Susquehanna Gateway National Heritage Area Act

Mr. President, Theodore Roosevelt said:

Of all the questions which can come before this Nation,

short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great

war, there is none which compares in importance with the

great central task of leaving this land even a better land

for our descendants than it is for us.

We should reconsider those words now in the context of carbon pollution--carbon pollution which is a direct assault to our rural resources, on our farming, fishing, and forestry. In Oregon we had three worst-ever droughts we have faced over a 13-year period, devastating to the farmers, their families, and the farm economy.

In fishing, everyone who goes to their favorite trout stream knows that if there is no snowpack, the stream is warmer and smaller in summer and a poor place to fish, and certainly worse for iconic salmon and steelhead.

The forests are burning, from pine beetles, which spread throughout the land in the context of not having those cold snaps in the winter, and in the context of tinderbox conditions on the forest floor. Those forest fires have been some of the worst we have seen in a century, and more is yet to come. We cannot wait for 20 or 30 or 40 years to act.

We cannot wait for 2 or 3 or 4 years to act. The carbon pollution is real and the damage is real. It is time for this Chamber to act.

Mr. President, I appreciate so much the comments of my colleague from Maine, bringing his insights and his expertise through the years and his stories about how the land and waters of his home State are being impacted and our responsibilities to the broader planet.

I am reminded of the comment that Henry David Thoreau said, which is, ``What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'' His comment now seems very much ahead of the time and the context of the issue we are discussing tonight.

Then we have the insight from Theodore Roosevelt, who said, in terms of our responsibility, ``Of all the questions which can come before this Nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendents than it is for us.''

But right now we are failing that challenge. Carbon pollution is a direct threat to our resources on this planet, a direct threat to our forests, to our fishing, and to our farming. So I am going to take a little bit of time tonight to talk about those aspects.

I would like to start by taking a look at our forests. Indeed, if there is something that symbolizes some of the dramatic impacts carbon pollution is making, it is the spread of the pine beetle.

This is a picture of a forest devastated not by fire, not by drought, but by the spread of the pine beetle. I have gone up in a plane and flown over a vast zone of the Cascades known as the red zone, where the pine beetle has killed thousands of acres in my home State. They start out looking red because the needles turn red. That is why it is called the red zone. Then the needles fall off, and you have essentially this brown desolate remainder of what was once a thriving forest.

Timber is something that is very close to our hearts in the State of Oregon. So many of us--myself included--are children of the timber industry. My father was a millwright--that is the mechanic who keeps the sawmill operating--a job he absolutely loved. He used to say that if he did his job right, then everyone had a job to come to, and the mill made money and everyone was happy as long as the machinery ran. Oregon is still the top American producer of plywood and softwood lumber. The industry certainly is a big component of our gross domestic product in my State.

When this happens, then not only do we have zones that are not good environmental zones, but they are not good timber zones either. It is a lose-lose situation. It happens, and it is spreading for one reason: The winters are not as cold as they used to be, and the pine beetle is very happy about that because it is not knocked back and largely wiped out with cold snaps each winter, and it is easy to spread much more quickly, and it is able to spread to much higher elevations.

Then these dead forests become a component in another huge problem, which is forest fires.

This picture you will see in a moment is a picture of the Biscuit Fire in 2002--a wall of flames.

The summer before last, I went down and flew about the State of Oregon to look at the innumerable forest fires that were burning. One of the reasons we had so many forest fires--10 years after this fire-- was because the floor of the forest was so dry. It is estimated

that a 2-by-4 that you see in a Home Depot has about a 6-percent moisture content. The material on the floor of the forest was even drier than that. Then you throw in far more lightning strikes due to the pattern of the weather, and you have this magic combination, this combination of tinderbox dryness, pine beetle devastation, and then lightning strikes. What you have are some of the largest fires we have ever seen. Indeed, the Biscuit Fire in 2002--500,000 acres. Half a million acres. Fast-forward 10 years. In 2012, 750,000 acres burned in my State. With the combination of the ongoing effects of carbon pollution--that being pine beetle damage, more lighting strikes, and far drier, drought-driven fire seasons--it is going to get worse and worse.

The seven largest fire years since 1960 have all happened in the last 13 summers. It is pretty amazing to recognize how that transition is occurring. If we think about projecting into the future, the National Research Council predicts that for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit temperature increase, the area burned in the western forests will quadruple.

This led our Energy Secretary to tell me a few weeks ago about a draft of a study that says the western forests will be dramatically impacted, devastated in the course of this century due to these factors.

We have a triple threat, that of drought and bark beetles, increased temperatures, and the result is decimation of an incredibly important world resource, our forests.

But carbon pollution is not only an attack on our forests, it is also an attack on our farming. Indeed, drought across the U.S. is a huge and growing threat to agriculture.

In the State of Oregon, we have had the three worst-ever droughts in the Klamath Basin in a 13-year period. It was 2001, then the worst-ever drought of 2010, then the worst-ever drought of 2013--and now we are looking at the possibility of a drought even worse than any of those-- the worst-ever drought of 2014. Hopefully, we will have a lot of precipitation and a lot of snow in the coming weeks and that won't be the case, but if we are looking at the snowpack, it is possible that we will have the fourth worst ever in a 14-year period. It is absolutely devastating to our rural economy, absolutely devastating.

Let's look at the impact coming from smaller snowpacks. Snowpacks are a significant piece of this puzzle. If we were to look at the Pacific Northwest, we would basically draw a circle like this. What we see are these zones where there is a huge percentage decrease in those snowpacks. The snowpacks then provide far less irrigation and water available, and therefore dry their foundation for the summer drought, which then has a devastating impact on agriculture. This is not good for our farming families, and it is certainly not good for our farm economy.

Those snowpacks have another impact. I am going to skip forward to the impact on our streams and our fish.

Folks who like to fish for trout and go to their summer streams know that it is going to be better if the stream is large and cold than if it is small and warm. But the last of those snowpacks means that the summer streams are smaller and warmer, and they are very bad for trout. That is what we are seeing in this particular picture: dead trout from the Deschutes River. Last fall thousands of fish died in the river from low flows attributed to drought.

Clearly, not only is it bad for trout, it is bad for salmon; it is bad for steelhead. It is certainly bad for our fishing industries.

Let's turn to another part of our fishing industry, and this is an impact that we see over on the coast of Oregon.

I specifically want to take a look at the impact that we see on our oysters. Oysters have to fixate a shell at the beginning of their life. They are called oyster seed, the baby oyster. We have hatcheries, and those hatcheries have been having challenges. The Whiskey Creek oyster hatchery in Oregon has had a big problem. Indeed, at one point it had a huge impact.

I will read part of an article:

Peering into the microscope, Alan Barton thought the baby

oysters looked normal, except for one thing: They were dead.

Slide after slide, the results were the same. The entire

batch of 100 million larvae at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish

Hatchery had perished.

It took several years for the Oregon oyster breeder and a

team of scientists to find the culprit: a radical change in

ocean acidity.

This is why, because when we have greater carbon pollution in the air, that carbon then is absorbed by the ocean, a significant portion of it. That dissolved carbon dioxide combines with water and becomes H2CO3, otherwise known as carbonic acid.

That carbonic acid is preventing the baby oysters from forming their shells. We can think of this as the canary in the coal mine for our world's oceans because if baby oysters are having a challenge forming their shells because of a 30-percent increase in acidity since the start of the Industrial Revolution, what other impacts are there going to be along in the shellfish world and the food chains that depend on those shellfish, not to mention the impact on our shellfish farmers.

I was noting this in Washington State and I was told: You know, our oyster farmers are experiencing a similar problem, and they are going to Hawaii and to Asia. This is not only an Oregon problem.

The manager of the hatchery in Oregon, David Stick, said in an article:

I do not think people understand the seriousness of the

problem. Ocean acidification is going to be a game-changer.

It has the potential to be a real catastrophe.

Let's recognize another part of the planet that is having a problem with warmer waters and ocean acidification; that is, our coral reefs. We have, in Oregon, a researcher at Oregon State university. His name is Professor Hixon. Professor Hixon is recognizing that the coral reefs around the world are in trouble. As he said in a presentation, he studied dozens of reefs. They are his children. Then he said: My children are dying. One of the key reasons is acidification, but another is the oceans are getting warmer.

I have a chart showing the warming of the ocean. The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide, and they are also absorbing heat. As they become warmer, they create a real problem for coral reefs. Coral is an animal. We may think of it as a plant, but it actually is an animal, and it lives in a symbiotic relationship with a type of algae.

They depend on each other. What happens when the water gets warmer around a coral reef is that the algae start to multiply in a fashion that overwhelms the coral.

