Veterans' Benefits Enhancement Act--Motion To Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

VETERANS' BENEFITS ENHANCEMENT ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued -- (Senate - April 22, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

EARTH DAY AND GLOBAL WARMING

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, 38 years ago this week, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a great environmentalist and a good friend of many of our colleagues who are still here, came to the Senate floor with a novel idea. He proposed one day each year to honor our planet, an occasion to rededicate ourselves to stewardship of the Earth and the fight against pollution. He called his idea Earth Day.

When Senator Nelson proposed the first Earth Day in 1970, our country's environmental outlook was grim. Smog choked the air of Los Angeles, New York, and other great American cities; many communities dumped raw sewage and untreated industrial waste in our greatest rivers, including the Mississippi and the Illinois and the Hudson. Polluted air and fouled water weren't the only challenges troubling our country. We had endured a series of tragic assassinations of great leaders, we were torn over a war in Vietnam, and we had seen civil rights riots and antiwar demonstrations in our streets. The Nation was divided and, frankly, losing the self-confidence for which Americans have always been known.

But Gaylord Nelson was an optimist. He believed that with imagination and dedication, despite all the problems going on in the world, we could attack at least one of our country's problems, and that was the problem of pollution. With the commitment of our people and the leadership from our Government, we could devise ways to clean up our rivers and our lakes and the air we breathe. He was right.

Since 1970, when Congress passed the Clean Air Act, we have greatly cut the amount of noxious substances in the air we breathe. Emissions of carbon monoxide have fallen by 50 percent since 1980, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, lead emissions are down 97 percent, and sulfur dioxide emissions have dropped by nearly 50 percent.

Since 1972, when the first clean water legislation passed, we have set high standards for water cleanliness and given our cities and towns the resources they need to stop dumping untreated waste. Our great rivers--the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Hudson--are healthier today than they were 30 years ago.

Now, this doesn't mean we don't have challenges with the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. As a member of the environmental committee, I know some of the problems we have seen with this administration in terms of rollbacks of some of these great strides. Nevertheless, we all know things have improved with the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act since Gaylord Nelson declared Earth Day.

On Earth Day 2008, however, we confront a new environmental challenge. It is a challenge of equal and perhaps greater magnitude. I am talking here about global climate change.

For several years, our country had a debate over whether climate change was real or some sort of hoax perpetuated by doomsayers. That debate is over. There is now an undeniable scientific consensus that the Earth is warming. Study after study demonstrates that global warming is real and that it is affecting us now.

Early last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report on the science of climate change. This report was produced by some 600 authors from over 40 countries. Over 620 expert reviewers and a large number of government reviewers also participated. This is a very cautious group of scientists with a very conservative process for meticulously reviewing the evidence and reaching their conclusions through consensus. What did they conclude? Well, they concluded that changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent.

Last November, the IPCC issued a followup report. It concluded that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal,'' based on observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures. It said that evidence from every continent shows dramatic changes in physical and biological systems, including melting of the permafrost, rising water temperatures, and changes in the habitat range of migratory animals.

So how did this all come about? Well, certain types of gases--most notably carbon dioxide but also methane and nitrous oxide--accumulate in the atmosphere and then absorb or trap the sun's heat as it bounces off the Earth's surface. The problem is that carbon dioxide doesn't dissipate quickly; it stays in the atmosphere for five decades or more, causing the Earth's temperatures to rise. This means that most of the carbon dioxide produced in the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and the 1980s--as I look at our pages, Mr. President, I realize many of them were not even born when this carbon dioxide was released--well, that carbon dioxide is still in our atmosphere today. And it means that carbon dioxide produced today will still be in our atmosphere in 2050 and beyond. All of that carbon dioxide has been trapping heat in our atmosphere. Over time, it makes global temperatures rise. In turn, sea levels rise--both because the water expands as the oceans warm and because melting glaciers and icecaps add more water.

Global warming is real, with enormous consequences for our world and for our economy. For example, here is a chart which shows the rising temperatures. Mr. President, 2006 was the hottest year ever in this country, capping a 9-year streak unprecedented in the historical record. The winter of 2006 was the warmest on record worldwide. Almost every State in our country is seeing higher temperatures.

