Keystone XL Pipeline Act--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to speak
about an amendment that I will be offering as part of the Keystone
Pipeline legislation. It is an extremely simple, straightforward
amendment. It is a brief amendment, but it basically raises a very
fundamental issue, and that issue is whether the Senate will abide by
scientific evidence, will come down on the side of science as we debate
this enormously important issue of climate change.

The amendment is very brief, and I wish to read it and then explain
why I believe it is such an important amendment. This is what it says:

It is the sense of Congress that Congress is in agreement
with the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific
community that, No. 1, climate change is real; No. 2, climate
change is caused by human activities; No. 3, climate change
has already caused devastating problems in the United States
and around the world; No. 4, a brief window of opportunity
exists before the United States and the entire planet suffer
irreparable harm; and No. 5, it is imperative that the United
States transform its energy system away from fossil fuels and
toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy as rapidly as
possible.

That is it. That is the entire amendment. I would say that for the
scientific community around the world, there is nothing in that
statement that smacks of controversy. These are simple statements of
fact, agreed to by the overwhelming majority of scientists who have
written and studied climate change.

Climate change is, in fact, one of the great threats facing our
country and the entire planet. It has the capability of causing severe
harm to our economy, to the food supply, to access to water, and to
national security.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--the leading
international scientific body on this issue--reported yet again this
past fall that ``warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is
now evident from observations of increases in global average air and
ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising
global average sea level.''

More than 97 percent of the scientific community in the United States
and across the globe agrees with these findings, including, among many
other organizations, the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Meteorological
Society, and the American Geophysical Union, to name just a few. In
fact, at least 37 American scientific organizations, 118 international
scientific organizations and national academies, and 21 medical
associations all agree that climate change is real and is being caused
by human activities.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of 37
American scientific organizations, 135 international scientific
organizations, 21 medical associations, and some religious and teacher
organizations that understand that climate change is real and that it
is caused by human activity.

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me read from an excerpt of a letter
signed by virtually every major scientific organization in this country
that was sent to the U.S. Senate way back in 2009. This is what the
letter states:

Observations throughout the world make it clear that
climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research
demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human
activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are
based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary
assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of
the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is
strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad
impact on society, including the global economy and on the
environment. For the United States, climate change impacts
include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of
extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water
scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and a
disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The
severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase
substantially in the coming decades.

Let me repeat that one sentence:

The severity of climate change impacts is expected to
increase substantially in the coming decades.

We know that the Earth's climate is warming and warming quickly as a
result of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. The 2014 National
Climate Assessment reported:

The most recent decade was the nation's warmest on record.
U.S. temperatures are expected to continue to rise.

According to NOAA, October, August, June, and May were the hottest
months ever recorded. And 2012 was the warmest year on record in the
contiguous United States and saw at least 69,000 local heat records
set.

The consequence of this rapid and dramatic rise in global
temperatures--what does that mean? What is going to happen? The answer
is, it is going to mean more severe storms, more flooding and
destructive storm surges, heat waves, drought, forest fires, and the
inundation of water supplies and agricultural land with saltwater.

As the New York Times reported in August, droughts in the West and
Southwestern United States appear to be intensifying as a result of
climate change.

Over the past decade, droughts in some regions have rivaled
the epic dry spells of the 1930s and 1950s. . . . The country
is in the midst of one of the most sustained periods of
increasing drought on record.

China's heat wave a year and a half ago was the worst in at least 140
years. Fire-suppression costs in the United States have increased from
roughly $1 billion annually in the mid-1990s to an average of more than
$3 billion in the last 5 years, adjusted for inflation, reports the
National Climate Assessment.

Our oceans are not just warming, they are becoming more acidic,
threatening fish, coral reefs, and other sea life.

A study published in the Journal of Science reported:

Carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere are driving a
rate of change in ocean acidity, which is already thought to
be faster than at any time in the past 50 million years.

The authors warn that we may be entering an unknown territory of
marine ecosystem change.

Extreme storms are also becoming more common and more intense, with
extraordinary impacts. For example, when Typhoon Haiyan struck the
Philippines a year ago, it displaced over 4 million people, killed
thousands, and cost the country at least $15 billion in damages.

