Unanimous Consent Request
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, last year I had the opportunity to travel to the Vatican. During my visit, I had the chance to overlook St. Peter's Square from a Vatican balcony. As I took in the view of that historic square, the Sun glinted off the future. Across the square, I saw the rooftop of Pope Paul VI Audience Hall on the Vatican grounds covered with solar panels. It was clear from that view that the Vatican takes climate change very seriously and had long been preparing to have a profound impact on this generational issue that touches every living creature on the planet.
I was at the Vatican as the only U.S. representative in a group of high-level legislators from around the world who are all working to address climate change in their own countries. We met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Vatican leaders responsible for writing the initial draft of Pope Francis's historical environmental encyclical, and shared the impact of climate change in our own home countries with the two cardinals who were going to be writing that encyclical.
The conversation then turned to what was happening in the countries of the legislators who were visiting. The lawmaker from the Philippines discussed the destruction that Typhoon Haiyan brought to parts of her country. Legislators from South Africa and Mexico shared the challenges their countries and regions face from drought. The representatives from Europe pointed to the damage from extreme heat waves and rainfall. I relayed my concern with the rising levels, temperature, and acidity of the ocean and the impacts on coastal communities. Rising sea levels are eroding our shores in Massachusetts and New England and across our country, increasing the damage in New England of nor'easters. In recent years, ocean temperatures in our part of the Atlantic ocean have been the hottest ever recorded. In one case, off of Cape Cod, it was 21 degrees warmer than normal this January, in Massachusetts, off of our coastline.
But all of us who had gathered at the Vatican were in agreement that the world's poorest people are suffering the worst consequences of climate change--extreme poverty, famine, disease, and displacement--which is why it should be no surprise that Pope Francis, a Jesuit trained in chemistry who is devoted to the poor and ensuring a just and better future for all mankind, would be the only Pope to devote an entire encyclical to humanity's relationship with the environment. In releasing his encyclical and giving us his message to protect what he calls ``our common home,'' Pope Francis has also given us a common goal: We must act now to stop climate change. But make no mistake--this Pope is looking for leadership. Pope Francis is looking for results. He is looking for all of us to lead to solve this problem.
Next week, we will have the honor of hosting Pope Francis here in Washington, DC, and hearing him address a joint meeting of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate--unprecedented--and the entire Nation will be watching the Pope as he speaks because we all need to hear Pope Francis's message of love, of compassion, of justice and action. And we need to join in the conversation he is calling the world to engage in about protecting people and our planet.
The science of climate change has been clear for decades. Global temperatures are warming, glaciers are melting, and sea levels are rising. Extreme downpours and weather events are increasing. The ocean is becoming more dangerously acidic. Last year was the warmest year ever recorded. Today, NOAA announced that this summer was the hottest summer since 1880. Increasing temperatures increase the risk for bad air days, in turn increasing the risk of asthma attacks and worse for people who actually have lung disease. Global warming is also a public health crisis.
The economic and security costs are now dangerously evident. Climate change is aggravating tensions around the world, especially where food and water security are at the heart of the conflicts. It is spawning new crises that are displacing millions of people and creating an era of refugees. This will require action by our diplomats and aid organizations, but every nation must do its fair share.
Pope Francis's address to Congress next week will offer us the opportunity to examine our own policies, their impact on not only the people of our Nation but on the entire planet, and our duty as leaders and as human beings to take action.
Pope Francis has brought this moral imperative to act on climate change just as the nations of the world are working to forge an international agreement in Paris this December as the world gathers to deal with this issue. The United States must lead this effort. The United States must heed the message of Pope Francis. The United States must be the nation in Paris in December saying to the rest of the world that we can and must do something to solve this problem.
We know that clean energy will be at the heart of meeting any of the goals which we have to establish here and across the planet in order to cut pollution. We must continue to improve the fuel efficiency of the automobiles and trucks we drive here in the United States. We must deploy more wind and solar energy and renew tax breaks for those projects.
By making a commitment to reduce the pollution imperiling our planet, we can engage in job creation that is good for all of creation. The United States can be the leader in the technological revolution to reduce the pollution imperiling our planet, and then we can partner with other nations to share this technology and protect the most vulnerable around the world.
Pope Francis said in his encyclical, ``Today, in the view of the common good, there is an urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially life.'' We know that to agree on a course of action is no easy task in this Chamber, but if we harness the ambition of the Moon landing, the technological power of our workers, and the moral imperative of Pope Francis's message, we can leave the world a better place than we found it. We have done it before. We have the tools to do it again. Now we need to forge the political will in order to accomplish those goals.
We need more solar, we need more wind, and we need the batteries for the vehicles we drive in order to reduce the amount of polluting fossil fuels we send up into the atmosphere. We need to invest. We need to be the technological giants. We need to unleash the same kind of revolution in the energy sector as we did in the telecommunications sector in the 1990s. No one on the planet except the United States had a device like this on their person just 15 years ago. We invented telecommunications. We invented the way in which people not just here in America but all across the planet--Africa, Asia, South America--communicate with these wireless devices. We can do the same thing on energy. We can do the same thing with wind and solar. We can reinvent the kinds of vehicles we drive--cars, trucks, buses. We can do it. We have to have the will. We have to listen to the Pope. We have to play the role that the United States is expected to lead by the rest of the world in order to meet this moral imperative. And we can do it by creating millions of new jobs here in the United States. So that is our challenge.
The Pope is arriving next week. For me, as a boy who grew up going to the Immaculate Conception Grammar School, Malden Catholic, Boston College, and Boston College Law School--Catholic school every day for 19 years--this is just an incredible thrill, knowing that, in a way, when he is standing up on that podium, it is going to be a latter-day ``Sermon on the Mount'' that he delivers to us telling us what our job is today: to save this beautiful planet God has created while also avoiding the worst consequences for the poorest people on the planet if we do not solve the problem.
Let's work together in a bipartisan fashion in order to heed the message of Pope Francis.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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