The coral, in an effort to survive, ejects the algae, throws them out of the host. Then the coral, having ejected the algae, dies. This is called bleaching, and it is something we are seeing in coral reefs around the world. That is why Professor Hixon noted: My children are dying.

I will state something else about the warming that is occurring, and this is more about warming that is occurring in terms of the temperature of our planet. It is affecting our recreation industry and our snow industry.

I am going to start by taking a look at what is driving that in terms of a chart related to carbon dioxide. Specifically, this chart shows the dramatic change that has gone on. We see the fluctuations in carbon dioxide over hundreds of thousands of years, into the modern time and then, boom, 400 parts per million of carbon pollution.

What does this come from? It comes from burning fossil fuels.

This carbon--carbon dioxide, as a component of the atmosphere, traps heat. To summarize, our planet has a fever. The temperature is going up. Let's take a look at how that carbon dioxide correlates with temperatures.

We have, in this case, showing since 1880--basically, the start of the Industrial Revolution--the increase in temperature on our planet, the global surface mean temperature. We have seen a significant increase.

If we want to find a way that this impacts our economy, let's take a look at how it impacts our recreation industry. This is an article that I grabbed from the New York Times. It is a lengthy article, but it is the title and the picture that I really wanted to show. It is from the Sunday Review and it is called ``The End Of Snow.''

This article basically documents how our ski resorts around our planet are suffering because they don't have as much snow as they used to have. There is a picture of artificial snow being created and put on the slope. It notes how much energy this requires, how many dollars it costs to provide that energy,

how this is making many of our resorts not feasible, and how many of them will go out of the business. This is just another angle on the impact that carbon dioxide is having, in this case, on our recreation industry.

Of course, it is having other impact on our recreation industry. When we think of those smaller streams, we can think of fewer kayaks, for example, and rafting companies operating.

Let's turn from these multitudinous impacts. First, before we return to recognizing that we have the power to take on carbon pollution, let's recognize when folks say isn't that global warming issue about some computer programmer using some assumption and some model. Isn't there some dispute about it; is it real.

Put all of that aside. We don't need a computer model to show us the impact from the pine beetle. We don't need a computer model to show us the impact on our trout streams. We don't need a computer model to show us the impact today on droughts. We don't need a computer model to show us impact on forest burning. We don't need a computer model to show us the impact on our coral. We don't need a computer model to show us the impact on the oyster industry, and we don't need a computer model to show us the impact on our snow-based recreational activities and the industries that are associated with it.

In other words, carbon pollution is here and now. Global warming is here and now. It is making an impact wherever we look. We can feel it, we can touch it, we can see it, and we can smell it. It is here, and it is our responsibility, our responsibility as American citizens, our responsibility as policy leaders in this esteemed Chamber of the Senate to take on this issue.

There is so much we can do because it boils down to this. We have to replace our appetite for fossil fuels with renewable fuels, renewable energy. We can do that. We can do that in a host of ways.

I will start. Let me start by noting a little bit about the growth of solar energy. When one realizes this chart is just from 2001 to 2013, it is phenomenal the deployed amount of installed capacity in megawatts in solar energy. From 2012 to 2013, we have more than 3,000 additional megawatts of energy, solar energy, solar potential, deployed.

A similar explosion of renewable energy is happening in the source of wind. Let's take a look at that.

We have deployed capacity in wind energy. If we were to recognize that, again, from 2001 to 2013 there was a huge growth in the industry--and I want to point out a particular factor here going from 2011 to 2012. This large bump on the chart was 13,000 megawatts of installed capacity and wind energy in 1 year. The next year there was only 1,000.

The difference, as pointed out by one of my colleagues earlier on this floor, is the difference in tax credits, of consistently available production tax credits that the wind industry can depend on.

We give all kinds of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Why can't we create a steady, reliable source to promote renewable energy to help replace those fossil fuels. We have this policy potential in our hands, and we need to exercise it. There are many other forms of renewable energy. There is offshore wind, there is geothermal energy, and there is wave energy. Oregon has some of the best winds for offshore wind energy and waves for wave energy, but we already have the ability through the technologies we have today to dramatically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.

What this chart shows is that in different parts of the country the mix between biomass and geothermal and wind onshore, wind offshore, wave energy and solar energy, concentrated solar power energy would be different in different parts of the country, but everywhere around the country there is the potential to essentially replace our appetite for fossil fuels.

Then there is the conservation side. We can certainly do a tremendous amount in our fuel standards for cars, a tremendous amount in our fuel standards for trucks, and a significant amount in terms of energy- saving retrofits to our buildings.

In the farm bill we just passed, we have a program for low-cost loans for energy-saving retrofits, and that program--the Rural Energy Savings Program--will help retrofits occur in commercial buildings and residential buildings, and it will allow people to pay back the loan on their electric bill. Often, they will be able to pay back that loan simply with the savings in energy--electricity consumption--from the changes they make to their building. So it is a win-win--creating jobs, saving energy, yet being paid for without much additional expense for the consumer.

All of these possibilities exist and more. It is our challenge as policymakers to take on this issue, to work on how we can generate electricity with far fewer fossil fuels, how we can conserve electricity in transportation. How do we conserve electricity and other fuels? In fact, in both cases--transportation and heating our homes, energy consumed in our buildings--how do we do this with far fewer fossil fuels and do it with renewable energy?

I applaud my colleagues for coming here tonight to raise this issue and say we must come together and take on these challenges. My colleague from Delaware is about to speak and share some stories from his experiences that bear on this, but every Senator in this Chamber can talk about issues from their home State and where they see the impact of carbon pollution and call upon us, call upon our moral responsibility to tackle this issue.

With that, I yield the floor to my colleague.

Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from Oregon, Senator Merkley, who has done a tremendous job laying out the scientific case, the compelling economic case, the cultural case, and the global case for why we here in the Senate need to wake up, need to listen to the indisputable evidence of what climate change is doing in our home States, to our country, and around the world.

Mr. President, even now as we speak in this Chamber, my own three children--Maggie, Michael, and Jack--are asleep at home. And as I reflected on this past summer, I was struck by something--an experience we had--that was a simple and telling reminder of the steady changes wrought by climate change in our Nation.

Last summer we took a family vacation--a trip--to Glacier National Park. For those who have had the opportunity to hike in this majestic national park in Montana, it is the site of many striking and beautiful scenes, but there was one hike we took in particular that stayed with me. It was a hike to historic Grinnell Glacier--a glacier that is by many photographs over decades documented in its steady receding. In fact, since 1966 it has lost nearly half of its total acreage. We took a long and winding hike up the trail that takes you to Grinnell Glacier. You can't quite see until you come up over the last rise that most of what is left of Grinnell Glacier in the summers today is a chilly pool of water.

For my daughter Maggie and for my sons Mike and Jack, as I look ahead to the long-term future, I think we all have to ask ourselves this question: How many more changes are we willing to accept being wrought on creation, on this Nation, and on the world by the steady advance of climate change?

I know we can't simply take the examples of things such as Grinnell Glacier or what to me seemed a striking change in the cap of Mount Kilimanjaro. I first climbed it in 1984 and visited it again last year. There is a striking change, a visually powerful change. These aren't scientific.

There are lots of other arguments, perhaps, as to why these two particular glaciers have retreated, but I still remember hearing a presentation at the University of Delaware by Dr. Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, a glaciologist who presented a very broad and I thought very compelling case based on ice cores for the actual advance of climate change over many decades.

In fact, I see my colleague from Rhode Island has a photographic history of Grinnell Glacier in Montana's Glacier National Park, so the point I was just making in passing he is able to illustrate here. That is as of 10 years ago. The glacier has retreated even further from that. But this striking glacier from 1940 is now almost completely gone in just one generation.

This and so many other glaciers that were monuments in our national parks are today receded or altogether gone.

Well, I think we have to ask ourselves fundamentally, what is our path forward? We have heard from other Senators. Tim Kaine of Virginia spoke about the importance of innovation, and Angus King, the Senator from Maine, spoke about the importance of markets and of making sure our inventions and innovations in trying to solve these problems are also shared internationally. I think these are great and important insights.

One of the things I wanted to bring to the floor today first was insights from my own home State of Delaware, where our Governor, Jack Markell, impaneled a sea level rise advisory committee starting in 2010 that looked hard at how climate change might affect my home State.

At just 60 feet, Delaware has the lowest mean elevation of any State in the country, and that already makes it more susceptible to sea level rise than almost any State in the country. In my State of Delaware, we have seen and will continue to see the impact of climate change on our businesses, our communities, and our local environment. As the sea level rises, we are seeing the effects more and more.

