Providing for Congressional Disapproval of a Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Mexico for his historic leadership on these issues.

The consequences of climate change are evidenced around the world. Temperatures are increasing, sea level is rising, glaciers are receding, rainfall is changing, and people's health is suffering.

These impacts can worsen the tensions that are fueling terrorism and conflicts around the world. The Pentagon and the CIA have both issued reports that found that instability from changes in the climate can contribute to conditions that breed insurgencies.

As we look around the world, we can see how climate change is a threat multiplier and a catalyst for conflict today. That is why partnering with developing countries so they can grow their economies in a climate-smart way is a crucial part of our foreign policy. That is why we need to support the Green Climate Fund and other financing and aid programs that will help countries increase their resiliency in the face of climate change impacts, because those impacts are very real, and scientists agree that it is humans who are causing them.

The year 2014 was the hottest year in a global record that stretches back to 1880. The first half of this year is now the hottest January to June in that same record. As temperatures continue to soar upwards on land, our seas are getting hotter as well.

While we have to deal with the consequences of climate change that are already gripping our Nation and our planet, there is still time to prevent future catastrophes. That is why President Obama has been using the tool he has in the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon pollution. He has used it to further increase the fuel efficiency of America's cars and trucks.

He has released the historic Clean Power Plan, but Republicans want to undo that plan with the Congressional Review Act. Undoing the Clean Power Plan would be bad for our economy, for our national security, and for our health. The Clean Power Plan captures the scientific urgency and the economic opportunity needed to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The Clean Power Plan provides flexibility to the States to find solutions to reducing carbon pollution that work best for their situations. The Clean Power Plan will be at the heart of a supercharged renewables renaissance in every single State in the Union. It will create jobs and save consumers billions on their electricity bills. It will avert almost 100,000 asthma attacks a year and prevent thousands of premature deaths. The climate and health benefits of this rule are estimated to be $34 to $54 billion every year by the year 2030.

With the Clean Power Plan, we can create wealth and health for our country. In Massachusetts, we know firsthand that by cutting carbon pollution, we can grow our economy and save families money. It is a formula that works. We did it through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, which is a model for the Clean Power Plan. Since the program went into effect in 2009, the program has added on the order of $3 billion worth of economic value to participating States and it has saved consumers more than $1.5 billion.

Massachusetts now has nearly 100,000 people working in the clean energy sector in our State. It is the fastest growing job-creation sector in our economy. All of this has happened just over the last 10 years.

As a nation, we have a choice: We can continue to pump harmful carbon pollution into our skies and foreign oil into our cars or we can pump new life into our economy, creating jobs and saving Americans money on their energy bills.

Climate deniers call this plan a war on coal, but it is really a war on carbon pollution. The Clean Power Plan is a signal to the marketplace to invest in clean energy, and it is a signal to the world that America will lead the global effort for climate action and be the global leader. You cannot preach temperance from a bar stool. If we want to be a leader, we have to stand up and say: Here is what we are going to do.

By reducing U.S. carbon pollution, the United States will be the leader and not the laggard in the international climate negotiations beginning at the end of this month in Paris. U.S. leadership has helped secure climate pledges for Paris from more than 150 countries. We now have the opportunity to forge an international climate agreement that includes all countries doing their fair share for a global solution to global warming.

We aren't tackling climate change alone. Efforts are underway in legislatures around the world to develop laws and develop national responses to climate change. But without the Clean Power Plan, America would not be able to have any credibility in Paris in 2 1/2 weeks in saying: We are going to reduce our greenhouse gases. You must, as another sovereign country, reduce your greenhouse gases.

Coal companies, the Koch brothers, and other allies of the fossil fuel industry may oppose the United States and the world acting on climate, but scientific facts, economic opportunity, and history are not on their side.

Today we are debating a resolution to overturn the Clean Power Plan, and should it pass, the President will veto it and Republicans won't have the votes to overturn the veto. What the Republicans are doing today is nothing more than a political Kabuki theater. Instead of wasting time tilting at legislative windmills, we should be passing tax extenders to help build more wind turbines and more solar panels in the United States of America. That is what we should be debating out here on the floor of the Senate today.

If the Republicans don't like the Clean Power Plan, then I ask them what is their plan to prevent climate change, expand energy, and create jobs. That is the real question we should be debating on the Senate floor today. The reality is that they have no plan. The reality is that as a party they are in denial that the planet is dangerously warming. The reality is that they want to keep the wind and solar tax breaks off of the books, giving incentives for Americans to innovate in this area. The reality is that the fossil fuel industry is still driving the agenda of the Republican Party here in Congress. That is the reality. That is why we are having this vote here on the floor of the Senate today, because the Republican Party is siding with Big Coal and Big Fossil Fuel in order to keep us on a pathway that does not allow us to unleash this renewable energy revolution.

The green generation--the young generation in our country--wants to be the leaders. They are innovators and they can find investors to help them with their new technology. They are professors and they are producers who want to work together in order to unleash this revolution.

The next generation already did this with telecommunications. They moved us from a black rotary dial phone to an iPhone in about 8 years. The technology was locked up. There was no innovation that was possible. The utility industry that was the telephone industry had a stake in everyone still renting a black rotary dial phone. The utility industry, which is the electrical generating industry, has a stake in slowing down the pace at which we move to wind and solar and to new technologies of the 21st century that are the match for the iPhone in the telecommunications sector. That is what we are debating on the floor--the path to the future. That is what we are debating on the floor--the 19th-century technologies versus the 21st-century technologies.

That is what we are debating on the floor--the status quo or an innovation economy where young people are able to move into these new sectors and invent these new technologies and exploit them around the planet. We did that in telecommunications. It is branded Google, eBay, Amazon and YouTube, around the planet. We did it in the blink of an eye once we unleashed the potential. We can do the same in the green energy sector, but defeating the Clean Power Plan vote the Republicans brought out on the floor is the key to unleashing this potential not only in our own country but across the planet.

I urge a ``no'' vote on this historic set of regulations that President Obama is putting on the books. It is what will give us credibility when he goes to Paris in the beginning of December in order to negotiate this historic deal.
Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

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