Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am on the floor for the 130th time in my ``Time to Wake Up'' series urging us to wake up to the threat of climate change here.

Time and time again, peer-reviewed science demonstrates that carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels is causing unprecedented climate and oceanic changes. We see the effects already in our farms, our forests, and our fisheries. Yet the Republican-controlled Congress continues to hit the ``snooze'' button every time an alarm goes off.

Every major scientific society in our country, upon examining the data, says climate change is real and it is caused by our carbon pollution. So do all of our National Laboratories. So do our leading home State universities. The Presiding Officer is from Nebraska, so let me read what the University of Nebraska says on its Web site: ``Climate change poses significant risks to Nebraska's economy, environment, and citizens.''

Another quote: ``The magnitude and rapidity of the projected changes in climate are unprecedented.''

The fundamental science of climate change is settled, and the stakes of the climate crisis loom large. In poll after poll, Americans demonstrate they understand the connection between climate change and the role humans play in affecting climate. A recent poll shows that 64 percent of Americans support enacting policies to address climate change and 78 percent of Americans think Federal Government should curb the release of greenhouse gases.

In spite of the overwhelming science demonstrating that climate change is real and the growing awareness and determination of the American public to do something about it, Congress continues to prevaricate. The reason is simple: the power and threats of the fossil fuel industry. But is this strategy, the fossil fuel industry strategy of obstruction and denial, actually self-injurious?

Let's look at coal. The coal industry--longtime provider of inexpensive yet dirty energy--is in economic decline. Between 2008 and 2014, coal production and consumption have decreased by 15 percent and 18 percent respectively. Analyses by the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggest 2015 U.S. coal production was likely down a further 10 percent, the lowest level since 1986. Coal is losing its share of the electricity market to natural gas and to wind power. From 2002 to 2012, net generation from coal declined by 22 percent and coal- fired electricity, which just 15 years ago constituted 50 percent of the electricity on the grid, now makes up only 33 percent, roughly, and falling. Gas-fired powerplants generated more energy than coal in 7 of the 12 months of 2015. Prior to 2015, gas-fired electricity generation never exceeded coal.

The top four U.S. coal companies--Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Cloud Peak Energy, and Alpha Natural Resources--produce approximately half of the domestic volume of coal in this country. In the past 5 years, all four companies' stock prices have crashed. According to a recent report from the Niskanen Center, a Libertarian-leaning think tank, the combined total revenue of these top producers between 2010 and 2014 declined by approximately 18 percent.

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs recently delivered more bad news for the global coal market. According to its analysis, ``the industry does not require new investment given the ability of existing assets to satisfy flat demand, so prices will remain under pressure as the deflationary cycle continues.''

The coal industry seems divorced from this reality. Consider what Peabody's CEO Gregory Boyce argued in his company's 2014 annual report: ``[T]hermal coal consumption from the low-cost U.S. regions . . . is likely to increase 50 to 70 million tons over the next 3 years as natural gas prices recover, demand from other regions is displaced, and expected coal plant retirements are offset by higher plant utilization rates.''

Well, the Energy Information Administration disagrees, projecting thermal coal demand growth of just 4 million tons between 2012 and 2018. And remember, this was Peabody Energy's CEO speaking last week. Wyoming's Star Tribune reported that Peabody Energy's senior lenders are recommending that America's largest coal company file for bankruptcy, as Arch Coal, the second largest coal miner in the United States, did in January. Patriot Coal Corporation, Walter Energy, and Alpha Natural Resources have also all filed for bankruptcy in the past year.

The fossil fuel strategy of political obstruction for coal is looking more and more like economic suicide.

In some corners, light is dawning. Appalachian Power president and CEO Charles Patton told a meeting of energy executives last fall that coal is losing a long-term contest with natural gas and renewables. He said this: ``If we believe we can just change administrations and this issue is going to go away, we're making a terrible mistake.''

Well, what if there is an answer to this terrible mistake that is also an answer to climate change. What if we could reduce the amount of carbon pollution we dump into the atmosphere and oceans while helping communities to transition from coal-based economies to clean energy ones, helping coal miners. More and more conservative and libertarian economists are making the case that the ailing coal industry should embrace a fee on carbon.

