Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in commending President Obama for putting forth his Clean Power Plan.

Theodore Roosevelt said:

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendents than it is for us.

I think it captured very well the challenge we face with carbon pollution and global warming because we are facing that great central task of leaving this land better for our descendents than it is for us.

We are facing a situation in which there is an accelerating quantity of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere, and it is having a profound impact on, basically, the temperature of our planet. If we simply look at the carbon pollution itself, scientists have said that we are in trouble if it rises over 350 parts per million. Well, here we are with pollution that last year hit 400 parts per million. So we are above the danger zone. We are going deeper into the danger zone--let me put it that way--and that is not where we need to be.

Furthermore, we are accelerating the rate at which we are polluting the planet with carbon dioxide. It was just a few decades ago that the rate of carbon pollution was increasing by about 1 part per million per year, and now it is increasing by something closer to 2 parts per million per year. So where we need to be decreasing the overall pollution, bringing it down, we are increasing it and increasing the rate at which we are polluting, and that is a very bad place for humankind to be on this planet.

There is incontrovertible evidence of how quickly the planet is warming. We have, by scientific record--14 of the warmest 15 years in recorded history have occurred in the last 15 years. So 14 of the 15 warmest years over the centuries of measurement have all occurred in the last 15 years. That is not just one little warm spell on some little piece of land; that is a global temperature.

As carbon pollution is increasing, we see the global temperature increasing, and it is reverberating all across the planet. We see dramatic changes in the Arctic. The rate of warming in the Arctic is roughly four times the rate of warming in more moderate latitudes. So we are seeing an incredible decrease in the ice, huge changes that are coming so quickly, it is very hard for animals to adapt. Of course, people are well aware of the crisis the polar bears are facing, but that is just one particular visible species as an indicator of the challenges that are going on.

We are seeing the feedback mechanisms in the polar zone. We are seeing the open waters where ice is not reflecting the sunlight back up. More water is absorbing more sunlight, and that is creating an accelerated heating impact. We are seeing that as thawing occurs in the permafrost, we have these situations with what are called drunken forests, where the trees that all stood straight are now staggering in one direction or the other as they lean slightly, as the ground underneath them that was frozen is melting. As it starts to melt, it will start to release methane gas, which is a very potent global warming gas. So that is another feedback mechanism we should all be concerned about.

Let's take my home State of Oregon, and I think one could do this type of checkup, if you will, on any State in the Union. In my home State, we had a very severe series of droughts in the Klamath Basin, which is a major agricultural basin. We have had the three worst ever droughts in a period of 15 years. It corresponds with the period of the warmest years on planet Earth in recorded history. And that has a huge impact on our farming industry. So if you care about farmers, you should care about global warming.

Then we had a big challenge with our forests because as these summers are becoming dryer and as the types of storms we have are producing more lightning strikes, we are having a lot more forest fires. The fire season is getting longer and more devastating. Far more acres are being burned. Over several decades, the fire season has increased by several weeks in length, and the amount of acres burning each summer, on average, is increasing. So if you care about timber, if you care about forests, then you should care about global warming.

Another impact of this changing pattern is that we are getting very little snowfall in the Cascades. Just as Glacier Park is now becoming the park of disappearing glaciers--you have to look very hard to find any glaciers left in Glacier Park--the Cascades also--a different mountain range--are losing their snowpack. In fact, we have virtually no snowpack now feeding the mountain streams that come down. So if you are a fisherman, you are looking at smaller and warmer streams, which is very unhealthy for fish.

That is not all. Right now we have sockeye coming up the Columbia River and getting to the Snake River, and they are dying because the temperature of the river is too warm for them to continue upriver to spawn. Some estimates that I have seen in the last week are that as many as 80 percent of the sockeye now returning are dying in the Columbia River before they make it to the Snake River. So if you care about fishing, you should care about global warming.

