Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I further ask that the committee-reported substitute be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following leader remarks on Thursday, January 30, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1926, with the time until 11:15 a.m. equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with the final 10 minutes equally divided between Senator Menendez or his designee, and Senator Toomey or his designee, with Senator Toomey controlling the final 5 minutes; that at 11:15 a.m., the Senate proceed to votes in relation to the following amendments: Toomey amendment No. 2707, as modified; Coburn amendment No. 2697; Merkley amendment No. 2709, as modified; and Heller amendment No. 2700; further, that upon disposition of the Heller amendment, the Senate recess until 2 p.m.; at 2 p.m. when the Senate reconvenes, the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill, as amended; finally, there be 2 minutes of debate prior to each vote, equally divided in the usual form; and that all after the first vote be 10-minute votes.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. My colleague's point, that this used to be a bipartisan issue, is actually illustrated by this photograph. This is Roy Carpenter's Beach. It is a beach that got probably hit the hardest. There were some bigger, older houses that got washed away down the shore, but this has a lot of these smaller houses that families have held onto for generations. After Sandy, with the sea level rise and then the storm, together, they knocked them into the water this way. This individual right here is Lincoln Chafee. That is Governor Chafee. He served in this body as a Republican, and he was one of the staunchest environmentalists in this body. If you go back further, his father John Chafee served as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He was one of my colleague's predecessors, and he helped lead the passage of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, a Republican, and he was proud of it. He didn't hide from it. It wasn't something the Republican Party had to run away from in those days. Try to find that in the modern Republican Party. It is embarrassing what has happened to a great political party.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. They have erected a barricade of lies, Madam Chairman. They have erected a barricade of lies, and it is supported by an avalanche of money. If you go outside that barricade, you see enormous support for getting something done about climate. Just to give the example of our corporate community--Coke and Pepsi, the Mars corporation, which makes M&Ms and Mars bars, Ford and GM, Apple, Nike, Walmart, on and on--we can go through the signal American corporations, the heraldry of the American corporate world, and they are ready to get something done. But there is enough money that gets thrown by the polluters and enough threats made by them in Republican primaries that our colleagues are trapped. Unless we build a coalition that gets them a way out, that barricade will continue to inhibit progress on this issue in this building.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Fifty-six.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If the underlying problem weren't so serious, it would be laughable that they are already challenging a rule that has not even been promulgated yet. They are sort of prechallenging it. It just shows what a pell-mell tumble our Republican colleagues will subject themselves to in order to keep in the good graces of the polluting industries. Again, it is embarrassing. It ought to be embarrassing. But I think there is hope. One of the signs of hope is the polling information among young Republican voters. Young Republican voters under the age of 35--not very young but young Republican voters under the age of 35--when asked about climate denial and asked what their view is of people who espouse climate denial say they think they are ignorant, out of touch or crazy. That is the young cohort of the Republican Party. That is what it believes. So time, obviously, is on the side of reason and science and the plain evidence people see in front of their noses across this country, whether they are farmers, fishermen, hikers or skiers. Anybody who has contact with the outdoors understands this is absolutely real. It is only people in this little hot house of polluter-paid intrigue that the denial strategy still stands up, and it is our job to knock it back down.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. One of the most prominent ones is George Shultz, who served with great distinction, I believe, under three Republican Presidents.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ran into him in the last 10 days and I said: Thank you for your work on carbon. It is important. He said: It is important. I said: We have to do a carbon fee. He said: Revenue neutral. I said: Yes, we have to do a revenue-neutral carbon fee. Revenue-neutral carbon fee means that the money that is generated by the polluters pays for the harm they do to do to all the rest of us, which they otherwise get away with for free, and it goes back to the American people. It is revenue neutral. It doesn't go into the government and raise the size of government. It goes right back. We could do it by lowering taxes, by paying off every student loan in the country. We could do it by giving seniors on Social Security a raise. What a good discussion that would be, to be having right here. But we can't have that discussion because the other party is trapped by the polluters--trapped in their politics, trapped by their money.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I hope my colleagues will vote enthusiastically for this amendment. Across the country, communities and local organizations are trying to revive rivers that have been dammed and blocked. When they go forward to remove a dam, when they go forward to put in a fish ladder, when they redesign a culvert to allow for water passage, they have to file a flood plan. FEMA requires them to pay a fee to have that flood plan assessed. The fee is almost always waived. But they still have to go through the waiver process, which costs money and frankly can be as burdensome as simply paying the fee. This eliminates that fee. It eliminates that part of the process and allows towns and small organizations more readily to come to the aid of our old small rivers. I think this is something we should be able to agree on with great strength. It is noncontroversial. I urge my colleagues to vote yea.