Sea level rises essentially for two reasons. First, as the planet's ice sheets melt--the much larger sheets than Grinnell Glacier--they add to the amount of water in the ocean. Second, saltwater actually expands as it warms as well. So as the planet's average temperature has steadily risen, so too has the level of its saltwater seas.

The fact that the Earth's oceans are rising each year isn't new information. It has been rising as long as we have been keeping track. But what is really jarring is that rate of rise is increasing and increasing significantly. When the data was tracked from 1870 to 1930, the sea level was rising at a rate of 4 inches per 100 years. Over the next 60 years it rose at a rate of 8 inches per 100 years--more than double. In just the last 20 years the sea level has been rising at a strikingly more rapid rate of 12.5 inches per 100 years. The water is rising, and in Delaware it is rising fast.

The land itself in my State is also actually sinking. There is actually a documented vertical movement of the Earth's crust under the mid-Atlantic coast. It is called subsidence. It has been happening in Delaware slowly but gradually since the ice age at a pace of just 2 millimeters of elevation every year. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up to another 4 inches over the century.

So we have the water rising and the land sinking, making climate change and sea level rise--specifically for my home State--a very real issue.

A wide array of scientists have studied this and its impact on Delaware, and they have developed three models for a future scenario. In the conservative model, by the year 2100 the sea level in Delaware will have risen about 1.5 feet. In another model, the water off Delaware rises another full meter. In another and the most disconcerting model, it is 1.5 meters or about 5 feet. Unfortunately, at present, this broad group of scientists--inside and outside of government--are estimating that is the most likely scenario.

Let's make this real. Here is a projection of these three different scenarios in one area of Delaware. This is Bowers Beach. This shows how now this is a well-established beach community. The most conservative model, we still have something of the land; in the middle, it is completely cut off here from the mainland; and then in the most likely, sadly, given the most current evidence, there is literally nothing left except a little sandbar out by itself in the Delaware Bay. That gives one example of why the difference between these three scenarios matters so much. Unfortunately, there is no scenario in which Bowers Beach is still a viable beachfront community by the end of this century. This beach community of Bowers Beach is very close to Dover Air Force Base and ends up underwater.

Now let's take a look at South Wilmington. The city in which I live is Wilmington, DE, and South Wilmington is a neighborhood in the largest city in our State. As the water rises in the Atlantic Ocean, it also rises up the Delaware Bay, the Delaware River, and the Christina River, which runs right through most of my home county, Newcastle County, and rises in the Peterson Wildlife Refuge too.

The impacts here are potentially devastating. We are talking about water 1.5 feet higher than what Delaware experienced during Superstorm Sandy--not for a brief storm surge but each and every day. Again, take a look at today the conservative, the middle, and the most likely, most aggressive scenario in which virtually all of South Wilmington is underwater by the end of this century. The calculation of whether we are hit with a half a meter, a full meter, or 1.5 meters of sea rise comes down to the rate of acceleration of climate change globally, and it leaves for us a central and so far unanswered question: whether we try to slow the rate at which climate change is affecting our planet and maybe somehow turn the tide. This is the part of climate change policy called mitigation.

Priority one in this strategy is cutting the emissions we are pumping into our atmosphere. To do that, we can and must diversify our energy sources and reduce our dependence on polluting fossil fuels. Clean energy technology, energy efficiency programs, public transportation, and more will help cut down on these emissions, but it will require a global effort in order to avoid or minimize local impacts.

The second part of climate change policy is adaptation based on an acceptance of the reality that our climate is changing and will have real effects on our planet and all of our communities. The truth is that even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today--if we shut down powerplants, stopped driving cars, stopped using gas-powered farm equipment, trains, and ships, and all the rest--the amount of greenhouse gases, of CO2 and others already in the atmosphere would still take many years to dissipate. Changes in the world's climate are at this point inevitable. It is already happening and affecting communities, and we can expect these impacts to intensify as the rate of climate change continues to accelerate. We can modify our behavior to prevent those effects from being catastrophic. We can and should make better choices now to prevent disaster later.

In Delaware, for example, we have had two laws on the books for now 40 years that have helped us adapt. The first was championed in the 1970s by a Republican Governor, Russ Peterson, a hero of mine and of our Governor's and others. It is called the Coastal Zone Act, and passing it cost him his career in politics. It prohibited future industrial development on a long strip of coastal land, allowing the State and Federal government to preserve it and reduce the impacts of flooding and coastal erosion. Ultimately, in the long run, Governor Peterson has been proven a visionary in preserving this vital barrier all along Delaware's coast.

The second law empowered the State to protect and replenish the State's beaches, including the beaches on Delaware Bay, which are often overlooked. This has allowed our State to build a berm and dune system that protects infrastructure and protects property from being washed away.

More important than these significant landmark laws of 40 years ago, today, instead of running away from the science, Delaware's leaders have embraced it. The State agency that manages environmental issues for Delaware--known as DNREC and ably led by secretary Collin O'Mara-- has taken the lead on a governmentwide project to assess the State's vulnerability to sea level rise and, as I mentioned, recommend options for adaptation.

Delaware's Sea Level Rise Committee spent 18 months looking at 79 different statewide resources--roads, bridges, schools, fire stations, railroads, wetlands, people and their homes and businesses--and layered all of this onto maps to show just how far the water would reach at different models for sea level rise.

If the sea level does get to 1.5 meters, we lose more than 10 percent of our State. The water claims 20,000 residential properties, significant percentages of wetlands, farms, highways, and industrial sites. We would lose 21 miles of our Northeast corridor rail lines to flooding, shutting down the vital Northeast corridor that transports so many millions every year.

The Port of Wilmington would be rendered useless, nearly all the State's acreage of protected wetlands could be inundated, nearly three- quarters of our dams, dikes, and levees flooded out. In short, this scenario for our lowest-lying State would be devastating.

As Secretary O'Mara said:

We're looking at big risks for human health and safety, and

not just at the Delaware Bay beaches. We have big concerns

about [communities in Delaware]. It's much more complex than

just the bay beaches or a community here or there.

He is right. So once again, remember, we have two basic approaches to climate change policy: adaptation and mitigation.

Once Delaware compiled its 200-page vulnerability assessment on sea level rise, the committee got to work on an adaptation strategy to protect our State and came up with slightly more than 60 options and hosted a whole series of public meetings and townhalls to discuss it. We are now working on a broader vulnerability assessment to examine the full range of impacts from climate change, even beyond sea level rise-- changing temperatures, extreme weather, changes in precipitation-- impacts which will affect us and our neighbors.

Climate change will affect the distribution, abundance, and behavior of wildlife, as well as the diversity, structure, and function of our ecosystem. We are already seeing changes in natural patterns. As Senator Markey of Massachusetts commented earlier this evening, many commercial and recreational fish stocks along our east coast have moved northward by 20 to 200 miles over the past 40 years as ocean temperatures have increased. Scientists expect migratory species to be strongly affected by climate change, since animal migration is closely connected to climate factors, and migratory species use multiple habitats and resources during their migrations. These changes are impacting our own multimillion bird watching and waterfowl hunting, an important economic driver for us and critical parts of our heritage.

According to the draft National Climate Assessment released in 2013, our farmers are expected to initially adapt relatively well to the changing climate over the next 25 years. But later, as temperature increases and precipitation extremes get more intense, crop yields and production of poultry and livestock are expected to decline. More extreme weather events--drought and heavy downpours--will further reduce yields, damage soil, stress irrigation water supplies, and increase production costs. All in all, this is a fairly grim long-term outlook in the absence of decisive action.

I am proud of my State. Delaware was the first State to thoroughly assess the vulnerability of specific resources in as comprehensive a way as they have, and we are determined to confront these changes to our planet head on and to protect our communities and the way of life we have built.

I will briefly review. There is so much we can and should do here in Congress in a bipartisan way to lay the groundwork for the actions we have to take. We can improve our energy efficiency. We could take up and pass the bipartisan bill recently reintroduced by Senators Shaheen and Portman to increase the use of energy-efficient technology across all sectors in our society. The new version of the bill has 12 cosponsors--six Democrats and six Republicans--and includes 10 new commonsense amendments which would save consumers electricity and money, a small but meaningful start on a journey toward changing our direction on climate change. Or we could level the playing field and help new clean energy technologies get off the ground by giving them the same tax advantages currently utilized by fossil fuel projects. The bipartisan Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act--which I am proud to cosponsor with my colleagues Senators Moran, Stabenow, Murkowski, Landrieu, and Collins, Democrats and Republicans working together-- would level the playing field for renewables and give them and other new technologies a fighting chance in our energy market.