What will happen if we fail to cut back dramatically on greenhouse
gas emissions and climate change continues to accelerate? What will
that reality mean for our country and for the globe? The IPCC estimates
that without additional efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
``warming is more likely than not'' to exceed 4 degrees Celsius--7.2
degrees Fahrenheit--by the end of the century.

Let me repeat that. If we do not begin the process to dramatically
reverse carbon emissions and slow down the warming of this planet by
the end of the century, warming is more likely than not to exceed 4
degrees Celsius, which is 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in a planet
that is over 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

Similarly, just last year the White House released the National
Climate Assessment, emphasizing that global warming is already
happening and warning that global warming could exceed 10 degrees in
the United States by the end of the century--10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The World Bank, which is a pretty conservative organization, talked
about a world in which temperatures increase by just 4 degrees Celsius,
that that would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and
major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on many
systems, ecosystems, and associated services. This is the warning we
hear from the World Bank, which is a fairly conservative international
organization.
The IPCC reports that sea levels are likely to rise another 10 to 32
inches by the end of the century. Some studies have reported projected
increases of more than 6 feet during that time period.

As the New York Times reported, a rise of less than 4 feet would
inundate land on which some 3.7 million Americans live. Miami, New
Orleans, New York, and Boston are highly vulnerable.

Similarly, according to the IPCC, ``many small island nations are
only a few meters above present sea level. These states may face
serious threat of permanent inundation from sea-level rise.''

Reuters has reported that experts estimate that if the sea level
rises by 1 meter over the next 50 years, 20 million additional people
will be displaced from their land.

The Army Corps of Engineers has predicted that the entire village of
Newtok, AK, could be underwater by 2017 and more than 180 additional
Native Alaskan villages are at risk. Parts of Alaska are literally
vanishing.

As reported in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, U.S. Forest
Service researchers reported that wildfires are expected to increase 50
percent across the United States under a changing climate and over 100
percent in areas of the West by 2050. So huge increases in forest fires
are expected.

The World Health Organization reported in August that the number of
weather-related natural disasters has more than tripled since the
1960s, and more than 60,000 people now die each year in weather-related
natural disasters. By 2020 food production is estimated to drop by 50
percent in some African countries, and by 2090, the World Health
Organization anticipates, climate change will double the frequency of
drought and the duration will be six times longer.

In 2003 a heat wave in Europe killed an estimated 70,000 people. As a
study published in Nature Climate Change projects, however, Europe will
likely experience severe heat waves once every 5 years now, which is 10
times more frequent than just a decade ago.

The need to act quickly is profound and pronounced. In its fifth
assessment, the IPCC found that ``without additional mitigation efforts
beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the
end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe,
widespread, and irreversible impacts globally.''

In order to prevent ``irreversible and severe impacts,'' we must
quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep warming below
2 degrees Celsius, and to do that we must transform our energy system
away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable
energy.

In the face of this overwhelming evidence, in the face of deep
concerns all over this planet, what is the Senate going to do over the
next few weeks? Well, I hope very much that we do not go forward with
the Keystone Pipeline, which moves us exactly in the wrong direction by
expanding the production and transportation of some of the dirtiest
fossil fuel on this Earth. I think that would be a terrible mistake.
But maybe more importantly, I hope the Senate goes on record in
strongly supporting the overwhelming scientific evidence which tells us
loudly and clearly that climate change is real, that climate change is
caused by human activity and the emission of carbon, and that climate
change is already causing devastating problems in our country and
around the world.

We have a short window of opportunity in order to move dramatically
to reverse climate change and cut carbon, and we must transform our
energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and
sustainable energy.

I intend to offer an amendment which basically urges the entire U.S.
Senate to go on record in making it clear that they understand what
scientists are talking about. They are going to listen to the
scientific community, and they are going to take actions for which our
kids and our grandchildren will be proud of them so that we do not
leave them with a nation and a planet substantially less habitable than
the planet on which we were born.

With that, I want to thank Senator Bennet and Senator Carper for
cosponsoring this amendment. I hope we can have more cosponsors and I
look forward to seeing the adoption of this important amendment.

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