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is the 56th time, the 56th consecutive week that we have been in session in the Senate that I have come to the floor to sound an alarm about carbon pollution and the harm it is causing to our oceans and to our coastal communities--the 56th time. Frankly, I am getting a little sick of it. I am getting sick of the Republican Party being completely the tool of the polluters. I am sick of the phony denial and of not getting anything done. I am sick of what it is going to say about American democracy if we keep failing at this. But I am going to keep pounding away because it is so vital to my ocean State. We are a little State with a lot of coast. Our sea level is rising, driven by faraway melting glaciers and everywhere expanding sea water. As oceans warm, the water expands. That is what liquids do. Deniers look up thermal expansion of liquids and deny that. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected that sea level will likely rise 1\1/2\ to 3 feet by 2100 if we do what the polluters prefer and ignore the clear scientific evidence. By the way, that is a conservative number. These rising sea levels hit coasts hard, particularly when storms beat those seas against our shores. It is not just me saying that, we are supposed to listen to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office around here. A 2013 GAO report on climate change effects said this: Storm surge, combined with sea level rise, is projected to generate a wide range of negative impacts on roads and bridges. For example, storm surges are projected to increasingly inundate coastal roads, cause more frequent or severe flooding of low lying infrastructure, erode road bases, and ``scour'' bridges by eroding riverbeds and exposing bridge foundations. People from polluting States may think that is funny, may think that does not matter, but to a coastal State such as mine this is a serious threat. This chart shows the worldwide measured change in sea level. This is not some theory--measured change in sea level--as well as a number of different models projecting future sea levels. We can see that sea level has been steadily rising over the past 130 years, generally consistent with human fossil fuel use. Between 1901 and 2010, sea level rise was estimated at 1.7 millimeters per year. Recently updated satellite measurements from the University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group show a rise of 3.2 millimeters per year from 1993 to 2013. The rate of increase has already nearly doubled. According to the IPCC, that rate is likely to accelerate. In Rhode Island, our tide gauge in Newport shows an increase in average sea level of nearly 10 inches since 1930. Consistent with the global trends, measurements at our Newport tide gauge show that the rate of sea level rise has also increased in the past two decades. Local coastal erosion rates have doubled from 1990 to 2006, and some freshwater coastal wetlands are already transitioning to salt marsh from freshwater as they are inundated by the sea. Our Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council has documented 160 feet of shoreline lost to erosion in the town of South Kingstown since 1951, a rate of 3 feet per year. A steady 3 feet per year is one thing, add a storm and surges can wipe up whole swaths of land at once, as we saw with Superstorm Sandy. We can see the erosion here. Back in 1994, this beach pavilion was set back a good way from the water. By 2012, here, the ocean was just a few feet from the structure. This is the roof that is here. This is the framing that is here. This is the very beginning of this walkway back here. There is the ocean. The ocean has moved from here essentially to there. Roads and other infrastructure that were once a safe distance from the shoreline were also battered by this terrible storm surge and wind. The small, vibrant coastal town of Matunuck, RI, is under siege from the advancing ocean. This chart shows how far the shoreline has shifted since 1951. Here is the 1951 shoreline. This is the 2012 photo, showing how much the sea has risen and eaten against the shores. In the last dozen years, beaches have eroded 20 feet. The community now faces difficult decisions. The only road connecting Matunuck to neighboring towns is protected by only about 10 feet of sand now. The road provides access for emergency vehicles residents may need. Underneath it lies their water main. If carbon dioxide emissions continue unchecked, another 5 feet of projected sea level rise is a real possibility after the year 2100. Matunuck's projected coastline with 5 feet of sea level rise can be seen in red. These are all houses. This is Roy Carpenter's Beach. These houses have been here in some cases for generations and they are tumbling into the sea as the ocean encroaches on them. This is famous Newport Harbor. In Newport, 5 feet of sea level rise would inundate large portions of our vibrant downtown area, including America's Cup Avenue, right here; including the Long Wharf Shopping Center, which would be about here; and including the famous and historic Cardines Field, a great old baseball field. Goat Island will be only a few specks of land. This is what 3 feet of sea-level rise would look like in Newport. Perrotti Park is gone. The Ann Street Pier is gone, not to mention the Newport Harbor Master's office. He will be a lot closer to the harbor when it is pouring through his windows than he is right now. Wherever Rhode Island meets the sea, our homes, communities, and our very economy are at stake. Yet in Congress we sleepwalk, lulled by the narcotic influence of the polluting special interests. No wonder I am frustrated. When my colleagues say they are worried about job loss in the polluting coal and oil industries, I am willing to listen. I am even willing to help, but I am not willing to stand by while this is happening in my home State and have us pretend it is not even real. Rhode Island, of