Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, one of the features of our trip to Paris was the presence of America's corporate leaders there urging us on. We not only met with significant corporate leaders like people from Citigroup, PG&E, VF Industries, and others, but they were cheering us on publicly in advertisements like this one taken out by the food and beverage industry, calling on a strong Paris climate agreement. The companies who signed this include Mars--if you like M&Ms, you like Mars--General Mills, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Hershey and Nestle, Kellogg, Unilever, and others. The food and beverage industry was joined by an advertisement from some of America's apparel leaders: VF Corporation, based in North Carolina, which produces North Face, Timberland, and a whole variety of other very well-known and popular brands--Adidas, the shoe manufacturer; Levis, if you know jeans you know Levis; Gap, which has stores all over the country; and others from the apparel industry. Perhaps the biggest advertisement that the American business community took out was this one: Companies like not only Johnson & Johnson, the bandaid people, but Johnson Controls, Colgate-Palmolive, Owens Corning, Procter & Gamble, Dupont, and utilities like National Grid and PG&E. So corporate America made a very strong statement in support of a strong Paris climate deal. The last one I will show is this one, which was taken out by America's financial leaders--Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. There was a strong, powerful message from America's corporate leadership that I very much hope our colleagues on the other side will begin to listen to; that Paris is a good thing, a strong agreement is a good thing, and we need to make progress together. With that, I will turn over the floor to my terrific colleague Senator Merkley from Oregon.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as this year draws to a close, so too does a long and accomplished legal career for Rhode Island Family Court Chief Judge Haiganush R. Bedrosian. She will retire from the bench at the end of December after serving on the family court for over 35 years. Judge Bedrosian is a trailblazer and a skilled leader in the Rhode Island legal community. She will be missed. Judge Bedrosian, the daughter of Armenian immigrants, is a lifelong Rhode Islander who grew up in Cranston. She attended Cranston East High School and then Brown University's Pembroke College, where she graduated with a degree in political science in 1965. She says that when she graduated from Pembroke, she was told ``women don't go to law school'' and she had best look for work elsewhere. That didn't sound right to her. Judge Bedrosian enrolled at Suffolk Law School, where she excelled. She earned a clerkship with Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice Thomas Paolino. After her clerkship, she rose quickly in the legal profession, serving as an assistant general counsel for the Providence & Worcester Railroad, representing children in private practice and serving as a special assistant to the Rhode Island Attorney General in the Criminal Division. In 1980, Rhode Island Governor J. Joseph Garrahy nominated her to serve on Rhode Island's family court, making her the first woman to sit on the family court bench. Over the course of her tenure, she has built a reputation for fairness, compassion, and thorough command of the law. She has deftly handled some of the most complex and difficult cases to come before the Court. She rose to the position of chief judge on the family court in 2010-- another first for a woman in Rhode Island--where she has proven herself an able leader. She has promoted mediation as a way to resolve challenging family disputes more quickly and with less stress on the parties involved. She has advocated for improvements to the way juveniles are treated in our justice system, both at the State and Federal levels. She has worked to combat human trafficking and sexual violence. And she has expanded the family treatment drug court, a smart and effective program to address drug offenses that involve youth and families. In addition to her good work in the courtroom, Judge Bedrosian has contributed a great deal to her community. She remains a committed member of the congregation of Saints Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church in Providence where she is a frequent volunteer. She has also founded and served as president of the Rhode Island Trial Judges Association. We will miss Judge Bedrosian's steady hand and compassionate, reasoned rulings on the bench. But we wish her well in the next chapter of her life. Best of luck, Your Honor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Ben Cardin, led a delegation of 10 Senators to Paris this past weekend. We went to support the ``high- ambition coalition'' on the international climate agreement. It was truly impressive to see so many nations represented at the meeting, active and trying to help. All of us in the codel came away from Paris with a good feeling about the prospects for a strong climate agreement. I had the chance to speak at Oceans Day, where people were keenly aware that the effects of carbon pollution on our oceans are undeniable. You can measure the warming oceans with thermometers. You measure sea level rise with basically a yardstick. You can measure acidification of the seas with simple pH tests. You can replicate what excess CO2 does to seawater in a basic high school science lab. That is why the big, phony climate denial apparatus the fossil fuel industry is running never talks about oceans. It is undeniable there. I also had a chance in Paris to cheer on our bright, young negotiating team staff, who worked late hours in their windowless common workspace but were very enthusiastic and made me very proud. The delegation also met with Todd Stern, who was leading the U.S. negotiating team, and we visited the NOAA scientists who were at the U.S. Pavilion. The U.S. presence there was great. One thing was sad, and that is that our Senate delegation of 10 Senators was all Democrats. The last political bastian of the fossil fuel industry worldwide is now the American Republican Party. No Republican was able to come with us. The fossil fuel industry would never let them. I will say the fossil fuel industry is behaving reprehensibly. The power it exerts over Congress is polluting American democracy. The spin and propaganda it emits through a vast array of front groups are polluting our public discourse. Of course, its carbon emissions are polluting our atmosphere and oceans. These fossil fuel companies are sinning, and on a monumental scale. Remember what Pope Francis said in his encyclical: ``Today . . . sin is manifest in . . . attacks on nature. . . . [A] sin against ourselves and a sin against God.'' Their behavior is truly reprehensible. They have a lot to atone for. But this is not exactly the American Republican party's finest hour, either. It is the world's only major political party so in tow to the fossil fuel industry that it cannot face up to the realities of carbon pollution and climate change. Some ``city on a hill'' that leaves us. Notwithstanding all the Republican intransigence, we were able to tell the world that we would have the President's back, and we will. We will protect the Clean Power Plan, we will protect the Clean Air Act, and we will protect any agreement that comes out of Paris. One nice thing in Paris was the presence of American companies, such as PG&E of California, VF Corporation of North Carolina--one of our biggest apparel manufacturers--Citigroup of New York, Kellogg of Michigan, Ben and Jerry's of Vermont, and Facebook of basically everywhere. They were there to cheer on a good deal, and so was the American Sustainable Business Council. And they have been doing this for a long while. Some of America's leading food companies took out this ad in the Washington Post and Financial Times on October 1 urging a strong agreement in Paris. The companies that have signed it include Mars--if you like M&Ms, you know about Mars--General Mills, Nestle USA, Unilever Corporation, Kellogg Company, Stonyfield Farm, and Dannon USA. On November 24, it was updated with new signatories, including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and Hershey. Quoting from the ad: Dear US and Global Leaders: Now is the time to meaningfully address the reality of climate change. We are asking you to embrace the opportunity presented to you in Paris. . . . We are ready to meet the climate challenges that face our businesses. Please join us in meeting the climate challenges that face the world. This is an ad taken out in Politico by another group of well-known apparel companies, including Levi's--if you know blue jeans, you know Levi's; Gap; Eileen Fischer, VF Corporation, which makes Timberland, North Face, and a number of other well-known brands, urging a strong agreement in Paris. This ad ran during talks on Thursday, November 3: To US and Global Leaders: As the world gathers in Paris this week for the 2015 United Nations Conference of the Parties, we come together, as some of the largest, best known global apparel companies, to acknowledge that climate change is harming the world in which we operate. . . . We recognize that human-produced greenhouse gas emissions are a key contributor to climate change. . . . We support a strong global deal that will accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy. Those industries are not alone. Here is an ad from a coalition of about 70 major American corporations again urging a strong agreement in Paris. They include Coca-Cola, Adidas, Intel, Colgate Palmolive, the Hartford Insurance Company, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, National Grid, DuPont, the Outdoor Industry