Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here today for now the 50th time to urge my colleagues to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans. Once a week--50 weeks--every week. Why? Why do I do this? First, because it is real. It is very real. It is happening. Here is the change in average global surface temperature since 1970. It is pretty hard to deny. Of course, if you are a denier, you will look at it and you will see from the same data that it stopped. The denier who tells you it stopped won't tell you that it stopped five times earlier on the way up. In fact, you could say that climate change has stopped six times since the 1970s, and even went down, but it didn't stay stopped long. Look at the linear trend for the whole data set from 1970 to 2013. No one can deny over this period the Earth is warming. This decade was warmer than the last, which was warmer than the one before that, which was warmer than the one before that. Let's look at NASA's entire historic surface temperature record going back to the 19th century. Listen to what University of California Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller has to say about the temperature record. The frequent rises and falls, virtually a stairstep pattern, are part of the historic record, and there is no expectation that they will stop, whatever their cause. . . . [T]he land temperature record . . . is full of fits and starts that make the upward trend vanish for short periods. Regardless of whether we understand them, there is no reason to expect them to stop. Here you can see again these short steps in the upward march. One reason we can't expect these upward steps to stop is that we know what is driving them. What is driving climate change is something even contrarian scientists accept; that is, more carbon dioxide leads to more warming. Simple as that; a 150-year-old established basic principle of physics. This is the October 1861 edition of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. It includes a manuscript by physicist John Tyndall entitled ``Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours.'' He says: [T]o account for different amounts of heat being preserved to the Earth at different times, a slight change in [the atmosphere's] variable constituents would suffice for this. Such changes in fact may have produced all the mutations of climate which the researches of geologists reveal. The ``variable constituents'' to which Tyndall refers include carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor. That is from 1861. President Lincoln took office that year. Yet here we are today having to explain on the floor of the Senate the physics of what carbon dioxide does in the atmosphere. It is not just the principle that is established. There are lots of measurements. The carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now exceeds 400 parts per million. For the last 800,000 years--at least 800,000 years, and perhaps actually millions of years--we have been in a range of 170 to 300 parts per million. That has been the whole of human existence. Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 of those 800,000 years, and it is only now--it is only since the industrial revolution--that we have broken out of that safe window that has protected us through that entire history of our species and now we have broken to 400. And that is a measurement. Look at the oceans. Oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases over the last 50 years. Absorbing all that heat makes the oceans rise. Oceans have absorbed about 30 percent of our carbon emissions, which would otherwise be in the atmosphere causing more warming. Absorbing that carbon makes the oceans more acidic, and that is all stuff we measure. At the Newport tide gauge, sea level is up almost 10 inches since the 1930s when we had our catastrophic 1938 hurricane in Rhode Island. You measure that. It basically takes a ruler. We are about 3 to 4 degrees warmer in the winter in Narragansett Bay than we were 50 years ago when my wife's URI mentor was doing his doctoral thesis--3 to 4 degrees. You measure that. It takes a thermometer. And the ocean is acidifying at the fastest rate recorded in 50 million years. You measure that with a litmus test, which anybody with an aquarium does. It is one thing to be against science, it is another to be the party against measurement. So the polluters and front groups don't talk much about the oceans, but that doesn't change the fact this is real and it is past denying. That takes me to the second reason I do this, and that is that it is plain old-fashioned wrong when people lie and trick other people, particularly when people are going to be hurt by the lies. And it is worse when there is money behind the trickery--when it is purposeful. Lies cannot go unanswered, and that is another reason that I speak. There isn't just lying going on. There is a whole carefully built apparatus: phony-baloney organizations designed to look and sound like they are real, messages honed by public relations experts to sound like they are true, payroll scientists whom polluters can trot out when they need them, and the whole thing big and complicated enough to be fooled into thinking it is not all the same beast. But it is. It is akin to the mythical Hydra--many heads, same beast. One day folks are going to look back at this and those behind it are going to be disgraced for what they did and it is going to be a scandal. That is the third reason I speak. We are all going to be judged very harshly, with all the dread power that history has to inflict on wrong. The polluters and their collaborators will be judged harshly. The Republican Party will be judged harshly for letting itself be led astray by them. But--and here is where it truly hurts--the failure of American democracy this is causing will also be judged harshly and will stain the reputation of our great American experiment. We in this generation have been passed this precious experiment by generations before us that fought, bled, and died to put it safely in our hands--and we do this. We foul it, by lying and denying for a bunch of polluters. Some generation we are going to be. If we believe this world needs America, this matters. Because a world fouled and changed by carbon pollution, in ways we could foresee but denied, will not believe it as much of a need for what a lying and denying America has to offer. This episode will darken the lamp America holds up to the world. We are a great country but not when we are lying and denying it is real. The atmosphere is warming; ice is melting; seas are warming, rising, and acidifying. It is time for the misleading fantasies to end. Here is how we go forward. First, price carbon right. Make the big carbon polluters pay a fee to the American people, as I have proposed with Representatives Waxman and Blumenauer and Senator Schatz; a pollution fee to cover the cost of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans, a cost which they now happily push off onto the rest of us. I know at present political conditions do not allow us to price carbon, so we must change those political conditions, and we can. Recently, President Obama changed the calculus for polluters: carbon pollution standards for new and existing powerplants, no more unchecked carbon dumping. Fifty powerplants emit one out of every eight tons of America's carbon dioxide emissions. These 50 dirtiest U.S. powerplants emit more than Canada or Korea. When the big polluters see the costs of complying with those new standards coming down at them, they may take a second look at an economywide carbon fee. Here is a news flash. When the polluters' calculus begins to change, the political calculus in Congress will change too. Nothing says we have to wait for the polluters to figure this out on their schedule. There are armies on our side. It is not just the environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club or National Wildlife Federation. It is not just virtually every major scientific organization, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union or the American Meteorological Society. We have faith-based groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of the Churches of Christ, Interfaith Power & Light, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. We have fishing, wildlife, and outdoor groups such as Trout Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, and Ducks Unlimited. They are joined by major sports leagues such as the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and National Hockey League, as well as the American Lung Association--which prefer to see kids playing outside in clean, healthy air. We have the Joint Chiefs of Staff on our side, joined by NASA, the National Academies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, even the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog. By the way, about NASA--let's not forget that NASA scientists sent an SUV-sized rover to Mars, they landed it safely on Mars, and they are driving it around on Mars right now. I will put NASA scientists up against the polluters' payroll scientists all day long. We have insurers and reinsurers whose business depends on understanding the mounting risk of natural disasters, folks such as Munich Re, Swiss Re, Allianz, and the Reassurance Association of America. We have State and local governments that are already active. Nine Northeastern States, for instance, including my own Rhode