Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The distinguished Senator from Utah is one of the most distinguished and ablest lawyers ever to serve in this Senate, and his comments about the patent trolls and patent litigation are entitled to great weight. I thoroughly agree with him that the use of these shell corporations is something we could and should act quickly to get rid of. I think the protection of an end user, such as a coffee shop or a florist or somebody who is not a competitor with a manufacturer or the patent holder, is something we could and should address. I think policing these often extortionate demand letters is something we could and should address. I look forward to working with the distinguished Senator in those areas. I think when it comes to fee-shifting, that is a very significant step. The principle in the American system of justice that a party pays his or her own lawyer is so deeply engrained in our system of justice that it is actually known as the American rule. To depart from that is something that I think we should do only with a very--let's put it this way. It is a very grave step and I am not sure it is justified in this case. But certainly we could move on the bill that got rid of shell corporations, that protected end users, and that went after these demand letters, and get into conference and, with any luck, something could be done there. But I very much appreciate Senator Hatch's long and sincere interest in this issue.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I will take approximately 20 minutes. I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized after the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The Senator from Utah may proceed, if he wishes.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Does the distinguished Senator from Utah seek recognition?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank Senator Klobuchar. It has been a pleasure working with the Senator. This was an important step today. It was the most benign, factual, noncontroversial statement of virtually undisputed facts that one could imagine. Yet, here of all places it was unable to achieve consent. Let me close by mentioning that this is not something that happens off in some other place; it is happening right in our homes. In Rhode Island, the tide gauge at Naval Station Newport is up 10 inches since the 1930s. We have had big storms before. We have had big hurricanes before. They do a lot of damage to our State, adding 10 inches of more ocean to our shores. That is serious for my State. That is deadly serious for my State. You can't argue with a tide gauge. It is not complicated; it is a measurement. We can look at the experience of Rhode Island fishermen who are hauling up fish such as tarpon and grouper. Fishermen have told me they started fishing on their granddad's boat and they finished on their dad's boat and in their lives they never saw these fish. But because of the warming seas I talked about earlier, these tropical fish are coming up into Rhode Island waters. When the seas warm, they get bigger. It is called the law of thermal expansion. It is not a law we passed; it is a law of God's Earth. To deny that is to deny the fundamental premises of this planet. If you think the Rhode Island gauge is weird, go down to Fort Pulaski, GA, where I went on my tour of the southern coast. Tides are up there as well, same thing. The ocean is warming, the seas are rising, and it creates much more risk for our coastal communities. You can go as far away from Rhode Island as you like. You can go to Utah; how about that. The Park City Foundation, which represents the skiing community--a lot of people go to Utah to ski--says climate change is serious, carbon pollution is causing it, and we are going to lose a lot of business because we are not going to have as much snow. It is going to shorten our season and make life much more difficult. It is the same in New Hampshire, back on our coast. I went up to New Hampshire a little while ago and met with the ski industry. They are seeing much more need to make snow because they are not getting the snow they used to. If you want to go cross-country skiing or if you want to go on a ski mobile tour, they can't make snow on those trails, so they are getting clobbered. What is really getting clobbered from the lack of snow is that iconic New Hampshire animal--the moose. Evidently, the way ticks breed, snow kills them off, and when the moose are walking around on snow they are protected from ticks, but when the snow is not there the ticks come at them. I was told in New Hampshire about young moose calves that had not 1 tick on them, not 100 ticks on them, not 1,000 ticks on them--10,000 ticks on them. Adult moose have been found with 100,000 ticks on them. They are sucking so much blood out of these animals that they can't come up, they sicken, and they die. That is from the New Hampshire scientists, including people at the University of New Hampshire, State universities. Utah Senators can deny this is real and refuse to talk about it, but Utah State universities both have climate change programs, and they both have people studying climate change. How can their State universities have programs and people studying climate change in their home States and then they come to Washington and pretend it is not real? It doesn't make any sense. How can a New Hampshire Senator not come here and admit it is real when the University of New Hampshire is so active in all of this? Florida--I will stop with Florida because Florida is probably the worst of all. Florida is getting hugely hurt by sea level rise. One of our great cities floods at high tide in Florida. I went down on my visit, and I stopped at the Army Corps of Engineers. People may think that the Army Corps of Engineers is some liberal organization colluding with somebody to do improper stuff and that they can't be trusted, but that is not the way people behave around here on any other subject. When the Army Corps wants to build lakes or dam rivers or build levees or anything else, we have 100 percent confidence in them. We have confidence in the Army Corps of Engineers. So you have to take with a grain of salt some of this skepticism about the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps of Engineers expert in Florida says that as the sea level rises it shoves saltwater by pressure into the limestone southern Florida is made of. You can actually measure the infiltration of saltwater into what used to be freshwater wells, and the line moves back from the coast as the sea level rises and creates hydraulic pressure. As they try to create counterhydraulic pressure, which they do with freshwater to push back in this hard limestone sponge, they raise the water level for freshwater. They said Florida is in a box. There is no way out. It is either going to flood with sea level or flood with freshwater. There is no way out. This is the Army Corps of Engineers expert in Jacksonville, FL. Why won't our colleague from Florida listen to the Army Corps of Engineers expert from his own State? We have to get through this, and we will, but it is going take pressure, it is going to take leadership, and it is going to take the kind of leadership Senator Klobuchar showed this evening on the floor. I am immensely grateful to her. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I appreciate very much having had the opportunity to hear those words from what I can only describe as an alternate reality from the one I inhabit, any way. First, let me say the very first paragraph of the resolution is this: Whereas, the 2014 National Climate Assessment stated the most recent decade was the Nation's warmest on record--U.S. Temperatures are expected to continue to rise. There is some evidence that certain temperatures have been flat for a few years--atmospheric temperatures. What that little rhetorical device omits to consider is two things: One, 93 percent of the heat that comes onto the Earth from global warming goes into the oceans. Maybe 3 or 4 percent actually goes into the atmosphere--93 to 3. So if there is any change in the ocean, which regulates the temperature of the Earth, then it is going to have a pronounced effect on atmospheric temperature. And the ocean continues to warm. People will say: No, the Earth stopped warming. It has not warmed for 12 or 15 years--whatever they say. No, if you actually look at it, the oceans are continuing to warm. There has been this step in atmospheric temperature at a certain level. The other thing that gets left out when our friends say that is this is not the first step. If you look at the history of how this got to be the hottest decade on record, over and over you can look at the graphs and you see these steps. To pretend that each step is the last one runs completely against the science. So to say we have no warming is just not factual. To say that the government--he used the word colluding--is colluding together, that is a fairly tough word to use. Let me tell you some of the government agencies that are so-called colluding together and believe climate change is real and carbon pollution is causing it. How about NASA? We trust them to send our astronauts into space. We trust them to deliver a rover the size of an SUV to the surface of Mars safely and drive it around, sending data and pictures back from Mars to us. You think these people know what they are talking about? We trust NOAA with our weather predicting. That is what they tell us. Nobody is saying they are incompetent at weather predicting. Do not listen when people are warning you about storms. But somehow when they talk about climate change, that is colluding. How about the U.S. Navy? The Commander in Chief of our Pacific Command, Admiral Locklear, has said the No. 1 threat we face in the Pacific theatre comes from climate change. Is he colluding when he says that? This is a career Navy man whom the people of America have trusted with the security of our Pacific theater. It is exactly consistent with what the Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review said both last time--4 years ago--and most recently. If you want to ignore the Federal Government, if you live in a world in which you think the Federal Government colludes with itself to make up things that are not true--OK, but look at the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry. They are the people with the biggest bet on this. They have billions of dollars riding on getting it right. They say climate change is real. Carbon pollution is causing it. We have to do something about it. So does the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, because they care about