Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016--Conference Report--

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak, along with a number of my colleagues, about groups that have spun a web of denial and to fight back against the regressive, fallacious, and dangerous rhetoric of climate change deniers. They would disavow the overwhelming evidence of one of our most significant environmental crises. It is not only a quality-of-life challenge, it is a national security crisis in our world today.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I know from our military leaders how seriously they take this crisis, which is causing droughts as well as unrest, and the challenges it creates when our military needs to access certain parts of the world. Those consequences are among the national security threats that climate change raises, and deniers do no great service to our national defense.

Connecticut knows firsthand the visible impacts of climate change because we see the mammoth storms that threaten to become the new normal in our world, causing rising tides, destroying homes, literally changing the nature of our shoreline and impacting our quality of life.

No one State can address climate change effectively, and that is why we need the Nation to act together and why climate change denial is so dangerous to our national security, not only in military terms but also in the very real terms of how we conduct our lives in this country. We need a coordinated, comprehensive approach, and yet some groups would have you believe that no action is necessary--none at all. They say that any measures are a waste of time and resources. They say that any measures to stop food supplies from disappearing, forest fires from spreading, and storms from raging are simply unnecessary. They have no evidence to support their claims, but, indeed, they have to distort the evidence that exists even to make those claims.

Just last year, we discovered that Exxon projects into its planning a model that it described for itself as ``too murky to warrant action.'' They planned for themselves but not for the people, including their own customers. They would be ready for climate change but would make sure that no one else could be by adopting a model and making it their business model--or part of it--that implicitly, internally, they felt they could not reveal publicly.

Some groups have adopted more covert efforts to sabotage science. The American Legislative Exchange Council, better known by its acronym ALEC, denies that its policy denied climate change. ALEC commits to fighting science in the shadows because it has no facts to bring into the sun. Indeed, its proposed bill, the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act--a very innocuous bill--actually seeks to serve as a stamp of approval on teaching climate change denial in science classrooms.

These tactics exist because when groups like ALEC or Americans for Prosperity stand ready to deny the truth, some part of our people will believe it.

One leader of the Americans for Prosperity group, when asked about the science of climate change, responded: ``I don't even want to argue the point. To me, it's not that important.''

This web of denial has consequences. It delays and distorts common awareness and consciousness about the truth and the need to act.

One of my colleagues compared this web of denial to actions of tobacco companies decades ago denying that smoking and tobacco could cause cancer or heart disease or any of the other serious illnesses that tobacco use causes, in addition to the lifetime addiction to nicotine that inevitably was a consequence to so many people who believed those tobacco companies. That web of denial was similar to this one. The tobacco companies knew the truth. They denied it. These deniers also know the truth. Our purpose in being here today is to make sure the American people know it as well.

Groups like ALEC and Americans for Prosperity may receive support from the economic interests that have a stake in hiding the truth, but ultimately the American people need to know it, they need to act on it, and they need to appreciate the motives and interests of the web of denial that is spun so artfully and relentlessly by these groups and the special interests that underlie them and support them.

I wish to thank my colleagues who have come to the floor today, particularly Senator Whitehouse, who has been so instrumental in organizing this group.

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