Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I got my first taste of politics when I was 16 years old. I was worried that my favorite surf spot was going to be turned into condominiums, so I joined the Save Sandy Beach Coalition. Adults around me told me that I was too young to take action. They told me that the adults had it under control, but I didn't listen. It took several years, but with lots of grassroots energy, the Governor of the State of Hawaii eventually signed legislation that preserved the Sandy Beach coastline for generations.
America's proud history of social change is about young people who don't take no for an answer; they take action. Some of the most inspiring movements in our history have been led by young people. They were the ones who first refused to leave their seats in segregated lunch counters, who filled campus squares demanding an end to apartheid, who marched in the streets against police brutality, and staged walkouts to protest gun violence.
Once again, young people are standing up because the adults are blowing it. On March 15, tens of thousands of kids walked out of school in hundreds of cities and 130 countries demanding action on climate. This isn't a school project for them. It is a fight for the world they will inhabit. They see what is happening around the world. The climate is changing, and it is getting worse, and we need to take action.
In 2017, the United States experienced 16 disasters that cost $1 billion or more: 9.8 million acres burned by wildfire; 30,000 people homeless; 200,000 homes and businesses damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Harvey; the Florida Keys devastated by Irma; thousands dead, and an entire island's infrastructure destroyed by Hurricane Maria. The year 2017 set a new record for the cost of extreme weather events.
Last year was not better. There were 14 separate disasters that cost $1 billion or more, including the largest, deadliest wildfires that California has ever seen. According to NOAA, the wildfires did more than $40 billion worth of damage. So in these two record-setting years, climate change has cost billions in personal property and taxpayer dollars. And they have cost lives.
Now the Midwest is flooding. I don't mean that as a political statement or a rhetorical flourish. The Midwest is flooding. In another once-in-a-lifetime storm, which is happening more and more frequently, the levees and systems built to deal with flooding have failed because they were built for a climate that no longer exists. Communities are underwater, and people are stranded in their homes right now, at this very moment. In Nebraska alone, the damage is already more than $1 billion. Livestock, crops, infrastructure have been destroyed. Soil that is needed not just for this season but for the future has been destroyed. This is the moment at which Congress should be examining the costs of climate change and what to do about it.
I have to say something about the senior Senator from Utah. That was appalling. I understand that we want to make jokes and that we want to be clever and that we want to have a clip to put on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, but that was appalling. This is the crisis of our generation, and it is not a joke. He spent time creating images not of what we ought to do--not of his conservative proposals around climate change--but in being consistent with what Leader McConnell wants the Republican Party to do, which is to not engage in the substance and to turn this into a joke.
I have to say, on behalf of everybody in Hawaii, on behalf of the young people who care about this, and on behalf of the people across the planet who want climate action, this isn't funny. This requires the party in charge of the U.S. Senate to take it seriously.
The good news is, we are starting to have an engagement about climate change. I saw the senior Senator from Tennessee engage a bit and say we should have a Manhattan Project for solving climate change. Good enough. I saw Senator Isakson, 3 or 4 weeks ago, talk about how we ought to take climate action. I also know the chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee cares about this issue. So there is an opportunity for engagement but not so long as Leader McConnell thinks this whole thing is worthy of nothing more than being a joke.
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