the poor and the effect this will have on the people who have the least. So does every major U.S. scientific society--every single one. So you can take a poll or a petition and say it has 30,000 names on it. I am told that among the names on that petition are the Spice Girls and people from MASH such as Dr. Frank Burns. It is almost a comedic effort. When you say there are 9,000 who have degrees, that is--what--.00003 percent of our population of 300 million? Maybe I got a zero wrong there. The idea that you cannot find 9,000 people who think the Earth is flat is a bit of a stretch. The idea that we should base our policies on a petition that imaginary people are on rather than on what NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, every major scientific society, and the entire property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry are telling us is just extraordinary. If you want to go into the private sector, you have to look no further than Coke and Pepsi. Look no further than Walmart. Look no further than Mars. You can go over there to the candy drawer and you can get wonderful Mars products. It is a huge company. They are going carbon neutral. They are desperately concerned about climate change. Look at Nike, look at Google, look at Apple--American company after American company. The only place, other than, of course, the 9,000 people who joined the Spice Girls and MAJ Frank Burns on this petition, where denial is anything credible any longer is here in Congress where the money from the fossil fuel industry still has such a pernicious effect. But even among the Republicans--I will close by saying this and yield to my distinguished chairman. Even among the Republicans, they are losing their young voters on this issue. People know better. You poll Republicans who are under the age of 35 and a majority of them will say that somebody who believes in climate denial is ignorant, out of touch or crazy. That is what the young Republicans think about that position. So time is on our side. The day will come when the Senate can face the fact that climate change is real. I want to thank Senator Klobuchar and salute her effort to bring such a noncontroversial proposition to the floor in the form of a resolution--such a noncontroversial and factual proposition. It is a measure of our times and a measure of this body and a measure of the influence on it that it was not adopted by unanimous consent but was objected to by the Republicans. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here because in the next week we are going to, it looks, vote on a House-passed bill to prevent an impending highway funding gap. We must pass this bill to avoid funding disruptions and to avoid all the job losses that would follow from funding disruptions, all of which could begin literally in weeks if we did not pass the bill. But I have to say the House highway bill is woefully inadequate. It is, frankly, a pathetic measure. It fails at virtually every measure, most particularly failing to provide the leadership and the certainty all of our States need so badly as they seek to implement their highway programs. The only positive thing that can be said about this bill is it is better than no bill at all and a collapse of the highway fund. But that is not much of a commendation. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives America's roads a letter grade of D, our bridges only a C-plus. In my State of Rhode Island, we have been around a long time. We were one of the founding Colonies. We have a lot of old roads, a lot of old infrastructure. We have a lot of stuff that dates a long way back. Our infrastructure, for that reason, is among the worst in the Nation, with 41 percent of our roads in poor condition, 57 percent of our bridges rated deficient or obsolete. Last Friday I visited one of our bridges, the Great Island Bridge in Narragansett, RI. This bridge is the sole access to an island community of 350 homes. It has been rated functionally obsolete and it must be replaced. If that bridge fails, the island's residents have no way to get to or from their homes. I will vote for this House bill to avoid that kind of catastrophe. But we are wasting an opportunity to do more, to do a responsible highway bill. We actually have a pretty good model. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, on which I serve, actually passed a bipartisan, multiyear infrastructure investment plan. That is what we need. A 6-year bill is what EPW passed. That is the kind of certainty our highway departments need so they can sign contracts for long-term projects. Sadly, the Republicans in the House could not manage that. The House- passed bill will extend the authorization for a mere 8 months. The EPW bill, the 6-year bill written by Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Vitter, in bipartisan fashion would reauthorize our Nation's highway programs for 6 years, through 2020. Our committee has done its part to move a 6-year bill in the regular order, in a bipartisan fashion. The House, once again, has failed. States need budget certainty to plan multiyear construction projects. That should be obvious enough even for the House to understand. To the millions of Americans who depend on Federal highway funding, either directly or indirectly, for their paychecks, for their livelihoods, the paltry 8-month extension says to them and their families: You have work until next May. That is not what these workers need and that is not what our 50 States need. They need long-term certainty, and this bill fails them. I plan to support the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment which would force that debate this year so we do not go home at the end of this Congress without having passed a serious highway bill. There is no reason the American people should have to wait until 2015 for the certainty and security of a long-term highway bill, plus no guarantee we will do it even in 2015. If the House cannot do a long-term bill now, what makes them think they can do a long-term bill later? Let's roll up our sleeves and pass a long-term highway bill this year. The House bill also fails to provide any real solution to highway funding, to the widening revenue gap in the highway trust fund. The Federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon is not indexed to inflation and Congress has not touched it in 20 years. So it should be no surprise that it is no longer providing the revenue support it used to. Plus, thankfully, cars are more fuel efficient, which is great for drivers--it lowers their fuel expenses--but it lowers highway revenues further. The House bill completely ignores that larger problem of how we pay for our highways in favor of a short-term funding patch with gimmicky one-time budget offsets that have nothing to do with highway use. We had the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the Environment and Public Works Committee say: Sure, raise the highway tax a little bit. Let's get built the infrastructure this country needs. But instead of crafting a responsible long-term highway plan, the House Republicans are running scared from tea party groups, tea party groups that do not think the Federal Government should invest in infrastructure at all. The Club for Growth, so called, went so far last week as to say the highway trust fund--and I am quoting them here--``should not even exist.'' Funny how Republican Presidents--Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Ford, Bush, and Bush--all managed to accept the idea of a Federal highway system, not thinking that there was anything unusual or improper about that. Well, today's far-right extremists have gone way beyond them. They have gone way beyond the American people. The American people overwhelmingly support Federal infrastructure investments. According to a recent poll commissioned by the American Automobile Association, more than two-thirds of Americans believe the Federal Government should invest more in roads, bridges, and mass transit systems. We may as Americans have differing views on many issues, but when it comes to investing in the roads and bridges we all use, there is, unsurprisingly, broad agreement except, of course, at the far-right fringe where people hate the government so much they want the rest of us to drive on bad roads and obsolete bridges. But that kind of extreme ideology hits Americans in the pocketbook. Rhode Islanders, for example, pay an estimated $467 extra each year for car repairs due to bad roads and potholes. So if you are looking out for the ordinary American, if you are looking out for the ordinary American consumer, if you are looking out for the ordinary American consumer's pocketbook, you will invest in infrastructure so our cars are not being banged up and beaten up on bad roads, obsolete bridges, and unfilled potholes. I am going to hold my nose and vote for this House-passed bill, because at this point the only alternative is a shutdown of the highway program. But let's be clear: This bill is a joke that does nothing on long-term investments in our infrastructure, nothing in a sustainable way to pay for them. We should not procrastinate until next May. We should start right now by building off of the bipartisan 6-year bill the Environment and Public Works Committee passed to give our constituents the infrastructure investments they are counting on us for. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam President. This is my 75th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, something of a minor benchmark, I suppose. I come here urging my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change. I do this every week we are in session, hoping someday a spark will hit tinder. But even as the evidence of climate change deepens, the dialogue in Washington remains one-sided. Climate change was once a bipartisan concern. In recent years something changed. I think I know what changed, and I will get to that. First, let's reminisce about the bipartisanship. As we take a look back in this body, we have Republican colleagues who once openly acknowledged the existence of carbon-driven climate change and who called for real legislative action to cut carbon emissions. Imagine that. It wasn't that long ago. We have a former Republican Presidential nominee amongst us who campaigned for the Presidency on addressing climate change. We have Republicans here who have spoken favorably about charging a fee on carbon, including an original Republican cosponsor of a bipartisan Senate carbon-fee bill. We have a Republican colleague who cosponsored carbon fee legislation in the House and another who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill when he was in the House. For years-- for years--there was a steady, healthy heartbeat of Republican support for major U.S. legislation to address carbon pollution. Let me be specific. In 2003, Senator John McCain was the lead cosponsor of Democrat Joe Lieberman's Climate Stewardship Act, which would have created a market-based emissions cap-and-trading program to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants from the biggest U.S. sources. Here is what Senator McCain said at the time: While we cannot say with 100 percent confidence what will happen in the future, we do know the emission of greenhouse gases is not healthy for the environment. As many of the top scientists through the world have stated, the sooner we start to reduce these emissions the better off we will be in the future. His Climate Stewardship Act actually got a vote. Imagine that. When it did not prevail, Senator McCain reintroduced the measure himself in the following Congress. Republican Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, my predecessor, were among that bill's cosponsors. Other Republicans got behind other cap-and-trade proposals. Senator Tom Carper's Clean Air Planning Act at one time or another counted Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine among its supporters. In 2007, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe was a lead cosponsor of then-Senator Kerry's Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act. Senators Murkowski and Stevens from Alaska and Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, then a Republican, were original cosponsors of the Bingaman Low Carbon Economy Act. That same year Senator Alexander introduced the Clean Air/ Climate Change Act of 2007. Each of these bills sought to reduce carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade mechanism. Said Senator Alexander: It is also time to acknowledge that climate change is real. Human activity is a big part of the problem and it is up to us to act. That bipartisan heartbeat remained strong in 2009. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, while he served in the House of Representatives, was one of eight Republicans to vote for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade proposal. In that same year, 2009, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, then representing Arizona in the House, was an original cosponsor of the Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act to reduce payroll taxes for employers and employees in exchange for equal revenue from a carbon tax. On the House floor then-Representative Flake argued the virtues of this approach. He said: If we want to be honest about helping the environment, then just impose a carbon tax and make it revenue neutral. Give commensurate tax relief on the other side. Myself and another Republican colleague have introduced that legislation to do just that. Let's have an honest debate about whether or not we want to help the environment by actually having something that is revenue neutral where you tax consumption as opposed to income. It was a good idea then and it is still a good idea now. Senator Flake's words were echoed that year in the Senate by Senator Collins, a lead cosponsor of the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal Act, Senator Cantwell's carbon fee bill. ``In the United States alone,'' said Senator Collins, ``emissions of the primary greenhouse gas carbon dioxide have risen more than 20 percent since 1990. Clearly climate change is a daunting environmental challenge,'' she said, ``but we must develop solutions that do not impose a heavy burden on our economy, particularly during these difficult economic times.'' Madam President, 2009--think of it. There was once not too long ago a clear and forceful acknowledgment from leading Republican voices of the real danger posed by climate change and of Congress's responsibility to act. What happened? Why did the steady heartbeat of Republican climate action suddenly flatline? I believe we lost the ability to address climate change in a bipartisan way because of the evils of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Our present failure to address climate change is a symptom of things gone awry in our democracy due to Citizens United. That decision did not enhance speech in our democracy. It has allowed bullying, wealthy special interests to suppress real debate. I have spoken before on the Senate floor about the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, one of the most disgraceful decisions by any Supreme Court, destined ultimately, I believe, to follow cases such as Lochner v. New York onto the ash heap of judicial infamy, but we are stuck with it for now. In a nutshell the Citizens United decision says this: Corporations are people. Money is speech. So there can be no limit to corporate money influencing American elections. If that doesn't seem right, it is because it is not. Phony and improper fact-finding by the five conservative activists on the Supreme Court concluded that corporate spending could not ever corrupt elections--just couldn't do it. By some magic it is pure. That is a bad enough finding on its face, but they also didn't get that limitless, untraceable political money doesn't have to be spent to damage our democracy. Unlimited corporate spending in politics can corrupt not just through floods of anonymous attack advertisements, it can corrupt secretly and more dangerously through the mere threat of that spending through private threats and promises. The Presiding Officer was the attorney general of her State, and she well knows how much mischief can be done in back rooms by threats and promises. That is what attorneys general see when they go out and investigate. As we are evaluating the effect of Citizens United on our climate change debate, let's remember this: A lot of this special interest money has been spent against Republicans. I have had Republican friends tell me, ``What are you complaining about? They are spending more against us than against you.'' There have been times when that has been true. When the Koch brothers' polluter money can come in and bombard you in a small primary election, that is pretty scary. When the paid-for rightwing attack machine can be cranked up against you in your Republican primary, that is pretty scary too. What the polluters can do with political spending, they can threaten or promise to do in ways that the public will never see or know, but the candidate will know. The candidate will know for sure. So I wrote a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court with Senator John McCain to highlight for the Justices some of the failings and pitfalls of their shameful Citizens United decision. ``The dominating influence of super PACs,'' we wrote, ``makes it all the easier for those seeking legislative favors and results to discreetly threaten such expenditures if Members of Congress do not accede to their demands.'' I think we were right. How does this bear on climate change? All that bipartisan activity I talked about preceded Citizens United. After that, polluter attacks funded by Citizens United money and the threat of those polluter attacks--perhaps promises not to make those attacks if you behave--cast a dark shadow over Republicans who might work with Democrats on curbing carbon pollution. Tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of dark-money dollars are being spent by polluters and their front organizations, and God only knows what private threats and promises have been made. The timing is telling. Before Citizens United, there was an active heartbeat of Republican activity on climate change. Since then, the evidence has only become stronger. But after Citizens United uncorked all that big, dark money and allowed it to cast its bullying shadow of intimidation over our democracy, Republicans--other than those few who parrot the polluter party line that climate change is a big old hoax-- have all walked back from any major climate legislation. We have Senators here who represent historic native villages that are now washing into the sea and needing relocation because of climate change and sea-level rise. We have Senators here who represent great American coastal cities that are now overwashed by high tides because of climate change. We have Senators representing States swept by drought and wildfire. We have Senators whose home State forests by the hundreds of square miles are being killed by the marauding pine beetle. We have Senators whose home State glaciers are disappearing before their very eyes. We have Senators whose States are having to raise offshore bridges and highways before rising seas. We have Senators whose emblematic home State species are dying off, such as the New Hampshire moose, for instance, swarmed by ticks by the tens of thousands that snows no longer kill. Yet none will work on a major climate bill. It is not safe to ever since Citizens United allowed the bullying, polluting special interests to bombard our elections, and threaten and promise to bombard our elections with their attack ads. Despite all the dark money, despite the threats and intimidation, I still believe this can be a courageous time. We simply need conscientious Republicans and Democrats to work together in good faith on a common platform of facts and common sense to protect the American people and the American economy from the looming effects of climate change in our atmosphere, on our lands, and in our oceans. We simply need to shed the shackles of corrupting influence and rise to our duty. In courageous times, Americans have done far more than that. It is not asking much to ask this generation to stand up to a pack of polluters just because they have big checkbooks. In previous generations, Americans have put their very lives, fortunes, and sacred honor at risk to serve the higher interests of this great Republic. We know it can be done because it has been done. We do not have to be the generation that failed at our duty. 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 that those who follow us will be proud of our efforts. But sitting here doing nothing, yielding to the special interest bullies and their Citizens United money, pretending that the problem isn't real, will not accomplish that. As I have said before, 74 times, and as I say tonight for the 75th time, it is time for us to wake up. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I object.