Nomination of Leigh Martin May to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I found the discussion edifying, and it was time that was well spent.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Mr. President, we are now reconvened after the election recess, and I am back on the Senate floor for the 79th consecutive week of Senate session to draw the attention of this body to the growing threat of global climate change.

I will first congratulate my Republican colleagues on achieving a majority in the Senate in the coming Congress. With control of the House and a majority in the Senate, Republicans now have great power in Congress. As the well-known saying goes, however, "with great power comes great responsibility.''

The hallmark of the Republican minority was obstruction--often pointless obstruction, obstruction for obstruction's sake. A rational and fact-based focus on the issues has not been, to put it mildly, their hallmark. That was their choice, and it is the privilege of the minority party in the Senate to behave that way. The minority party in the Senate can choose to simply make themselves antagonists with no policy responsibility. I have to say they did an amazing job of that. But now my colleagues have a majority, and they have the power and the responsibility that comes with that beginning in January.

The touchstone of responsibility is to be responsible. I will concede the Senate could actually become a better place if the new majority, when it comes in, chooses to be responsible and the uniquely partisan obstruction that characterized their role as the Senate minority passes away as they move into the majority.

A key test to this, however, will be whether the Republicans here in the Senate choose to become responsible about climate change; about what carbon pollution is doing all around us, to our atmosphere and to our oceans; about what happens when carbon concentrations in the atmosphere that have varied between 170 and 300 parts per million for as long as we have been a species on this planet suddenly surge to 400 and beyond; about what happens when scientific laws that have been understood since Abraham Lincoln was riding around Washington, DC, in his top hat begin to impose their inexorable effects upon this world.

In the minority, they pretended it wasn't real. Some even said climate change was a hoax. Many said they were not scientists and so they couldn't do anything about it. I would note they are not gynecologists, either, but many have no hesitation about trying to regulate that area.

No one would work on doing anything serious about carbon dioxide emissions. It was not always this way. Republican Senator John Warner was the lead sponsor of the Warner-Lieberman climate bill. Republican Senator John McCain ran for President on a solid climate change platform. Republican Senator Susan Collins coauthored an important cap-and-dividend climate bill with Senator Cantwell. Republican Senator Mark Kirk voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the House of Representatives. Republican Senator Jeff Flake was an original cosponsor of a carbon fee bill led by former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis that would have placed a $15-per-ton fee on carbon pollution in 2010, more than $20 per ton in 2015, and $100 per ton in 2040. Well, all of that ended. That and more ended shortly after the Citizens United decision when for the first time our elections were flooded with polluter money and flooded with dark money, which is probably polluter money, but because it is dark and anonymous, we don't really know.

So say you are not a scientist. Isn't the responsible thing to sound out scientific opinion? Scientific opinion about climate change is now firmly settled. Climate change is caused by the massive carbon pollution we have unleashed. Every major scientific society in our country knows this and has said so. Here is a list. If my colleagues want to, they can check with them. This is a list from a letter dated October 21, 2009--more than 5 years ago. We have been fiddling around on this since the science was so clear.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I could start with the body that was chartered 150 years ago, actually, to provide us independent, scientific, objective advice--the National Academy of Sciences. If that doesn't suit, try the American Association for the Advancement of Science or the American Physical Society or the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union or the American Medical Association or the American Chemical Society or the Geological Society of America. If none of my colleagues are scientists, check it out. Ask the responsible scientists. Ask the leading scientific societies.

If my colleagues don't believe the measurements--measurements confirm what the scientists know. Sea level is rising, and the rise is accelerating. We measure that with a glorified yardstick. It is already up nearly 10 inches at the Newport Naval Station since the 1930s when we in Rhode Island had the devastating hurricane of 1938. It is similar at Fort Pulaski in Georgia. Go visit Miami Beach, where they just spent hundreds of millions of dollars installing huge, 14,000 gallon-per-minute pumps to keep the city dry as the rising tides flood in.

The ocean is warming. We measure that with a thermometer. Narragansett Bay is nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, mean water temperature, than 50 years ago. That is an ecosystem shift, and it has wreaked havoc with our winter flounder catch, for instance. Warmer waters aren't just in Rhode Island. They have brought the snook--a game fish from the Florida Keys--up into Georgia waters.

The ocean is more acidic, and it is getting more acidic at the fastest rate measured looking back millions of years in the geologic record. If my colleagues doubt that the ocean is acidifying, ask the oyster growers in the Pacific Northwest and Maine. Ask the scientists who study Alaska's salmon fishery about what is happening to the pteropod, a key food source for salmon.

Here is my challenge to my Republican colleagues who say they are not scientists: Ask the scientists. Ask the scientists at your own home State universities. And ask the folks, by the way, employed by your outdoor industries--the people who see the changes happening around them. Ask your park rangers. Ask your forest rangers.