Association, and others. They say: Failure to tackle climate change could put America's economic prosperity at risk. But the right action now would create jobs and boost competitiveness. We encourage our government to . . . seek a strong and fair global climate deal in Paris. Seventy major American corporations, every single one whose name you know, are saying: We seek a fair climate deal in Paris. Finally, this is a financial sector statement on climate change from the financial giants: Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo, again calling for a robust global agreement out of Paris. They state: We call for leadership and cooperation among governments for commitments leading to a strong global climate agreement. They want frameworks ``that recognize the costs of carbon.'' They say: We are aligned on the importance of policies to address the climate challenge. It is time people started listening. And let's not forget the more than 150 American companies that have signed on to the White House's American Business Act on Climate Pledge, joining that call for a strong outcome on the Paris climate negotiations. Those companies on the White House American Business Act on Climate Pledge have operations in all 50 States, employ nearly 11 million people, represent more than $4.2 trillion in annual revenue, and have a combined market capitalization of over $7 trillion. Yet, if you believe some of my friends on the other side, they are all just part of a big old hoax trying to fool everybody. Really? Unfortunately, while the world is listening to these strong corporate voices for a strong Paris agreement, these companies' own home State Republican Senators are right here in Congress trying to undercut their home State companies' work. But the world listens to the companies, not the deniers. One of their best voices is Unilever, whose CEO Paul Polman met with our delegation to express the growing support in the corporate community for climate action and to describe Unilever's work to catalyze that support. We met with Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, and heard about a meeting scheduled for May here in Washington, DC, for corporate CEOs to come to Congress and let us know they want climate action. The grip of the fossil fuel companies on Congress will slip, as other corporate leaders come forward to urge strong climate action. Pretty soon, there is going to be a very small island of denial and obstruction left in a rising sea of reality. Pretty soon, there will be nobody left on the shrinking Denial Island but the fossil fuel industry, the Koch brothers and their front groups, and the Republican Members of Congress--oh yes, of course, can't forget the Republican Presidential candidates who are so desperate to toady up to the fossil fuel industry that they won't acknowledge this issue. Mark my words: As the rest of corporate America stands up, the fossil fuel industry's fortress of denial and deceit will tumble down. Paris sends a strong message of hope that echoes Pope Francis's strong encyclical on climate change. Governments, corporations, and civil society groups are a gathering force behind that message. Vice President Gore, who has labored long in these vineyards, met with us in Paris and had a strong message of hope. Against the gloomy falsehoods the fossil fuel industry propagates, hope burns bright for this gathering force. The Vice President observed to us that ``things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.'' From a man who has been through--uniquely--this all taking a long, his confidence in fast happenings was heartening. So not only is it time to wake up, but the world is waking up. Corporate America is waking up outside of the narrow, selfish confines of the fossil fuel industry. Wise Republicans are starting to stir--and the sooner the better. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record materials I referred to during my remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, thank you very much. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, recently the oceans lost one of their greatest champions. With the passing of Dr. John A. Knauss, Rhode Island has lost a beloved teacher, a visionary leader, and a brilliant scientist. We will all miss him a great deal. John's accomplishments are too many to list, but I will note a few. In 1966, Dr. Knauss was named to the Commission on Marine Science, Engineering, and Resources, where he and his colleagues recommended that Congress form a new and independent Federal agency to advance marine and atmospheric sciences and better understand our oceans, coastlines, and Great Lakes. That agency became the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts some of the most important ocean science in the world and where John served as Administrator from 1989 to 1993. Along with Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell and Dr. Athelstan Spilhaus, Dr. Knauss developed the National Sea Grant College Program. Their model was the country's land grant college system--century-old centers of learning that promote better use of America's vast resources of land. Pell and Knauss thought that surely our oceans and Great Lakes needed a similar network of institutions to conduct coastal and marine science and promote conservation of such important natural assets. Congress agreed. In 2016, Sea Grant will celebrate 50 years of good work on behalf of our oceans and Great Lakes. In recognition of his vision and leadership in forming Sea Grant, NOAA named one of its most prestigious fellowships in his honor--the NOAA Sea Grant John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. Every year, around 50 of the Nation's top graduate and postgraduate students are selected for Knauss fellowships to spend a year working on marine and coastal policy issues for the Federal agencies and congressional offices in Washington, DC. Two Knauss fellows, Adena Leibman and Anna-Marie Laura, have worked in my Senate office, helping shape national oceans policy. But perhaps his most significant achievement is the Graduate School of Oceanography, GSO, at the University of Rhode Island. John founded the GSO in 1962, served as its dean for over 25 years, and built it into an international leader in marine research. Today, sitting atop a bluff overlooking Rhode Island's beautiful Narragansett Bay, the GSO is home to 41 faculty and 170 graduate students engaged in cutting-edge oceanographic science and pursuing degrees across a range of specialties, including the country's first marine affairs and ocean engineering programs. It is a true Rhode Island treasure, one we should continue investing in, and a testament to Dean Knauss's leadership and commitment to our oceans. Easily lost among his accomplishments in founding and leading ocean research institutions are his personal contributions to oceanography. In his dissertation for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, John was the first to make comprehensive measurements of the Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent--a current that runs for thousands of miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. He later discovered another major current in the Indian Ocean. John will be remembered for his collegiality and gift for collaboration among the administrators, faculty, students, and other researchers and ocean-minded professionals that he touched. Like the currents he studied, connecting vast oceans in one system, the institutions and programs he created and led bind together leading minds in ocean science, bettering our understanding of our ocean world and how important it is to us. I offer my and Sandra's condolences to the Knauss family, to the marine science community, and to the countless people John Knauss taught, mentored, and inspired through the years.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here to join the chorus for providing some additional help to our seniors on Social Security. What can I say? Here we go again. In 2010 and in 2011, America's seniors were told by the Social Security Administration there would be no cost- of-living adjustment, no increase for them, and now it is happening a third time. We all know that the price of the things seniors actually buy has continued to go up, and yet no COLA. In 2010 and 2011 we tried to remedy that with Senator Sanders' Emergency Senior Citizens Relief Act. We did not succeed. There was opposition from the other side. We did succeed at getting a one-time $300 payment to seniors under the Economic Stimulus Act in 2008, back in the depths of the great Wall Street recession, and another $250 under the Recovery Act. So we have done this before, and it has helped. I strongly encourage that we do it. There is a flaw built into the Social Security COLA, which is that the CPI measures things that a lot of seniors don't buy. It measures laptops, it measures flat screens, and it measures a lot of technology, but seniors in Rhode Island who make a little over $1,200 from Social Security on average aren't buying a lot of flat screen TVs and they are not buying a lot of laptops. What they are buying is fuel, medicines, food, and maybe something for the grandchildren at Christmastime, and all of that keeps going up. We should fix that formula. There should be a CPI-E, a CPI for elderly folks that tracks what they actually spend and not some hypothetical CPI that spreads across all age groups. That would be the ultimate fix, but in the meantime, we should do this. I think it is paid for very sensibly. I commend Senator Warren. We established as a country that beyond $1 million in executive compensation, it wasn't going to be tax deductible any longer. If you are a big corporation and you want to pay your CEO more than $1 million--fine, you still do that, but you don't get to have the American taxpayer kick in for the more-than-$1 million salary. So what did corporate America do? They took it out of salary and they moved it over to bonuses. Now you have those big bonuses over $1 million. They dodged that exemption, and now the American taxpayer is back on the hook again to kick in for a $1 million-plus compensation package for a corporate CEO. Come on. We ought to be able to get beyond that. So we have a way to pay for it that is fair, sensible, and consistent with the policy that we have already agreed on as a nation, which is that above $1 million in compensation, taxpayers shouldn't be kicking in any longer to help the company pay those exorbitant salaries. I think we have a very good way to spend those resources, which is helping seniors who now--for the third time since I have been in the Senate--are getting a zero COLA while everything goes up around them. I commend Senator Warren for taking the lead, and I am pleased to be a cosponsor on her bill. I am delighted to yield back.