course, is not the only region experiencing sea- level rise, coastal erosion, and economic disruption. Rising seas concern coastal regions across the country. With over 1,000 miles of coastline, Florida is at grave risk from sea-level rise. According to the World Resources Institute and an article published in ``Environmental Research Letters,'' of all the people and housing in America threatened by sea-level rise, 40 percent is in Florida. That is because in Florida the flooding won't just be along the coast; low- lying inland areas are also at risk. That is because Florida is built on porous limestone. In New England, on our rocky shores, we could perhaps build levees and dams in some places to hold the oceans back. In Miami, they would be building those structures on geological sponge. The water will seep right under. Using the best available science, the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact assessed the risk to four south Florida counties of sea-level rise. In those counties, 1 foot of sea- level rise would endanger approximately $4 billion in property. In Monroe County, three of the four hospitals, two-thirds of the schools, and 71 percent of emergency shelters are endangered by a 1-foot sea- level rise. Go to 3 feet of sea-level rise in these counties. That would endanger approximately $31 billion worth of property. That is a lot of infrastructure at risk. This map shows 3 feet of sea-level rise in Miami-Dade County. The map on the left shows current elevation in southern Miami-Dade compared to 3 feet of sea-level rise on the right. These blue regions go underwater. They have lost acres upon acres of that city. This nuclear power station, Turkey Point, and this sewage treatment plant are virtually cut off from dry land. Yet what do we hear from our Republican colleague from Florida? Denial, right along the polluter party line. Louisiana is teed up for the worst storm surge by the warming, rising waters of the Gulf of Mexico. According to a U.S. Geological Survey-led study, between 1985 and 2010, Louisiana lost a football field an hour of land and wetlands to coastal erosion. A recent poll shows that Louisiana voters understand and want action on climate change. Seventy-two percent of Louisianans believe climate change is a serious problem that threatens everyone. It is hitting their lives and yet our Republican colleague from Louisiana offers streams of denial. The State with the most coastline is Alaska. Another U.S. Geological Survey study shows that coastal erosion of a 40-mile stretch along the Beaufort Sea has climbed from 20 feet per year between the mid-fifties and late seventies to 28 feet per year between the late seventies and two thousands and now has doubled to more than 45 feet per year between 2002 and 2007. Climate change is one of several factors at play and is contributing to this accelerating loss. Earlier this month our Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I lead with Chairman Waxman, welcomed Alaskans from the town of Shishmaref, an Inupiat Eskimo village located on a small barrier island 5 miles from mainland Alaska, to hear from them how climate change is affecting their homes. Their houses are literally falling into the sea thanks to sea-level rise and coastal erosion. Their centuries-old culture is crumbling away with each wave. This is a house in Shishmaref. This is a house at Roy Carpenter's Beach in Rhode Island. We can see how we sympathize with the town of Shishmaref. In Alaska, Shishmaref is not alone. A recent GAO report showed that 31 Alaskan villages are at risk. The 12 red dots shown are villages that are now considering relocating completely. According to the U.S. Corps of Engineers, relocation costs are estimated at $100 million to $200 million for Shishmaref, and other villages could face similar costs. Stanley Tocktoo is the former mayor of Shishmaref. He came to our hearing and said: No matter your politics, you can't ignore the facts. The facts are that our village is being impacted by climate change on a daily basis. And we need you to do something about it. He said: No matter your politics, you can't ignore facts. The painful truth, Mayor Tocktoo, is that in Congress, if you have certain politics, you are actually obliged to ignore the facts. You are required to ignore the facts. Your big-money people--the big polluters, the Koch brothers--insist on it. They demand that you ignore the facts. Citizens United, that God-awful Supreme Court decision, means that the big polluters' big money can drown out in elections--particularly in Republican primary elections--every reasonable person, Republican, Independent, or Democrat, who understands that we need to act. The party on the other side is stuck, trapped by the campaign finance rules and the big money of the big polluters. We could, in Congress, be awake, helping and meeting the call of duty. We could be working with the President to implement his climate action plan. The Environment and Public Works Committee, under the strong leadership of Chairman Barbara Boxer, recently held an oversight hearing on the President's climate action plan. What did we get in that hearing from our Republican colleagues? Denial, quarreling, and obfuscation--the polluter party line. They actually brought in, as a Republican witness, a person whose organization took money from the Koch brothers, Exxon, and from other far-right and denier foundations, including the notorious Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, which launders money from big donors who want to remain anonymous. If people have not heard of this Donors Trust and Donors Capital group, a recent report out of Drexel University described this group as the ``black box that conceals the identity of contributors,'' the ``central component,'' and ``dominant funder'' of the denier apparatus. This was who they chose as their witness. We could, in Congress, be figuring out how a carbon pollution fee-- one that returns all of its proceeds back to the American people--could best boost our economy, as some prominent Republicans have suggested. But I sent a letter to my Republican colleagues summarizing the Republican case for a carbon fee and not one responded. The polluters have the Republican Party at their heels. It is a tragic state of affairs for a