If a colleague is from North Carolina, ask the scientists at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences.

If a colleague is from Colorado, ask the scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

If a colleague is from Iowa, ask the scientists at the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa.

If a colleague is from Arizona, ask the scientists at the University of Arizona, which hosts the Climate Assessment for the Southwest Program.

If a colleague is from Florida, ask the scientists at the University of Florida's Climate Institute.

If a colleague is from Texas, ask the scientists at the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M. The Aggies get climate change. Check it out.

If a colleague is from New Hampshire, ask biologist Eric Orff, who worked for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department for 30 years, what is happening to the moose. Ask Mike Bartlett of the New Hampshire Audubon Society what is happening to the purple finch, the State bird.

If a colleague is from Utah, ask the Park City Foundation and, while colleagues are at it, employees at Alta Ski Area, Canyons Resort, Deer Crest, Deer Valley, or Park City Mountain Resort what they foresee for that industry.

If a colleague is from Idaho, ask University of Idaho Professor Jeffrey Hicke how rising temperatures let loose the bark beetle and decimated almost 1,000 square miles of the iconic mountain pine forests.

If my colleagues like big business, if they think only the private sector knows anything, then ask the big property casualty reinsurers such as Munich Re or Swiss Re, who have billions of dollars at stake and have to get this right.

If a colleague is from Georgia, ask the folks from Coca-Cola. If a colleague is from Arkansas, ask the folks from Walmart. If a colleague is from North Carolina, ask the folks at $30 billion clothing maker VF Corporation. They all have a lot of money riding on getting this right, and they are making decisions based on business, not on ideology. So ask them.

If my colleagues trust the military, ask ADM Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, who says climate risk is the most dangerous long-term challenge we face in the Pacific.

If my colleagues are looking for some pretty good high-level scientists, they might want to ask NASA and NOAA. Remember NASA? They put a rover safely on the surface of Mars, and they are driving it around on Mars. Do my colleagues think they might know what they are talking about?

If my colleagues need to hear it from Republicans, ask former Republican Treasury Secretaries, such as George Shultz and Hank Paulson. Ask former Republican EPA Administrators such as Bill Ruckelshaus, Christine Todd Whitman, William Reilly, and Lee Thomas. Ask James Brainard, the Republican mayor of Carmel, IN. Ask Bob Dixon, the Republican mayor of Greensburg. Ask Betty Price, the Republican mayor of Fort Worth, TX. Ask Republican mayor Sylvia Murphy and county commissioner George Neugent of Monroe County, FL.

If my colleagues are not scientists, just ask. Do your homework. Exercise this new great responsibility that will come with the great power you have won. But don't pretend climate change isn't real. Even your own young voters know better than that. A majority of Republican voters under age 35 think a politician who denies climate change is ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. Those were the words checked off in the poll. To paraphrase Michael Corleone from that great movie, "Don't tell me it isn't real, because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.

To our Republicans, I say I want to be your best friend in all of this, the kind of best friend who tells you when you are in no shape to drive and should hand over the keys until you are sober enough to drive safely even if it makes you mad to hear it, the kind of friend who will tell you the truth you need to hear but don't want to hear. And let me say, friends don't let friends deny climate change.

I know the big carbon polluters want this issue to be ignored. But responsibility is knowing when to tell even your friends no. Responsibility is doing what is factual and is based in real science and measurement. Responsibility is doing what is right for your State and for your country in the long run, not just what rewards your supporters--even those really big supporters--in the short run.

Maybe as their friends you might even want to have a little conversation with them because this is only going one way. As Pope Francis just said, God is not "a magician with a magic wand.'' He put laws of the universe, laws of nature in place, and we don't get a pass on them just because it is politically convenient. How long does ExxonMobil think it can pursue unsustainable fossil fuel goals by fixing the politics? Laws of nature can't be bought or repealed. The Koch brothers are rich enough to buy virtually anything, but even they can't buy new laws of nature. BP went and quietly shut down its solar and wind programs, but carbon still does what carbon does. As your friends, they might need a little intervention from you.

Just so you know, I am not going anywhere. I have homes and businesses being swept into the ocean in my State. I have fishermen who tell me it is getting weird out there in Rhode Island Sound, that the lobsters and fish aren't where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there, that they are catching the kinds of fish their fathers and grandfathers never saw in their nets.

It is getting weird out there. I am not going anywhere. My State is small and coastal, and worse, bigger storms put us in serious danger. I am not ever going to ignore that. I am never going to walk away from this issue. I will never deny what Rhode Islanders see right in front of their faces and what all our expert warnings tell us is only going to get worse.

If you are going to be responsible and not just powerful, you won't deny this issue and walk away either. I promise you this. One way or another, we are going to get this done.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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