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, as the Presiding Officer knows well, every week that I am here and the Senate is in session, I come to the floor to remind us of the damage carbon pollution continues to do to our atmosphere and oceans. Today I rise for the 120th time to urge my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change. I am not alone, although it sometimes seems a bit lonely here. We have an advertisement today in the Wall Street Journal--we will find it here in 1 second; well, I seem to have mislaid it--that has a considerable number of American companies that have called upon the public and called on the readers of the Wall Street Journal to support a strong outcome in Paris. It matches another Wall Street Journal full- page advertisement--this one went back to October 22--which was ``Republicans and Democrats Agree: U.S. Security Demands Global Climate Action.'' That had 23 Republican former officials, including Senators Cohen, Coleman, Danforth, Hagel, Lugar, Kassebaum, Smith, and Snowe, Secretaries of Commerce, State, Treasury, members of the National Intelligence Council, Homeland Security advisers, and Trade Representatives. In total, 33 Republican and military officials were calling on us to get serious about it. So a lot of people out there, including Republicans, are interested in getting something done. I wanted to build my remarks this week around something interesting that Pope Francis said this past weekend about the upcoming climate talks in Paris. He said: ``It would be sad, and dare I say even catastrophic, were special interests to prevail over the common good and lead to manipulating information in order to protect their own plans and interests.'' ``Sad,'' and ``even catastrophic''--let's look at that part. The fact is, we have changed the composition of our atmosphere, pushing the concentration of carbon dioxide beyond the range it has been in for at least 800,000 years, longer than our species has been on the planet. For 8,000 centuries, humans have inhabited an Earth with an atmosphere between 170 and 300 parts per million of CO2. Concentrations have now hit 400 parts per million, farther out of the range than the midpoint of the range, and that trend continues to rise. By the way, that is measurement. That is not somebody's theory. That is not a computer-model run. We have measured that. Last year was the hottest year since we began keeping records in 1880, a dubious distinction. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the last 5 years are now the warmest 5-year period in human history. This year is on track to be another recordbreaker, expected to reach the both symbolic and significant milestone of 1 full degree Celsius above the average temperature of the preindustrial era. Many scientists agree that 2 degrees above the precarbon-era norm will likely mean irreparable harm to our planet and to our current way of life. So it would, indeed, be sad and perhaps ultimately catastrophic if we were to do nothing. Yet we in Congress continue to do nothing, which brings me to the next of Pope Francis's words in that opening quotation: ``special interests prevail[ing] over the common good.'' Well, doing nothing is just fine by the big polluters because they make more money when we do nothing. To keep their profitable racket running, the polluters spend huge sums on lobbying and on politics, particularly right here in the Congress. As one author has written, and I will quote him: ``[R]ivers of money flowing from secret sources have turned our elections into silent auctions.'' And the polluters get what they pay for. With the Congress of the United States distracted and deceived by their mischief, the effects of climate change just keep piling up. This problem got worse in 2010 when the big polluters got a gift. They got handed a big, new political weapon. Thanks to five Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, all of them Republican appointees, the big polluters can now threaten lawmakers with the cudgel of unlimited, undisclosed Citizens United money. So we do nothing, and the polluters offload onto everyone else the costs in damage from their fossil fuel product, the costs of heat waves, of sea level rise, of ocean acidification, of dying forests, of worsening storms and more. The polluters happily dump those costs onto everybody else. They suck up hundreds of billions of dollars in effective public subsidy, according to the International Monetary Fund, and of course they fight desperately to protect their favored status. Pope Francis had it right--special interests indeed prevail over the common good. And that brings us to the Pope's words about them ``manipulating information in order to protect their own plans and interests.'' I have spoken on this floor about the decades-long, purposeful corporate campaign of misinformation on climate change. The fossil fuel industry and its allies gin up doubt about the dangers of carbon pollution through a smokescreen of misleading public statements, sophisticated marketing, and polluter-funded front groups. The mission of these well-organized and mightily funded deniers is to manufacture a product--uncertainty, doubt. The polluters spend huge amounts on a big, complex PR machine to churn out doubt about the real science. It is a fraud. It is a deliberate pollution of the public mind. We know that a network of front organizations with innocent-sounding names has emerged to propagate that baloney science. This network has been well documented by Dr. Robert Brulle at Drexel University and Dr. Riley Dunlap at Oklahoma State University, among others. Professor Brulle's follow-the-money analysis, for instance, diagrams the complex flow of cash to these front groups, a flow that the fossil fuel industry persistently tries to obscure. A new study was released just last week, a study by Dr. Justin Farrell at Yale University. His work examines how corporations have used their money to amplify the voices of climate deniers and to exaggerate scientific uncertainty. Dr. Farrell used computers to perform a comprehensive quantitative analysis of more than 39 million words written by 164 climate denial organizations--yes, there are 164 of them; this is a big beast--over a 20-year period. His study compared corporate-funded groups to the rest. Professor Farrell's stated purpose was to uncover empirically the actual social arrangements within which large-scale scientific misinformation is generated and the important role private funding plays in shaping the actual ideological content of scientific information that is written and amplified. He describes the climate denial apparatus as a complex network of think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, trade associations, and other groups that are ``overtly producing and promoting skepticism and doubt about scientific consensus on climate change.'' Farrell describes the function of the network as, one, ``the production of an alternative contrarian discourse,'' and two, ``to create ideological polarization around climate change.'' Why polarization? Because ``it is well understood that polarization is an effective strategy for creating controversy and delaying policy progress particularly around environmental issues.'' So the polarization we see in this building on this issue is a product created by a network of corporate-funded climate denial front groups. We are the living proof of the success of this scheme. Corporate backing created a united network, said Farrell, within which the contrarian messages could be strategically created. That is right, climate denial is ``strategically created.'' Farrell's data show particularly that donations from ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations signal what he calls entry into a powerful network of influence, and that corporate funding influences the actual language and thematic content of polarizing discourse. And, of course, one of the areas of distinct corporate-funded polarizing discourse produced by this network was questions about the scientific veracity of long-term climate change. Again, it is the product of a scheme. Professor Farrell made another comparison. He has made the same comparison that others have made with tobacco. I will quote him: Well-funded and well-organized ``contrarian'' campaigns are especially important for spreading skepticism or denial where scientific consensus exists--such as in the present case of global warming, or in historical contrarian efforts to create doubt about the link between smoking and cancer. To create doubt about the link between smoking and cancer. That echos the telling sentence from the tobacco denial campaign: Doubt is our product. Just as Pope Francis said, the denial machinery is ``manipulating information in order to protect their own plans and interests.'' The actions of the climate denial