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am delighted that Senator Reed organized for the two of us to come down to the floor today. Newport, RI, is a venue for many wonderful and remarkable events, from the America's Cup of the old day, to the Volvo Around the World ocean races now, to the Newport Folk Festival, and, of course, what we are here to celebrate today is the Newport Jazz Festival, celebrating its 60th anniversary. Since 1954, this festival has provided generations of Rhode Islanders and visitors with the opportunity to experience some of the world's finest jazz music, and it has brought countless visitors to our Ocean State to witness these performances and enjoy our other great Rhode Island beaches and other amenities. The Newport Jazz Festival began as the brainchild of Elaine and Lewis Lorillard, who financed the first festival as a way to bring some outdoor excitement and activity to Newport in the summer. In what would become a historic partnership, they reached out to George Wein, a Boston jazz club owner, to help them organize the event. Their creation became one of the first dedicated jazz festivals in the United States and ultimately came to shape the genre in ways they never could have anticipated. The first festival was held on July 17 and 18, 1954, and included some of the finest performers ever to grace the stage, including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Dizzy Gillespie. Held at the Newport Casino in Newport's Bellevue Avenue Historic District, that first festival included outdoor performances that allowed attendees to sit on the lawn and enjoy a beautiful Rhode Island summer day while reveling in the music. The event garnered national media attention, and it drew over 13,000 people to Newport on its very first start. In the 60 years since that first festival, Newport has served as the backdrop for some of the most notable performances in the history of jazz. It was at the Newport Jazz Festival that Miles Davis first introduced the world to what would become known as hard bop jazz, mixing in sounds from the blues and gospel music. Duke Ellington's performance at the 1956 festival of ``Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue'' is considered one of the greatest single performances in the history of jazz and revitalized Ellington's career. A number of performances at the festival have gone on to be released as independent albums, including acts from Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Nina Simone, and Miles Davis. The list of legendary performances goes on, with every year bringing a new crop of inventive jazz musicians to put their own mark on the festival's history and on their original art form. Since his original partnering with the Lorillards in 1953, George Wein has gone on to replicate his success in Newport throughout the country, while maintaining Rhode Island's event as the flagship in the industry. He will do so again this year, still going strong as he closes in on his 89th birthday. Under his leadership, on Friday, August 1, Newport will welcome thousands of eager music lovers looking to hear the best performers in modern jazz. The ticket this year includes Wynton Marsalis, Trombone Shorty, David Sanborn, and many others. Additionally, in commemoration of this 60th anniversary, the festival will for the first time run for 3 full days, with shows lasting through the weekend. The festival no longer takes place at the Newport Casino, as it has outgrown that original home and it has expanded to three stages that are set up on Narragansett Bay at the historic Fort Adams State Park, looking out on the Newport Bridge and the East Passage, with the ships sailing by. However, the Newport Jazz Festival still provides guests with the same opportunity it did 60 years ago to come and enjoy the Rhode Island summer and hear up close some of the finest jazz in the world. I join my senior colleague Senator Reed in applauding the city of Newport for its outstanding commitment to the arts, and I thank so many dedicated individuals who have worked so hard over those 60 years to keep this wonderful tradition alive. I look forward to another 60 years of amazing jazz in Rhode Island. I once again thank my senior Senator for organizing us to be on the floor together for this recognition.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this Fourth of July marked the 75th anniversary of the muggy summer afternoon the great Henry Louis Gehrig bid farewell to baseball and introduced Americans to the illness that would become known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Lou Gehrig was the only surviving child of a sheet metal worker and a maid--immigrants from Germany. Gehrig brought his family's humble work ethic and steadfastness to his own job, playing first base for the New York Yankees. His career was one that even a Red Sox fan can admire. On June 1, 1925, 4 days before his 20th birthday, he pinch-hit for Pee Wee Wanninger. On June 2, he broke into the starting lineup for good. He would play every single regular and postseason Yankees game until May 2, 1939--2,130 in a row. ``The Iron Horse,'' as Gehrig was known, didn't just play a lot of baseball, he played superb baseball. He racked up more than 2,700 hits, for a lifetime batting average of .340 and close to 2,000 runs batted in. He had 493 career home runs. His No. 4 jersey, known as ``the Hard Number'' by the American League pitchers who had to try to get the ball past him, was the first ever retired from Major League Baseball. Despite his exceptional play, Gehrig was happy to leave the spotlight to teammate Babe Ruth, or later, Joe DiMaggio. ``I'm not a headline guy,'' he once said. ``As long as I was following Ruth to the plate, I could have stood on my head and no one would have known the difference.'' Lou Gehrig wasn't just great. He was always great. And his competitive spirit inspired Americans during the long years of the Great Depression. But for some unknown reason, his numbers fell off sharply in the 1938 season. He had trouble gripping the bat, running, even walking and sitting. So on the first Tuesday of May 1939, eight games into the season, the Yankee captain took his name off the lineup card. ``I'm benching myself, Joe,'' he told manager Joe McCarthy, ``for the good of the team.'' A series of tests at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, would reveal that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that causes nerve cells to stop working and die, was robbing Gehrig's swing of its fabled power. ALS attacks neurons responsible for controlling voluntary muscles and progresses rapidly. The brain and spinal cord lose the ability to send messages to the muscles of the body, which weaken and atrophy. ALS can impair speaking, swallowing, and breathing. As Gehrig biographer Jonathan Eig explains, the progression of ALS is like ``shutting down the body's functions one by one, like a night watchman switching off the factory-floor lights.'' Yet on that humid 1939 Independence Day, between the legs of a doubleheader against the Washington Senators, Lou Gehrig stood before a tangle of microphones at homeplate, bowed more by humility at the adulation of 62,000 Yankee fans, teammates, ball boys, and groundskeepers than by his disease. Clenching his cap in two hands, the man sportswriter Jim Murray once described as a ``Gibraltar in cleats'' spoke 278 simple words that still echo in the ears of those of us not even born at the time they were uttered. ``Fans,'' he began, ``for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.'' Although there is still much we have to learn about the causes of ALS, we have made great strides in research and treatment since Lou Gehrig took himself out of the game. With the help of Federal grants, advances in genetic research have opened the door to insights about the disease's hereditary nature, and drugs and assistive technology are improving dramatically. Kreg Palko of Barrington, RI, recently underwent a pioneering surgery to transplant millions of stem cells into his spinal cord, in hopes of undoing the paralyzing effects of his ALS. Until Kreg discovered he had ALS just last year, he was always on the move--as a speedy defensive back at the Air Force Academy, Gulf War pilot--or active skier and surfer. ALS has dampened his mobility but not his competitive spirit. Kreg has volunteered for every clinical trial he can, and whether or not these treatments heal Kreg, he and his wife Elizabeth know this research will benefit future patients. The heart of the movement for a cure is the dedicated community of advocates, researchers, physicians, and ALS patients. When members of the Rhode Island chapter of the ALS Association visited my office this May, they brought along baseball cards featuring Rhode Islanders living with ALS. I saw in each face courage and dignity equal to Lou Gehrig's. Senator Jacob Javits of New York, who worked for years after his 1979 ALS diagnosis to improve long-term care and end-of-life policies, said: Life does not stop with terminal illness. Only the patient stops if he doesn't have the will to go forward with life. Brian Dickinson refused to let ALS stop him. Editor of the Providence Journal's editorial page and a prize-winning columnist, he had an indomitable spirit. This was the man who once sang ``The Battle Hymn of the Republic'' outside KGB headquarters on a tour of Soviet Moscow. And although ALS silenced his voice, Brian continued to tap out his column for a number of years, with the help of a special computer in his home. His profound, optimistic observations inspired his readers. ``I do believe,'' he once assured us, ``that the capacity for hope can help us meet stiff challenges.'' Brian finally lost his battle with ALS in 2002. Last month, the ALS Association Rhode Island Chapter presented the Brian Dickinson Courage Award to Kreg Palko. As we look back to the day Lou Gehrig reminded us he had ``an awful lot to live for,'' we should renew our own will to go forward, with workmanlike determination, toward a cure.