Then we look at our coastal shellfish and we discover that we have a significant problem with our oysters. Oregon produces a lot of oyster seed. Those are the baby oysters that get distributed to oyster fishermen. There is a similar process going on in Washington State at another hatchery. The challenge for the hatcheries is that the water that is pumped out of the ocean to produce the baby oysters, get them going, is becoming too acidic. This also is about global warming because the higher rates of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are being absorbed by the ocean, and that creates carbonic acid. It has been enough that there is a 30-percent increase in the acidity of the ocean, and that is causing a big problem with baby oysters as far as forming shells. So if you care about the seafood industry, you should care about global warming.

When we talk about the issue of global warming, we are not talking about computer models and things that are 50 years into the future; we are talking about real-life effects seen on the ground right now, things that are having a big impact on our seafood, a big impact on our fishing, a big impact on our farming, and a big impact on our forestry. If you care about rural America's resource-driven economies across this country, you should care about global warming.

As a nation, it is incumbent on us to take on this challenge. We are the first generation--as has been said by others--to feel the impact of global warming and the last generation that can do something about it. It is incumbent on us, the Senators in this Chamber, the U.S. Senate, to take on this issue. It is incumbent on the Presidents and the executive teams they put together to take this on in partnership with the rest of the world because this is absolutely a tragedy of the commons.

Very clearly, if the United States takes some action to reduce our carbon dioxide or to reduce our methane production, it will have a modest impact but not enough. Nations across the planet have to act, and they will act more or less as a community because very few nations are going to say they will act alone knowing they won't have a big enough impact unless nations join together. So it is up to our leadership role in the world that we act actively, aggressively, and reach out with other nations to partner.

Earlier this year there was an agreement struck with China. China is going to produce as much renewable energy from electricity by 2030 as all the electricity we currently produce in the United States. I am not just talking about our renewable energy. If you take the U.S. renewable energy, our nuclear energy, our energy produced from gas-fired plants, our electricity produced from coal-fired plants, and you add it all together, that is the amount of electricity China is going to produce with just renewable energy between now and 2030. They are taking on a massive commitment to renewable energy. They wouldn't be doing it if the United States wasn't also responding aggressively. India is starting to become interested in doing their share, seeing that other nations are stepping up.

The United States should never be sitting on its hands and saying: We will wait for everybody else to act--not when there is an issue that threatens the success of the next generation of humans on this planet and the generation after and the generation after.

I said earlier that not only are we the first generation to feel the impact of global warming, but we are the last generation that can do something about it. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that the further you get into global warming, the further you get into carbon pollution, methane pollution, and more feedback mechanisms, the harder it is to stop. There is momentum that builds behind the warming of the planet. It becomes much harder to take it on. That is why we need to act decisively now.

So the Clean Power Plan the President launched, put forward yesterday, is responding to the moral demand of this generation to take on carbon pollution. It is doing so in a most cost-effective fashion, a fashion that will create jobs in the United States, a fashion that will reduce deaths in the United States.

Let me give an example of the health benefits. It will avoid up to 3,600 premature deaths, lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks in children, and prevent 300,000 missed workdays and schooldays. That is incredible. It will save the average family nearly $85 in their annual energy bill by the year 2030. So that is powerful.

In addition, we are going to create jobs in this fashion. It has the tremendous impact of putting people to work--tens of thousands to work, driving new investments in cleaner, more modern, and efficient renewable energy technologies.

I close by turning back to President Theodore Roosevelt, who said there is no more important mission than ``leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.''

There are individuals who will come to this floor and they will say: Let's act someday but not now. Let's do it when it will not have an impact on jobs. Well, this will actually create jobs right now. Let's do it when it will cost less. Well, it never costs less if the problem gets bigger. It costs less to invest now. Let's pass it on to the next generation. They will solve it. That is morally irresponsible.

Every State is feeling the direct impact. Every rural community, timber community, fishing community, shellfish community, and farming community is feeling the impact today of our failure to address this yesterday. Our children, our children's children, and our children's children's children are counting on us in the Senate to act aggressively, to support a strong plan to take on carbon pollution--a strong Clean Power Plan. So let's do so.

I thank the Chair.

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