great political party. Carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is altering the atmosphere and oceans. It is changing our climate. The scientific consensus around this fact is overwhelming. Denial at this point is propped-up polluter-paid nonsense. Where carbon pollution hits the oceans, denial requires people not only to reject science but to reject measurement. We measure sea-level rise. We measure ocean warming. We measure ocean acidification. It is not complicated. We measure sea- level rise, more or less, with a yardstick. We measure ocean warming with a thermometer; we measure ocean acidification with simple litmus tests that everyone with an aquarium is familiar with. Yet despite that incontrovertible evidence from our oceans, we sleepwalk on in Congress, thanks to a great political party's captivity by polluters. It is a disgrace. It will go down in history as a disgrace. We could strengthen our economy, we could save our great coastal cities and our age-old island villages, and we can leave things better, not worse, for the generations that will follow us, but we have to pay attention to reality. We have to pay attention to the real evidence. We can't be swept up in the toxic polluter-paid politics that infect Washington. This matters immensely to Alaska. It matters immensely to the citizens of Shishmaref. It matters immensely to the residents of Florida who are looking at their cities; and it matters immensely to Rhode Island, the Ocean State, because the undeniable changes from sea- level rise and warming are upon us and will only worsen. For once and for all, it is time for us to wake up.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I wish to say a few words about this amendment which I hope we can pass. I think it is an amendment that will find strong bipartisan support. I am from New England and across New England--and I suspect in Wisconsin and across the country as well--communities are trying to restore old rivers to their healthy state. What we see in New England, particularly in Rhode Island with our history of the Industrial Revolution, is that our early industrial history was powered by hydropower. It was powered by damming rivers and then diverting some of the flow through a wheel that then drove the engines of industry--the mills, for instance, that were so important to Rhode Island's industrial history. That is not true just of Rhode Island; it is true across New England, and I suspect it is true in a lot of places across the country. As local communities are restoring these old rivers--they tend to be small rivers, particularly in New England, and these tend to be old dams--what we want to do is remove the old dams so the original flow is restored or we want to rebuild or maybe even redesign culverts so the flow of the river through the culvert permits the passage of fish. In some cases, we want to fully keep the dam but build a fish passage, so the fish that are working their way upstream to their traditional breeding grounds find a passage and aren't blocked by dams. Again, this is part of bringing these old rivers back to life. When we do that, in my State, it is usually towns--small towns often--and local community organizations that have to apply in order to make those changes. Part of the application process is a flood map revision to show what a change--removing the dam or changing the culvert or adding the fish ladder--will make on downstream conditions and so the flood map gets redone. The flood map gets filed with FEMA, and FEMA requires a processing fee of more than $5,000 in order to review and accept the flood map revision. What actually happens in practice is that the town or the local organization that is filing the flood map revision, because they are repairing or replacing the dam or providing fish passage for it, will apply to waive that fee. Virtually always--at least in Rhode Island, and I think around the country--FEMA is willing to waive that fee. But the problem is, these are small organizations and these are small towns, and it takes actually a considerable effort to put together the fee waiver application. So you may save $5,500 in the form of the FEMA fee, but you will spend maybe close to that much on your lawyers and engineers and on time and trouble in working together to get that application done. So since these fees usually get waived anyway, this amendment would just cut to the chase and say there is no fee. And because there is no fee, now you do not have to apply for a fee waiver. That will help the small towns and the small organizations that are often behind these small projects; and I mean dams that are only just 4 or 5 feet tall sometimes. The redesign of a culvert is not a major effort. It is very important to local communities, very important to local fishermen, very important to local canoers and outdoorsmen, but not a terrifically big deal. I hope we can agree to eliminate that bureaucratic requirement. Neither NOAA nor FEMA have expressed any objection whatsoever to this amendment. If I can close, I will read a statement by Chris Fox, who is executive director of the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association. The Wood River and Pawcatuck River run through western Rhode Island, and they are wonderful rivers. I have actually canoed and kayaked them both and enjoyed it immensely. He had to go through this fee waiver process for a set of projects on the Upper Pawcatuck River, and he writes: This Amendment will avert lengthy project delays and reduce the cost of these environmentally beneficial projects nationwide. . . . On behalf of the wildlife, water, and people who reside in, and depend upon the health of the Wood- Pawcatuck Watershed, I thank you and all those who support this Amendment. I hope all my colleagues will join together to earn Chris Fox's thanks for this, I hope, noncontroversial and beneficial amendment. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Absolutely. Indeed, years ago one expert in this area wrote that, in terms of the experience that people would have--yes, the planet is warming--but the experience that people would have wouldn't be just of warming. It would be of weirding weather--weird weather--and truly the better name would be not global warming, but it would be global weirding. That is because, very simply, when you add energy-- heat energy in this case--to a closed system by trapping it with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, you speed things up. You make storms stronger, you change weather patterns, and you see things that you have not seen before. So the things people are seeing now--not specifically and not that storm, but the patterns that people would see more extreme weather of various kinds--were indeed predicted. The fact that it is happening is exactly consistent with what the scientists have been warning us about.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield to the Senator.