There are so many other steps we could do in combination, if we would but get past this endless, pointless debate which has long been resolved in the halls of science, and move forward in a way which better serves our country and our world.

The bottom line is that our climate is changing. We know this. With this knowledge comes the responsibility to reduce our emissions, to mitigate the impacts, and prepare for and take action to deal with the coming changes.

As I reflect on our own responsibilities as Senators, I am in part moved to respond to the challenge of climate change--not just because it is an environmental issue, an economic issue, a regional issue or global issue, but it is also for me and for many others a faith issue. It is a question of how we carry out our responsibility to be good stewards of God's creation, to be those Senators we are called to be each from our own traditions who stand up and do what is right, not just for the short term, not just for the concerns of the day, but for the long term.

As I move toward my close, I will share with those in the Chamber and watching one of the things most encouraging to me as I have reflected on the change in the climate change movement over recent years is it has begun to draw support from all across the theological spectrum. There was last year, July of 2013, a letter sent to Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Reid, and all Members of Congress by 200 self- identified Christian evangelical scientists from both religious and secular universities all across the United States, a powerful and incisive letter which says:

As evangelical scientists and academics, we understand

climate change is real and action is urgently needed. All of

God's Creation--human and our environment--is groaning under

the weight of our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels, bringing

on a warming planet, melting ice, and rising seas.

I urge any watching to consider reading it. It is posted on line. It goes on to quote Christian Scripture at length in making the case we have an obligation, if we are concerned about our neighbors and about the least of these in this world, to take on the challenge of making sure we are good stewards.

Those of the Roman Catholic faith might be inspired by Pope Francis, who has taken the name of the patron saint of animals and the environment, and recently issued a call for all people to be protectors of creation.

Last, I might read from a letter issued by the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a group not commonly known for their close alignment with my party. Leith Anderson wrote in a letter in 2011:

While others debate the science and politics of climate

change, my thoughts go to the poor people who are neither

scientists nor politicians. They will never study carbon

dioxide in the air or acidification of the ocean. But they

will suffer from dry wells in the Sahel of Africa and floods

along the coasts of Bangladesh. Their crops will fail while

our supermarkets remain full. They will suffer while we

study.

This couldn't be more true. I urge all of us in this Chamber to reflect on whatever traditions sustain and bring us here that we have an obligation to those who sleep soundly in our homes now, to those from our home States around the country, to stand up and take action, to look clearly at the challenge which lies in front of us and to act in the best traditions of this body and of this Nation, to be good stewards of creation and to stand up to the challenges of this time.

Mr. President, I appreciate the words of my colleague from Virginia, especially his focus on innovation and how it must be a major part of the solution to our climate change problem.

As I look around the Chamber and see Senators from Vermont, Virginia, Hawaii, California, we may be 5,000 miles apart, but what unites us today--including the Presiding Officer's home State of Maine--is the focus on climate change and the recognition we are connected by the impact of global climate change. It is time for Congress to wake up and tackle this issue. This is why we are staying up all night tonight to make that major point.

The consequences of climate change include rising seas and larger tidal surges for seaside communities, the devastating drought and water shortage we are seeing in California, extreme weather harming the habitat for

native animals in Hawaii, but it also impacts the Midwest, which I don't think is the first area of the country people think about where we are seeing climate change problems.

We have seen increased potential in my home State of Minnesota for extreme weather wreaking havoc on our local economies, particularly those anchored in forestry and farming. In Minnesota we export about one-third of our agricultural production which contributes significantly to our country's record high agricultural trade surplus of $38 billion. This is a major part of our economy and the second biggest industry in my State.

The 2012 drought in Minnesota threatened our ability to produce the food needed to feed a growing world. Look at our lakes and our rivers. For many years our snowmobilers, the tourism industry, and ice fishers couldn't even get out. They had to cancel many activities because--not this year but many years before--we had issues with the heat in the middle of the winter. We certainly have issues with the heat in the summer.

What is this industry? Every year nearly 2 million people fish in our lakes and streams, and close to 700,000 people hunt our fields and forests nationwide. The hunting and fishing industry is valued at $95.5 billion a year and brings in $14 billion in direct tax revenue. This is why, as a member of the farm bill conference committee, we worked very hard with conservation groups such as Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever to make sure we had strong conservation protection in the bill and new ideas, such as the sod saver provision Senator Thune and I introduced and got signed into law.

For the people of our State, the economic impact of climate change is about their livelihood. It is about a way of life. I mentioned the 2012 drought. It was the worst drought since 1956 and cost over $30 billion in damage nationwide. The drought was uneven in our State. For one farmer their crops were fine; in the next county crops would be devastated. At the same time, as some farmers were experiencing not enough rain, farmers in other parts of our State actually lost their crops due to flash floods.

Research which looks at weather changes in Minnesota indicates that extreme weather events, which include heavy rainfall, are becoming more and more frequent. These are costs borne heavily by farmers, ranchers, and consumers. These production costs lose revenue, they lose supply, and they drive up costs at the grocery store for everyone.

One of the things I don't think people always think about when they think about the economic connection with climate change--in the Midwest we think about our crops; we think about extreme weather, with tornadoes, flash floods, and extreme heat and drought. But it actually affects the transportation of goods to market.

In 2012 Lake Superior was near its lowest level in the last 80 years, impacting our ability to transport cargo. It is simple: The heat was there, the water wasn't. The barges couldn't be filled all the way because the water was simply too shallow. Why is this happening? In the years when we don't have solid ice cover, the ice is melting more quickly so the water evaporates and you see lower water levels in places such as Lake Superior.

This isn't just a problem for Lake Superior; it is also a critical issue impacting the shipping industry on the Mississippi River. The Mississippi moves hundreds of millions of tons of goods, such as corn, grain, coal, and petroleum. The Mississippi River starts in Minnesota. In Minnesota one can actually walk over the Mississippi at Itasca State Park. The 2012 drought led to low water conditions which made barge travel down the Mississippi very difficult. If shipping were completely cut off, as was possible, the economic repercussions would be severe. If barge traffic is disrupted, cargo valued at over $7 billion could experience shipping delays, including 300 million bushels of farm products, 3.8 million tons of coal, and 5 million barrels of domestically produced crude oil. A prolonged shipping delay would be devastating to the bottom lines of farmers, businesses, and common citizens. These are just a few examples of the economic costs of climate change.

Global climate change is a challenge with so many dimensions, some moral, some economic, some scientific, and I will spend a few minutes talking about the science. My colleague from Virginia talked about Virginia being the home of science. I kind of wanted to break in and say we have the Mayo Clinic. Minnesota is truly a home of science. We are the home of great medical institutions. We helped launch the green revolution in agriculture with University of Minnesota alumni Norman Borlaug one-half century ago. We have brought the world everything from the pacemaker to the Post-it note. We believe in science.

As we know, climate change doesn't mean every day we will have a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico or every day will be as hot and sticky as a 100-degree, humid Minnesota afternoon. But scientists say we are sure to see more days outside the range of normal, which includes extremes of all kinds.

In fact, scientists at NASA found that at 2013, factoring all the cold temperatures Minnesotans bravely endured last year, the United States was still warmer by 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit than the mid-20th century average.

The last time the United States had a below-average annual temperature was 1976. Climate change means simply, over time, the average temperature is getting warmer and weather patterns are changing and becoming less predictable. How many times have we heard in our States: This is the hottest summer I can remember. I can't believe it warmed up this quickly. I can't believe the ice is melting this quickly.

The debate on whether climate change is happening should be over. The facts are in and the science is clear.

The National Academy of Sciences finds climate change is occurring, is very likely caused primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities, and poses significant risk for a range of human and natural systems. We know certain kinds of gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, absorb or trap the Sun's heat as it bounces off the Earth's surface.

This wouldn't be such a big problem except that carbon dioxide doesn't dissipate quickly. It stays in the atmosphere for five decades or more, causing Earth's temperatures to rise. This means most of the carbon dioxide produced in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is still in the atmosphere. It means carbon dioxide produced today will still be in the atmosphere in 2050 and beyond. This carbon dioxide-trapping heat is in our atmosphere. Over time, it means global temperatures rise; in turn, sea levels rise, both because water expands and glaciers melt.

The 2013 draft National Climate Assessment found human-induced climate change is projected to continue and accelerate significantly if emissions of these heat-trapping gases continue to increase.

In short, there is robust scientific evidence that human climate change is occurring. Climate change is impacting our Nation's systems in significant ways, and that is likely to accelerate in the future. The result is ocean levels are rising, glaciers are melting, violent weather events are increasing, and certainly we have seen them in my State.