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor, and I note the absence after quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Outside these walls, climate change is an issue Republicans can actually discuss. Outside these walls, 2012 Republican Presidential candidate John Huntsman, who won reelection as Utah's Republican Governor in 2008 with almost 80 percent of the vote--this is a popular guy in Utah--wrote a New York Times op-ed this year entitled ``The G.O.P. Can't Ignore Climate Change.'' That is the title of Governor Huntsman's article. He wrote: While there is room for some skepticism given the uncertainty about the magnitude of climate change, 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 is an enduring theme of conservative thought. It is also a concept diverse groups can embrace. That is from Utah's former Governor. By the way, when he ran for reelection and won by that near 80- percent margin, he was running on a pretty good environmental platform. He was not denying. But in Congress there is silence from the Republican Party--except those who come and say that climate change is just a big old hoax. It would have to be the most complicated hoax in the world, with most of our corporations, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--NOAA--and innumerable other groups involved in it, and it would be pretty impressive to actually raise the level of the seas 8 to 10 inches as a part of that complicated hoax, but I guess that is their notion of why that is happening. Here, other than that hoax argument, there is silence. No Republican comes to the floor to say: You are right. This is a problem. We should do something about it. Let's work together. We may not agree on the solution right now, but let's at least work on it as a serious problem. They won't do that. The Republican Party has taken the position and followed the direction of the polluters. It is as simple as that. I, for one, believe they will be judged very harshly for that choice because Americans know better. Utahns know better. More and more people across America see what is happening before them, and they are no longer fooled by the phony campaign of denial. I hope this Congress will listen to the people in our home States and the people across this country and wake up to what has now become a clear and present danger. We need to do what the people who elected us sent us here to do, which is face reality, make sensible choices, work together, and solve problems, not stick our heads in the sand and pretend problems don't exist.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, thank you. Before I get into the business I have come to address, let me thank the distinguished Senator from Virginia for his remarks. I was a lawyer at a time when the previous case on this subject came out of the Supreme Court that said something very different. It said if you were a Native American and if as a Native American you had a sincerely held religious belief that peyote was actually a part of your religion's sacrament, that in pursuing that ritual and that tradition you could utilize peyote notwithstanding the laws of the State to the contrary. That was the argument they made. It was protected by the free exercise of religion. The Supreme Court said absolutely not. No way. If you are a Native American, your sincerely held belief that peyote is an appropriate part of your religious sacrament is overruled because of society's interest in enforcing the law generally. Now if you are a corporate CEO, a completely different set of rules applies. Remember, in the case of the Native Americans the question was whether that individual could ingest the peyote themselves and they were told no, the interest of the State prevailed. In this case, if you are a corporate CEO, you are being told that you are free to exercise a right to control what other people do. And in this case the Supreme Court completely reversed itself and said no, the State has to back off if you are a corporate CEO telling other people what they have to do. But if you are a Native American seeking to honor your own tradition, well, there the State can butt in and move around. So in addition to the distinctions the Senator so eloquently and properly described, certain of this might have been influential with the Court in the fact that these were corporate CEOs, and there is very little the corporate CEO can do that the five activists on the conservative side of this Court won't encourage them to do and let them do. I will reserve for another day statistics of how this Court has over and over again turned itself over to corporate interests and over and over again ruled in favor of corporate interests and over and over again reversed precedent to give precedence to corporate interests in this country. I thank the Senator. Climate Change My original topic of being here before I got into the subject is this is my 74th visit to the floor to urge my colleagues that it is truly time to wake up to the threats of climate change. The reports keep rolling in. The latest one for coastal States such as ours is a study called ``Risky Business'' that was commissioned by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who knows something about coastal issues, having been flooded by Sandy, former George W. Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer. This report calculated the economic effects of climate change throughout the United States and it found that along our coast between $66 billion and $106 billion worth of existing property--property that Americans own right now--will likely be below sea level by 2050. By 2100, $238 billion to $507 billion worth of Americans' hard-earned property will be underwater. Now, everything doesn't happen just as you guess. Sometimes you get bad news that there are long odds and you need to be prepared for those long odds. The report found there are 1 in 20 odds that by 2100, the end of this century, there would be around $700 billion of infrastructure below sea level and nearly $730 billion more of infrastructure that would be potentially in trouble during high tides. So our landlocked colleagues may laugh this off, but if a similar threat were looming at their State's door, they would, I submit, be paying attention. For coastal States such as ours, this is deadly serious. The Atlantic coast, including Rhode Island--a coastal State named the Ocean State, the second most heavily populated State in terms of population density in the country--we have a lot of people living along that coastline. Our coast will see the worst of it. Climate change, unfortunately, has become, mostly since Citizens United for reasons I have elaborated on before, a taboo subject now for Republicans in Congress. So the discussion here of climate change is somewhat one-sided, but Americans who are witnessing climate change's effects firsthand in every State around the country know--and if they don't know they are learning--that climate change is a real problem. I have discussed my travels to Florida, to Iowa, to North and South Carolina, to Georgia, to New Hampshire, and of the actions these people are taking in their home States to stave off the worst effects of their changing oceans and climate. But at the local level folks truly aren't denying climate change. That is something that is unique to Congress and the peculiar world we inhabit. They are not denying, they are paying attention. And it is not just in coastal States that people are paying attention. This week I am going to look at Utah. Utah is right here on this section of the map of the southwest corridor of our country. This is a map of temperature trends. Temperature is not complicated. It is not some difficult theory that people have to try to get their minds around. We measure it with thermometers. It is pretty straightforward stuff. On this chart we see that average temperatures over the last 13 years compared to the long-term average over a century show there has been an increase in temperature across the entire State of Utah. Down here, this region, the average has increased 2 full degrees Fahrenheit. In the southeastern part of the State there are actually spots where the temperature has risen as much as 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Southern Utah is home to iconic national parks including Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches National Park. In Utah, park officials aren't denying climate change. Just last week the Park Service released a report called ``Climate Exposure of U.S. National Parks in a New Era of Change.'' This report studied dozens of climate variables in 289 national parks. In Bryce, Zion, and Arches, the report shows higher year-round temperatures, hotter summers and warmer winters. Such significant shifts in temperature can mean less snowpack, worse wildfire seasons, and abnormal conditions for the plants and animals that reside in those parks. Utah is getting warmer and it is getting drier. The U.S. Geological Survey shows a significant drop in the size and scope of floods in rivers and streams all across the Southwest in this area from 1920 to 2008, and that of course includes southern Utah. Indeed, here are the symbols for the negative trends, and the biggest symbol for a negative trend in river and stream flooding is this one. If you cannot see the map very clearly, that is southern Utah. Here is the State of Utah right here and there is the location where the highest drying trend in streams is taking place--again, not complicated. This isn't a theory, this is based on simple rainfall measurements and simple flooding measurement. If you look at it, you will see another place that is going up a lot. We New Englanders are seeing an increase, although in the Southwest they are seeing a substantial decrease. So when those characters come into our hearings and give testimony saying, oh, you don't have to worry about this because there isn't an overall increase in flooding or anything, yeah, because they offset each other--but go to Utah and you see a very distinct trend and it is drier. Other factors, such as population growth and water management policies, play a role, but Lake Powell in Utah is about half full right now. Lake Mead, farther down the Colorado River in Nevada, has drained down to just 39 percent of its capacity. That is the lowest level Lake Mead has ever been since it was first filled behind the Hoover Dam. Scientists at Colorado State University, at Princeton, and at the U.S. Forest Service predict that unless we take major action climate change may lead to water shortages so severe that Lake Powell and Lake Mead dry up completely. The drying of the Western United States and of southern Utah means less water for drinking, fighting fires, farming, wildlife, and recreation. Salt Lake City gets 80 percent of its water supply from snowpack in the Uinta and Wasatch Mountains. If predictions hold true, local water managers in Utah will no longer be able to depend on historical data to predict and manage how much water the mountains will yield. Utah will be in a brave new world--a dry new world. The prolonged drought conditions in the Western United States, compared to the last century, make it ripe for forest fires, and indeed a recent study of western wildfire trends--led by Dr. Philip Dennison of the University of Utah--from 1984 to 2011, fires have become larger and more frequent. The total area burned by these fires is increasing over this time period at roughly 90,000 acres burned per year. That is the rate of increase. The recent National Climate