine. That was 1986, that was 2007, and this was 2009. Then something happened. Citizens United got decided by the Supreme Court or, to be fair to the Supreme Court, Citizens United got decided by five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court. In my view, the fossil fuel industry asked for that decision, predicted that decision, and they were off like a sprinter at the gun when they got that decision. From that moment, all of that bipartisan activity on climate change here in the Senate ended, and it ended because the fossil fuel industry was allowed to spend unlimited money in politics. They found out how to spend unlimited dark money in politics. It is politically obvious that if one can spend unlimited money in politics, one can also threaten to spend unlimited money in politics. So between the unlimited spending and the unlimited, anonymous dark money spending and whatever they did in the way of threats and promises, it has been like a heart attack--flatlined--here in the Senate, since that moment. It is a tragedy. In fact, if you go back to this letter for a minute, there were six signatories. We couldn't get six States to come to the floor yesterday because one of these States has two Republican Senators, and we couldn't get either of them to come to the floor. I don't know what has happened to the Republican Party that they can't take this seriously even now--even as States like Florida are flooding on sunny days, even as States see wildfires they have never seen before, even as farmers are recording drought and flood conditions that are unprecedented, even as my State looks forward to 5 or 6 feet of sea level rise. And then we got a clue as to what goes on here. This is a letter that was written on behalf of Andrew Wheeler, who is the slightly cleaned-up version of Scott Pruitt and who is pending before us to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. It ought to tell us a lot that the Republicans put up a coal lobbyist to represent the people of America leading the Environmental Protection Agency. What tells you a lot also is this letter of support for this guy. Who is on it? These are these phony-baloney front group organizations funded by the fossil fuel industry that got together to write this letter: The Heartland Institute. Koch-affiliated groups gave it $7.18 million, and $730,000 came from Exxon. Heartland is such a slippery, slimy group that they compared climate scientists to the Unabomber. That is the company that they travel in. The Cornwall Alliance. Secret funding--we don't know, but they are always in this climate-denier fringe crowd. The founder doesn't believe in evolution. He said that tornadoes are a punishment from God, and that AIDS is punishment for being gay. You are running in great company with them, guys. FreedomWorks is next. They received $2.5 million from Koch-affiliated groups, and at least $130,000 from the American Petroleum Institute. The Competitive Enterprise Institute is next, with at least $2 million given from Exxon, and Koch-affiliated groups gave at least $5.2 million. Americans for Prosperity. This is basically the hit squad for the Kochs in politics. It is one of the largest dark-money election spenders, spending more than $70 million since Citizens United on Federal elections. They received a minimum of $12 million, that we know of, in funding from the Kochs and more than $23 million from the Koch- linked Donors Trust. Donors Trust, by the way, is a big enterprise whose sole purpose is to launder away the identity of big donors so that their money can flow without people knowing who is behind it. Americans for Limited Government received at least $5.6 million from Koch-affiliated groups. Freedom Partners is described as ``the Koch brothers' secret bank.'' It has spent more than $55 million in dark money on Federal elections since Citizens United and received at least $3 million from the Kochs, but, as usual, its funders are shrouded in secrecy. Americans for Tax Reform. The American Petroleum Institute gave at least $525,000, and Koch-affiliated groups gave at least $330,000. The Energy and Environmental Legal Institute received at least half a million dollars from Koch-affiliated groups. CFACT received at least $580,000 in funding from Exxon and more than $8 million from Koch-linked groups. Then, at the bottom is this little Caesar Rodney Institute, which is part of the larger State Policy Network, funded by the Kochs to spread their propaganda and poison into State legislatures. This crew of fossil-fuel-funded, climate-denying front groups have received a minimum of more than $63 million from the fossil fuel industry, and this is why we have Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist, lined up to run our environmental agency in this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. These six U.S. Senators were troubled by testimony they had heard about climate change in three separate hearings of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee. They wrote: The testimony convincingly portrayed a fundamentally altered planet, with shifts in ocean circulation and climate zones; altered precipitation and storm patterns; more frequent and