When it comes to climate and environmental policy, I think we all know we have seen gridlock in this country, just as we have seen in so many ways--despite the Presiding Officer's good efforts as the Senator from Maine in trying to break through and mine as someone who came out of a background which wasn't at all partisan. I was involved early on in Kent Conrad's bipartisan energy group during my first few years in the Senate, where we were trying to forge some kind of a compromise on a policy approach to energy and the environment which brought people together. We were stymied in our effort. I served on the environmental committee for many years under Senator Boxer's leadership. We were again stymied in our efforts.

As I look back at the moments where we could actually move on the issue, where the Nation was captivated, I think we blew it.

We blew it when President Bush stood before the American people after 9/11; and if he had truly sold the Nation on energy independence from the countries involved in that tragic historic moment, if he had made the case for a

new American energy agenda, I believe 80 percent of Americans then would have said sign me up. That didn't happen.

The second moment we lost was during the summer of 2008. The Presiding Officer wasn't a Senator then; I was a brandnew Senator. We actually took action. We raised gas mileage standards for the first time since I was in junior high. We also made some energy efficiency improvements. I called them ``building a bridge to the next century.'' But we fell short of one important thing, and we didn't just fall short. We fell one vote short of beating the filibuster to get a national renewable electricity standard like we have in Minnesota. That was a lost moment by one vote.

The third moment we lost was when President Obama first came into office. We had some new Senators. We were in the middle of a downturn. It was an incredibly tough time. But I still believe, as I have said many times, if we had moved forward on a renewable electricity standard at that time in those first 6 months with those new Senators, we would have passed it with the House of Representatives. We chose to do some other things with the environmental committees. We passed a bill, but we were, unfortunately, unable to get it done on the Senate floor. That is where we are.

So when is the next opportunity? The next opportunity is now. We have the potential for leadership on energy. We have the potential because of the people in this country--the innovators Senator Kaine so eloquently talked about. I continue to be optimistic. I wouldn't be standing here late at night if I wasn't. This desk is the desk of Hubert Humphrey, who was known as the Happy Warrior. He was willing to tackle anything which came his way.

Why am I optimistic? The first is the leadership of Gina McCarthy at the EPA. Her background working with Republican Governors, her reputation among business leaders as being tough but fair, and her experience navigating the ways of Washington make her well suited to look at the bigger picture issues.

As someone who comes from an agricultural state, I understand full well how the EPA can sometimes get bogged down in minor issues from my perspective, taking on things that create a huge firestorm that actually do not solve the problem. I believe this Administrator, Gina McCarthy, is going to look at the larger mission of the EPA, especially when it comes to climate change.

Secondly, I am optimistic because we still have some good happening here. There is some realism going on in Congress. The Washington Post ran an editorial last fall where the editorial board wrote:

The overriding problem is that Congress hasn't faced up to

the global warming threat. Instead of updating clean air

rules and building a policy that addresses the unique

challenge of greenhouse emissions, it has left the EPA and

the courts with a strong but sometimes ambiguous law that

applies imperfectly to greenhouse gas emissions.

That is true, and that is why we have something to do here.

Given the current mix right now, given what we are facing on this issue, I still believe.

What can we do this year? This year we can be pragmatic. We can foster leadership. We passed the farm bill. It had good measures in it for conservation and the environment.

Another example is the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill which contains a range of policies that would reduce residential, commercial, and industrial use. Not every bill is supported with everyone from the Chamber and NAM to many environmental groups. This bill is.

This leads to my third reason for hope. There are a lot of businesses out there that realize they cannot afford the pure cost of the old way of doing things. More and more businesses are seeing the good in going green, whether it is Walmart in its push toward energy efficiency or Apple which is working toward a goal of getting 100 percent of its energy from renewables.

The fourth reason to be positive is because there are some current economic positives and market changes out there that are actually moving in the right direction. We have reduced our dependency on foreign oil in just the last 7 years from 60 percent to 40 percent. It is a combination of things. Yes, some of the natural gas and drilling in North Dakota is a major force, but we also have stronger vehicle gas mileage standards. We have biofuel. We have cleaner fuel. We are moving on a number of fronts.

Look at the efforts on the State level ranging from the rules in Texas that are helping to encourage the construction of transmission lines bringing wind energy from the plains to the homes and businesses, to Colorado's strong renewable portfolio standard and the use of woody biomass for power.

I would add my own State of Minnesota where we have a renewable electricity standard requiring 25 percent of electricity coming from renewable sources by 2025. Xcel Energy, our largest utility, is on its way to meet their even more ambitious standard. By law they will get 30 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. I have met with their CEO. They are more than on their way to meeting that standard. They believe in wind. They believe in renewable.

The bill we passed in Minnesota, which could be a model for the Nation, has overwhelming bipartisan support. It had bipartisan support, and when it passed, nearly every legislator voted for it and it was signed into law by former Governor Tim Pawlenty.

What does this mean? The investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency technology means that Xcel is actually on its path to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 31 percent. Xcel will cut its emissions a full 11 percentage points by 2020, more than the standards proposed by the passed cap-and-trade law that came out of the environment committee.

Minnesota Power is another utility in our State that is working to meet the State's renewable portfolio standard by bringing more wind energy onto the grid. They are looking to keep costs low to their consumers by using Canadian hydropower to back up their wind resources. Because the wind doesn't always blow in Minnesota, the hydropower will act as a battery, storing energy when there is too much on the grid, and providing electricity when it is needed. By working together we can get more wind and solar energy on the grid in a way that provides reliable service and keeps prices low for our consumers.

The Rural Electric Co-op also implemented another way to make better use of wind energy in Minnesota, to make our goal of 25 percent by 2025. They installed large capacity hot water heaters in people's basements. How can something as basic and boring as a hot water heater play a role in reducing energy consumption and climate change? The hot water heaters are only turned on at night when the wind blows the strongest and the demand for energy is the lowest. In the morning when people wake up and turn on their lights, the heater is already off. The wind energy is stored in the form of hot water that can be used throughout the day. Heating water is a major source of energy consumption and our co-op could find a way to provide an important service in a way that incentivizes wind development and saves consumers money.

It was the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who said that ``the states are the laboratories of democracy.'' We are certainly seeing that right now with energy and environmental policy.

I would like to see a major Federal policy back at those moments that I went through back when Bush was President and the tragedy of 9/11 occurred, back when we had that vote in the summer, when we missed the renewable electricity standard by just one vote. But I am hopeful that we are going to get back to a point where compromise is possible in Washington, and we will get there just as the American people have demanded. And when we get there, we know that the States are useful models for how to get this done.

Before we can act on a comprehensive national blueprint for climate policy in this country, we need to bring together Americans who share these values and speak with a common voice. We are starting that discussion tonight. The message is to get Congress to wake up and get this job done.

As I close, I think about this challenge and I recall a prayer from the

Ojibwe people in Minnesota. Their philosophy told them that the decisions of great leaders are not made for today, not made for this generation, but leaders must make decisions for those who are seven generations from them. That would be an Ojibwe philosophy, that led them to take care of their land. This is now a part of our burden and our challenge as we approach this issue. I have always believed we should be stewards of the land.

In the past, leaders from both parties--you know this so well from me--have worked to protect our land, keep our air and water clean. President Theodore Roosevelt took executive action to create the National Parks System which Ken Burns famously called ``America's best idea.''

Congress has come together to make great progress to protect our natural resources. The 1970 Clean Air Act passed in the Senate 73-0 and the House by a vote of 371-1. The Clean Water Act in the House, the final vote was over 10-1 in favor of this landmark legislation to protect our water.

Global climate change is our generation's challenge to solve. It is our generation's challenge. I believe if we work together constructively, we can address this threat. We can be stewards of our world.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that the order with respect to alternating blocks of time be vitiated and that the Senate remain in a period of morning business until 8:45 a.m., Tuesday, March 11, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for between 20 and 30 minutes.

I want to begin by thanking my friend and colleague, Senator Boxer, for her leadership. It was 2 years ago that she began a climate action task force that took place at noon, when all our stomachs were grumbling for food, but it provided some very interesting advice, very interesting knowledge, from interesting scholars who came to speak. She was then joined by Senator Whitehouse, when he came. Now there is Senator Markey, and there is quite a large number--certainly of Democratic Senators--who attend these Tuesday meetings at noon. So I want to thank them very much for this leadership.

As we have heard already, debate over climate change has raged for years here on Capitol Hill, but the scientific facts actually have been conclusive for some time now. Most people I have found don't realize that the greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere just don't go away. They do not dissipate. These gases can stay for decades. Our actions--the greenhouse gas pollution we put into the air and the forests we cut down--are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere, increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to above 400 parts per million.