Island, engage in cap and trade through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Four Florida counties share resources and strategies for adapting to climate change through the bipartisan Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, and those are just two examples of many from around the country. A coalition of investors worth nearly $3 trillion just wrote to 45 fossil fuel companies seeking explanation about risks facing their fossil fuel investments. Divestment campaigns are popping up at college campuses across the Nation. Major utilities accept the science and are investing in renewables and improving efficiency. Energy companies PG&E, the Public Service Company of New Mexico, and Exelon all quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after a Chamber official called for putting climate science on trial such as the Scopes ``monkey trial'' of 1925. America's flagship companies such as General Motors, Ford, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike, Apple, Walmart, and Alcoa all recognize the serious implications of climate change. This support is latent, though, and it is unorganized. It is time to wake up and to gather our armies. We have to create allied command, assemble our divisions, agree on a strategy, and go into action. That will affect the calculus in Congress. Most important, we have the American people. Sixty-five percent of voters support the President taking significant steps to address climate change now. Another poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe we should start preparing now for rising sea levels and severe storms from climate change. Those in Congress who would deny science to protect the polluting interests increasingly look ridiculous, even to their own side. Misleading statements in the media, such as the stuff purveyed by the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal, are losing their battle and losing their audience. It is not just time to wake up. People are waking up. Inevitably, the truth will be fully known. The polls show clearly that climate denial is a losing tactic. Four out of five voters under 35 support the President taking action to address climate change. Fifty-two percent of young Republican voters would be less likely to vote for someone who opposed the President's climate action plan. Even a majority of Texans say more should be done about global warming by all levels of government, with 62 percent of Texans saying more should be done in Congress. For those last holdout deniers comes this: Fifty-three percent of young Republican voters under age 35 said they would describe a climate denier as ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. Republicans outside of Congress are trying to lead their party back to reality and away from what even young Republicans are calling ignorant, out of touch, and crazy extremist views. They support a revenue-neutral carbon fee: Republicans such as our former colleagues in Congress, Sherwood Boehlert, Wayne Gilchrest, and Robert Inglis; Republicans such as former Environmental Protection Agency Administrators William Ruckelshaus, Lee Thomas, William Reilly, and Christine Todd Whitman, who served under Presidents Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush respectively; advisers such as President Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz, Reagan's economic policy adviser, Art Laffer--known as Reagan's economist--and David Fromm, speech writer for George W. Bush. Here is what the Republican Presidential nominee had to say 5 years ago: [I]n the end, we're all left with the same set of facts. The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington. Good stewardship, prudence, and simple common sense demand that we [act to] meet the challenge, and act quickly. . . . We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them. [T]he fundamental incentives on the market are still on the side of carbon-based energy. This has to change before we can make the decisive shift away from fossil fuels. . . . [T]here were costs we weren't counting . . . [a]nd these terrible costs have added up now, in the atmosphere, in the oceans, and all across the natural world. . . . We Americans like to say that there is no problem we can't solve, however complicated, and no obstacle we cannot overcome if we meet it together. I believe this about our country. I know this about our country. And now it is time for us to show those qualities once again. It is indeed time for us to show those qualities once again. It is time to wake up. It is time to turn back from the misleading propaganda of the polluters, the misguided extremism of the tea party, and the mistaken belief that we can ignore without consequence the harm our carbon pollution is causing. It is time to face facts, be adults, and meet our responsibilities. I give these speeches because climate change is real, because the campaign of denial is as poisonous to our democracy as carbon pollution is to our atmosphere and oceans, and because I am confident, I am confident we can do this. We can strengthen our economy, we can redirect our future, we can protect our democracy, and we can do our duty to the generations that will follow us and will look back in shame unless we change our program. But we have to pay attention. We have to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am here today for what is now the 49th straight week in which the Senate has been in session to urge that we wake up to the effects of carbon pollution on the Earth's oceans and climate, that we sweep away the manufactured doubt that so often surrounds this issue and get serious about the threat we face from climate change. When I come to the floor, I often have a specialized subject. I talk about the oceans and how they are affected by carbon pollution. I talk about the economics around carbon pollution. I talk about the faith community's interest in carbon pollution. Today I want to talk about the role of the media in all of this. In America, we count on the press to report faithfully and accurately our changing world and to awaken the public to apparent mounting threats. Our Constitution gives the press special vital rights so that they can perform this special vital role. But what happens when the press fails in this role? What happens when the press stops being independent, when it becomes the bedfellow of special interests? The Latin phrase ``Quis custodiet ipsos custodes''--who will watch the watchmen themselves--then becomes the question. The press is supposed to scrutinize all of us. Who watches them when they fail at their independent role? I wish to speak about a very specific example--the editorial page of one of our Nation's leading publications, the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal is one of America's great newspapers, and there is probably none better when it comes to news coverage and reporting. It is a paragon in journalism until one turns to the editorial page and then steps into a chasm of polluter sludge when the issue is harmful industrial pollutants. When that is the issue, harmful industrial pollutants, this editorial page will mislead its readers, will deny the scientific consensus, and it will ignore its excellent news pages' actual reporting, all to help the industry, all to help the campaign to manufacture doubt and delay action. As I said before, there is a denier's playbook around these issues. We have seen the pattern repeat itself in the pages of the Wall Street Journal on acid rain, on the ozone layer, and now, most pronouncedly, on climate change. The pattern is a simple one: No. 1, deny the science; No. 2, question the motives; and No. 3, exaggerate the costs. Call it the polluting industry 1-2-3. Let's start in the 1970s when scientists first warned that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which were commonly used as refrigerants and aerosol propellants, could break down the Earth's stratospheric ozone layer, which would increase human exposure to ultraviolet rays and cause cancer. As outlined in a report by Media Matters, this is when the Wall Street Journal's editorial page embarked upon what would become a persistent and familiar pattern. For more than 25 years, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page doggedly printed editorials devaluing science and attacking any regulation of CFCs. In January of 1976, an editorial proclaimed the connection between CFCs and ozone depletion ``is only a theory and will remain only that until further efforts are made to test its validity in the atmosphere itself.'' In May of 1979, an editorial said that scientists ``still don't know to what extent, if any, mankind's activities have altered the ozone barrier or whether the possibly harmful effects of these activities aren't offset by natural processes. . . . Thus, it now appears, all the excitement over the threat to the ozone layer was founded on scanty scientific evidence.'' In March 1984, we read on the editorial page that concerns about ozone depletion were based on ``premature scientific evidence.'' Rather, it was written, ``new evidence shows that the ozone layer isn't vanishing after all; it may even be increasing.'' In March 1989, an editorial called for more research on the ``questionable theory that CFCs cause depletion of the ozone layer'' and implored scientists to ``continue to study the sky until we know enough to make a sound decision regarding the phasing out of our best refrigerants.'' Again, deny