extreme weather events such as droughts, monsoons, and lowland floods. Individually and collectively, these changes bring about others, ranging from disruption of forest, crop, and ocean productivity to shifts in populations. Witnesses before the Committee testified that the Earth is now committed to a substantial greenhouse warming, projected to be about 2 degrees Centigrade, as well as an ozone layer depletion. Well, that was quite a prediction. Who were these six Senators? Quentin Burdick, Democrat from North Dakota; Max Baucus, Democrat from Montana; George Mitchell, Democrat from Maine; Robert Stafford, Republican from Vermont, the chairman then of the committee; Dave Durenberger, Republican of Minnesota; and Rhode Island's Republican Senator, John Chafee. You cannot help but be struck that the prediction back then by these six Senators is now our reality. Everything they predicted is happening. The scientists they listened to had it right. Global temperatures have already risen by around 1 degree Celsius, and we are headed to over 2 degrees Celsius of global warming by the end of the century. Their grim predictions, which we now live with as fact, motivated these six Senators to ask the Office of Technology Assessment for policy options that ``could lead to the stabilization and minimization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.'' Why did they want these policy options? They wanted to learn about policy options because, as they continued in their letter: Congress must soon begin to weigh the alternatives facing the United States and other nations. . . . Due to the likelihood that legislation will be considered by the Committee early in the next Congress, it would be most helpful if this analysis could be undertaken without delay. ``Without delay.'' Since then, Republicans have demolished the Office of Technology Assessment; that office no longer exists. Republicans have relentlessly blockaded legislation to address carbon emissions and have trafficked in phony climate denial, all while accepting hundreds of millions of dollars of political contributions from the fossil fuel industry. Today, five of those six States are represented again, having a reunion on the Senate floor. I see Senator Tester from Montana here. I will yield to him now. We will also be joined by Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Angus King of Maine. I yield to Jon Tester of Montana, taking the position of his predecessor, Max Baucus--whom, by one of the weird coincidences of the Senate, I just passed coming out of the trolley. Senator Tester, the floor is yours.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank Senator Tester. I will turn to the Rhode Islander who was in that early bipartisan effort to understand and address climate change. Senator John Chafee's history of service to his State and country was remarkable. He saw bloody combat in World War II on Guadalcanal and Okinawa with the 1st Marine Division. He went back as a Marine rifle company commander during the Korean war with Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. He served in Rhode Island's legislature and as our Governor. In 1969, he was appointed Secretary of the Navy. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976 and chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee from 1995 until his death in 1999. In the small Rhode Island world, he was also my father's college roommate and lifelong friend. The environment was an abiding passion for this man, and his devotion showed in his work in the Senate. His legacy includes the Superfund Program, the Oil Pollution Act, and the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, and his legacy is his early recognition that climate change, driven by carbon pollution, caused by fossil fuels, poses an existential threat to humanity and the planet we call home. At the 1986 hearing that led to this bipartisan letter, Chafee declared: This is not a matter of Chicken Little telling us the sky is falling. The scientific evidence . . . is telling us we have a problem; a serious problem. This is 1986, and the Republican chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee is saying that the scientific evidence is telling us we have a serious problem. He went on to say: Scientists have characterized our treatment of the greenhouse effect as a global experiment. It strikes me as a form of planetary Russian roulette. . . . By not making policy choices today, by sticking to a ``wait and see'' approach . . . [b]y allowing these gases to continue to build in the atmosphere, this generation may be committing all of us to severe economic and environmental disruption without ever having decided that the value of ``business as usual'' is worth the risks. Those who believe that these are problems to be dealt with by future generations are misleading themselves. Senator John Chafee, 1986. I yield now to the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Committee and honorary Senator pro tempore, Patrick Leahy, here on behalf of the State of Vermont.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Leahy, Klobuchar, King, and Tester be recognized in the next 40 minutes or so for a colloquy with me.