Just look at this chart. As this chart shows, these are global warming gases. This is carbon dioxide. You can see how it has run quite along at this level, and then in the last few years it has begun to jump up, so much that the average in 2013 was 396 parts per million. People don't know this--that all these gases remain in our atmosphere year after year, decade after decade, and century after century.

This change is altering how our atmosphere interacts, with massive amounts of solar energy radiating out from the center of our solar system. It is well known within the scientific community that the Earth's blanket--our atmosphere--is getting more effective at trapping heat. The full effects of this stronger blanket--or shield or whatever you want to call it--must be projected into the future. Different projections show different effects, but we know this. Change is coming, and it has already begun.

A lot of people also believe our Earth is immutable, that we can't destroy it and that it can't change. They assume our planet has always been pretty much the same. But the last time the Earth's atmosphere contained 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide was more than 3 million years ago when horses and camels lived in the high Arctic in conditions that averaged 18 degrees warmer than today. Seas were at least 30 feet higher, at a level that today would inundate major cities around the world and flood the homes of a quarter of the United States population.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen, as I said, from the 280 parts per million to more than 400 parts per million in just the last 150 years. Scientists tell us there is no known geologic period in which concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased as quickly. Bottom line: Never has our planet faced a faster or more ecologically devastating change.

To settle the scientific debate over climate change, the Bush administration appointed a National Academy of Sciences Blue Ribbon Panel. The group, which included former climate change deniers, reported to Congress in 2001 that greenhouse gases are ``causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.'' They said: ``Temperatures are, in fact, rising.''

The United Nations created its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of more than 600 leading scientific experts; and what did they say? They said the ``warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.''

Average temperatures over lands and ocean surfaces globally have increased 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit from 1880 to 2012, with the highest rate of increase in the past 3 decades.

Just look at this. See the line indicating carbon dioxide concentration. Start from here. Now notice that the temperatures are still down. Watch the line start to go up and notice the climate warm up to where it is today.

The IPCC report continued: ``The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.''

This makes that clear. If we don't reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, the National Research Council predicts the average global temperatures will increase by as much as 11.5 degrees--11.5 degrees by 2100. Such a dramatic and rapid increase would be catastrophic to our planet Earth. It would change our world permanently.

As temperatures have increased, we have seen that ice sheets that cover the North and South Poles have begun melting. The average annual Arctic sea ice area has decreased more than 20 percent since 1979. That is when satellite records first became available. The Greenland ice sheet has melted by nearly 30 percent.

Here we can see the Arctic, the red line shows what it was in 1979, and current picture shows what has been lost and what is left.

The melting of glaciers and ice caps, along with expansion of ocean water due to the increase in temperature have caused the global sea level to rise by 8 inches since 1870, with over 2 inches just in the past 20 years. If we do nothing to stop climate change, scientific models project that there is a real possibility of sea level increasing by as much as 4 feet by the end of this century--4 feet.

Now, what would 4 feet do? At risk are nearly 2.6 million homes located less than 4 feet above high tide nationwide.

Let me speak about my home State of California. We have, within those 4 feet, the homes of 450,000 people, 30 coastal power plants with generating capacity of 10 gigawatts, 22 wastewater treatment plants with capacity of 325 million gallons per day, 3,500 miles of roadway, 280 miles of railway, 140 schools, and 55 hospitals and other health care facilities. These could all be inundated by the end of the century.

Oakland and San Francisco International Airports are susceptible to flooding, and both are today studying expensive new levy systems to hold back the tides.

Sea level rise in California would also cause flooding of low-lying areas, loss of coastal wetlands, such as portions of the San Francisco Bay Delta,

erosion of cliffs and beaches, and saltwater contamination of drinking water. Bottom line: Rising seas put California's homes, public facilities, and environmental resources in great peril, and adapting to this change will impose great cost.

Temperatures in California have increased 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 4 decades. The warmer climate could be particularly devastating to us where threats from catastrophic wildfire and reduction in water resources will likely make sunny California a desert State. The Sierra Nevada snowpack--and we are hearing a lot about that now--which includes Lake Tahoe--is the State's largest source of water. It equals about half the storage capacity of all of California's man- made reservoirs. If we do nothing, the Sierra Nevada spring snowpack could drop by as much as 60 to 80 percent by the end of the century, eliminating the water source for nearly 16 million people.

Only four States have populations as large as 16 million people, and the largest agricultural State in the United States--California--needs water resources to farm and grow crops. The 38 million people living in California also need water to drink, to bathe, to water flowers, for businesses to flourish.

Major fire is another danger because the size, severity, duration, and frequency of fires are greatly influenced by climate. This is the Rim Fire, from not too long ago. It gives us an idea of how things burn. Fire seasons in the West are starting sooner and lasting longer. The average length has increased by 78 days since 1970, a 64-percent increase. This isn't a coincidence, and climate change is suspected as a key mechanism for that change. The change is apparent.

During a recent Senate hearing, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tidwell testified:

On average, wildfires burn twice as many acres each year as

compared to 40 years ago, and there are on average seven

times as many fires over 10,000 acres per year.

I believe this: We cannot stop climate change from happening. We do not have a silver bullet. There is no action we can take to stem the tide. But if we can hold the warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, we can accommodate for it. But if the warming reaches 5 degrees to 9 degrees Celsius, the effects are catastrophic for our planet Earth. Dramatic and catastrophic effects are far more likely. Through a series of incremental but somewhat aggressive policy steps, we can slow the change.

The combustion of fossil fuel--coal, oil, and natural gas--accounts for 78 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in our country. Most of the fossil fuel emissions come from the smokestacks of our power plants and the tailpipes of our vehicles.

The bottom line: To address climate change, we must take steps to use fossil fuels more efficiently, and we must initiate a shift away from fossil fuels where we can and toward cleaner alternatives.

I believe we can attack this problem by: establishing aggressive fuel economy standards to reduce emissions from the transportation sector; enabling a shift to renewable sources of power; limiting the emissions from stationary sources, especially power plants; and, most important, putting a price on heat-trapping carbon pollution.

Let me mention some steps we have taken because we have begun a transition to a cleaner energy economy. The good news is that carbon dioxide emissions have dropped 12 percent since 2005, due in part to the policies we have adopted.

One of my proudest achievements was working with Senators Snowe, Inouye, Stevens, Cantwell, Lott, Dorgan, Corker, Carper, and many others in the 2007 Ten-in-Ten Fuel Economy Act, raising the corporate average fuel economy known as CAFE at the maximum achievable rate.

Let me say what these new standards mean. They mean we will have a fleetwide average of 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025. These standards will cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks in half by 2025, reducing emissions by 6 billion metric tons over the life of the program, more than the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the United States in 2010. Better yet, these standards will save American families more than $1.7 trillion in fuel costs, resulting in average fuel savings of more than $8,000 per vehicle.

Our legislation also directed the administration to establish the first ever fuel economy standards for buses, delivery trucks, and long- haul 18 wheelers. The first standards, which apply to trucks and buses built from 2014 to 2018, will reduce greenhouse gas pollution by approximately 270 million metric tons.

I am very sorry Senator Snowe from Maine isn't here today because I began this effort with a simple sense of the Senate resolution in 1993 with Senator Slade Gorton from Washington, Senator Bryan from Nevada, and myself, and we couldn't get a simple statement passed. We then tried an SUV loophole closer, which was to bring SUVs down to the mileage of sedans and we couldn't do this.

We then did the Ten-in-Ten and we didn't think it was going to go anywhere. Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye put it in a commerce committee bill. Senator Stevens changed his view on it, put it in a commerce committee bill, and it swept through the Senate and through the House, was signed by the President, and is now the law. Today President Obama has made completing CAFE standards for trucks built after 2018--which are required by our 2007 law--a key part of his Climate Action Plan.

Power plants are our largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions. It is fair to say Federal tax incentives and financing, State mandates, federally funded research, and a dramatically improving permitting process have led to a recent shift away from coal-fired power plants and toward renewable energy and lower emission natural gas.

Additionally, renewable energy production has more than doubled since 2008, and it continues to boom. Last year 4,751 megawatts of solar were installed nationwide. This is a 41-percent increase over the previous year. Power plant carbon dioxide emissions have dropped 17 percent since 2005.

The lesson is clear: We must continue the policies which are working, such as the wind and geothermal production tax credits, the solar investment tax credit, and a project-permitting process which advances projects on disturbed and less sensitive lands expeditiously, but we must also take longer term steps to ensure that power plant emissions continue to drop.