the science. Predictably, they also attacked the motives of reformers. A February 1992 editorial stated that ``it is simply not clear to us that real science drives policy in this area.'' Finally, playbook 3, they have warned that action to slow ozone depletion would be costly. A March 1984 editorial claimed that banning CFCs would ``cost the economy some $1.52 billion in forgone profits and product-change expenses'' as well as 8,700 jobs. An August 1990 editorial warned that banning CFCs would lead to a ``dramatic increase in air-conditioning and refrigeration costs.'' It added that ``the likely substitute for the most popular banned refrigerant costs 30 times as much and will itself be banned by the year 2015. The economy will have to shoulder at least $10 to $15 billion a year in added refrigeration costs by the year 2000.'' A February 1992 editorial warned that accelerating the phase-out of CFCs ``almost surely will translate into big price increases on many consumer products.'' Despite the protests of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, we actually listened in America to the science, and we took action. We protected the ozone layer, we protected the public health, and the economy prospered. What about all those costs that they claimed? Looking back, we can see that action to slow ozone depletion in fact saved money. According to the EPA's 1999 progress report on the Clean Air Act, ``every dollar invested in ozone protection provides $20 of societal health benefits in the United States''--$1 spent, $20 saved. The Journal's response? Silence. They just stopped talking about it. Next we will go to acid rain. In the late 1970s scientists began reporting that acid rain was falling on most of our Northeastern United States. Guess what. Again, at the Wall Street Journal editorial page, out came the playbook. First, they questioned the science behind the problem. A May 1980 editorial questioned the link between increased burning of coal and acid rain, concluding that existing ``data are not conclusive and more studies are needed.'' In September 1982 the editors told us that ``scientific study, as opposed to political rhetoric, points more and more toward the theory that nature, not industry, is the primary source of acid rain.'' Nature is the primary source of acid rain. A September 1985 Journal editorial claimed that ``the scientific case for acid rain is dying.'' In June 1989 the editorial page argued that we needed to wait--it is always needing to wait--for science to understand, for example, to what extent acid rain is manmade before enacting regulations. During that same period the Wall Street Journal's editorial page also smeared the motive, declaring that the effort to address acid rain was driven by politics, not science. Consistent with No. 2 in the playbook, in July 1987 the editorial page wrote: ``As the acid-rain story continues to develop, it's becoming increasingly apparent that politics, not nature, is the primary force driving the theory's biggest boosters.'' Wall Street Journal editors also consistently opposed plans to address acid rain because of cost concerns--No. 3 in the playbook. A June 1982 editorial warned of the ``immense cost of controlling sulfur emissions.'' A January 1984 editorial claimed a regulatory program for acid rain would cost ``upwards of $100 billion.'' These claims were made even as the evidence mounted against their position, even as President Reagan's own scientific panel said that inaction would risk ``irreversible damage.'' Of course, the cost equation of the Wall Street Journal editorial page was always totally one-sided--always the cost to clean up the pollution; never the cost of the harm the pollution caused. That is the industry playbook, faithfully spouted through the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal--No. 1, deny the science; No. 2, question the motives; and No. 3, exaggerate the costs. But we made undeniable progress against acid rain despite the efforts of the editorial page. Guess what. The Journal's editorial page suddenly reversed its tune. A July 2001 editorial called the cap-and- trade program for sulfur dioxide ``fabulously successful,'' noting that the program ``saves about $700 million annually compared with the cost of traditional regulation and has been reducing emissions by four million tons annually.'' On this occasion, when its effort had failed, the Journal changed its tune, but until then it was still the industry playbook--No. 1, deny the science; No. 2, question the motives; and No. 3, exaggerate the costs. With carbon pollution running up to 400 parts per million for the first time in human history, the Journal is using the same old polluter playbook against climate change. The Journal has persistently published editorials against taking action to prevent manmade climate change. As usual, they question the science. In June 1993 the editors wrote that there is ``growing evidence that global warming just isn't happening.'' In September 1999 the page reported that ``serious scientists'' call global warming ``one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.'' In June 2005 the page asserted that the link between fossil fuels and global warming had ``become even more doubtful.'' This is June 2005, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page is questioning whether there is a link between fossil fuels and global warming. A December 2011 editorial declared that the global warming debate requires ``more definitive evidence.'' As usual--back to the industry playbook--the motives of the scientists were smeared. A December 2009 editorial claimed that leading climate scientists were suspect because they ``have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.'' As usual, we heard that tackling climate change, tackling carbon pollution, would cost us a lot of money. In August 2009, the editorial page warned ``that a high CO2 tax would reduce world GDP a staggering 12.9 percent in 2100--the equivalent of $40 trillion a year.'' Just last month, October 2013, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal warned that in the face of climate change, ``interventions make the world poorer than it would otherwise be.'' That same October 2013 editorial actually completed the full polluter playbook trifecta by also decrying the ``political actors'' seeking to gain economic control and by questioning the science, saying ``global surface temperatures have remained essentially flat.'' They covered them all in just the one editorial. If only the editorial page writers at the Wall Street Journal would turn the page to the actual news their own paper reports on climate change. A March 2013 article reported: New research suggests average global temperatures were higher in the past decade than over most of the previous 11,300 years, a finding that offers a long-term context for assessing modern-day climate change. A piece from the Wall Street Journal news in August 2013 revealed: Average global temperatures in 2012 were roughly in line with those of the past decade or so, but the year still ranked among the 10 warmest on record as melting Arctic ice and warming oceans continued to boost sea levels. That takes me to a particular fact about what carbon pollution is doing, and that is our oceans are taking the brunt of the harm from carbon pollution, and it is time to stop looking the other way. But the Wall Street Journal editorial page doesn't often address the effects of carbon pollution on oceans, perhaps because the changes taking place in our oceans are not a matter where the complexity of computer modeling leaves room for phony doubt to be insinuated. The oceans' recent changes from our carbon pollution aren't projections and they aren't models, they are measurements--simple, unyielding measurements. We measure sea level rise with a ruler. It is not complicated. We measure ocean temperature with a thermometer. We measure ocean acidification on the pH scale. They do not talk about that much in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. There is no room for phony doubt. So they look elsewhere. We have the right to expect independent and honest media to teach the American public about the threats facing our oceans and our environment. What a difference good reporting can make. Exemplary and compelling storytelling can and does influence our national conversation and inspire change. Reporters fail when they give false equivalency to arguments on each side of the political spectrum, even though they are not really equivalent. Editors fail when they look at the science, look at the measurements, look at the real threats posed to our world and then fail to tell us the unvarnished truth. The story of climate change needs to be told. Our oceans need a voice. It seems the big polluters already have one. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. While I was awaiting my turn to speak on the floor, I had the opportunity to hear both Senator Boxer and Senator Baldwin. I commend both of them for very excellent and eloquent remarks and thank Senator Baldwin for her courage and conviction. I also know that my dear colleague in the House, Representative David Cicilline, is watching this vote very carefully. We hope we will make him, Senator Baldwin, and so many people around this country proud when we take up this vote tomorrow.