Paris Climate Change Talks
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from New Mexico for his longtime leadership on climate and conservation issues.
I have been working on this for a long time, as many of us on the floor have been working on this for a long time, and I have not been so hopeful in a very long time. I am reminded of the essential elements of success when it comes to an international agreement, and that is American leadership. We still remain the indispensable Nation, and we finally reasserted ourselves and reclaimed the moral high ground and the political high ground that put us in a position to stitch together an international agreement.
One observation I will offer from the Paris climate talks is how positive the response was. I think we anticipated that we were going to have to do perhaps more troubleshooting, more allaying of concerns about America's commitment to climate action than we ended up having to do. That is because people understand that the President is committed, and people understand that the Clean Power Plan is going forward, and we are making progress and there is no turning back.
I will offer seven very quick observations about the Paris climate talks. The first is this: It is already a success. If you had told any knowledgeable observer that they were going to get 185 countries--representing 97 percent of countries and 98 percent of emissions--and 150 heads of State in the same place at the same time--the most in history--if you had said that 2 years ago, that would have sounded wildly optimistic. We really are making progress.
No. 2, this is not going to require Senate approval. There have been more than 18,000 such agreements that our President and Presidents in the past have entered into over time not requiring Senate approval.
No. 3--and this is important and can't be overstated--it is not enough. If we want to hit the 2-degree Celsius target, this only gets us about 40 percent there. But 40 percent there is 40 percent there. We were at zero 3 weeks ago. So I think getting 40 percent there is very important.
I think the other thing we have learned from other states and other countries and even in the private sector is that once you unleash the power of clean energy on the private sector, there is no turning back. So we anticipate being able to ratchet up these agreements every 3 to 5 years on an international basis.
No. 4, it is way more than expected and way more than ever before.
No. 5, I think we need to know that there are some pretty good accountability and transparency mechanisms in there. This was a key element of the negotiations that Secretary Kerry and the President himself have insisted upon. We need to know--the United States has a robust reporting mechanism. At the public utilities commission level, at the regional level, we know exactly what our energy portfolio is. That is a little bit more of a challenge in the developing world, so we had to develop a matrix so we know that countries aren't cheating or they are not getting their own data wrong. I feel satisfied that it is likely to hit those marks.
No. 6, it is wildly popular in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans support an international climate agreement. A bare majority of Republicans, a decisive majority of young Republicans, and decisive majorities of Democrats and Independents support international climate action.
No. 7 is this: People are going to try to undo this. They are going to do it through the Congressional Review Act. They are going to try to do it through the appropriations process. They are going to try to do it through the electoral process. That is the democratic process, and that is OK. But there is no turning back either legislatively, politically, or in terms of the momentum we have in the private sector.
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