Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Madam President, I am on the floor for the 63rd consecutive week we have been in session to ask my colleagues to finally wake up to the threat of climate change. The evidence mounts of unprecedented and dangerous changes, from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to the recent warning from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The American people demand action in ever-greater numbers. Yet Congress continues to sleepwalk, lulled by special interest influence and polluter propaganda. The influence and propaganda are spread through an apparatus of denial. This apparatus is big and artfully constructed--phony-baloney organizations designed to look and sound as if they are real, messages honed by public relations experts to sound as if they are truthful, payroll scientists whom polluters can trot out when they need them. The whole thing is big and complicated enough that when we see its parts, we could be fooled into thinking it is not all connected. But it is just like the mythological Hydra: many heads, same beast. And this denial beast pollutes our democracy just as surely as its sponsors pollute our atmosphere and oceans. Some editorial pages spread the polluter party line so consistently that it appears they have gone over and actually joined the apparatus.
The climate denial network controls the political arm of the multinational corporations, the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Polluter-funded super PACs target officials who don't fall in line--interestingly, often Republicans, in an effort to purify the party in a coal-fired crucible.
The whole deniers' castle can look pretty daunting, but it is based on rejecting science and ignoring empirical evidence. That is a weak foundation. It won't stand. The castle is built on sand and its fall is inevitable. Remember from Apocrypha: ``But above all things Truth beareth away the victory.'' And it will.
There are cracks in the foundation already. Some leading news sources have begun to put climate denial into their policy against printing misinformation and discredited theories. They just won't print that nonsense. Many executives recognize the significance of climate change and are distancing their companies from the policies and politics of climate denial. They don't want any part of that nonsense. Many local officials are doing all they can to protect their communities from the effects of climate change. They know climate denial is nonsense.
It has been wrong that the climate change denial campaign has been so ignored by major media outlets. Media Matters found that all the major network Sunday TV talk shows in all of 2013 discussed climate change for a grand total, all combined, of 27 minutes. NBC News's "Meet the Press'' mentioned climate change once. When several of the Sunday shows discussed climate change on February 16 of this year for a grand total of 46 minutes combined, it was more climate coverage than in the past 3 years.
It has been wrong that polluters so often got their way on the editorial page. Whether through a desire to appear fair and balanced or a willful effort to help polluters, newspapers still publish editorials or letters to the editor that dispute consensus science, disparage scientists or journalists who report the truth about climate change, and exaggerate the costs of taking action to stop it. Often, their authors have direct ties to coal and oil interests, and rarely is the connection disclosed.
As we can see from this chart, some papers do it more than others. The denier champ is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, with eight denier letters in the first 10 months of 2013. That is one every 5 weeks. I think they have actually joined the denier apparatus and are now a part of the scheme, but they are on the wrong side of history.
On the right side is the Los Angeles Times, whose editorial page last year released a note from editor Paul Thornton announcing they would no longer print climate denial letters.
Thornton's note read:
I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying "there's no sign humans have caused climate change'' is not stating an opinion; it's asserting a factual inaccuracy.
Reddit is one of the Internet's most popular social and news Web sites, "the front page of the Internet.'' According to the Pew Research Center, 1 in every 17 American adults uses Reddit. Reddit science has 4 million subscribers. That is about twice the circulation of the New York Times. Reddit Science has banned posts on climate denial because, as its moderator, Dr. Nathan Allen, explained, ``We require submissions to [Reddit Science] to be related to recent publications in reputable peer-reviewed journals, which effectively excludes any climate denial.''
The L.A. Times and Reddit Science are not alone in seeing that the climate denier castle is built on lies. More and more American corporations are responding to the facts, understanding that they are ultimately responsible to their shareholders and customers. Major utilities--for example, PG&E, the Public Service Company of New Mexico, and Exelon--all quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after a chamber official called for putting climate science on trial like the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. The chamber may have been infiltrated and captured by the polluters, but major corporations get it: Coke and Pepsi, UPS and FedEx, GM and Ford, Google and Apple,
Walmart--we can go on and on. The denier castle is crumbling.
Many of the businesses getting serious about reducing carbon pollution are actually based in States that are represented in Congress by Members who won't take the problem seriously at all. Coca-Cola, headquartered in Georgia, says:
We recognize climate change is a critical challenge facing our planet, with potential impacts on biodiversity, water resources, public health and agriculture. ..... Beyond the effects on the communities we serve, we view climate change as a potential business risk, understanding that it could likely have direct and indirect effects on our business.
Texas- and Maryland-based Lockheed Martin states:
From 2007 through 2011, Lockheed Martin reduced its absolute carbon emissions by 30 percent, and continues to focus on carbon emission reductions by championing energy conservation and efficiency measures in our facilities.
Sprint, the mobile carrier headquartered in Kansas, gets it.
We understand that climate change is a critical issue and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an important goal. Because Sprint is a large corporation with thousands of locations, millions of customers and billions of dollars in operating costs, we have many opportunities to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
The denier castle is crumbling at the local level too. Scores of locally elected officials are fighting to slow climate change and protect their residents, even if in Congress their Congressman won't listen. One of those local leaders is Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, whom I met on my recent trip to Iowa. Iowans are taking climate change seriously, and Mayor Cownie is one of over 1,000 mayors represented on this map all across the country who have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Their pledge is to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets in their own cities and press their State governments and the Federal Government to enact meaningful greenhouse gas reduction policies.
Seventy-eight current and former mayors from Florida have signed on. With over 1,000 miles of coastline, Florida is at serious risk from sea-level rise. According to the World Resources Institute, of all the people and all the housing in America threatened by sea-level rise, 40 percent is in Florida.
Thirty-one former and current mayors from Texas have also signed on to the climate agreement. Texans are waking up to the threat of climate change. A recent poll showed that roughly 55 percent of Texans say the United States should reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of whether other countries do the same.
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, our former Republican colleague from this Chamber, understands the benefits of cleaner energy. He fought to keep in Kansas his State's renewable portfolio standard, which encourages utilities to ramp up generation of renewable electricity. The standard has already helped create thousands of Kansas jobs.
Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky, a coal-producing State, has taken a commonsense stance on climate change that defends the well-being of his State. He said:
[W]e have to acknowledge our commitment to address greenhouse gas emissions, while stressing the need for a rational, flexible regulatory approach.
I have to say I agree with him. I stand ready and many of us stand ready on this side to work with coal-State colleagues to ease their transition away from a polluting fossil fuel economy.
When we think of what the costs are going to be to all of us of failing to address this problem, the cost of easing the transition for those who will suffer from it is easily worth undertaking. But to do any of that, we first have to break through the barricade of lies built around Congress in Washington. We can't keep pretending this isn't real. That is why once a week for over 60 weeks I have come to the floor to press this point. It is real. It is happening. It is not going to go away if we ignore it.
There is one thing and one thing only that prevents our action, and that one thing is the politics of the Republican Party. There is one thing and one thing only that makes this the politics of the Republican Party, and that one thing is the special influence of the polluters. But against the relentless facts and science, against Mother Nature's relentless truth, that castle is built on sand and will fall. But above all things, truth beareth away victory.
For the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our future, for the sake of our honor, it is time for us to wake up.
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