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is my 48th trip to the floor to remind Congress that it is time to wake up to the threat of climate change. I am joined by Senators Blumenthal and Schumer because 1 year ago today Hurricane Sandy struck our States with frightening force. Now, a year later, communities across the Northeast have dug out and are rebuilding, but Sandy left a permanent mark on our coasts and on our consciousness. To be sure, we cannot say that this devastating storm was specifically caused by climate change. However, Sandy showed the many ways we are vulnerable to the undeniable effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and warming oceans--effects that can in turn load the dice for more damaging storms. As evening fell on October 29, 2012, a storm surge from the largest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded swept against Rhode Island's shores about 5 feet above mean sea level. A few hours later, waters peaked around New York City--about 9 feet above mean sea level. A harrowing night followed for victims of Hurricane Sandy. It was a night that took more than 150 lives and caused $65 billion in physical damage and economic loss. Hurricane Sandy, or Superstorm Sandy as many remember it, hit 24 States with direct effects. Floodwaters invaded homes and swept out roads. High winds knocked out power to 8.5 million homes and businesses, cutting a swath of darkness that could be seen from space. An entire New York neighborhood was gutted by fires that emergency personnel could not reach through the storm. Sandy flooded nearly the entire coastline with beaches and dunes driven down by the waves and wind. Displaced sand and stone covered roads like here on Atlantic Avenue in Misqaumicut, RI. Houses were swept off their foundations in Rhode Island's southern coast communities like Matunuck, shown in this photo. Here we see Governor Lincoln Chafee, a former Member of this body, surveying the damage to these homes. President Obama granted Governor Chafee's request for a Federal disaster declaration covering four of Rhode Island's five counties. More than 130,000 Rhode Islanders lost power. Eight cities and towns implemented evacuation actions. Nearly one-third of all Rhode Islanders were directly affected one way or another. In a close-knit State such as ours, nearly everyone was touched by Sandy. Rhode Islanders are resilient and we are recovering. Over $30 million has been paid out to Rhode Islanders for more than 1,000 Federal flood insurance claims. FEMA has approved more than 260 projects for reimbursement. Over $12 million has been put to repairing our State's parks, wildlife refuges, and historic sites. Individuals and families received more than $423,000 in grants to meet their immediate basic needs for housing and other essential disaster-related expenses. The Federal Government will always play a central role for communities such as ours, picking up after a disaster like Sandy. So it would make sense for the Federal Government to learn from these events and be smart as we plan for future risks. The Government Accountability Office recently reported on the risks to U.S. infrastructure posed by climate change. Roads, bridges, and water systems are designed to operate for 50 to 100 years. Well, 50 to 100 years from now, our climate and our coastline will be very different. Sandy threw at Rhode Island's shores Atlantic seas that had risen almost 10 inches since the 1930s, against a shoreline that had already retreated more than 100 feet in some locations. As climate change progresses, more and more infrastructure will be exposed to more and more risk. Earlier this year GAO added to its High Risk List the United States financial exposure to climate change. GAO, our congressional watchdog, now warns that it is fiscally irresponsible to ignore the signs of climate change. The President's Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, and his Climate Action Plan, both call for adaptation to this risk from climate change--particularly for better coastal resiliency and preparedness. Here is an example of doing it right. When hurricane Katrina hit the I-10 Twin Span Bridge that crosses Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, it twisted and toppled the bridge's 255-ton concrete bridge spans off their piers and into the lake. The bridge was rebuilt by using Federal Highway Administration funding, but they built it stronger, better engineered, and in some sections they built it more than 20 feet higher. It makes sense to make sure that our agencies repair American infrastructure to the commonsense standard that it is ready for future risks. Rebuilding to the specs that failed is not common sense. Being deliberately stupid in order to deny climate change is a losing proposition. Congress can do something smart right now. We could pass the Water Resources and Development Act with the resiliency and restoration provisions that were in the Senate-passed bipartisan bill. Congress could support the President's Climate Action Plan, using our wise Earth's natural protections for our coastal infrastructure. Of course, even robust climate adaptation won't let us off the hook in some places. New England can build levees and dams to hold the waters back, but the vast low areas of southeastern Florida are porous limestone. Even if you built a giant dike, the water would just seep in through the underlying limestone. A study last year found that 3 feet of sea level rise, which is what we presently expect, will hit more than 1.5 million Floridians, and nearly 900,000 Florida homes--almost double the effect on any other State in the Nation. So Florida should want to prevent as much climate as possible, and that means cutting carbon pollution. Ultimately, for the open market to work, we need to include the full cost of carbon pollution in the price of fossil fuels. Anything less is a subsidy to polluters. What Florida should want is for Congress to enact a carbon pollution fee to correct the market, and then return that fee to American families. Ultimately, inaction is irresponsible, and Americans get it. Eighty- two percent of Americans believe we should start preparing now for rising sea levels and severe storms from climate change. Young Americans, in particular, see through the phony climate denial message. Three-quarters of independent young voters and more than half of Republican young voters would describe climate deniers as ``ignorant,'' ``out of touch,'' or ``crazy.'' Let me repeat that. The majority of Republican voters under 35 would describe climate deniers as ``crazy,'' ``ignorant,'' or ``out of touch.'' Continuing the climate denial strategy is not a winning proposition for our friends on the other side. Even their own young voters see through it. Congress should wake up to the alarms that are ringing in nature and to the voices of the American people. One of the loudest alarm gongs was Hurricane Sandy. Voltaire said: ``Men argue, nature acts.'' Well, nature acted, driving epic winds and seas against our shores, and she will continue to act if we continue to tip her careful balances with reckless carbon pollution and shameless subsidies to the big polluters. We need to wake up as a Congress and take responsible action to protect our homes and communities. We need to remember Sandy and learn her lessons. I yield the floor for my distinguished colleague from New York.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Before I join the colloquy with Senators Blumenthal and Schumer, I have two bits of housekeeping.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5 p.m. today all postcloture time on the Griffin nomination be yielded back, and the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate; the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before I depart the floor, and while Senator Schumer and Senator Blumenthal are still here, I wish to add a point that is a personal observation of mine as a Senator; that is, first the Senator from New York is widely and properly regarded as one of the more formidable presences in the Senate. Having witnessed the difficulties that Senator Blumenthal discussed at getting the Sandy disaster relief out and done, I will say we learned Senator Schumer has an even higher gear when it comes to the urgent needs of his home State and of his coast. When his New York City lies battered and drowned by storm, the work that he did to make sure a reluctant House passed this relief for us was an exercise in legislative craftsmanship and personal vigor that many of us will long remember. Of course, I have seen Senator Blumenthal fighting for his people in Connecticut, both after Hurricane Sandy and, of course, after the terrible tragedy that Connecticut experienced when a crazed gunman went into an elementary school and began to murder its children. So Senator Blumenthal, in responding to those cares, concerns, and crises of his home State of Connecticut, has been truly exemplary. It has been a privilege for me as a Senator to see these two Senators in action in their causes I just mentioned.