The idea is simple. You levy a price on the thing you don't want-- carbon pollution--and you use the revenue to pay for things you do want. Greg Ip, chief economics commentator for the Wall Street Journal wrote:

The most reliable way to limit the bushing of fossil fuels is to alter market signals so as to divert demand toward cleaner sources of energy or conservation. We know how to do that: Put a price on carbon dioxide emissions via a tax, or via tradeable emission allowances in a cap-and-trade system. Both incentivize the market to find the least economically harmful way to reduce emissions.

Dr. Aparna Mathur of the conservative American Enterprise Institute conducted an analysis with a colleague from the Brookings Institution showing a carbon fee could reduce emissions, shore up the country's fiscal outlook, and play an important role in broader tax reform. Dr. Mathur points out: ``The fact that we understand better the burden of a carbon tax and how to offset it for low-income households should make us more likely to adopt this policy, not less so.''

In fact, even the fossil fuel industry knows a carbon tax is an effective mechanism to help shift toward a low-carbon energy future. Six of the world's major oil and gas companies, including BP Group and Royal Dutch Shell, wrote the United Nations last summer saying they could take faster climate action if governments work together to put a proper price on the environmental and economic harms of greenhouse gas emissions. Here is what they said:

[W]e need governments across the world to provide us with clear, stable, long-term ambitious policy frameworks. We believe that a price on carbon should be a key element of these frameworks.

Harvard Professor N. Gregory Mankiw was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, and he served as an economic adviser to Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney. He agrees: ``The best way to curb carbon emissions is to put a price on carbon.''

With a robust price on carbon, Congress could help coal mining companies, help coal mine workers, and help States and communities with significant coal mining activity. A carbon fee could be used to help coal companies by supplanting current taxes and fees and funding carbon capture for existing operating coal plants. A carbon fee could help coal workers by retraining them for high-paying jobs and providing pension and health care security not available from bankrupted employers. A carbon fee can provide assistance to coal mining communities to help them transition through all the challenges I have described.

A report by David Bookbinder and David Bailey of the Niskanen Center said this:

The coal industry is facing terminal decline. . . . An unfettered chaotic decline of the coal industry would create major social and economic issues such as deep regional unemployment and a multitude of unfunded liabilities, particularly for coal-dependent States.

They point out that there is a way to solve these problems:

Compensation for the losers from government policy action is an important conservative principle.

It is in this spirit that I introduced, along with Senator Schatz, the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act of last year. I call it a carbon fee because none of the revenues would go to fund Big Government. The bill is a simple proposal to cut emissions while raising over $2 trillion in revenue, all of which would be returned to the American people--no bigger government.

In addition to slashing the corporate tax rate, which the revenues would let us do, and providing families with tax credits beginning at $1,000 per couple, which the revenues also would allow us to do, the bill would provide $20 billion of flexible annual funding back to the people through their States to be used to help them through this inevitable transition--this inevitable transition. In coal-heavy States, this money could make the difference for communities that have been reliant on coal jobs.

Arthur Laffer, economic adviser to President Reagan, called our bill a ``game-changer.'' He said of my proposal: ``I applaud Senator Whitehouse's efforts to reduce carbon emissions while simultaneously offsetting--through pro-growth marginal tax rate decreases--the harm done to the economy by the carbon tax.''

I introduced my bill to start a conversation with Republicans on how best to design a carbon fee to help the economy. I would welcome the opportunity to sit down with any colleague to discuss ways to improve our proposal.

The coal industry in particular has a clear choice: either to keep fighting climate action, keep obstructing, keep their head in the sand, continue to be truculent and obtuse until they crash into more bankruptcy in that unfettered chaotic decline the Niskanen Center predicts or they could embrace a carbon fee and use it to provide for coal communities, to provide for coal workers, to provide for carbon recovery, and to provide for retirees burdened with unfunded pension obligations.

Mr. President, I have put a ladder into the water, and I urge the coal industry, before it goes under, to grab hold.

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