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 that the pending amendment be set aside so I may call up amendment No. 2706.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. John Warner.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I thank the chair for her staunch leadership. She is such an ally and leader for us. It really is very exciting, and, yes, you will see considerably more activity. I will close by telling one personal story because very often you are dealing with statistics, and you are dealing with figures, and you are dealing with things that are happening on a large scale when you talk about climate change. I remember this day. I remember this day, walking along and meeting with these homeowners whose houses these were. I remember talking to the lady whose house--I think this one was right here--the Governor is looking into. She remembers, as a child, being in that house. In front of this house she had a lawn, a lawn where they could throw Frisbees and play Wiffle ball. On the other side of the lawn was a road that gave access along the shoreline, a sand road. On the other side of the road was a parking lot where people would come and bring their cars, and on the other side of the parking lot was the beach that was so long down to the water, and she could remember running as a kid. You know, when the summer Sun beats down on the beach and the sand gets so hot that it hurts your feet, and you have to dash to get your feet into the water because they are hot, hot, hot as you run when you are a little kid? And she would make that long run and think what a long run it was to get down that hot sand and into the cool, clear waters of Narragansett Bay. That beach is gone. That parking lot is gone. That road is gone. Her lawn is gone, and this is what has happened to her house. If people want to know why we are not going to give up--yes, I am sick of it. I am sick of having to come here and do this. It is tiresome to have no progress and have people not listen and have it be because of, frankly, scandalous polluter-paid interference and influence in this building. Yes, I am sick of it. But I am not going to stop, not while this is happening to my home State of Rhode Island. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of S.J. Res. 28 and S.J. Res. 29, and the Senate proceed to their consideration en bloc.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am back now for the 55th time that the Senate has been in session, each week, to urge my colleagues to wake up to the toll that carbon pollution is taking on our atmosphere, on our oceans, and on our people. While climate change deniers continue to gin up phony doubt to mislead the public, top American businesses and corporations recognize the risks posed by climate change. They are preparing for the economic fallout. Members of Congress bury their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, hoping the issue will go away, wondering in some cases recently whether the recent cold front disproved decades of research and an overwhelming scientific consensus. Business leaders in the real world, not the political world, not the polluter-paid, phony-doubt world, business leaders in the real world are doing what they do best; that is, taking steps to protect their bottom line and maintain their relationships with their customers. Major corporations, even those with large carbon footprints, are taking voluntary action to lower their own carbon output. Some are joining broader efforts to support policies that reduce carbon emissions. Some of our largest and most sophisticated companies are even factoring the economic burden of climate change in their own accounting and their own long-term planning by--guess what--assigning an internal price to carbon. The Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I lead with Congressman Waxman, wrote to over 300 businesses and organizations seeking their views on actions the Federal Government could take to reduce carbon pollution and to strengthen our resiliency to climate change. The response from the business community was very encouraging. Some examples: Coca-Cola, headquartered in Georgia, wrote this: We recognize climate change is a critical challenge facing our planet with potential impacts on biodiversity, water resources, public health and agriculture. Beyond the effects on the communities we serve, we view climate change as a potential business risk, understanding that it could likely have direct and indirect effects on our business. That is Coca-Cola. Texas- and Maryland-based Lockheed Martin told the task force of the major headway it has made in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. I will quote from Lockheed Martin: From 2007 through 2011, Lockheed Martin reduced its absolute carbon emissions by 30 percent, and continues to focus on carbon emission reductions by championing energy conservation and efficiency measures in our facilities. Lockheed Martin. Let's look at Walmart, founded and headquartered in Arkansas. Walmart wrote: We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and we are working with our suppliers to do the same. Indeed, I met yesterday with the general counsel from Apple, doing exactly the same thing, working to reduce their carbon footprint, working with their suppliers to push for reductions on the part of their suppliers. Walmart's 2009 sustainability report shows its longstanding commitment to fighting climate change. Here is what Walmart said: Climate change may not cause hurricanes, but warmer ocean water can make them more powerful. Climate change may not cause rainfall, but it can increase the