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Aaron Goldner and Danielle Schreiber, two fellows in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Pennsylvania in expressing relief and optimism that, finally, it looks as though we are rid of the wasteful and useless government shutdown we have been put through for the past 2 weeks; that it looks as though we are rid of the dangerous threat of American default that we have faced for the last few days; and let's hope that together we are also rid of the malicious spirit that led us down this evil path in the first place. A colleague the other day on the Senate floor used the analogy of a fire in an airplane's cockpit distracting the pilots from flying the aircraft where it needed to go as they had to put out the fire. That is kind of what we have been through these past 2 weeks. I hope we will have no more of our own countrymen lighting fires in the cockpit just to try to get their way. We need as a nation to get our heads up, fly the plane, and ready ourselves for the weather ahead. The last 2 weeks have been wasted in this useless artificial crisis and has distracted us from real crises, real problems, undeniable problems--things which the Speaker of the House can't make go away by finally allowing a vote but which will require us to work together to solve them. None is more significant to our children than what our carbon pollution is doing to the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. It is not enough just to put out the fire in the cockpit. We have to wake up to the real problems ahead and around us. I know the Presiding Officer from Ohio is a keen enthusiast and student of history. I recently saw part of ``The Dust Bowl,'' Ken Burns' documentary series. The Dust Bowl calamity was an economic disaster and a human disaster, but it was also described in the show as having been an economic disaster and a human disaster because it was first and foremost an environmental disaster--indeed, one of the two or three most devastating environmental disasters in the United States. The Dust Bowl happened, creating such disaster for so many good, hard-working families, because, simply put, we messed with Mother Nature. To plant wheat, we tore up the deep-rooted buffalo grass which had protected the prairies for generations. We ignored the cycles of drought which were the Great Plains' history. The result was tragedy and destruction. There are obvious parallels from the Dust Bowl experience to where we are now on carbon pollution. Most obviously, lesson No. 1, you mess with Mother Nature at your peril. And are we ever messing with Mother Nature. We just broke through 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere after at least 800,000 years--which is longer than homo sapiens have been a species--in the range between 170 and 300. Our whole species has come to the success we have seen on this planet in a safe window of 170 to 300 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, and we have now broken out of it. And it is not just 400, it is 400 and climbing. Let's move from our atmosphere to our oceans. Our oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate ever recorded. We have to go millions of years back into the geologic record to find anything comparable. When we go there, what else do we find when we look back to those points in the ancient geologic record? It isn't pretty. In fact, it is downright ominous. The second lesson is that the cause of such a calamity can be a perfectly normal activity, just at the wrong scale. Look at the Dust Bowl. There is nothing wrong with plowing. Plowing the Earth is probably the single most valuable action humankind has ever learned to do. Plowing is essential to farming. Yet it was that ordinary activity--plowing--which brought on the Dust Bowl and the vast human tragedy that ensued because it was at the wrong scale. Similarly, there is nothing inherently wrong with burning fossil fuels. We do it when we drive to the market, and we call it up when we flip on the light switch. Yet burning fossil fuels at too great a scale is leading us to the brink of a new disaster. What changes and makes it no longer perfectly normal and OK is when we know the consequences of the scale of our activity. Once we know the consequences we are causing, that activity is no longer so benign and responsibility cannot be so easily shrugged off. If only the farmers at their plows had listened to the warnings of the cattlemen and Native Americans and not put every corner of every farm to the plow. There is a third parallel, which is that there is a lot of lying done when there is money to be made. In the Dust Bowl, land dealers and speculators told farm families that plowing the prairies would make more rain fall. Rain follows the plow, they were told. They had nothing to worry about. And the land speculators sold, and they sold a pack of lies. The race to plow created more speculators and more hucksters and more lies. Today we have the deniers--a sophisticated, well-honed apparatus of institutions and strategies designed to spread lies, designed to sow doubt, designed to delay action. Today it is done on a scale that makes the Dust Bowl hucksters look like piddling amateurs. It is funded by giant corporations such as ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. It uses the slickest Madison Avenue strategies. It maintains a stable of pet scientists willing to be trotted out and to recite from the polluters' playbook. It operates through a network of false front organizations designed to look more independent and credible than their funders are and designed to hide the money flow. When history looks back and this story is fully told, I believe this apparatus of lies will take its place beside great American scandals such as Teapot Dome and Watergate. But for now it churns merrily on its way, cranking out the propaganda. Regrettably, this apparatus has captured large segments of the Republican Party and silenced others. The polluters have maneuvered the question of carbon pollution right into the middle of the Republican Party's culture wars. The fossil fuel industry must be really chortling at having pulled off that fete. But it does not bode well for the Republican Party. Lies are ultimately revealed. The choice to make bedfellows of the polluters will soon enough be very damaging to the Republican Party. For the polluters, they have played the Republican Party for suckers, and they will grin all the way to the bank. They won't care. The last parallel is the lesson that when you are messing big-time with Mother Nature, things can go precipitously wrong. Mother Nature can turn on you very suddenly. Wheat farming on the plains was a bonanza, with bumper crops year after year. Families who had never owned land, who had never before had a place to call their own, saw golden futures as far as the eye could see as the wheat ripened. And within just a few years the devastation was complete and families' dreams were shattered. The Dust Bowl came on fast. There is a phrase--``a fool's paradise.'' It is called a fool's paradise because it looks like paradise for a while if you don't look ahead and take the precautions to protect paradise and fend off calamity. Not looking ahead is what gets you to the ``fool'' part. Young people are looking ahead. Voters under 35, by a ratio of 66 to 27--more than 2 to 1--say that climate change is a problem we need to address. And when asked about climate deniers, 74 percent of Independent young voters said they would describe climate deniers as ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. For self-identified Republican young voters under 35, 53 percent identify climate deniers as ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. I ask unanimous consent to conclude in 1 minute.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. So I ask my Republican friends, how is climate denial a winning strategy when 53 percent of your own young voters think it is ignorant, out of touch, or crazy? How is that looking ahead? We in Congress get elected to look ahead. We don't get elected to put our heads in the sand. We certainly don't get elected to parrot the lies of the special interests. Well, we are not looking ahead. We are sound asleep here in Congress. We are having a snooze while nature's alarms are ringing all around us. It is time for Congress to wake up. We have a duty. We need to wake up to our duty. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, yesterday we heard very optimistic news about steering away from the brink of American default before it became too late. Majority leader Harry Reid came to the floor and gave very optimistic reports. Minority leader Mitch McConnell came to the floor and gave very optimistic reports. They hinted very strongly that a deal was close, and time was scheduled with the caucuses, presumably to make a presentation of the deal. And then what? We have had some very interesting speeches and colloquies from our Republican colleagues on the floor. I found the debate as to whether our defense and law enforcement experts had kept an Al Qaeda captive in the right location to be interesting. I found the earlier discussion about the insurance exchange Web sites to be a very interesting discussion. I found the discussion earlier this morning about Iran to be a very interesting discussion. What is even more interesting is what they are not talking about. What they are not talking about is that today the Republican leader pulled out of those very productive negotiations and very optimistic negotiations--pulled out of those negotiations that promised an end to this crisis. I find that absolutely stunning. I am amazed, while we are in a situation where we are that close to resolving this crisis and avoiding the catastrophes that have been predicted, that one side would simply walk away. I don't blame the minority leader. The information I have is that he was asked to do so, that the message came from the other