Assessment similarly shows that ``between 1970 and 2003, warmer and drier conditions increased burned area in western U.S. mid-elevation conifer forests by 650 percent.'' That report is quite clear about the link between climate change and these forest fires in the region, noting that ``climate outweighed other factors in determining burned area in the western U.S.'' These changes in temperature and precipitation are putting Utah's iconic desert sagebrush at risk, according to Peter Alder, an ecologist at Utah State University. Sagebrush is grazed by livestock, and it is important to Utah's ranching industry. Dr. Alder is working with faculty and students from seven area universities to better understand the vulnerability of sagebrush ecosystems to climate change. These Utah scientists are not denying climate change, and neither is, for instance, Utah State University. Utah State has entire new courses of study to train the next generation of students to predict and combat climate change. Utah State has its own climate action plan. Utah State has an active climate center, and it is not the only one. The University of Utah has an active sustainability center and an army of students and researchers working on addressing climate change. Each year, the University of Utah publishes an annual report on climate change. Members of Utah's delegation may be pretending climate change is not real, but Utah's universities are not. They are not denying. They are acting. Utah's capital city is not denying climate change. There may be a barricade of polluter influence around Congress, but mayors all across the country are taking action, including in Utah, as we saw with the unanimous resolution of the Conference of Mayors recently. The United States Conference of Mayors ranked Salt Lake City, UT, and its mayor Ralph Becker first place in the Mayors Climate Protection Center rankings because of the impressive work being done in Salt Lake City. For example, the Salt Lake City Public Safety Building will be the first public safety building in the Nation to achieve a net zero rating, which means it generates as much electricity as it uses. Utah also has energy investors who are wide awake, building a growing number of solar installations. Community Solar has a pilot project in Salt Lake that allows homeowner groups to purchase solar energy. It is estimated that over its 25-year lifetime, this installation will avoid 5,500 tons of carbon dioxide pollution. Renewable energy is integral in Utah's energy portfolio moving forward. In this chart, we can see this display showing that by 2050, Utah will rely mostly on wind, solar, geothermal, and natural gas to achieve carbon dioxide emission reductions of 80 percent compared to 1990 levels. As we can see, the yellow is solar. Solar is projected to account for more than half of this shift. Utah-based businesses, such as EBay, are enhancing renewable energy. EBay built a data center in South Jordan, UT, and wanted to make sure it used only clean energy to run that facility. To accomplish this, EBay worked with GOP State senator Mark Madsen, Rocky Mountain Power-- the State's largest electric utility--and a local renewable energy generator on legislation to make renewable energy available to Utah electricity consumers. None of them were denying climate change. The renewable energy bill was unanimously passed by the Utah State Senate and House of Representatives and signed into law by Republican Governor Gary Herbert. EBay employs 1,500 people in Utah, including its 400- member group in Salt Lake City known as the Green Team, dedicated to making the company environmentally responsible. They are not denying climate change in Utah. EBay is actually looking to add another data facility and more jobs using that same clean energy framework. The faith community in Utah is taking action as well. Utah Interfaith Power and Light is a network of nearly 30 Christian, Jewish, and nondenominational congregations, representing thousands of Utahans seeking ``to promote earth stewardship, clean energy, and climate justice.'' In addition to conducting free energy audits for new-member churches and offering plans to increase energy efficiency in their buildings, Utah Interfaith Power and Light also works to educate its members about climate change and advocates at the local and State level for moral and responsible climate policy. Then, of course, there is the famous Utah ski industry. The operators of Utah's great ski resorts have been outspoken about the threat climate change poses to their business. Five of them--Alta Ski Area, Canyons Resort, Deer Crest Private Trails, Deer Valley, and Park City Mountain Resort--signed the BICEP coalition's Climate Declaration in support of national action on climate change. They are not denying climate change. Indeed, the Park City Foundation in Utah issued a report explaining that as drought and increasing temperatures reduced the snowpack in the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains, the future of skiing and snowboarding in those ranges is at risk. This Utah report predicts a local temperature increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075, which could cause a total loss of snowpack in the lower Park City resort area. Beyond the loss to the skiing tradition in Park City, this will result in thousands of lost jobs, tens of millions in lost earnings, and hundreds of millions in lost economic output, and that is according this Utah report. In Utah as in other States there is a groundswell coming from local communities asking for action on climate change. There are scientists, public health advocates, business owners and corporate leaders, outdoorsmen, faith leaders, State and local officials, and countless others demanding action on climate change and leading the charge. David Folland is a retired pediatrician, and he is the co-leader of the Salt Lake City Citizens Climate Lobby, which recently joined 7 other Utahans and 600 volunteers from around the country to come to Congress to push us for swift passage of a proper carbon fee. In a Salt Lake City Tribune op-ed last week, Dr. Folland wrote: ``[p]lacing 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.'' Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have Dr. Folland's op-ed printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for the 73rd ``time to wake up'' speech that I have done to urge my colleagues to wake up to the growing threat of climate change. The changes we are seeing, driven by carbon pollution, are far-reaching--from the coast lines of States such as Rhode Island and the Presiding Officer's State of Connecticut, to the great plateaus and mountain ranges out West; from pole to pole; from high up in the atmosphere to deep down in the oceans. In Rhode Island, we know the oceans are ground zero for the effects of carbon pollution. Since the Industrial Revolution, the oceans have been absorbing our carbon dioxide emissions--roughly a quarter of the total excess emissions--which, by the laws of chemistry, has caused rapid changes in ocean acidity, the pH level of the oceans, changes not seen for a long time. When I say ``a long time,'' I mean at least 25 to 50 million years, potentially as many as 300 million years. To put 300 million years into perspective, we homo sapiens--the human species-- have been on the Earth for about 200,000 years. So 300 million years goes way back into geologic time, back before the dinosaurs. So a change that is unprecedented in that much time is something we should pay attention to. Recently, four Republican former EPA Administrators testified before my Environment and Public Works subcommittee on the dire need for congressional action to curb this carbon pollution that is causing these effects in our oceans. Here is how the EPA's very first Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, put it. He said: Since the ocean absorbs 25-30 percent of the carbon from stationary or mobile sources we thought the ocean was our friend. It was keeping significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. But our friend is paying a penalty. As carbon dissolves in water, it makes the water more acidic--a fundamental chemical proposition--and that can upset the delicate balance of ocean life. Again, that is just basic physics and chemistry. Ronald Reagan's EPA chief Lee Thomas--Ronald Reagan's EPA chief-- warned us that thanks to the profuse carbon pollution we have emitted, oceans are now acidifying at a rate 50 times greater than known historical change--50 times. Of course, my colleagues in the minority did not seem inclined to listen to their fellow Republicans. Instead, they took a page out of the polluters' playbook, and as usual their routine was to call into question widely accepted science. Well, I recently visited communities around the country. I will mention my trip recently along the southeast coast--the Atlantic coast--where researchers, elected officials, and business and home owners are seeing the effects of climate change firsthand. It does not matter what somebody thinks on the Senate floor. They are seeing it firsthand. They know better than what the polluting special interests are trying to sell. Indeed, recently the United States Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a resolution calling for natural solutions to fight the effects of climate change to ``protect fresh water supplies, defend the Nation's coastlines, maintain a healthy tree and green space cover, and protect air quality.'' Unanimously, by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a bipartisan organization. So there are a lot of people who know better than the nonsense the polluting special interests are trying to sell. I flew out during this trip to where sea level rise is gnawing away at the Outer Banks. When you fly over the North Carolina coast, you see a lot of investment along the shoreline. You see houses, big houses, nice houses. You see hotels, you see restaurants, you see roads and infrastructure, you see an entire seafront economy. I met down there with the North Carolina Coastal Federation at their Coastal Education Center in Wilmington. This is a bipartisan group. It has joined together in concern over the exposure of their coastal communities, their homes, to rising seas. What would my colleagues here in the Senate tell this bipartisan group in North Carolina about climate change? What would they tell the United States Conference of Mayors, a bipartisan group, about climate change? Do not worry, it is not real; run along now, do not concern yourself. Good luck with that. People know better. King Canute could not decree that the tide not come in. Republicans in Congress cannot legislate