Providing for Consideration of H.R. Climate Action Now Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 329. It provides for the consideration of H.R. 9 under a structured rule that makes 30 amendments in order.
It also provides for 90 minutes of general debate, with the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs controlling 60 minutes, and the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce controlling 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, the measure we are considering today makes clear that under this Democratic majority science is once again respected here in the House of Representatives, that facts matter, and that the word of the fossil fuel lobby is not going to rule the day, because there is no debate on our side about something as basic as climate change.
The evidence is overwhelming. It is happening, Mr. Speaker, and human beings are playing a defining role.
Now, you don't have to take my word for it. You can ask virtually any scientist working in the field today, because 97 percent of all climate scientists agree that it is happening--97 percent.
There is a United Nations body charged with looking at the science here called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Do you know what it has found? That the evidence is unequivocal.
The facts are as clear as day.
But you don't even need to read the report to know that something is happening here. Just look out your window. Once-in-a-generation hurricanes are becoming commonplace; record-breaking storms are becoming the norm; and drastic temperature swings are now just the way it is.
My district is home to more than 1,800 farms, and I visit with farmers often. Climate change isn't just an issue on their minds; it is sometimes the top issue on their minds when they are asked about the challenges that they face.
These farmers have told me about how heat waves disrupt what was once a reliable growing season and how unexpected frosts have completely wiped out their crops. Rainfall that once ran like clockwork has given way to droughts that could wipe out their entire profits.
They don't question what is going on. They are not debating the science of whether climate change is real. They know. They know.
They can see it, seemingly every day as it impacts their livelihoods. I wish the Republicans took climate change as seriously. But instead of treating it as a threat, they treat it as a punch line.
A Republican Senator once brought a snowball onto the Senate floor, trying to prove that climate change isn't real because it still snows sometimes. You can't make this stuff up.
Just the other day, President Trump mocked clean energy by suggesting that windmills cause cancer. Are you kidding me? That is the President of the United States.
I won't pretend to know what goes on in the President's head, but I know this: His announcement in June 2017 that he would be pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement was indefensible.
This agreement set an ambitious goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius and established binding commitments for countries to meet to reduce emissions. It recognized climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution.
If the President gets his way and actually withdraws the United States, we would stand alone as one of the only nations in the world not to be part of it. Even Syria, a nation embroiled in war, announced that it would sign on.
Thankfully, we are not out of it yet, but we could be starting as early as 2020.
H.R. 9 would ensure the President wouldn't get his way by requiring him to develop a plan to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement.
It is called the Climate Action Now Act because we can't wait, Mr. Speaker. Climate change isn't some far-off threat. It is not a problem for our great-grandchildren or even our grandchildren to solve. It is our problem. It is here today, impacting our Nation and our future.
It is not just about the weather. Climate change also negatively impacts public health and our national security. Experts have even developed a new term to describe those displaced by its destructive impacts, ``American climate refugees.''
This is not the time for handwringing or indecisiveness and not the time to let the fossil fuel industry that funds some campaigns outweigh the facts. It is certainly not the time for more stunts or snowballs on the floor.
This is the time to act boldly, to listen to what the scientists are telling us, and to protect our planet for future generations. That is what H.R. 9 is all about.
I ask my colleagues to let the facts rule the day once again in the people's House of Representatives. Let's support this rule and the underlying legislation and send an undeniable message that, under this majority, we value science and recognize the urgent need to act on climate change.
Before I yield to the gentleman from Texas, let me make a couple of points.
First of all, just so the Record is clear, under President Trump's policies, which are now taking effect and are now reversing some of the advances that we made under previous administrations, basically, these policies have consequences. In 2018, our emissions rose by 3.4 percent. We are going in the wrong direction.
When the gentlewoman talks about all these other alternative energy sources that are clean and green that my Republican friends support, she neglects to point out that this President hasn't seen a fossil fuel that he hasn't wanted to embrace. In fact, he wants to go back and invest more in coal, which is hard to believe, given all the scientific evidence that exists about the dangers of coal for our atmosphere.
There is no question where this President is coming from. He doesn't believe in climate change, and that is what is so shocking, that the whole world, the scientific community all over the world, has warned us time and time again that this is a real problem, and we have a President who doesn't believe it. It is stunning. It is stunning, but that is what we are dealing with.
Basically, this is an attempt to try to get us back on the right track, to take this problem, which is already having significant negative consequences in our country, and do something about it.
It is time to come together and tell the President, who doesn't believe in science, that science is real, that it is something we ought to take seriously, and that we ought to do something about it.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the words from our distinguished minority whip, but I would point out that the cost of climate inaction will far outweigh the cost associated with acting now.
According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, by 2090, lost wages will reach $155 billion, mortality from extreme temperatures will surpass $140 billion, and coastal property damage will approach $120 billion. All told, the U.S. economy could lose more than 10 percent of its GDP under the worst-case scenario.
So people can deny that this is a problem all they want, but they do so at great economic risk for our country and for other economies around the world.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene).