I support the President's plan to use Clean Air Act authorities to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The Supreme Court's landmark global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA, found greenhouse gases are pollutants with the potential to endanger human health and welfare. President Obama and EPA have an obligation to comply with these directives to limit such emissions. So I very much look forward to the President advancing a strong rule which will use market-based mechanisms.

I also believe Congress could act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by putting an explicit price on pollution. It has taken me a long time to get there--approximately 20 years. I supported various other mechanisms--and will continue to support--but I am convinced, based on information by the Energy Information Administration, a fee on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants starting at only $10 per ton could reduce emissions 70 percent to 80 percent by 2050, if the fee steadily increases over time. This is the emissions reduction level experts say is necessary to stabilize the climate at less than 2 degrees Celsius warmer than today. If we can do this, we save planet Earth. If the climate goes 5 degrees to 9 degrees warmer by the end of the century, we have lost.

Such a fee could be responsive to emissions performance. If emissions were falling consistent with science-based emissions targets, the fee would not have to go up every year. It is estimated a fee on power plant emissions would be nearly as effective in reducing heat-trapping emissions as an economy-wide fee. The difference is 2 percent. So both policies deserve consideration.

Such a fee would provide industry with cost certainty, and the revenues--exceeding $20 billion annually--could help address our Nation's debt. They should go back to the general fund. The revenue could finance other important national priorities, such as tax reform,

income inequality, energy research development.

An MIT study found that if the fee revenues were used to cut other taxes or maintain spending for social programs, ``the economy will be better off with the carbon (fee) than if we have to keep other taxes high or cut programs to rein in the deficit.''

Science has clearly shown the planet is warming and now at a faster rate than ever. We know this. Now we as leaders must make a choice: Do we act, do we lead, do we tackle the problem or do we wait until it is too late? Do we continue the progress we have made on fuel economy by taking on other large emitters or do we simply claim it is impossible, it is intractable, we can't do anything about it? Do we blame the problem on China? And China has a big problem. Do we deny undeniable facts due to current politics?

I believe we have an obligation to lead. There is no question it is difficult and there is no question there are hard choices, but we have an obligation to control our own pollution. Our Nation has the opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of the world it can be done, and tonight shows there are some leaders.

I thank Senator Boxer, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Markey, and Senator Schatz for their leadership, not only on this evening but for the years they have led on this issue. So let's get it done.

Before I end, I would note that my legislative assistant, the young man sitting next to me, is leaving to work for the Department of Energy. He has worked on fuel efficiency standards, climate change, energy, transportation, and a number of other issues.

Matthew Nelson, I want you to know your expertise, your unique creativity and capacity, and your dedication will be missed.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I thank Senator Schatz for all the work he did to put together this effort tonight.

I simply want to say that when you look at the data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Academy of Sciences, I believe you reach a blunt judgment: Climate change is the scientific equivalent of a speeding Mack truck. So tonight it is appropriate that Senators start getting into these issues with practical approaches. We have done our part in a bipartisan effort to promote hydropower. I am very pleased the President has a new approach in terms of dealing with wildfire, which is also bipartisan, because fires we are seeing are getting bigger and hotter, and there are steps we can take to deal with those urgent problems. This evening is all about sensible action.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, earlier this evening I touched on the numbers that underlie this debate--the numbers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the numbers from the National Academy of Sciences--and said they really drive me to the judgment that climate change is the scientific equivalent of a speeding Mack truck. But I believe numbers don't really capture this discussion fully because what people want to know is the impact of climate change in their community, what it truly means for them in their part of the country.

To get into those impacts, I will start with one that is shellacking my home State; that is, the wildfires that are burning longer, getting hotter, and starting earlier. Drought and high temperatures from climate change are driving all of this. During the early part of this past year's fire season, intense wildfires once again burned across the Western United States, threatening population centers and destroying hundreds of homes. This winter, fires have already burned in western Oregon--something that used to be very rare. The number of houses that have burned in our country from wildfires has increased a staggering 400 percent in only the past couple of years and is projected to get far worse. In 2012, 2 percent of my home State of Oregon burned in just one summer and nearly 1.5 million acres burned across the Pacific Northwest. Wildfires, of course, have always been part of life in my home State, but the fires of recent years are getting hotter and are significantly more threatening to homes.

Our country's top scientists say the conditions that caused these recent fire seasons to become more severe, including drought accompanied by above-average temperatures, are more common now due to human-induced climate change. Over the past 30 years the fire season has become 2\1/2\ months longer and both the number and severity of forest fires in the American West have increased several-fold. Scientists who have examined this issue say climate change is a significant factor behind it.

To their credit, the Obama administration has indicated that they want to work with Senators of both political parties to tackle this issue. In particular, what they have suggested--and Senator Crapo, the Republican Senator from Idaho, and I have pushed this strongly--is that instead of shorting the prevention fund, which is the heart of the problem--we have to go in and thin out these overstocked stands-- instead of shorting the prevention fund, which is what happens every year now, because these fires are so big and so hot, what happens is the bureaucracy comes in and takes money from the prevention fund in order to suppress the fires, and the problem, of course, gets worse because we don't have the funds for prevention.

The administration wants to work with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and in the other body so that the most serious fires--only the most serious ones--get handled from the disaster fund. We believe this is going to free up additional support for efforts to prevent these fires, and that will be beneficial to our communities.

Second, I would like to focus on power sector vulnerability. The drought and high temperatures that can lead to the wildfires and make our power grid more vulnerable also raise the question of the implications for our grid and for taxpayers.

Much of that vulnerability comes from changes in water supply and water temperature. Water plays two critical roles in generating electricity. Water is needed for generating hydropower--something we do a lot of in the Pacific Northwest. It is also needed for cooling in many other types of generation, such as nuclear, biomass, and coal. For those generators, water must not only be available in sufficient quantities, but it has to be cool enough to allow the plants to run safely and efficiently. That means climate change poses a double threat to some of these facilities.

This is not a hypothetical situation; recent history has already shown the power sector's vulnerability to both drought and high temperatures. In 2001, for example, severe drought in the Pacific Northwest and California significantly reduced hydroelectric generation, causing tight electricity supplies and high prices throughout the West. That drought was estimated to have an economic impact of between $2.5 billion and $6 billion.

High temperatures have also made water too hot to actually be able to cool some powerplants. In 2007 the Tennessee Valley Authority had to temporarily shut down its Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant because the intake water temperatures were too high. In 2012 the Millstone nuclear plant that powers half of Connecticut had to take 40 percent of its capacity offline for almost 2 weeks because the cooling water it was getting from Long Island Sound was too warm. In that same year the Braidwood nuclear facility in Illinois had to get an exemption to use intake water that was 102 degrees instead of shutting down during a heat wave. When somebody has their air-conditioning on high because it is over 100 degrees, that is not a time that we can afford to be taking a base load powerplant offline.

So far it has been possible to get through the heat- and drought- related shutdowns of these powerplants without major outages, but let's make no mistake about it--the ratepayers have definitely felt them in their power bills. In Texas during the summer of 2011, for example, electricity was selling on the spot market for $3,000 per megawatt hour--well over 100 times the normal rate.

Next I would like to talk about the effects of climate on energy infrastructure. The power sector isn't the only bit of energy infrastructure that is vulnerable to climate change. Recently, I--along with the majority leader, Senator Reid, Senator Franken, Senator Harkin, and Senator Mark Udall--asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the effects of climate change on energy infrastructure.

That report was just released. What the Government Accountability Office

found is that climate changes are projected to affect infrastructure throughout all major stages of the energy supply chain--of course, once again increasing the risk of energy disruption.

In addition to power sector vulnerabilities, the GAO also found vulnerabilities among the infrastructure for producing and extracting natural resources, including oil and gas platforms, refineries, and processing plants. This infrastructure is often located near the coast, making it vulnerable to severe weather and sea level rise.

Fuel transportation and storage infrastructure, including pipelines, barges, railways, and storage tanks, are also susceptible to damage from severe weather, melting permafrost, and increased precipitation.

I close by outlining some of the steps that can actually be taken to deal with these issues. I am sure people who are following this discussion tonight are saying: All right, they are making a good case about the nature of the problem. So what else. What comes next in terms of our ability to take action to deal with this.

I have said before that there are a host of areas where we are going to have to work in a global kind of manner to build support with other countries for tackling climate change, but there is no question that this Senate can put points on the board this year in the fight against climate change.

I am very pleased to have been able to work with our colleague Senator Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, over this past year. Until recently I served as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and we were able to pass a major law to spur development of hydropower, which is one of America's forgotten renewables. Hydropower already makes up two- thirds of our country's renewable power, so this is obviously a vital renewable source of energy. Our legislation makes it easier to put hydro on existing dams, irrigation canals, and conduits, and we believe it is going to spark big investments in clean renewable power. The National Hydropower Association estimates that there are 60,000 megawatts of potential new hydropower in our country yet to be harnessed.