away the changes we are seeing in our oceans. When I was down in Florida, fishermen there told me about the northward migration of species they are used to catching in Florida, species such as redfish and snook, moving north because of warming ocean temperatures. Fishermen in South Carolina told me snook are now being caught off the coast of Charleston. I have heard that redfish are being caught as far north as Cape Cod. I believe that because Rhode Islanders are catching tarpon and grouper off the shore of Rhode Island. I have had Rhode Island fishermen tell me they are catching fish their fathers and grandfathers never saw come up in their nets. As one Rhode Island fisherman told me, ``Sheldon, it's getting weird out there.'' It is not just Rhode Island. The Maine legislature just established a bipartisan commission to study and address the harm from ocean acidification to ecosystems and to their shell fisheries--again, bipartisan. Once you leave this building, people are taking bipartisan action. It is only here that the polluters hold such sway. In Virginia, which is also a coal State, a bipartisan group, including Republican U.S. Representatives Scott Rigell and Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe, are working together to prepare communities such as Hampton Roads, VA, for several feet of sea level rise. A State commission that was first assembled under the administration of our Virginia colleague Tim Kaine, back when he was Governor, has reconvened to address the threat of climate change in the oceans. These Virginia leaders are not wasting time quarreling and denying basic science. They are working to protect commerce and homeowners in their communities threatened as the seas continue to rise. While our Republican colleagues in Congress try their best to ignore the problem of carbon pollution, there are very serious conversations going on outside these walls. For example, former President George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson invoked ocean warming and sea level rise in a recent editorial he wrote, calling for a fee on carbon pollution. Here is the cover of this week's Newsweek: ``Deep end. What rapid changes in oceans mean for Earth.'' This would not be the first one. Last year, National Geographic came out with this issue entitled ``Rising Seas.'' Now perhaps my colleagues on the other side who pretend that climate change is a hoax will agree that Newsweek is part of the hoax; National Geographic is part of the hoax; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is part of the hoax; the U.S. Navy is part of the hoax. We are bedeviled in this Chamber by preposterous ideas. What the Newsweek cover article highlights is the unprecedented effects of pumping all of that excess carbon into our oceans, ranging from coral bleaching to dissolving larval shellfish, to the disappearance of entire species. BloombergView just published a recent editorial titled ``Climate Change Goes Underwater.'' I ask unanimous consent that this document be printed in the Record at the end of my comments. This is not wild speculation. This is good old-fashioned reporting of things that are happening around us that people see. I have talked before about the humble pteropod, so let's talk a little about the pteropod, a funny type of snail which is about the size of a small pea. The pteropod is known sometimes as the sea butterfly because its small foot has adapted into two little butterfly-like wings which propel it around in the ocean. These images show what can happen to the pteropod shell when the creature's underwater environment becomes more acidic and therefore lacks the compounds that are necessary for this little creature to make its delicate shell. It is not good for the pteropod. This is the pteropod in action with the little butterfly wings that help it to swim. Here is a clean shell from proper water. Here is a dissolving shell from exposure to acidified ocean water. This obviously is not good for the pteropod. Recent research, which was led by NOAA scientists, has found that ocean acidification off our west coast, in what is called the California current ecosystem, is hitting the pteropod especially hard. Let me take a minute and read from the publication of this report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, a respected publication. The release of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning, cement production and deforestation processes has resulted in atmospheric CO2 concentrations that have increased about 40% since the beginning of the industrial era. Now, the measure of that--we have always had atmospheric carbon concentrations between about 170 and 300 parts per million--we have broken 400. April was the first month when we were consistently, on average, above 400 parts per million. When you think that the 170 to 300 parts per million range has lasted for thousands of years, for millennia, for longer than our species has been on the planet, the fact that we are suddenly outside of that range is a signal that ought to call our attention. That is what they are referring to. Continuing: The oceans have taken up approximately 28% of the total amount of CO2 produced by human activities over this time-frame, causing a variety of chemical changes known as ocean acidification (OA). The rapid change in ocean chemistry is faster than at any time over the past 50 million years. They go on to say, toward the end of the report, that one of the chokepoint areas, what they call the first bottleneck: ``The first bottleneck would primarily affect veligers and larvae''--which are early stages of the shell before its shell has hardened. The larvae is little, and the veliger is when it has kind of a shroud around it, but not yet a shell. It helps it to move and to consume food. Continuing: The first bottleneck would primarily affect veligers and larvae, life stages where complete shell dissolution in the larvae can occur within two weeks upon exposure to undersaturation. They also note that: Significant increases in vertical and spatial extent of conditions favouring pteropod shell dissolution are expected to make this habitat potentially unsuitable for pteropods. So if the California current ecosystem habitat becomes unsuitable for pteropods, we have a little problem on our hands because pteropods are food for important fish like salmon, like mackerel, like herring. Pteropods are the base of the food chain. No pteropods means crashed salmon fisheries, crashed mackerel fisheries, crashed herring fisheries, crashes throughout polar and subpolar fisheries. Dr. William Peterson is an oceanographer at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center. He is the coauthor of the study, and he said: ``We did not expect to see pteropods being affected to this extent in our coastal region for several decades.'' These ecosystems, these ocean ecosystems, are crumbling before our eyes and yet this Congress hides behind denial. In the face of inertia in Congress and in the face of the relentless truculence of the deniers, the Obama administration is trying to do what it can to push responsible policies. Last month Secretary of State John Kerry held the State Department's ``Our Ocean'' Conference and I attended that conference for 2 days. One of the presenters there was Dr. Carol Turley of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. She described her research on ocean acidification, including using this graph of ocean acidity over the past 25 million years. That is today minus 25 million years, today minus 20 million years, minus 15 million years, minus 10 million years, minus 5 million years, and now. Look at how little variation there has been in ocean pH across that 25-million-year time scale. Remember, we have been on the planet around 200,000 years. We go back to about here. The rest of this is geologic time. That is a long span of time. If we put that against what is happening now, look how sudden that change is in ocean pH, the basic acidity of the oceans. Why is this happening? We know that human activity releases gigatons of carbon every year. That is undeniable. We know that carbon dioxide acidifies seawater. That is basic chemistry. You can do that in a high school lab. We know the ocean's pH is changing in unprecedented ways in human history. No one in their right mind can say this is natural variability. This acidification of our seas will have devastating effects on ecosystems such as tropical coral reefs, which, as Dr. Turley pointed out, are home to one in every four species in the marine environment. If you wanted to drive a bulldozer through God's species on this planet, it would be hard to do much better than allowing this rampant ocean acidification. My colleague and cochair of our Senate Oceans Caucus, Senator Lisa Murkowski, and I have had the chance to address the oceans conference together. She told the conference that the waters off her Alaskan shores are growing more acidic. I agree with Senator Murkowski that we need to understand what ocean acidification means for our fisheries and ocean ecosystems much better than we do now. Secretary Kerry delivered a clear challenge. On this planet, with all of its many peoples, we share nothing so completely as we share the oceans. And if we are going to honor our duty to protect the oceans, to honor our duty to future generations, we are going to have to work together. These are painfully clear warnings. The facts speak volumes. The denial propaganda has shown itself to be nonsense, to be a sham, which ought to come as no surprise because the machinery that produces the climate denial propaganda is the same machinery that denied tobacco was dangerous, the same machinery that denied there was an ozone hole, the same machinery that has always fought public health measures for industry, and has always been wrong. It has always been wrong because it is not its job to be right. It is its job to protect industry and allow them to continue to pollute and make money. That is its job. So it ought to come as no surprise that the argument it makes about climate change is nonsense and is a sham. It is time to unshackle ourselves from that machinery. History is going to look back at this, and it will not be a shining moment for us. History will reflect that the polluters are polluting our democracy with their money and their influence just as badly as they are polluting our oceans and our atmosphere with their carbon. We have to wake up. It will disserve our grandchildren and their grandchildren, and it will disgrace our generation to have allowed this democracy to miss this issue and to fail to act because of the propaganda machinery that has over and over again proven itself to be wrong. Our ocean economies, our ocean heritage, are all at stake. As Secretary Kerry put it, it is our ocean, and it is our responsibility. Let us please wake up before we have completely disgraced ourselves.