machine have been so effective, they have made it ``difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,'' says Farrell. Doubt is still their product. Every generation of Americans has faced its challenge, and each has risen to its challenge. Some generations left bloody footprints in the snows of Valley Forge to secure our independence. Some generations were torn to pieces by cannon fire in the great battles of the Civil War. Some generations endured mustard gas and trench warfare in World War I. Some secured the world's freedom from the Axis powers in World War II. Some rebuilt the American economy after the Great Depression. Some were beaten, bombed, and burned as they struggled to secure the civil rights we now enjoy. We are the generation whose duty it is to face down the climate crisis that threatens our planet and face down the folks behind this vast climate denial scheme. All we have to do to rise to our duty is to resist all the dark money, all the fossil fuel-funded threats and intimidation Citizens United made possible. Let me read from an opinion that was in my clips today from David Brooks, a conservative columnist. I see him at American Enterprise Institute gatherings. He is a self-identified Republican conservative who was writing about climate change and the upcoming Paris conference. He says this as if he is communicating with Alexander Hamilton. He obviously is not, but that is his rhetorical device. He said, ``So I seanced up my hero Alexander Hamilton to see what he thought'' about the Paris climate conference. Here is what he said: First, [Alexander Hamilton] was struck by the fact that on this issue the G.O.P. has come to resemble a Soviet dictatorship--a vast majority of Republican politicians can't publicly say what they know about the truth of climate change because they're afraid the thought police will knock on their door and drag them off to an AM radio interrogation. That is a conservative Republican economist talking about this. We can get through this. We simply need conscientious Republicans and Democrats to work together in good faith on a common platform of established science, clear facts, and basic common sense. If we do that, we can protect the American people, the American economy, and our American reputation from the harm of the looming effects of climate change. It is on us. It is on us. We simply need to shed the shackles of corrupting influence and rise to our duty, as other generations always have. We do not have to be the generation that failed. Yes, we are headed down a road to infamy now, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can leave a legacy that will echo down the corridors of history, so the generations that follow us will be proud of our efforts the way we are proud of those who did great things for our country before us. But sitting here doing nothing, yielding to the special interests, won't accomplish that. This new analysis out of Yale is an important addition to the increasing body of academic research and journalism that is shining some much needed sunlight on the shadowy enterprise of phony science and phony doubt that props up climate denial. It is time we all caught on to this deceptive enterprise. Being suckers down a road to infamy is not a good legacy. It is time to wake up. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the advertisement ``Business Backs Low-Carbon USA'' in the Wall Street Journal and the article by David Brooks, ``The Green Tech Solution,'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to speak for 5 minutes on Epilepsy Awareness Month. If the matter for which Senator Wicker is waiting comes to the floor, I will interrupt my speech immediately so I don't slow down his business at all. I know he has been waiting here for a while, but as long as we were in a quorum call, I will speak in recognition of November as Epilepsy Awareness Month. Epilepsy is a chronic, debilitating condition that can produce violent, unpredictable seizures. It can be caused by traumatic events such as strokes, tumors, or brain injuries, but for a lot of patients the cause remains unknown. It is no easy thing to live with epilepsy. Yet millions of Americans do so every day, including an estimated 10,000 Rhode Islanders. They include Sawyer, a 12-year-old Warwick resident who recently started seventh grade. I think we all remember what it was like to be a young person in school. I am sure we all know someone who for one reason or another was labeled as different and had a harder time than most. Well, imagine how hard it must be to navigate that world while also struggling with the daily symptoms of epilepsy. It takes a brave person to confront that challenge head-on, and I think we can all admire Sawyer's courage every day as he goes to school and pursues his education amid challenging circumstances. One reason Sawyer and his mom moved to Rhode Island was to take advantage of the support services provided by the Matty Fund, a local organization dedicated to helping those living with epilepsy and raising awareness of the condition. The organization was founded in 2003 by Richard and Deb Siravo in honor of their son Matty, whom they lost to epilepsy that same year. The group provides services to local families, including Camp Matty, a day camp designed for kids with epilepsy. Sawyer recently attended Camp Matty and spent time with other kids like him, as well as older camp counselors, who are living with epilepsy and thriving. According to the Matty Fund, Sawyer flourished during his time at the camp. The group's executive director, Marisol Garcies, tells me that Sawyer ``could see in these teenagers and volunteers a glimpse of himself in a few short years, and it comforted him.'' I am proud of the work the Matty Fund is doing to support Rhode Island kids like Sawyer, and I would also like to see us in Congress do more to give hope to him and millions of other Americans living with epilepsy. Federal funding for epilepsy research through the National Institutes of Health was cut $27 million from fiscal year 2012 to fiscal year 2013 as a result of the recent budget battles. Funding has been restored in the years since, but until we provide the kind of year-to-year funding certainty that big research initiatives need, there will continue to be trouble. The researchers developing the next generation of medical treatments for epilepsy and countless other conditions shouldn't have to worry that their funding is at risk because Congress is having another political fight. That is why I am proud to be a cosponsor of Senator Durbin's American Cures Act, which would create a trust fund dedicated to sustaining and expanding funding for health research at the NIH, CDC, Department of Defense, and Department of Veterans Affairs. In addition, I am currently working with my colleagues on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to make NIH funding a mandatory part of our annual budget, ensuring that a baseline of Federal research dollars will be available year in and year out. I hope we can get it done. In the meantime, let's all keep sending our thoughts and prayers to people like Sawyer, and to help to lift the stigma that is too often associated with epilepsy. These brave individuals fight every day to live a normal life against some very real obstacles, and we can help by giving them our admiration and encouragement. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to speak in what is probably my 119th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech related to climate change. I would like to take this occasion to express my appreciation to a person whom the TV cameras can probably see behind me sitting on the staff bench, Joseph Majkut, who has been a fellow on my staff for over a year now. He has been very instrumental in helping me prepare these speeches. I am grateful to him. Today, I ask that we imagine a dark castle with looming ramparts and tall towers. It is strongly built, and it is well defended. Its defenders are determined and implacable. They patrol those ramparts and from their castle battlements attack and harass their opponents. The castle's thick walls are built to keep out unwelcome things. In this castle, those unwelcome things are science--the science of climate change; truth--the truth of what carbon pollution does to our atmosphere and oceans; and decency--the human decency, in the face of that information, to try to do the right thing. This is Denial Castle, the fortress of climate denial constructed by the big polluters. Like many castles, this castle is built on elements that date back to earlier wars. Some parts date back to tobacco companies denying that smoking causes cancer. Some parts of it date back to the lead industries denying that lead paint poisons children. Some parts go back to denial of what acid rain was doing to our New England lakes and denial of what pollution was doing to our atmosphere's ozone layer. There might even be a few bits dating back to denial that seatbelts and airbags were a good idea. But now it is the big carbon polluters who command Denial Castle. They now enjoy the power to pollute for free, so they attack climate science. They send out trolls to disrupt Web sites and blogs. They harass climate scientists. One minion became attorney general of Virginia and so harassed a University of Virginia scientist that Mr. Jefferson's university had to use university lawyers and the State supreme court to get the harassment stopped. This castle has within it its own little stable of scientists to trot out like trained ponies to create false doubt and uncertainty about the harm carbon pollution causes. Of course, the polluters have mouthpieces, such as the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to help spread their fog of doubt and denial. Most of all, they have weaponry. The weaponry