Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2017--Continued
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, on other judicial business, today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral argument in West Virginia v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is the case that will determine the fate of the EPA's Clean Power Plan. As that court considers our national plan to reduce carbon pollution from powerplants, which is our largest source of carbon emissions, I rise now for the 148th time to urge us all to wake up to the threats of climate change.
In the runup to today's argument, Leader Reid, Senator Boxer, Senator Markey, and I released a report entitled ``The Brief No One Filed'' highlighting who is behind the legal challenge to the President's Clean Power Plan. Our report, which is structured as an amicus brief, although not filed with the court, shows how State officials, trade associations, front groups, and industry-funded scientists in the case are connected to the fossil fuel industry. In short, the court of appeals has been barraged with briefs by amici curiae and parties who are funded by oil, gas, and coal interests. I hope the court considers the appalling conflict of interest these briefs present when it considers this case.
Let's begin with why there is such a big effort by the fossil fuel industry to launch its proxies in this case. A working paper by the International Monetary Fund puts the effective subsidy of the fossil fuel industry in this country at nearly $700 billion per year. For the record, that is billion with a ``b.'' That includes the climate harm they get away with for free.
To protect this massive subsidy--perhaps the biggest subsidy in the history of the world--the fossil fuel polluters have concocted a complex web of climate change denial. The web includes deceptively named nonprofits and fake think tanks--to use Jane Mayer's apt phrase, ``think tanks as disguised political weapons''--whose purpose is to propagate phony science, manipulate public opinion, and create an echo chamber of climate science denialism. The polluters also wield their influence in our election campaigns, with especially devilish effect since the dreadful Citizens United decision of 2010. A lot of this fossil fuel apparatus has turned up in the DC Circuit.
If we examine the Members of Congress filing amicus briefs against the Clean Power Plan, we find massive funding to them from the fossil fuel industry. The Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Center for Responsive Politics report that since 1989, Member amici signing these briefs have received over $40 million in oil, gas, and coal campaign contributions. Thirty-four Senators opposing the Clean Power Plan received over $16 million in direct contributions, and 171 Representatives opposing the Clean Power Plan received nearly $24 million. And that is just direct spending to candidate campaigns. On top of that come fossil fuel-related political action committee contributions, over $42 million more to Member amici since 1989--nearly $12 million to the 34 Senators and nearly $31 million to the 171 Representatives.
In total, the fossil fuel industry's disclosed political spending to Members on these briefs amounts to nearly $83 million, with approximately $55 million split among 34 Senators and nearly $28 million split among 171 Representatives. And, of course, Citizens United opened the door to unlimited spending that is not disclosed as well. So we actually don't know the full amount or the full effect of fossil fuel political spending above and beyond that disclosed $83 million.
The CAP Action Fund has labeled 135 of the 205 Member amici as ``climate deniers'' based on their past statements and their voting records. Climate deniers reject the overwhelming consensus of peer- reviewed science about the causes and effects of carbon in our atmosphere and oceans, often, interestingly, contradicting the research of scientists and academic institutions in their home States, even as to the effects of climate change manifesting in their home States. In this path, climate deniers are not following their constituents. Seven in ten Americans in a nationwide survey released this month favor the Clean Power Plan. More than 80 percent acknowledge the health benefits of the plan.
Of course, the big polluters don't spend just to influence legislators at the Federal level, they also spend big on State officials, and they prop up trade associations, think tanks, and front groups willing to push their anti-science agenda. Many of these State politicians, trade associations, and front groups sure enough showed up in the Clean Power Plan litigation.
From the 27 States currently challenging the Clean Power Plan in court, the CAP Action Fund has identified 24 climate-denying attorneys general and Governors based on their own past statements. These State officials have received over $19 million in contributions from the fossil fuel industry since 2000. One small example of this: Documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy show that Murray Energy, a coal company, donated $250,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association in 2015 and received a closed-door meeting with State prosecutors to discuss the Clean Power Plan. According to research director Nick Surgey:
It's no coincidence that GOP attorneys general have mounted an aggressive fight alongside the fossil fuel industry to block the Clean Power Plan. That appears to be exactly what the industry paid for.
Other energy companies and trade groups that gave money last year to the Republican Attorneys General Association include Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Southern Company, and Cloud Peak Energy.
Then there are the industry trade groups, such as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the National Association of Manufacturers also petitioning against the EPA. To pick just one, the National Association of Manufacturers has been described as a ``trade association and corporate front group that has a long history of hiring lobbyists to promote anti-environmental, pro-industry legislation.'' Other front groups, such as the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, have also filed briefs. E&E Legal advances what it calls ``free-market environmentalism'' using strategic litigation. It has made it its hallmark to harass climate scientists who work at public institutions and are vulnerable to State and Federal FOIA requests. E&E Legal received significant funding from the fossil fuel industry to engage in this harassment.
Documents made public in the bankruptcy proceedings of three separate coal companies--Arch Coal, Peabody Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources-- reveal payments to E&E Legal or to its senior fellow, Chris Horner, a gentleman who has written not one but two books on why global warming is a hoax. E&E Legal is also an associate member of the State Policy Network, which the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch describes as an ``$83 million right-wing empire'' that in turn receives money from a Koch family foundation and from the identity-scrubbing Donors Trust and Donors Capital, organizations set up to launder the identities of big donors. Such is the web of denial.
Madam President, I could go on. Our report contains substantial detail on the network connecting the opponents of the Clean Power Plan to the fossil fuel companies behind their effort. ExxonMobil's CEO may pretend concern about climate change and mouth support for a carbon fee, but on his political gun decks, all their cannons are aimed to protect the freeloading, polluting status quo. And the Koch brothers don't even pretend; they will send us off a climate cliff to enforce their extremist ideology and to maintain their power to socialize their costs. These Koch brothers are fine capitalist free-marketeers when it comes to extracting private profits, but when it comes to imposing public costs, they are more socialist than Trotsky. The fossil fuel powers whistle, and the hounds all come running to bay at the court.
Before the court of appeals takes their arguments seriously, it should consider the industry's financial relationship with so many of the Clean Power Plan opponents, it should consider their sordid record of deceiving Americans about climate science for years, and it should consider the massive, massive conflict of interest of the industry lurking in the shadows behind their front groups.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
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