frequency and severity of heavy flooding. Climate change may not cause droughts, but it can make droughts longer. Every company has a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gases as quickly as it can. That is Walmart. That is why we are working in a number of areas to reduce our company's carbon footprint, and also working with our suppliers and customers to help them do the same. Currently we are investing in renewable energy, increasing energy efficiency in our buildings and trucks, working with suppliers to take carbon out of products, and supporting legislation in the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is Walmart. I also wish to commend the Walmart family foundation for the work they are doing on oceans as well as on the atmospheric aspects of carbon. Let's look at Mars, the Virginia-based candy company. Mars states: We are committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in absolute terms because this is the right thing to do. As climate change has implications for the production of agricultural ingredients, addressing it requires changes to the way we source materials and manufacture our products. Mars, maker of the famous Mars bars and M&Ms. North Carolina's VF Corporation, which makes major apparel brands such as Lee and Wrangler, Nautica, and North Face says this: We seek to conduct our business with the highest levels of honesty, integrity and respect. These values are embedded in our approach to sustainability, which reflects our commitment to operating our business so future generations can live with cleaner water and air, healthier forests and oceans and a stable climate. Toy maker Hasbro, from my home State of Rhode Island, has issued its energy pledge: Climate change mitigation is a pressing global issue and we aim to reduce our corporate carbon footprint by improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions at our sites. Hasbro was awarded a Climate Leadership Award by the EPA in 2012 for excellence in greenhouse gas management. These companies and their products are household names in this country. They are major players in the American economy. Lockheed Martin had annual revenue in 2012 of over $47 billion. We trust them with some of our most important defense contracts. Coke topped $48 billion and may be the most recognizable corporate franchise in the world. Walmart is the world's second largest company, with 2012 revenue of more than $443 billion. These are serious companies, they are serious about their products, and they are serious about their returns. In part, they earn their impressive returns by being serious about science, and they understand the harm carbon-driven climate change causes. They see the unfair advantage big polluters get when those big polluters don't have to factor the costs of their carbon pollution into the price of the coal or oil. That is why more and more leading businesses are calling on Congress to wake up and set new ground rules to even the energy playing field. Mars and VF Corporation, along with eBay, Gap, Levi's, Nike, Starbucks, and other name-brand American corporations, are members of the Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy coalition--BICEP--which is pushing for energy policies that will draw down carbon emissions and boost economic growth. BICEP is only one of the impressive initiatives organized by Ceres, a nonprofit organization that helps to mobilize investors and business leaders to build a sustainable global economy. If we in Congress are willing to take on the special interests, the polluting special interests that keep Congress barricaded, BICEP member companies and others will have our back. What we need to do is to price carbon properly, to get a right price for carbon. That means making the big carbon polluters pay a fee to the American people to cover the cost of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans. That is a cost they now happily push off onto the rest of us. Because of the political control of the polluters over Congress, conditions do not presently allow us to price carbon. So Senator Boxer and those in our new Senate Climate Action Task Force are pushing to change those political conditions. While we are doing that--and we will do that because we have the public, the facts, the science, and the imperative, both moral and practical, on our side--while we are doing that, these big, name-brand American companies have begun to assess their own internal prices on carbon. A recent report by the Climate Disclosure Project, which gauges carbon emissions and energy usage of major corporations, has identified 29 large companies that use internal carbon prices in their operations or their long-term planning. Some of those companies price carbon to drive energy efficiency. Others see it as a smart way to prepare their business practices for the likelihood of a national American carbon fee. Among those companies are some of the world's largest oil and gas companies, as well as major energy consumers. For example, ExxonMobil estimates that a price of $60 per metric ton of carbon dioxide will be assessed on carbon by 2030. BP's figure is $40, and Devon Energy's is $15. Some of the biggest carbon emitters in history are preparing for a price on carbon. Let that sink in for a second. The emitters have already baked into their planning a price on carbon--among other reasons, because they know it is the right outcome. Who else is using internal carbon pricing? Well, Google assesses an internal carbon fee of $14 per metric ton that it uses to invest in green initiatives. Likewise, Microsoft charges each of its organizational divisions a quarterly carbon neutral fee of $6 to $7 per metric ton. The revenue from those divisions from that carbon fee goes--very similar to Google--to a central fund to support carbon offset projects. Microsoft even published a carbon fee playbook as a guide for businesses looking to establish their own internal carbon fees. The Walt Disney Company--talk about a nameplate company--charges its subsidiary businesses a carbon fee based on their share of the company's overall footprint. According to a company statement: The higher the carbon footprint, the more they pay. We have built this into our capital planning process as well, so businesses have to take the