side, from the Speaker; that Speaker Boehner torpedoed the productive bipartisan Senate negotiations that were at the brink of resolving this crisis. Instead of the bipartisan successful process, Speaker Boehner has wanted to interrupt and bring in the same partisan House process that has been a disaster for us over and over--100-percent partisan, 100- percent politics. We have sent bills over to the House. Those bills have never been brought up for a vote. They have been monkeyed with before they have brought them up, but House Members have never had the chance to vote on a Senate-approved measure, which would have ended this. That is the Speaker's choice. It is the so-called Hastert rule, which means that unless a strong majority of the Republicans are for something, he won't give Democrats a chance to even vote, let alone to be a part of the negotiations. Here in the Senate we have bipartisan negotiations, with the leaders from both sides still with optimism and hope. On the other side, we have a leadership that won't talk to the Democrats, has purely made partisan decisions about whether something should come to the floor, and has not yet brought a Senate bill to the floor for a clean vote. It is a nightmare over there. And the strategy has not worked, in case they did not get the memo. Holding the economy hostage was a terrible choice for the Speaker. Causing the shutdown was a terrible choice. Holding the credit of the U.S. Government hostage has been a terrible choice. To use words that were used on the floor this morning by one of our Republican friends, it was a ``fool's errand''--it was a ``fool's errand''--that put the party ``in a ditch.'' Well, unfortunately, because he is the Speaker, it is not just the Republican Party that is in the ditch. The whole country is in the ditch as this default looms. Some of them are trying to get out of the difficulty they find themselves in by pretending that the default is not real. We have default deniers now side by side, I guess, with the climate deniers and the other deniers. They deny that October 17 is the real date when anything might go wrong. They deny that anything bad will actually really happen if the U.S. Government defaults. They deny--if we just pay the Treasury bills and leave other things unpaid-- anything really bad will happen. Treasury bills get sold in an auction, in a market. If you are going to that auction to buy Treasury bills and you see a government that is not paying Social Security recipients on time, that has massive liquidity and cashflow problems as a result of the debt limit failure, we may say: Yes, we will pay you first, but are you really going to pay the same rate for that security of that country while that country is facing all of these other problems? It is a preposterous notion. It is the type of notion that you can only believe when you absolutely need to believe it for your ideological purposes. Reality simply does not support a notion like that. If you are living in a cocoon world of extremist ideology, you can come up with thoughts like that. And if you are only talking to other people who think the same way, you can kind of agree that thought makes sense. But there is a little problem. Reality wins. Reality always wins. They are playing with dynamite over there, and they are pretending that it is not even dangerous. It would be one thing if we understood that they respected how very dangerous the stunts are that they are pulling in the House Republican leadership. It is even more dangerous when they do not appear to know the danger they are causing for our economy. I hope we will get back to work here in the Senate right away with a bipartisan solution to this rather than allowing the House and the Speaker to wreck the opportunity we had as late as yesterday in order to play dangerous partisan games. We do not have the time for that, and it is the wrong thing. It is the wrong thing in a very immediate way in terms of the damage it will do to our economy, to the world economy, to people across this country whose interest rates are pegged to Treasury bills, to anybody who depends on an economy where people have confidence that the United States is a solid investment and have confidence that our economy is going to grow. The default puts all that at risk. It creates real economic hazards for our country. But the method of getting us here has additional hazards, and I would like to close by talking about them. From the very founding of this Republic, we have prided ourselves on our distinct American system of government. We have fought for it. We have protected it. It has seen us through world wars, civil wars, great depressions, great recessions, all types of calamity. What it fundamentally is--the phrase we use probably as much as any other about our country is that it is a government of laws. It risks being turned into--by a very small faction in one party in one House in one branch of government--a government not of laws but of threats, a government where the person who can make the scariest threat wins. It does not matter that what they are objecting to was passed in the regular order, passed by both Houses of Congress, signed into law by the President, approved by the Supreme Court. It does not matter that it was the center of the last Presidential election and that their point of view lost convincingly. What matters to them is if they can make dangerous enough threats, they may be able to try to get their way anyway--anyway. That is not the way a government of laws behaves. That is the way a government of threats behaves. If we go down the road of a government of threats, we will be taking a very big step away from our American heritage, away from the procedures of our American Constitution, and away from the values that have seen us through hundreds of years of growth and pride. It is a dangerous point, and the fact that they are willing to do that, the fact that they are willing to not only wreck the economy but to wreck the status of this country as one that is run by a government of laws and turn it instead into a government of threats, shows how shallowly they wear their patriotism on their sleeves. It is bunkum patriotism to put the real values of this country into the hopper and turn us into a government of threats instead of a government of laws. A great judge, a Supreme Court Justice, once said: Procedure is the bone structure of a democratic society. Breaking those bones to make your point is no way to enhance our democratic society. So I hope the majority leader and the minority leader will resume their negotiations right away. I hope, frankly, they have begun already and I just do not know about it yet. But we have to get going. And if the minority leader is unwilling to tell Speaker Boehner: No. Knock it off. You have done enough damage already. We are going to solve this in the Senate, and we are going to sit down and have a bipartisan compromise--if he is unwilling to say that, then we need to come back to the floor and we need to bring up the bill the Republicans filibustered on Saturday that would have gotten us out of this pickle. Time is short. We have to get moving. If our colleagues on the other side then want to filibuster--to filibuster--the solution to this debt limit crisis, they will have shown their hand in a very dangerous way. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, a colleague recently described on this floor his experience flying in a private aircraft when a fire broke out in the cockpit of the plane. He observed that putting out the fire distracted the pilots from flying the aircraft and that they precipitously lost altitude. This tea party shutdown and the tea party's threat to our country's credit, like that fire in the cockpit, are distracting us from flying the plane. I dispute the notion that those who caused the shutdown have good standing to come to this floor and criticize the way the Obama administration is implementing a shutdown that we don't want on our side of the aisle and that the Obama administration does not want. The tea party and Speaker Boehner, for their insistence on lighting that fire in the cockpit, are answerable to history and their consciences. In the spirit of getting back to flying the plane, I will talk about, as I usually do, a real and looming crisis--not the manmade fire the tea party has lit in the cockpit of our government. That tea party shutdown could end tomorrow if the Speaker of the House would simply call up the measure the Senate passed. He refuses to do so, and it is his continued indulgence that keeps this shutdown going. Climate change is for real. It is not manmade, nor is it something the Speaker can turn off with a vote. It is coming at us, and it is time to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and ocean. Regrettably, one of the reasons Congress is still asleep is that the worst culprits--the big corporations that do the worst carbon polluting--are pretending it is not that bad, it is not that serious, and they should keep doing what they are doing; the status quo is fine. It causes me to wonder why it is that corporations seem never to admit they are wrong. Why is ``oops'' a word they can't seem to use? When it turned out that people would be a lot safer with seatbelts, did the car industry say: Oops. We should have put those in and put seatbelts in the cars. No. They fought and they had to be defeated, and then we got seatbelts. When cigarette makers found out their product made