You can see what we have here, with the coldest being 1, the warmest being 112. And you can see for several of the States it was the record warmest, and for most of the States it was much above normal, as in the Presiding Officer's State of New Jersey. Maybe you remember the year of 2006--it wasn't that long ago--and you can see how hot it truly was when you look at it from a worldwide perspective. It doesn't mean you won't have a year here or there that won't be normal, but when you look at the actual trend over the last decades, you see an increasing warming temperature.

Worldwide, glaciers are rapidly melting. In fact, almost everything frozen on our Earth is melting. A few months ago, it was reported that glaciers in the European Alps will be all gone by the year 2050. Experts believe that in 25 years there won't be a single glacier left in Glacier National Park. So if people are planning a vacation to visit Glacier National Park to see the glaciers, they better do it soon because experts predict that in 125 years there won't be any left.

Globally, sea levels have risen 4 to 10 inches over the past century. The frequency of extremely heavy rainfalls has increased throughout much of the United States.

The impact is especially dire in Greenland and the Arctic region. The temperature changes there have been the greatest, resulting in widespread melting of glaciers, thinning of the polar icecap, and rising permafrost temperatures. You can see here in our picture that since 1979, more than 20 percent of the polar icecap has melted away. There is the North Pole, and you see the Arctic sea boundary that we had in 1979, and now we have 20 percent melting of this icecap.

Well, I saw this firsthand, Mr. President, when I visited Greenland last summer with my colleagues from the Environment and Public Works Committee. Greenland has been called the canary in the coal mine for climate change. They have seen vast changes. We talked to local residents, and there are still more dogs than residents--more sled dogs--but we talked to some of the local residents who said they can remember the days when there was ice in their front yards, and now they are growing potatoes. They have lost the size of Texas and Arizona combined into the sea from the icecap in Greenland.

Other changes, such as the recent increase in the severity of hurricanes and other extreme or destructive weather events, are consistent with the kinds of changes scientists expect to occur on a warming planet. They are early indicators of even more dramatic climate shifts and economic damage that await us if we don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions and attack the problem of global warming. So here you have related economic losses, and these are, of course, from increased storms and wildfires.

I think we all remember well the wildfires in California. I remember this well because during the same time the wildfires were raging in California, we had a hearing in our Environment Committee where we had the commission on disease control testify. We noticed, when we looked at the written testimony, it seemed kind of chopped up. It turned out it had been edited by the administration. Among other things, of the parts that were edited out was a part about the effect climate change would have on disease and the mortality rates in our country. There was actually a part edited out that said it would lead to more wildfires in the Western States, just as the wildfires were raging in California.

So this is an example of the increased economic loss we have seen that are weather related in this country. You can see that from 1960 to 1969, and then you go up to 1988 to 1997, and of course I am sure you are going to see more now.

We have had fires in Minnesota and floods in Minnesota, and the people of our State are starting to see this in a very different way. In our State, one economic loss that isn't one of these hurricanes or fires is the decreasing levels of Lake Superior. That will be surprising to people who think sea levels are rising because Greenland's ice sheet is melting. Why would the level of our Great Lakes be going lower? They are going lower because the ice is melting more quickly, so the water evaporates, and Lake Superior is now at its lowest level in 80 years.

Now, you might think: Oh, Lake Superior is so cold, hardly anyone can go swimming anyway. Who cares? Well, it affects our economy in Minnesota because the barges are not able to come in. We have shipped something like 300 tons less, by my memory--we will have to correct the record if I am wrong--300 tons less of traffic because these barges cannot carry as much because the water level of Lake Superior is so low.

By that example, this is truly an issue that has finally moved out of the science labs and the classrooms and the seminar rooms and has entered the everyday conversations of people in my State. I hear it from hunters across Minnesota, who notice how our valuable wetlands are changing. I have heard it from the heads of our snow mobile associations, who testified at a forum I had with our Governor on climate change in January, because they have seen decreasing snow levels. I hear about it from ice fisherman because they have seen it takes longer for the ice to freeze and they can't put their fish houses out as early as they would like.