on these dark ramparts is not just pointed outward at science and at the public; those polluter weapons point in, as well, at the Members of Congress who are held hostage inside the castle. This is not just a fortress; it is also a prison. Members know that if they try to escape, the full force of the polluters' political weaponry will fall on them. Many of the hostages are restless, but escape is hazardous. Some are actually happy to help man the ramparts. Look at the effort by Senate Republicans this week to override the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan--our Nation's most significant effort yet to assert global leadership in staving off the worst effects of climate change. For those Republican Senators who want out of Denial Castle, escape is hazardous because Citizens United, that shameful Supreme Court decision, armed the polluters on the ramparts with a terrifying new weapon: the threat of massive, sudden, anonymous, unlimited political spending. A Republican in a primary has virtually no defense against that. One minute you are on course to reelection; the next moment a primary opponent has millions of dollars, pounding you with negative ads, and the polluter-funded attack machine has turned on you. One polluter front group actually warned that anyone who crossed them would be ``at a severe disadvantage,'' and that addressing carbon pollution with a price on carbon would be a ``political loser.'' From a group backed by billionaires now threatening to wield, just in this election, $750 million in political spending, that is not a very subtle threat. Of course, a threatened attack doesn't actually have to happen to have its political effect. A threat, a quiet threat, a secret threat can be enough. We will never see those threats unless we are in the backroom where they are made. That is the unacknowledged danger of Citizens United. What were the five Republican judges thinking when their Citizens United decision unleashed unlimited political spending and its dark twin, the silent threat of that unlimited political spending? This is not an idle concern. By 2 to 1, Americans think the Justices often let political considerations and personal views influence their decisions. Americans massively oppose the Citizens United decision--80 percent against, with 71 percent strongly opposed. Most tellingly, by a ratio of 9 to 1, Americans now believe our Supreme Court treats corporations more favorably than individuals. Even self-identified conservative Republicans by a 4-to-1 margin now believe the Court treats corporations more favorably than individuals. Linda Greenhouse, who long resisted drawing such a conclusion, has written that she finds it ``impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Republican-appointed majority is committed to harnessing the Supreme Court to an ideological agenda.'' Other noted Court watchers such as Norm Ornstein at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and Jeffrey Toobin long ago reached a similar conclusion. Let's look carefully at what those five Justices did in their 5-to-4 Citizens United decision. Let's start where they started, with the First Amendment to the Constitution. The First Amendment protects honest elections by allowing limitations on the influence of money. The First Amendment allows limitations on election spending when they reflect a reasonable concern about corruption. If you are a judge who wants to unleash unlimited corporate money into elections, you need to get around that problem, which they did by making the factual finding that all this corporate money will not present even a risk of corruption, not a chance. That is obviously false, but they said it anyway, which is interesting. But wait, it gets more interesting still. To make that factual finding, they had to break a venerable rule--the rule that appellate courts don't do factfinding. They broke that rule. They did something else, too. Every time Congress or the Supreme Court had examined corporate corruption in elections, they found a rich, sordid record of corporate corruption of elections. That is American history. The five Justices knew a record like that in the case would have made it pretty hard to find no risk of corporate corruption of elections. All the evidence would go the other way. How did the five Justices make sure the case had no good evidentiary record on corporate corruption of elections? Very cleverly. They changed the question in the case--what the Court calls the question presented. They changed the question late in the case, after there was any chance to develop a factual record on that new question presented. It is very unusual, but it is exactly what they did. Then they overruled a hundred years of practice and precedent of earlier Courts. One could argue that each one of these different steps was wrong. Certainly, the ultimate factual finding, that corporate money can't corrupt an election, is way wrong. But the worst wrong is that these steps are linked together in a chain of necessity you must follow to get that result. What is the chance that these conservative Justices just happened to change the question presented, which just happened to prevent there being a robust factual record on the very question where they just happened to need to make false factual findings about corruption; which just happened, this of all times, to be the time they broke the rule against appellate fact finding; all of which just happened to provide the exact findings of fact necessary to get around that First Amendment leash on corporate political spending? Put all those steps together, and what you see is Justices behaving not like an umpire evenly calling balls and strikes, but like a locksmith carefully manufacturing a key, each of whose parts is precisely assembled to fit the tumblers and turn a particular lock. The result was amazing new weaponry for the corporate polluter apparatus, political Gatling guns in a field of muskets, which the polluters have deployed very effectively to silence debate about climate change. Before Citizens United, Republicans regularly stood up to address climate change. A Republican nominee campaigning for President had a strong climate change platform. A Republican President spoke of its urgency. Republican Senators authored and sponsored big climate change bills. Republican Congressmen voted for the Waxman-Markey bill in the House or wrote articles favoring a carbon tax and then came over and became Senators. But after Citizens United, there was virtual silence. The polluters used Citizens United's new political artillery to shut debate down. Money can be speech, but it isn't always. Money can also be bribery, bullying, intimidation, harassment, shouting down, and drowning out. The legendary turn-of-the-century political fixer Mark Hanna once said: There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is. He didn't say that because money is free speech. Money is political artillery. Look at the munitions. My gosh, most dark money political ads in the last election were negative ads. At times, virtually all on the air have been negative ads. Many ads have been reviewed and deemed false or misleading. At times, a majority of the ads running were deemed false or misleading. That is not debate; that is artillery. The power to fire that artillery opens the way for secret threats and promises to use or not use that artillery. It does cause corruption when a politician will not vote his conscience because he hears those whispered threats and fears that new artillery. But even with all this new political artillery, the Denier Castle is not as secure as it looks. It is built on a foundation of lies--lies that the science of climate change is unsettled, lies that there is no urgency to this, lies that there will be economic harm if we fix the problem. The truth is exactly the opposite. The effects of carbon pollution are deadly real in our atmosphere and oceans. Time is running out to avoid the worst of the peril, and a sensible political response to climate change actually yields broad economic gains. The Denier Castle's foundation of lies is slowly crumbling. The cracks are already beginning to appear. Twelve Republican House Members escaped from the castle--far enough to sponsor a climate resolution. Young Republicans--under 35--by a majority think climate denial is ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. Conservative heartland farmers see unprecedented weather in their fields and coastal fishermen see unfamiliar fish in their nets. Corporate climate leadership grows, from Walmart, Coke and Pepsi, Ford and GM, Mars and Unilever, General Mills and many others, and whole industries like the property casualty insurance industry. Of course, well-respected military leaders warn of climate change as danger, a catalyst of conflict. With all that comes the economic tide of lower and lower cost clean energy--energy which is probably cheaper already than fossil fuel, if the energy market weren't rigged by the polluters to favor their dirty product. The blocks of the Denier Castle are loosening and beginning to fall. Mortar sifts down. The whole structure of deceit and denial is creaking and crumbling. Fear is starting to spread within the castle about what will happen when the lies are exposed and all the bullying revealed. Will there really be no price to pay for all that deceit and denial in a world of justice and consequences? The Wall Street Journal editorial page has gotten so anxious that it accuses me of ``treat[ing] [climate] heretics like Cromwell did Catholics,'' all because I, the junior Senator of the smallest State, had the temerity to say that mighty ExxonMobil, one of the biggest corporations in the history of the world and a Goliath if there ever were one, should maybe have to tell the truth in the place we trust in America to find the truth--an American courtroom. Exxon has gotten so frantic that their public relations people are starting to use bad language, things I can't even say on the Senate floor. Even this week's Clean Power Plan challenge has an air of desperation--a last-ditch effort to show the fossil fuel industry that folks have done all they could before they stand down and evacuate the castle. The dark castle will fall, and it will fall abruptly. It will collapse. More hostages will break free, and a torrent will follow. When the lies and political influence are all exposed, there will come a day of reckoning. For all faithful stewards of God's Earth, and for our American democracy, that will be a day of joy, a day of honor, and a day of liberation. Each one of us can push a little harder to make that day come a little sooner. Let us lean into our tasks and to our duty. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is a pleasure and privilege to follow the distinguished Senator from Indiana. His concerns for national security are well established, and I enjoy working with him, particularly in the area of cyber security. But I would note, in the wake of his eloquent remarks about our national security situation, that we are not here on the floor to discuss national security. We are here on the floor right now because the Republican leadership is taking a run at the President's Clean Power Plan. Paris has not recovered from the devastation of the other day, and we have important bills that the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations has worked very hard on to get ready and that would improve the capacity of our Department of Justice, our FBI, and our Department of Homeland Security to address this threat. Are we on those bills? No. The majority leader has decided we are going to take a run at a climate regulation. Now, with ISIS and terrorism being the issue of the day, one might think: OK, I can understand why we are going to climate change. We have known for years that our intelligence community, our defense leaders, and the men and women in uniform we count on to protect us have said climate change breeds terrorism. It creates the conditions--the Quadrennial Defense Review and the intelligence reports have said--that spawn the kind of despair that leads to terrorism. It is a catalyst of conflict. So one might say: OK, sure, it makes sense we should address climate change because it is a catalyst for conflict. And we would find voices--I think the distinguished Senator from Indiana mentioned Admiral Stavridis. We love Admiral Stavridis in Rhode Island because he has been associated with the Naval War College. He has said that the cascading interests and broad implications stemming from the effects of climate change should cause today's global leaders to take stock, and he has said many other eloquent things on climate change too. But we are not here to do something about climate change and help reduce it as a catalyst of conflict. What the majority leader has brought us here to do is to undo American leadership in this area. One might say: OK, they have a better plan. The Republicans have a plan they think is better than the Clean Power Plan, and therefore they want to foul up the Clean Power Plan so they can put a clean power plan of their own in place. There is no such thing. There is no Republican strategy to deal with climate change. In fact, a majority of my colleagues on that side can't even admit that it is real. So that is where we are. We are on a measure that clearly won't pass under the Congressional Review Act, clearly will go to the President and be vetoed and be sustained on the veto. So this will never become law. It is just a big exercise in time-wasting. While the smoke is still clearing over Paris, we are still engaged in this big exercise in time-wasting. Why? To send a signal. To send a signal to the big coal interests, the big oil interests, the Koch brothers, and the tea partiers that ``We are with you.'' The American public isn't with you. Even Republicans aren't with you. If we look at recent polling, other than the tea party--and by the way, 70 percent in the tea party thinks global warming isn't happening--isn't happening. I don't know whom they are talking to. They are not talking to fishermen in my State. They are not talking to foresters out West. They are not talking to farmers in the Midwest. It is happening. We might go further as to discussing what to do about it, but the tea party is so irresponsible that they think, in a strong majority, it is not even happening. But they are not the ones we should be listening to because 83 percent of Americans--including 60 percent of Republicans--and by the way, with the November elections coming up, 86 percent of Independents say that if nothing is done to reduce emissions, global warming will be a very or somewhat serious problem in the future. So we are now going against what 83 percent of Americans, including 61 percent of Republicans and 86 percent of Independents, would direct us to do, in order to keep the faith with the big coal and oil and Koch brothers industries that fund so much of this operation here. So 56 percent of Republicans--and 54 percent of conservative Republicans--say that the climate is changing and that mankind is contributing a lot or probably a little to the change. A majority of Republicans now believe there is solid evidence of global warming-- again, 56 percent. When we look at young Republicans, this is where it gets very interesting. Young Republicans--under the age of 35--think climate denial by politicians in Congress is ``ignorant, out of touch or crazy.'' That is where young Republicans are on this. Yet the majority leader has brought us here to interrupt any conversation we might be having over national security, slowing down any progress on the domestic security appropriations bills that might go forward, against the interests of young Republicans and everybody else virtually across the country, all to help out Big Coal, Big Oil, the Koch brothers, and to cater to this small, little tea party contingent, 70 percent of whom don't even believe climate change is happening. There is a point where you can't take views seriously. Frankly, if this group by 70 percent thinks it is not even happening, there is a point where we have to say: Run along, fellows; we want to play with the grownups here who understand what is going on. So here we are on this bill. I will say that I like to do a little research when there is somebody speaking on the Senate floor. I thought the Senator from Indiana was going to talk about climate change, so I did home State Indiana, university, and climate change, to see what comes up. What came up was an article published by the University of Indiana that says ``Indiana University experts comment on climate change report.'' That is the headline. The No. 1 lead under it is ``Changing climate will affect Midwest crops, forests, public health.'' That is the lead, Indiana University. The second lead is ``Report signals need to move away from fossil fuels.'' So they get it at the University of Indiana. Here is the quote: ``Climate change, once thought to be a problem for future generations, `has moved firmly into the present. . . . ' '' That was an article from May 6, 2014, more than a year ago, and still we are on the floor fighting about vain and doomed-to-failure efforts to attack the only climate change plan that is out there. I invite my Republican colleagues: If you have a better plan than the climate plan the President has put forward, let's hear it. But I am here to say they have nothing--nothing--zero. So bring up that subject if you want. Highlight for the American people that this is a party in tow to coal and oil and Koch brothers' interests. Highlight for the American people that you are running in direct opposition to what the American people believe, to what even young Republicans believe. I don't get it, but have fun with it. The last thing I will mention is this. I am from the Ocean State. I am about to be followed by my distinguished colleague and friend from Wyoming. Rhode Island has a little bit of a different situation. We are on the ocean. This denial business really doesn't work for us. We can go down to Narragansett Bay and measure that the bay is 3 to 4 degrees warmer, mean water temperature, than it was 30 years ago. That is not just a statistic; that signals the end of the winter flounder fishery in Rhode Island. We used to catch winter flounder. It was a robust crop. It is gone, more than 90 percent wiped out, largely because that warming has changed the ecosystem in which the winter flounders grew. So it is gone. We paid a price for that. We can go to Naval Station Newport and look at the tide gauge. It is up 10 inches since the hurricane of 1938 came through. Google ``Hurricane of 1938, Rhode Island.'' Take a look at the images. We got smashed by that hurricane, and now there are 10 inches more water that can stack up with storm surge into an even bigger cocked fist against my State. That is directly related to the warming oceans--unless somebody wants to repeal the law of thermal expansion around here. But I don't think we get to do that in the Senate. That is one of God's laws. That is one of the laws of nature. So our seas are warming, and our seas are rising. We have virtually lost our winter flounder fishery. We are losing our lobster fishery. We are getting clobbered, and we can't deny this stuff. The effect carbon has on the oceans can be replicated in a high school science lab. Ramp up the carbon dioxide in saltwater and seawater and it turns acidic. The ocean is turning acidic at the fastest rate ever since humankind has been on this planet. Go to the western coast and look at a little tiny sea snail called the pteropod, the sea butterfly. God's evolution has