people really addicted and really sick, did they say: Oops. We better figure out a way to not kill so many people. No. They fought and they lied for decades. When it turned out that lead paint damaged children's brains, did the lead paint companies say: Oops. We better warn folks about that and clean it up. No. They fought against protections and had to be defeated. Indeed, they are still fighting. When it turned out that aerosol refrigerants and propellants were eating away at the Earth's ozone layer, did the manufacturers say: Oops. That is dangerous, and we better come up with a safer product. No. They fought the change, but they lost, and now they are making money making new safer products. When acid rain was killing off the fish in the northeastern lakes, did the big utilities say: Oops. We better clean up our emissions. No. They fought the changes until they were forced to clean up. When the flame-retardant industry found out its product was dangerous and ineffective, did they say: Oops. This flame-retardant stuff is hurting people and doing creepy things in nature, so we better knock it off. Nope. It is still fighting while whales turn into swimming toxic waste. Now that carbon pollution has blown through 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere--a first in human history--and launched the most rapid acidification ever seen in the oceans--and by that I mean going back to geologic time--are the polluters saying: Oops. We better take our billions of dollars in profit and trillions of dollars in capital and invest seriously in new fuels and power sources. Fat chance. Corporations that are harming people never say ``oops,'' and for two big reasons. One reason is there is a lot of money at stake. They would not be in the business if they were not making money, and they don't want to stop. The other reason is that corporations don't have consciences, they have reputations. A reputation is something you can manage. Huge chunks of Madison Avenue and K Street are dedicated to managing corporate reputations. So with no conscience and only a reputation, you manage the problem that you are harming people. By now, the strategy for managing a corporate reputation while hurting people is well developed. It is a common one across cigarettes, acid rain, lead paint, flame-retardants, refrigerants, and now carbon pollution. There is a playbook, and guess what. The big carbon polluters are following the playbook: one, pretend to care--that is important; two, attack the science, and if you can't attack the science, attack the scientists themselves; three, claim it will cost consumers a fortune; and four, make your goal not victory but doubt. Pretend to care. I don't know if you remember those phony-baloney Exxon ads that were all over the place a while ago with guys in lab coats, and they had these Lucite molecules floating around. They wanted you to believe they were out there looking for tomorrow's clean fuels. Well, you got had. Since 2005 ExxonMobil has been making tens of billions of dollars in profit every year. It is hard to pick through their numbers, but sources report that over that same time it only spent tens of millions per year on clean energy--about what it spent on advertising. They spent as much advertising their clean energy, it appears, as they did investing in it, and it was a tiny fraction of their profits, let alone their revenues. Remember BP and their green Sun baloney? BP pulled completely out of solar and completely out of U.S. wind investments once it had laid down a fat barrage of advertising about being beyond petroleum. Pretend to care. Attack the science and even the scientists themselves. The polluters have to do this through proxies. Nobody will really believe it if Exxon's fingerprints are all over the attack on the science, so others do the dirty work. One example is Virginia's tea party attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who attacked the top climate scientist at the University of Virginia. He used his powers of office--the special powers of office that are entrusted to attorneys general. Having been an attorney general, I know something about how precious and special those powers are. He used those powers to harass and subpoena a college professor. UVA's lawyers stuck up for the professor, and the Virginia Supreme Court threw that nonsense out. But for the polluters behind it, it was right out of the playbook. You may remember the polluters whipping up a phony scandal called climategate, pretending that a group of climate scientists were doing dishonest work. The scientists had to endure audit after audit, every single one of which gave them a totally clean bill of health. It turned out it was the cooked-up, phony scandal that was dishonest, but the polluters had a field day in the meantime. It was right out of the playbook. Claim it will cost consumers a fortune. This is a playbook classic. The big polluters are always talking about how it will cost you to clean up their act. Implicit is that they are going to put all the costs on to you and that they are not going to eat any of it and that their shareholders are not going to bear any of it. Let's get past that. What they conveniently overlook is that, for instance, under the Clean Air Act--yes, complying with the Clean Air Act did cost utilities a lot of money, but for every $1 that was spent cleaning up to comply with the Clean Air Act, Americans have saved about $40. They spend $1, you save $40, and they want you to believe that is a big problem? The Office of Management and Budget does a little calculation called the social cost of carbon. The latest cost is $36 per ton of CO2 emitted. For every ton of carbon pollution the polluters don't sell, we save $36. But they will never tell us that side of the story, nor that there are more jobs now in green energy than in the entire oil and gas industry, nor that we are in an international race for tomorrow's clean energy technology innovations. It is a race these big international corporations are perfectly happy to have America lose. It is no skin off their nose. Last, their goal is not victory, it is doubt. They don't want to convince anyone that climate change isn't happening. They don't need to do that. Of course, they couldn't do that in any kind of a fair debate. All they need to do, the playbook strategy says, is to convince us, as we are driving down the road listening to the radio, that nobody is sure yet; that there is some doubt, but we don't need to do anything just yet; that people can move on to their next worry; this one is still up for grabs. They will keep trying to push action on carbon pollution over that horizon of doubt, never having to prove their case. The American people are being played for chumps in this game. It is a racket, and we are the mark. Even so, even with all of that, the facts around us--what is happening to our woods and shores and farms and weather--are becoming so clear that even with the playbook they are losing, just like they ultimately lost on cigarettes and seatbelts, on lead paint and acid rain and the ozone hole. Here is what Americans are saying: 61 percent of Americans say the effects of climate change are already affecting them personally or they see it happening in their lifetime. Fifty-eight percent said the country should do more to address climate change, including 51 percent of Independents, while just 14 percent--14 percent--said we are doing enough already. Sixty-five percent of voters support ``the President taking significant steps to address climate change now''--65 percent. That number jumps up to 70 percent when looking at voters under 40 years old. Sixty-six percent of young voters--two out of every three--say climate change is a problem to address, while just 27 percent say climate change is a natural event that humans can't affect, and only 3 percent don't believe climate change is happening. Fifty-three percent of people say they would be less likely to vote for a politician who did not understand that climate change is a real problem. Even in the red State of Texas, 70 percent believe global warming is happening, and more than half say more should be done about global warming at all levels of government. Today is day 10 of the tea party shutdown. As we have pointed out over and over, it is a manufactured crisis. It goes away the instant Speaker Boehner stands in the House and calls the measure the Senate has passed, without amendments and without gimmicks, to the floor. It will pass. The crisis will be over. This crisis is different. This is not a crisis of a fire in the cockpit that is being kept burning by Speaker Boehner who could stop it at any time; this is for real. This is Mother Nature--400 parts per million for the first time in 800,000 years is serious. The tea party Republicans are wildly out of step with the American people on both issues, and it is time for them to wake up. Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request, if I may ask the distinguished Senator from Georgia to yield for one moment. I ask unanimous consent that Senators on the majority side be limited to 10 minutes each until 1 p.m.