price of carbon into account while planning new projects. The additional operational cost has started to incentivize businesses to seek methods to reduce their impact. Walmart ran the numbers assuming an economy-wide carbon fee of $18 per ton. The company finds that ``Walmart's early action on emission reductions represents a competitive advantage over other retailers that have not performed such projects.'' Investors, who are behind a lot of these companies, are also voicing concerns about the exposure of their portfolios to the effects of climate change, and they are pushing for climate action. The Carbon Asset Risk Initiative--also coordinated by Ceres--is a coalition of 70 investors worth nearly $3 trillion. They have pressured 45 of the world's top fossil fuel companies to disclose the climate risks facing their investments in those companies. Should the oil and gas interests prove, shall we say, evasive in answering, well, investors may soon have other resources at hand to evaluate the climate risk to their portfolios. Bloomberg News, for example, has developed for its readers the Bloomberg Carbon Risk Valuation Tool--a model which can describe the potential effect of carbon regulations on fossil fuel company earnings and share price. Investors and corporate executives take climate change seriously because of how they see it will hurt the bottom line and because of how it will affect their relationship with their customers. They get it. Big nameplate American corporations get it--unlike this building, this institution and the one down the hall, the Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives, which remain under the control and thrall of the polluting interests and won't take action like these big nameplate American corporations already have. We can work with these big corporations. We have to work with them to break the campaign of polluter-paid denial that has Congress barricaded. That campaign of denial is as poisonous to our democracy as the underlying carbon pollution is to our atmosphere and oceans. We need to clean up both of them. We need a democracy that is clean of polluter-paid denial, and we need an atmosphere and oceans that are clean of polluter-emitted carbon. It is time to push back on the misleading propaganda of the polluters. It is time to recognize that our allies are out there to work with us. It is time for us to wake up. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am back today for the 54th time to urge my colleagues to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to the Earth's climate and oceans. We see the facts all around us, but can't seem to penetrate the politics of Congress. We, in this body, are willfully ignoring changes we have never seen before, changes that threaten our planet and its rich array of plant and animal life, our homes, farms, and factories, and our very health and well being. Carbon-driven climate change can be seen in warming surface temperatures and shifting seasons, but perhaps nowhere is carbon pollution doing more harm than in our oceans. The year 2013 brought ample new evidence of these changes in our oceans. People often talk about climate change as if it were a theory. Here is what we know. We know that the oceans are warming. That is not a theory; that is a measurement. It is done with thermometers. It is not complicated. Sea level, we know, is rising; that is another measurement. It is very simple. We could do it with a yardstick. Oceans are becoming more acidic. Every American with an aquarium measures acidity with litmus paper. Again, it is simple measurement and proven facts. If we put those proven facts into context, let's look at geologic context. According to an article published in 2012 in the journal Science, our current rate of carbon dioxide emissions--mainly from burning fossil fuels--is enough to cause the most severe changes to the chemistry of our oceans in 300 million years, and 300 million years ago is before the dinosaurs. We know the oceans are warming. The oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat in the atmosphere between 1971 and 2010, according to a 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here is where the heat goes: 93.4 percent goes into the ocean. The rest we are seeing, 2.3 percent, goes into the atmosphere. Our oceans are really taking the brunt of the added heat. We also know that sea level is rising. We know this. It is driven not only by melting glaciers carrying water into the seas and raising their level, but also by ocean water expanding. As water warms, it expands. The principle of thermal expansion is known in every science class in this country. At the Newport tide gauge in Rhode Island, sea level is up almost 10 inches since the 1930s. So that means that storms driving the sea against Rhode Island's coast have 10 more inches of sea to throw against our homes and infrastructure. Recent satellite measurements from the University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group show 3.2 millimeters of sea level rise per year from 1993 to 2013. Between 1901 and 2010, that rate was estimated at 1.7 millimeters per year. So the rate of increase has nearly doubled, and that means sea level rise is very likely speeding up. That is all stuff we measure. That is not theory. The IPCC report also projects--conservatively, in my view--that sea level will likely rise one-half to one full meter by the year 2100 if we do nothing to dial back carbon pollution. Obviously, the other estimates are for far more extreme sea level rise. We know the oceans are becoming more acidic. Oceans not only absorb 90 percent of the heat that has come from climate change, they are absorbing about 30 percent of the carbon itself. The carbon itself goes to the surface of the ocean, and it is absorbed there. Roughly 600 gigatons worth of carbon have been pumped into our oceans as a result. As all that carbon dissolves into the oceans, what happens? Ocean water becomes more acidic. It is a chemistry experiment you can duplicate in any simple lab. Indeed, if you do the measurement, we have gotten about 26 percent more acidic--the seas have--since the Industrial Revolution. That was reported, again, last year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean. The rate of change in ocean