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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, let me just say to my ranking member, whom I have great respect for, that I think we always need to figure out a way to do better and to be more accommodating, and I will continue to work with him to try to do that. But I will point out for the record that the committee has made in order 30 amendments, a total of 31 pages of amendments on a 6-page bill.
I think we have a long way to go to achieve the record of closed rules that the previous Congress had, well over 100 closed rules. That broke, I think, every closed rule record in history. We certainly don't want to get there, but we need to continue to figure out ways we can be more accommodating, and he has my word that I will do that.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Maine (Ms. Pingree).
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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, oh my God, just listening to the gentleman from Washington State give his remarks. He was on the Rules Committee when the Republicans were in charge last time and voted for a record number of 103 closed rules. That meant that not a single amendment, Republican or Democrat, could be made in order. Never once, never once, did I hear him express reservation about the historic closed process that the Republicans embraced.
And as far as his amendment goes, as the gentleman knows, the Paris climate agreement operates under the theory that parties should be able to satisfy their compliance plans any way they choose. There are neither preferred nor prohibited ways to reduce emissions.
Since the Paris Agreement is fuel and technology neutral, we think this bill should be too. But I just find it hard to sit here and to listen with any level of seriousness to the gentleman's complaints. When he was on the Rules Committee, they broke every record in the history of Congress being the most closed Congress in the history of our country. Can we do better? Yes, we can, and we should do better.
But I will remind the gentleman, again, that there were 30 pages of amendments made in order on a 6-page bill, a bill, by the way, that the gentlewoman, Mrs. Lesko, said is not a serious bill anyway. So, I am not quite sure what the messaging is here: that it is not serious or that it is serious enough where we need to have more amendments. I can't quite figure their logic out here.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).
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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, let me just remind my colleagues that the impact on our economy is astronomical if we do nothing. We are already seeing the negative impacts on our economy because of climate change. It is hard to believe that we are having a debate on the floor of the House of Representatives where people are denying that climate change is a real threat or that our constituents somehow don't care about this issue, which they do.
And just one other thing. I want to make sure that the Record is clear on process. This bill went through two committee hearings-- Foreign Affairs and Energy and Commerce--and two markups before it went to the Rules Committee where we granted a structured rule and we are having a debate here on the floor. That is called regular order. I know some of my Republican friends don't know what regular order is, because when they were in charge bills routinely came to the Rules Committee that bypassed committees of jurisdiction and then were closed up and sent to the floor with no amendments at all.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the distinguished chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
This is like the theater of the absurd, when I listen to my Republican colleagues. We have a bill, H.R. 9, that says that the United States should not remove itself from the Paris climate accord. I have one colleague saying that it is a messaging bill that means nothing. I have other Republican colleagues saying that if we pass this, it is the end of the world because it is going to have all these implications.
Then we get lectured to by my Republican colleagues for almost an hour now that 30 amendments are not enough on a 6-page bill, that we need more and more amendments in order. Then, the gentleman from Georgia comes to the floor and says: I want to offer the Green New Deal, and I want to offer it under a closed rule where nobody can amend it.
I mean, you can't make this stuff up. The Republicans are saying: We don't want hearings, and we don't want markups. We want nothing. We just want to bring it to the floor under a closed rule so that nobody, Democrats or Republicans, can amend it.
I support the Green New Deal. I have some ideas to make it a little bit better. I would like to have some amendments made in order. But my Republican friends say no amendments, closed rule, shut it all down. Old habits die hard.
When the Republicans were in charge, they presided over the most closed Congress in the history of our country, and they just can't break that old habit.
Well, you know what? We want to move on a Green New Deal, but we want to do it right. We want to do hearings, and you can have some of your friends and allies who are climate-change deniers come to testify against it if you want. We will bring experts and scientists because we believe in science. We will have them come to talk about why it is important and how we can improve it.
We look forward to that, but not under a closed rule with no hearings and no markups. This is embarrassing.
Madam Speaker, the United States has a unique role to play in fighting climate change, not just because we should be leading the way on innovation or because we have the largest economy anywhere but because we played a major role in furthering this crisis.
Between 1970 and 2013, the U.S. ranked number one in total carbon emissions. We released more carbon into the atmosphere than China, Japan, or any of the other 40 global nations. That is according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. I don't think we should be turning our back on a problem that we helped create.
It isn't a radical or partisan idea. Experts consider 1988 to be the year that the science behind climate change became widely known and accepted, and that is the year when a Republican Presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush, pledged that he would fight the greenhouse effect with the ``White House effect.''
We have come a long way since then, Madam Speaker, and I don't mean positively. There was a time when Republicans cared about the environment, when they understood that issues like the climate crisis were something that we needed to work on in a bipartisan way. Now they have become the party of climate change deniers.
This is the challenge of our generation. It is more important than petty partisanship.
President Trump seems obsessed with dismantling anything that Barack Obama has ever done. That doesn't mean that Congress should sit idly by when it comes at the expense of the future of our planet.
With climate change, public health is at risk and our national security is endangered. The President may be unwilling to rise to the challenge, but this Democratic majority is not. Congress shouldn't let another one of his temper tantrums ruin our planet.
Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on this rule and the underlying resolution.
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