Just yesterday, USAToday had a story about the shrinking number of
moose in northern Minnesota. Biologists think that global warming is affecting the habitat of these moose and making them more vulnerable to parasites, causing an incredible reduction in the number of moose.

This is how real people in the real world are talking about this. They are worried about what is happening to their planet and the consequences that will have for all of us and our children and our grandchildren.

So the question is, How will we respond in Washington? I am actually going to give a talk on this every single week, Mr. President, up to our debate on this bill in June, and I figured a good day to start was with Earth Day. But just to summarize--and I will go into more detail in other floor remarks I will make--how will Washington respond?

In December, the Environment and Public Works Committee approved a landmark bipartisan bill to get our country moving in the fight against climate change. I thank my colleagues, Senators Warner and Lieberman, for their work on this legislation, and I thank Senator Boxer, the chairwoman of our committee, for her leadership in developing this bill and moving this bill through the committee.

This legislation is visionary, but it is also practical. The bill would, for the first time, set mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions, on greenhouse gas emissions. It would establish a cap-and-trade system to use market forces so that the private sector can reduce greenhouse gas pollution in the most efficient way possible.

And I can tell you, we have learned from experience. We did this with acid rain, and it was very successful. We have seen from what the European Union did what is good and bad, so we can learn from that experience and do, I would say, a better job in this country, if we can get this right.

This legislation, in its first title, also contains my proposal, the bill I introduced with Senator Snowe, for a carbon counter, which is a national greenhouse gas registry, because you can't fix a problem if you can't measure it. Right now, we have 33 States off on their own starting a climate registry, which shows how absurd the situation is getting. They want to act because they are hearing from the people in their States. They know they can't wait, so they have started their own climate registry, instead of what makes sense, which is a Federal registry. And that is the first title of this bill.

In a few weeks, we are going to bring the Lieberman-Warner bill to the floor, and we will have a chance to take a historic step on behalf of our country--in fact, on behalf of the entire world. As we prepare to consider this important legislation, there is something else we need to remember, and that is that global warming is, of course, a huge challenge, but it also presents opportunities for our country. It gives us the opportunity to develop new technologies, new jobs, and new industries. It gives us the opportunity to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which just hit another record of $117 per barrel this week. It gives us an opportunity to give consumers new, cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels. Whether it is an electric car, a hybrid car, or looking at what Brazil did with sugar cane, where they became energy independent, so they are not dependent on foreign oil, we know there are things we can do beyond what we are doing now with switchgrass, prairie grass, and all kinds of alternative technologies.

But we have to set the standards as a government so we can encourage that kind of investment. We are not going to have a silver bullet here. As we like to say in Minnesota, we will have silver buckshot. We are going to have a number of proposals and alternatives, but we have to get moving by setting the standards.

This is an opportunity that we must seize now. I am proud to celebrate Earth Day today, to join with my colleagues and millions of Americans in honoring our planet. But in the decades since Gaylord Nelson sponsored the first Earth Day, the occasion has often turned into a symbolic event, a day for teach-ins at our schools and rallies at our State capitols. I participated in them myself.

But today, 38 years after its inception, we have the opportunity to return to the original spirit of Earth Day and celebrate the occasion with action, the action of investing in the farmers and the workers of this country instead of the oil cartels of the Mideast; the action of finally doing something to set that investment in place so we can develop the next generation of new technology, as we did when we said we were going to put a man on the Moon. It was great to put a man on the Moon and beat Russia--and look at what came out of that: the CAT scan and infrared technology. I remember in the 1970s my family went on camping trips with those little chocolate space sticks that came out of that trip to the Moon--hundreds and hundreds of new technological developments because our Nation put its mind on one goal.

This is another time to take action. We will have a chance to pass this climate change legislation that is forward looking, that is bipartisan, and that is pragmatic. We will have the chance to answer the call of the people in this country--the little kids with the penguin buttons, the hunters of Minnesota who see the changes of their wetlands. They see the urgency of this issue. We have a chance to regain world leadership on the most pressing environmental challenge of our day. We will have a chance to take our place in a great tradition of environmental stewardship in the Senate and to renew the promise that Americans made on the first Earth Day, 38 years ago.

I yield the floor.

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