acidity--we can see it is speeding up--is already faster than at any time measured in the past 50 million years according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Yet we sleep walk here in Congress, narcotized by polluter money. Ocean acidification and warming are fundamentally altering our undersea environment--what Pope Francis in his recent exhortation called the ``ocean wonder world.'' These changes, among other things, have made the world's coral reefs extremely vulnerable to decay and bleaching. Areas such as the Great Barrier Reef--one of the great global wonders of the world off the coast of Australia--has already experienced large-scale bleaching. As a boy, I used to scuba dive in the Andaman Sea. If you go back now--30 years later--it is heavily bleached. These are pictures that were taken in 2002 by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and they clearly show a once lush and vibrant reef now gone and barren. Worsening this bleaching would be particularly hard on countries whose people depend on the bounty of the reef for their protein, sustenance, and economy. Remember, the reefs are the ocean's nurseries, and they support food and economic stability as well as pretty tropical fish. New research also suggests that even the most remote depths of the ocean will suffer the consequences of climate change. A study published in the journal Global Change Biology looked at various climate models to predicate changes in food supply throughout the world's oceans. The models predict that the changes to our ocean could lead to a worldwide drop in sea floor dwelling life by the year 2100. The North Atlantic--off our shores in Massachusetts and in Rhode Island--may lose more than one-third of all deep-sea marine life. These drastic changes from our carbon pollution are daunting ones-- particularly for our ocean State of Rhode Island. Our way of life in Rhode Island, like the Presiding Officer's in Massachusetts, has always been closely tied to the sea. Yet here in Congress we ignore all of that and continue perilously sleepwalking through history. The Obama administration has at last put forward a Climate Action Plan, the cornerstone of which will be EPA regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing powerplants. Our 50 worst powerplants--in terms of emission--put out more carbon pollution than the entire country of Canada and the entire country of Korea. So solving that problem is vitally important. The plan also directs executive branch agencies to take concrete steps to safeguard the American people and our interest in the world against the harmful effects of excessively high temperatures, melting ice, ocean acidification, and sea level rise. These are important steps, but they must ultimately be backed up by congressional action. EPA regulations and executive orders will never have the same economy-wide effect as a congressionally approved carbon fee, for instance. The sweeping changes taking place in our oceans make adapting to these changes particularly important along our coastlines. Warmer waters and higher seas load the dice for more damaging storms. Our coastal counties in this country harbor 39 percent of the country's population and account for 41 percent of our GDP. Let's look at our ports, for example. According to a 2009 National Ocean Economics Program report: ``Three-quarters of all United States trade passes through estuary ports.'' No wonder, then, that the American Association of Port Authorities is taking climate change seriously--working to reduce carbon pollution and stave off its effects, rather than waiting for Congress to awaken from our slumber. American ports are switching trucks and cranes from diesel to electric and installing onshore power supply to ships, thus reducing emissions from the port and from idling vessels. Likewise, the International Association of Ports and Harbors has launched the World Ports Climate Initiative to reduce the CO2 output from port- related activities. In my State, the Rhode Island Climate Change Commission reported: Inundaton of the state's ports and railroads may reduce interstate access, affecting economic viability and potentially limiting imports and exports. Sea level rise may also reduce navigational clearances for the State's bridges, additionally limiting access. These changes will be particularly harmful for the Port of Providence, which today brings hundreds of millions of dollars to the region. We need strong Federal action to reduce the carbon emissions that are threatening our coastal communities. We must also take firm Federal action to adapt ourselves, and our States and our coastal communities, to the changes that we can no longer avoid because of what we have already pumped into the atmosphere and the harm we have already done. This is a real threat. It is embarrassing, and it is wrong for Congress and the Senate to continue to ignore it. Somebody who knew something about looming threats was Sir Winston Churchill. He gave this advice: One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. That is good advice. What's embarrassing and wrong is that not only are we failing to meet it promptly--and flinching--but that failure and that flinching is the result of special interest influence in this body. We face uncommon challenges and they demand uncommon resolve. America has not overcome past crises by pretending they did not exist; that state of play is preposterous for us to embark from. We actually have clear scientific understanding of the problem. The doubt is passed, the jury is in, and the verdict has been delivered. Yet we lack the will of leadership to forge a solution. Another great leader who knew something of leadership in times of crisis was President Lincoln. He understood that the greatest challenges require clear vision and brave thinking. When faced with a crisis, President Lincoln said: The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. It is past time to disenthrall ourselves of the corrupt thrall of polluting special interests. It is time, at last, to wake up and get to work on the job we have before us. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I presume we are in a quorum call. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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