metamorphosed this little snail to having a foot that is actually a wing that swims it through the ocean. It is one of the core species. If we had good ocean sense here, everybody would know what a pteropod was. It is all over the place. It is a huge food source. It is the bottom floor of the food pyramid. In the study just done, more than 50 percent of the pteropods in the Pacific from California north had severe shell damage--more than half of the species had severe shell damage from acidification of those seas. People in Oregon and Washington have had their oyster farms wiped out as the acidified water came in and ate away the shells of these little creatures. You do not survive long in an environment in which you are soluble, and that is the predicament we are creating for these of God's species. Pope Francis said something very simple: We don't have that right. We don't have that right. Those pteropods aren't this generation's species. They are God's species. They are the Earth's species. It is not for us to tell our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren: We don't care. Go ahead, die right out. We are going to protect our big industry friends. That is just wrong. We should not be on this bill. This is a time-waster. This is a disgrace. This has no business being here. The American people know better, and that may be the reason we are trying to get off it as quickly as we can. But I am here to say it is not enough to get off trying to knock down our one plan for dealing with climate change; we ought to be thinking about how we enhance wind and solar in Texas, wind and solar in Wyoming, protect the great forests of this country, protect the great shores of this country, and protect the species offshore. We are changing their world on them by making the oceans more acidic than they have been in the lifetime of our species. I know the Senator from Wyoming is here to rebut everything I have said, but he has that right. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is my habit to give my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches once a week when the Senate is in session. It is also a practice of mine to go to other States--particularly States that have Republican Senators--to look at what is happening in the States and get a sense of where the local universities and the local experts are with respect to climate change. My last visit was to Ohio. I have also been to New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Iowa. The thing that is common across all of those trips is that there is no denying climate change in those States. The denial is the function of this building, and it is the function of the wall of money the fossil fuel industry has erected around this building. But pick a State university in the country and go there, and we find there is simply not climate denial. I am joined today by my friend Sherrod Brown, Ohio's senior Senator, who was kind enough to accompany me on the trip--on several parts of it, anyway. We went to Cleveland. We had a couple of meetings there together. Another one of my visits was to Lake Erie, which got clobbered by the cyanotic bacteria that shut down Toledo's water system, which is also climate change-related. Let me yield to the Senator from Ohio for a few moments, and then we can talk about Cleveland and the lake.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Well, I was very happy to join the Senator. I thought Frank Jackson was extremely impressive on this subject. He pointed out that there are times in life when we simply have to go to the future, and if you decide to hang on to the past, you will fail as a result of missing that curve. He said that the business community in Cleveland was really beginning to get that, beginning to take it on. So he has led with a Cleveland Climate Action Plan, which is one of the best ones in the country. We went to a great place where they are growing lettuce hydroponically, 3, 4 acres in an old building, under an open glass ceiling. They are using captured rain water; they are recycling it. The people there have jobs that pay well. They were the owners of the project and they were really vested in it. Wasn't the morale of the people working there phenomenal? It was terrific. Dr. Aparna Bole, whom Senator Brown mentioned, was very in tune to what was happening in minority communities as a result of climate change from asthma, from heat. She is seeing it with her young patients. She was wonderful, talking about that. At this point, because of toxic ground level ozone and ragweed being triggers for asthma attacks--she has seen so much of that. She said that more than one in five African-American kids in Cleveland has asthma, and she connects it to what is happening in climate change. Of course, we understand that in Rhode Island because we have the same bad air days where we have to have kids stay indoors and elderly people stay indoors, all because of the air coming from the Midwest that has been fouled by these coal-burning powerplants. Out on Lake Erie I met with some of the scientists from Stone Labs and a couple of the lifelong fishing captains who had been out there on the lake. Here are some of the water samples we took while we were out. It is clean now--this is what the water should look like--but back before, when the climate change-driven rain bursts were flooding Lake Erie with phosphorus from the farms in the watershed, there was an explosion of cyanotic bacteria to the point where these guys said driving their boats wasn't like driving through water, it was like driving through pudding, and the wake would slurp over instead of turning the way a regular boat's wake would. One of them had been doing this for 35 years and he said: I don't know this lake any longer. I don't know where the fish are going to be. For 35 years I have fished this lake, and now it is like a stranger to me because of all these changes that are happening. That is exactly what my Rhode Island fishermen are telling me, too, about Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound. We are here with the Senator from Massachusetts. ``Sheldon, it is getting weird out there. Sheldon, this is not my grandfather's ocean.'' We have some responsibilities to pay attention to these people and to listen to them. One of the most impressive parts of the trip was this at Ohio State. Ohio State is host to the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center named after the famous polar explorer Admiral Byrd. These two scientists, Ellen Mosley-Thompson and Lonnie Thompson, have spent their lives traveling all over the planet going to these incredible, faraway places--the North Pole, the South Pole, to the Greenland icecap, going to glaciers high in Peru, going to glaciers in the faraway mountains of China. They drill down and take a core sample out of the glacier and get hundreds of thousands of years of data in that core sample. Then there you are on the top of a glacier in Peru or China, and you have to figure out how to get this core sample back to Ohio--and it has to stay frozen the whole time. So they had this huge logistical challenge. They conquered all of that. They are two amazing people. These are all the core samples from glaciers all around the globe. Some of them, because of the way climate has dissipated the glaciers, where they drilled the core sample the glacier doesn't exist anymore. It is the last record of gone glaciers. Here is a picture they had. This is the same site. On this side is a picture of the glacier. You can see striations from the seasons and years going by, and they took this picture from the same place. You can see how the glacier used to be right in front of them and now this glacier is off in the distance. It has moved back as the climate has warmed. They gave me this. This is a piece of plant matter. You can hardly see it. It is plants that were unearthed as the glacier moved back, and they can date them. Those plants were last out 6,626 years ago, when a snow covered those plants. Snow piled on to snow and it was buried under the glacier. It stayed and it stayed, and thousands of years went by. Then, after thousands of years had gone by, Jesus came and walked the Earth, and then thousands more years came by, and now the glaciers are melting so fast that here it is. You can look, and you can still see the leaves. It is squashed and old, but it hasn't decomposed because of the way it was preserved under the glacier that is going away now. In this laboratory they have this incredible treasure. You can go in and you can find air that was on this planet when Jesus walked the Earth, and it is still preserved just the way it was in the ice. You can find dust from dust storms that were written about in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and there is the actual dust held in the ice. This is the record that the climate science is based on, and it truly is a marvel. The last thing I will mention is that we also stopped by the Ohio State Center for Automotive Research. Here is a brandnew Camaro in the background. They work with GM to get cars brand-spanking-new, a high- performance American Camaro. These students are going to take it apart and put it back together so it runs cheaper, faster, and with less fuel. They are going to make a hybrid Camaro with the same level of performance, and it is really very impressive what they are doing. They know climate change is here. That is why they are doing this stuff. I will close out because I have other Senators waiting, but I thank Senator Brown for taking me around Cleveland, meeting all the people we did, and taking me on those visits. I thank the folks at Ohio State. Stone Labs out on Lake Erie is an Ohio State facility. The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center is an Ohio State facility. I met with the John Glenn Institute folks at Ohio State University. Look, if you are a Buckeye fan and you are listening, pay attention to what Ohio University says about climate change. Don't listen to the fossil fuel phonies. Listen to what your home State university says. These guys are deadly serious. They know it is real. I don't think there is a home State university in this country that is denying climate change, and yet this body is stuck in denial. It has nothing to do with the facts; otherwise the home State universities would say something different. You can't go home and root for the Buckeyes on the weekend and then come here and deny climate change and pretend you are being true to your home State university. I don't care what your home State is--Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, Georgia--you name it. Go to the big State universities. They understand that climate change is real. What prevents us from acting isn't information, it is the wall of special influence money that the fossil fuel industry has built around this place, and it is time we woke up and got on with our business. So I will close with that. I am grateful for the people in Ohio who showed me around, particularly to Dave Spangler and Paul Pacholski, lifelong charter boat captains. They make their living out on Lake Erie. They know what it is like out there, and they know what climate change is doing to their beloved lake and their beloved way of life. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to a Rhode Islander whom I have known and admired for nearly 30 years: George Healy, chief judge of our State's Workers' Compensation Court, who retired in July after 24 years on the bench. A number of George's colleagues will be gathering on November 19 to honor his years of service, and it is indeed my honor to say a few words about him today. I first came to know George Healy amidst a genuine crisis in Rhode Island: the near-collapse of our State's workers' compensation system in 1991. Here is how a 1991 report by the Rhode Island Department of Economic Development summed up the situation. The financial burden borne by employers had simply become too great. Insurers had begun to exit the Rhode Island marketplace. And, most importantly, the financial protection required for our state's injured workers was being placed in jeopardy. Indeed, when compared with our New England neighbors, our average claim costs were through the roof. In 1990, the average claim in Rhode Island was $12,638, more than three times higher than the average claim in Vermont and significantly higher than Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, which collectively had average claim costs in the range of $6,000 to $7,000. This was simply unsustainable. Enter George Healy who until that time had been a civil litigator and workers' compensation practitioner. Our Governor at the time, Bruce Sundlun, appointed George and a handful of other stakeholders to a task force that was given a bold directive: Reduce the cost of the system without reducing benefits. As Governor Sundlun's legal counsel at the time, I had the honor of leading the task force, but I relied greatly on George for his expertise on the system. Working together with our colleagues, we were able to develop a plan that protected workers, reduced costs, eliminated pending rate increases, stabilized the workers' compensation market, eliminated fraud, and prevented a collapse of the system. One of the hallmarks of the reform was the creation of the Workers' Compensation Court, which hears and decides all disputes involving an injured employee and an employer relating to workers' compensation benefits. Governor Sundlun appointed George to be among the inaugural class of the court's judges after its creation in 1991. George was then appointed chief judge by Governor Don Carcieri in 2004. Now, as George Healy looks back on his career, I hope he will rule it a success. I certainly do. The reforms he helped lead reduced average claim costs in Rhode Island from $12,638 in 1991 to just $5,179 in 2007. The reduction came about not from benefit cuts but from system reforms, quick court action, injury prevention, and getting people quickly back to work. A 2009 report by the International Workers' Compensation Foundation put it this way: ``When both claim frequency and severity are considered (taking into account all employees, whether or not injured) . . . Rhode Island stands out as the state with the lowest average medical cost per employee per year in the entire country.'' Because of George's work, Rhode Island is now a model system for the rest of the country. In short, thanks in large part to George's hard work and his years of service on the bench, Rhode Island workers can rest assured that, if they get hurt on the job, their State's insurance program will be there for them. That is a proud and meaningful legacy to leave behind. In addition to all of George's accomplishments on the bench, I will always remember him for his humility, gentle demeanor, and respect toward those who appeared before him. I will also be grateful for his friendship through the years, and I hope George enjoys many peaceful years of retirement, knowing that his efforts have improved the lives of countless others. I wish him the best as he enjoys much deserved family time with his lovely wife Ruth, his son Tim and his wife Jewel, his son Paul and his wife Meghan, and George's three grandchildren, Quinn, Jack, and Charlotte. Godspeed, my friend.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, today marks a dark milestone on the long road to environmental justice. Twenty years ago, Nigerian environmental and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged, along with eight fellow defendants, following an internationally denounced military tribunal. Saro-Wiwa was a well-known author and television producer in his native Nigeria before he chose to devote himself full time to the causes of the Ogoni, a minority ethnic group of about 500,000 farmers and fishermen who hail from the Niger Delta. As president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People--MOSOP--he fought against the exploitation of Ogoni lands and the Ogoni people themselves by the oil drilling operations of Royal Dutch Shell. As the oil industry grew to represent the main source of revenue for the Nigerian Government, the delta landscape was ravaged by oil spills and acid rain. Fertile farmland turned to oil-soaked wasteland. The region's fish and wildlife were wiped out--along with the livelihood of the Ogoni. Out of the entire 5,000-person workforce employed by Shell in Nigeria, less than 100 were Ogoni. Under Ken Saro-Wiwa's leadership, MOSOP organized hundreds of thousands of Ogoni to demand environmental remediation, compensation for past damages, and a share in oil revenues. The regime of dictator General Sani Abacha responded with a brutal campaign of occupation, mass arrest, rape, execution, and the burning of Ogoni villages. In May 1994, Saro-Wiwa was abducted from his home and brought up on charges in connection with the murder of four Ogoni leaders. He was tried and convicted by a military tribunal that governments and human rights organizations worldwide condemned as fraudulent. On November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa was put to death. ``The only crime he and his colleagues had committed,'' reads Saro- Wiwa's citation for the prestigious Godman Environmental Prize, ``was to demand sound environmental practices and to ask for compensation for the devastation of Ogoni territories.'' A human rights lawsuit brought by Saro-Wiwa's son and other victims' families in U.S. Federal court alleged that Shell bribed at least two witnesses in the 1995 tribunal and that Shell's manager in Nigeria offered Saro-Wiwa's brother, another jailed activist, release from captivity in exchange for abandoning the movement. That suit was settled by Shell for $15.5 million, just days before going to trial in 2009, following a protracted legal battle. The Ogoni cause has been taken up by other Ogoni, both within Nigeria and living in exile, including Saro-Wiwa's sons. The struggle and death of Ken Saro-Wiwa serve as a lasting inspiration to people of all nations who seek relief from corporate abuse, government corruption, and environmental ruin. We will remember his noble fight for the basic right of a people to live in harmony with the Earth.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is with gratitude and appreciation that I congratulate Joseph J. Cox of Virginia on his retirement as president and chief executive officer of the Chamber of Shipping of America. Upon graduating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1967, Mr. Cox served honorably as a deck officer on commercial ships in the Vietnam war. He worked for 8 years at the U.S. Department of Labor in the Marine Standards Office. In 1981, he joined the Chamber of Shipping of America, the association of American ship owners, operators, and charterers. He rose to president and CEO and led the organization from 1997 until his retirement earlier this year. Mr. Cox is widely respected as a valued representative of the American maritime community. He has actively advocated for domestic legislation and regulation to advance the interests of the shipping and maritime industry. He has participated in the development of transnational treaties at the International Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization. At the helm of the Chamber of Shipping of America, he elevated the nearly 100-year-old association to its respected status in the global maritime community. He will continue to serve as an adviser to the organization. I thank Joe Cox for his decades of service to his country and to the marine trades, and I wish him and his family smooth sailing on the next leg of their voyage.