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Manchin have such time as he needs to conclude his colloquy.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I agree with the distinguished Senator from West Virginia that the Department of Energy's advanced fossil projects loan guarantee program has not yet lived up to, at this time, its potential. I will work with him to push the administration to accelerate its use. I wish to close my share of this colloquy by noting something very basic; that is, that America has long stood before the world as an exceptional country and deservedly so. America proved the case for popular sovereignty with no need of kings or crowns. America took our balanced market capitalism and rose to international economic dominance. America has long been the vanguard of civil and human rights for our people and around the globe. When American military power must be used, we don't conquer and rule. We come home. This exceptional nature confers upon us a responsibility to lead, to be an example, to be, as President Reagan said, ``a shining city on a hill.'' Our generation will be judged by whether we were responsible about climate change, whether we listened, and whether we led. Senator Manchin and I are both committed to the idea that American innovation can create the clean energy technologies of the future, so that when it comes to addressing the biggest problems facing our world, the United States should be out front, and we are committed to working together to find responsible solutions to the climate crisis. We also realize we have different perspectives on what those solutions should look like. I live in a State that is harmed by carbon pollution, and Senator Manchin is from a State that sees economic benefit from coal. We believe we could both learn more about those different perspectives. So I am committing to travel with Senator Manchin to West Virginia to see the coal plants that power many parts of our country and meet the people there working to curb pollution and improve efficiency, and I invite Senator Manchin to Rhode Island to see how climate change is taking its toll on our shorelines and marine industries. America is still a beacon to the world because ultimately we have the ability to work through disagreements to common ground on a shared platform of fact. With the commitment of serious leaders such as Senator Manchin, I am confident we can move forward to an energy future that preserves the economy and quality of life in West Virginia, in Rhode Island, and for all Americans.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Senator Manchin and I come from very different parts of the country. We are the Ocean State, he is the Mountain State. We both came here today to say that climate change is real, that human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, are causing dramatic changes to the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, and to seek responsible solutions that will ensure reliable, sustainable energy for the United States and protect our local communities and economies from the worst effects of a changing climate, recognizing, as we must, that fossil fuels will be part of America's fuel mix for decades. The recent National Climate Assessment showed many effects of climate change are already being seen across the United States. In my home State of Rhode Island, we have Narragansett Bay, more than 3 degrees warmer in the winter than it was 50 years ago. Measurements at the Newport tide gauge show that as the seawater warms and expands, the sea level is up almost 10 inches against our shores since the 1930s. Extreme weather depends a lot on natural variability, but climate change increases the odds that heat waves and heavy rain bursts will occur. As the climate has warmed, some types of extreme weather have become more frequent and severe. Here on this chart we see that in the northeast, up here, the area which includes both Rhode Island and West Virginia, between 1958 and 2010, the amount of rain coming in those big downpours has gone up by 70 percent. Let's remember how climate change affects the economy and jobs. For example, fishermen in Rhode Island have seen their winter flounder catch from Narragansett Bay nearly disappear in the recent decades as the bay has warmed. These are not distant climate model projections, this is now. This is happening to Rhode Island. The people of West Virginia have Senator Manchin fighting for them every day in Washington. I know he believes that we need to find economically responsible answers to environmental problems. I am proud to stand with him today as his friend and colleague.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I agree with my friend from West Virginia that we must address climate change in a way that protects jobs in all sectors and ensures grid stability. Fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas are indeed going to be an important part of America's energy mix for decades. So we need to invest, as Senator Manchin has suggested, in reducing the carbon pollution we generate from these sources. We also need to adapt our power infrastructure to withstand the effects of climate change. Extreme weather has become the main cause of blackouts in the United States. The President's Council of Economic Advisers and the Department of Energy counted 679 widespread outages between 2003 and 2012 due to severe weather. Fifty-eight percent of power outages since 2002 and 87 percent of outages affecting 50,000 or more customers were caused by severe weather such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, and blizzards. The average annual cost of power outages caused by severe weather is between $18 billion and $33 billion per year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration compiled data that is plotted on this chart showing that weather-related power outages are already on the rise since just the early nineties. Addressing climate change is also important to grid stability. We also should expand and modernize our electric grid. A smarter grid will make it easier to respond to and recover from extreme weather events, will boost efficiency within the system, will help lower utility bills, and will bring more renewable energy online. In both our States, Senator Manchin and I realize it is in America's interest to be leaders in the research, development, and deployment of energy efficiency tools; in cleaner fossil fuel research; and in renewable energy technologies--particularly ones we can export. I know Senator Manchin has some of these technologies being rolled out in his State.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Efficiency is something we take seriously in Rhode Island as well. In 2013 the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranked Rhode Island as the sixth most energy efficient State in the country. The Energy Information Administration in 2011 ranked Rhode Island the lowest in energy consumption--which, as the Presiding Officer from the small State of Delaware can understand, we have a bit of an unfair advantage--but we were also the sixth lowest in total energy costs per capita. We do our part to save energy, avoid emissions, lower costs, and reduce the demand and stress on the electric grid. Rhode Island and eight other States participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative--we call it ``Reggi''--which caps carbon emissions and sells permits to emit greenhouse gases to powerplants. One of the ways Rhode Island has been able to drive down our energy consumption and our utility bills is by investing the money generated through RGGI into energy efficiency. Rhode Island invests over 91 percent of its RGGI proceeds in energy efficiency projects and improvements, helping residents save money on their utility bills and making small businesses more competitive. Rhode Island is also poised to gain scores of jobs from the development of offshore wind. I think we have the advantage on West Virginia in offshore wind. Our private developer of offshore wind, Deepwater Wind, has received its first major environmental permit to begin deployment in the Block Island wind farm area. The price of wind energy has decreased over 90 percent since the early 1980s and is now competitive in the energy markets. I am working to make wind energy more a part of our energy portfolio. At the Federal level, our energy policy must use the best science available to improve the way we use fossil fuels, and our Tax Code should help address climate change while leveling the playing field for various energy sources. I believe carbon-driven climate change hurts our economy, damages our infrastructure, and harms public health. Yet those costs are not factored into the cost of fossil fuels. That means the cost of the pollution has been borne by the public. I believe we should adopt a carbon fee to correct this market failure and return all its revenue to the American people--what Republican supporters of a carbon fee call revenue neutral. On a smaller scale, Congress can also extend the renewable energy tax credits and other measures that are supported by Members on both sides of the aisle, helping renewable energy in West Virginia and a bipartisan array of States.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. May I ask the Senator from Maryland to comment on another point. We are having a conversation right here and right now on the floor about a specific EPA regulation. But those of us who are here on the floor a lot and those of us who pay attention to these issues can't not see this conversation in the context of a larger conversation that is taking place in the Senate. That causes me to inquire: When will a Republican come to the floor and ever support EPA on anything? When will that happen? I was just speaking in the House at a hearing, and Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the committee that I was testifying before, pointed out that they were coming up on the House Republicans' 500th vote attacking the environment in the House. Now, we know they have tried to repeal ObamaCare 50-plus times--but 500 attacking environmental regulations? I can't not see this in that larger context of a party that has simply thrown over its proud environmental history and just consistently takes the position of the polluter almost as a reflex.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If I remember correctly, we had four from Republican administrations.