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am glad to join this debate, which throughout the afternoon has been peppered with the assertion that either Majority Leader Reid or the President or Democrats in general will not negotiate--that we will not negotiate. I remember when I was younger there was a radio commentator, a man named Paul Harvey, and his little motto in his radio bits was to surprise you with ``the rest of the story.'' On ``will not negotiate,'' we don't even have to go to the rest of the story. Go to the rest of the sentence. The rest of the sentence is that the President and the majority leader will not negotiate--while the other side is holding hostages, while the tea party is holding hostages. Here is what our former colleague, my former ranking member on the Budget Committee, Senator Judd Gregg, has said about this: A small group of Republican legislators led by the junior Senator from Texas, decided to take as hostages government operations and the raising of the debt ceiling. Those are exactly the hostages, Federal employees who cannot work, people and businesses that want or need Federal services, those families we have heard so much about today who lost loved ones on the field of battle and cannot get their death benefits. There is an even bigger hostage out there, which is the threat of a catastrophic default which would be the result of a failure to lift the debt limit. Our country has been through a lot, through Civil Wars and world wars, through depressions and calamities of various kinds. Through all of that we have never defaulted on our debt. But there is a group in Congress so desperate that they are willing to use that, that threat as a hostage for leverage in negotiations. When colleagues on the other side invite us in the old phrase, ``Come, let us reason together,'' let us negotiate, they do not mean come let us reason together, let us negotiate; they mean let us negotiate, but we want a blackjack in our pocket. If the negotiations don't go just the way we want, we want to keep hundreds of thousands of Americans out of their jobs and we want to threaten the economic security of this country. There is a difference that every American understands between negotiating and negotiating while threatening the hostages. I will say that sanctimoniously offering to release a hostage here or a hostage there when a program becomes too popular or there is too much scrutiny on the damage that one thing is doing, to say, oh, we will give up that hostage, we will let us vote on that hostage, doesn't change the principle. There is a difference between negotiating in good faith, negotiating on the merits, and negotiating with threats to hostages. That is no road to go down. That is a very dangerous threat. As President Reagan warned us: Congress must realize that by failing to act they are entering very dangerous territory if we don't raise the debt limit. Never before in our history has the Federal Government failed to honor its financial obligations. Too fail to do so now would be an outrage. Ronald Reagan: The Congress must understand this and bear full responsibility. We have to address these problems in the traditional order of government with real negotiations because if we don't, if we yield to hostage-taking as the new way of governance in this country, where does it end? The continuing resolution that we proposed that the Speaker has refused to have a vote on--in all this time he has never had a vote on the continuing resolution that we passed that would open the government--it would only extend the operations of government for 6 weeks. We would be back at it again. What would the price be next time? After we defunded ObamaCare, would they want to privatize Social Security? They tried that before. Over and over, the popular will has to rule. That we do through our American procedures. The vaunted procedures of our American system of government would be lost in a devil's game of threats and hostage-taking on both sides because two can play at this game if those are the new rules. We don't want to go there. America is a great country and in part we are a great country because our democracy is an example to the world. We are no example to anyone when we legislate by threats of default, disaster, and confusion, to use the felicitous phrase of our colleague from Alabama. There is a condition that sometimes befalls pilots called target fixation. It happens when a pilot diving on a target becomes so fixated on hitting that target that they become disoriented with their surroundings. The worst thing that befalls somebody who has target fixation is that they crash the plane. Right now we have Republican target fixation on repeal ObamaCare. Imagine passing it 40-some times in the House, which they have done. If that is not a sign of target fixation, I don't know what is. Not seeing the damage that is being done by closing down the government, not seeing the damage to families, not seeing the damage to employees, not seeing the damage to people who depend on government services and licenses and safety checks seems to me to be a sign of target fixation. If they have target fixation this badly, they may not even see President Ronald Reagan's warnings of how dire and dangerous it is to play around with our debt limit. On the House side, they are already talking about playing around with our debt limit. They want to go into the danger zone, and who knows how close to the flame they are willing to fly. When they have target fixation, their judgment is not very good. They are certainly not seeing the damage to American values and American procedure that an insistence on legislating by holding hostages and threatening them does. It does damage to our values, and it does damage to our procedures. A great observer of the American system of government once described procedure as its bone structure. We can throw it all out, the Constitution, the bicameralism, and we can go back to the basic animal state that whoever can make the worst threat wins the argument. That is not the American way. The American way isn't to win the argument by seeing how many people you can put at risk and how badly you can threaten them, but that is the stage we are in right now. Let's negotiate, indeed, but let's negotiate as Americans. Let's negotiate under our proper procedures. Let's open the government. There is no reason for it to be closed other than bargaining leverage and hostage-taking. There is no other reason. That is exactly why the tea party has shut down the government, just for that purpose. They say it. They use nicer words. I think the word that was used earlier in debate today was to create adequate incentive. When somebody else is holding hostages, we have incentive, but it is not an appropriate incentive. So open the government and stop threatening the debt limit. That is wildly irresponsible. If they don't believe us, believe Ronald Reagan, believe the Secretary of the Treasury, believe the National Association of Manufacturers, believe the CEO of AT&T, believe virtually every responsible, knowledgeable adult who has observed what the dangers are of blowing the debt limit and default. Open the government, stop threatening the debt limit and, by all means, let's negotiate. We could set a date tomorrow. I am sure the President would have a meeting at the White House the next day. Anything people wanted could be on the table, but they would have to come in and negotiate like Americans. They would have to negotiate on the merits fairly and not with a blackjack in their back pocket, with threats that if they don't get what they want, they are going to start wrecking things such as our economy and our government. That is not the right way to proceed. If we go down that road, who knows what evil lurks at the end. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I note that the President and Leader Reid have both indicated a very open willingness to negotiate on virtually anything. But in light of the difference the Presiding Officer pointed out on the floor a moment ago between good-faith negotiating under our established constitutional procedures and negotiating while holding hostage either the continuing operation of the Federal Government or a U.S. default on its obligations for the first time in history, that that difference does indeed bear on this discussion. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from South Dakota. I noticed he was on the floor during the remarks of the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Maine, a few moments ago. Having heard those remarks, I ask the Senator from South Dakota if he would concede that there is a difference between negotiating and negotiating with hostages; whether the hostage is shutting down the government or whether the hostage is defaulting on the U.S. obligations, there is a difference between negotiating and negotiating while holding hostages.

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

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Through the Chair, I inquire whether, in evaluating the relative activity of the Senate and the House in trying to bring this shutdown to a conclusion, the Senator would not concede that the Senate has repeatedly voted on House-passed measures? We have taken them up, stripped out extraneous language, and sent them back. We have tabled them. We have over and over done our constitutional duty and voted. The Senator might not like the way the vote came out, but does he concede, A, that we voted on House-passed measures, and B, that the Speaker of the House has never yet called to the floor a Senate-passed measure and had a fair vote on the House side of the aisle?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And that the House never reciprocated by taking up a Senate-passed bill?