In addition, our committee passed an important bill to cut redtape associated with developing geothermal power on public lands.

My colleagues and I urge the administration to take steps to have tools at their disposal to invest in energy efficiency and use the savings to pay for those upgrades.

I look forward, here on the floor of the Senate, to being able to pass what I would call the platonic ideal of consensus energy legislation; that is, the bill that has been sponsored by our colleagues, Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman. I am very pleased that we had a promising development over the past few weeks where we brought together those who care about trying to promote clean and renewable energy in Federal buildings. We have been able to get common ground between Senators of differing views. I look forward to seeing that bill, the Shaheen-Portman bill, on the floor of the Senate.

The fact is a number of our renewable energy sources have been on a roll over the past several years, demonstrating their potential.

For example, onshore wind has installed tens of thousands of megawatts of capacity in recent years when the policy support has been in place. As expected, the costs have come down with technology improvements, experience, economies of scale, and as a deep domestic supply chain has built up to manufacture all of the components of the wind turbines and towers. The policy support has been working, and wind is now knocking at the door of competitiveness with fossil technologies.

Offshore wind is also picking up steam, even off the coast of my home State, where the waters have always been too deep for offshore wind to be possible. A company called Principle Power is trying to solve that problem by demonstrating floating offshore wind turbines just off the coast of Coos Bay in my home State. Putting a turbine on a floating platform instead of mounting it on a tower on the ocean floor has the potential to dramatically change the potential for offshore wind. It would let developers tap into the huge windy resource above the deep waters off the coast of Oregon and elsewhere but without the footprints on the ocean floor and without affecting views from the coast. It is a promising technology, but, like all first-of-a-kind technology, it is going to cost a bit more. That is why we ought to get policy support-- so we can realize the potential of commercial-scale energy.

Finally, the costs of solar power have also been dropping like a rock. The potential for sustainable biomass to provide a quadruple win of low-carbon energy, increased forest health, reduced danger of forest fires, and economic growth is still there waiting to be fully developed.

I wish to touch on two remaining issues, and one is before the Senate Finance Committee. It is my strong view that the tax treatment of all energy production in the United States ought to be modified so that all energy sources compete on a technology-neutral level playing field. That ought to be one of the major goals of comprehensive tax reform, which, in my view, is really the grand bipartisan prize for Senate Finance Committee members.

In the short-term, we have another challenge. We shouldn't let the renewable energy industries that are so important simply fall off the cliff just when the supply chains have been developed and just when they are reaching a level of competitiveness where they can really take off.

It is my hope that it is possible to work in a bipartisan way. I intend to talk to Senator Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, and colleagues on both sides of the aisle to work on a tax extenders package that includes a variety of clean energy and efficiency credits. Senator Hatch and I have been interested in moving forward this spring through the regular order and markup of this kind of energy package in the Finance Committee.

I will close by talking about natural gas because to capture all of the climate benefits we also have to factor in the dramatic shale gas revolution. We understand that natural gas has turned the energy equation upside down over the past few years. Along the way, it has provided a low-cost way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. Increased usage of natural gas has helped our country to reach its lowest level of greenhouse gas emissions since 1994, even as the economy has been picking up steam. Manufacturing and industrial operations have been moving back to the United States to take advantage of cheap reliable gas.

This is good news that was almost unimaginable just a few years ago, but we have some major challenges as well. I am concerned that methane emissions from leaky compressors and leaky pipes could undermine the emission benefits of natural gas in a way that isn't being accounted for. A recent report which showed a leakage rate of just 3 percent through the entire natural gas supply chain can make burning natural gas the same as burning coal from a climate perspective. So I have been pushing hard with colleagues here in the Senate to keep that leakage rate below 1 percent from production to usage to make sure that climate benefits come to reality.

There are technologies that can address the issue of leakage, and they already exist. They can be put in place at almost no net cost, with many of the measures paying for themselves. There has been a comprehensive survey of the measures for reducing methane leaks through the natural gas supply and usage chain, and it found emissions could be reduced by 40 percent with technologies that already exist and are practical today.

The scale of this problem is, of course, immense, and it is what Senators are talking about here tonight. It is going to take everyone pulling together at every level to make the meaningful changes actually happen. We are going to need continued leadership from our entrepreneurs, who aren't sitting idly by but are innovating to come up with solutions to climate change. We are going to need savvy consumers demanding lower carbon and more efficient goods and services. We will need leadership from retailers who are going to ask more of their suppliers and supply chains to

give them products to sell to those consumers. Of course, the key is always innovation in the private sector--the private-sector leaders working with our national labs and universities.

I am especially proud that my home State of Oregon is going to lead the State efforts in trying to promote sustainability, renewables, and efficiency at the local level.

To wrap up my remarks, let me state the obvious. It is going to take new leadership from the Congress. The Congress is going to have to lead if we are going to get a long-term framework for a low-carbon economy that innovators, entrepreneurs, and others can use in the days ahead to address the global nature of this problem, and I think we are up to it here in the Senate. I think we are up to doing it in a bipartisan way, and that is what I look forward to being part of in the days ahead.

I yield the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Presiding Officer.

The problem of carbon pollution could not be more real for my home State of Rhode Island. It is real for our country's future. I will be here in the wee hours and I will yield my time so we can compress this. We have a lot of Senators who want to speak in a short period of time.

I want to yield my time and express my gratitude to Senator Schatz of Hawaii who has coordinated tonight's event.

Mr. President, how much time remains under the control of our side?

That is kind of the distinguished Senator, but I think we have managed to come within our time.

As we close, I wish to thank so many colleagues who have participated in this early lightning round of statements by Senators. We expect to have 30 Democratic Senators speaking on this issue during the course of the night, through the night, and into tomorrow morning.

It is a matter we are overdue in addressing. It is a matter that is really beyond legitimate scientific dispute--at least as to the fundamental truth of the planet warming and why. Indeed, Abraham Lincoln was the President when a scientist named Tyndall--over in England--first presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences his work showing that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warms the Earth as it increases its density. We are now more carbon dense.

As Senator King said, we spent about 800,000 to 3 million years in a zone of 150 to 300 parts per million. We had never been at 400 parts per million in the history of human habitation on the face of this planet until just a few months ago when the first 400-parts-per-million reading was recorded. We have to pay attention to this.

I will close by saying that not only is this a vital point for our home States, it is vital for California, which is riven by drought. It is vital for New Mexico and Colorado, which have also seen drought and wildfires. It is also vital for New York, which was clobbered by Superstorm Sandy. It is vital for Hawaii, which is seeing sea level rise and acidification. It is vital for Massachusetts, where the sea level is up 10 inches, and we are beginning to see fisheries move north and away from our waters to avoid the warming seas. It is vital for Connecticut, which has virtually lost its lobster fishery because of its warming season. And, of course, it is vital for Rhode Island. My Narragansett Bay is 3 to 4 degrees warmer in the winter, and that means that fisheries, such as the winter flounder fishery, are simply gone-- 90-plus percent crashed.

We have to face this as States, we have to face this as a nation, and if we fail, we will have failed the fundamental test of every American generation. The fundamental test of every American generation is, will you bring the reputation of this country and the integrity of this democracy forward through your time so the next American generation can carry it forward with honor?

We received our democracy from the ``greatest generation.'' They fought world wars to make it safe for us. If we fail now, we will not be the greatest generation; we will be a disgraced generation. I intend to do everything I can to make sure we do not get there.

I yield back the rest of the Democrats' time

Madam President, Senator Feinstein is scheduled to speak next, and we are delighted that she is.

Dinner Invitation

I just wanted to make a public service announcement at this point in the evening. Any staff, Senators who are here through the night, any floor staff, Republican floor staff as well, all are invited; and for any of the parliamentary staff who are interested, there is dinner available in Room S. 219, and better to get it while it is hot.

That is the end of the public service announcement.

Madam President, may I thank the distinguished Senator from California for her speech. For those who know of her history with this issue and her leadership on pollution issues over many years, this was an important speech, and I thank the Senator very much.

Before we turn to Senator Boxer, I wish to say a few things about the comments the Senator from Oklahoma made earlier, I suppose in an effort to suggest climate change is not all that we shake it up to be. The first point he made was about a group of emails that came out of East Anglia University, which the climate denier community seized on and nicknamed climategate, as if like Watergate there was a big scandal in those emails. There were some probably not entirely appropriate comments that were said in the emails, but the question is, Was the science underlying it affected or compromised in any way?

So-called climategate was actually looked at over and over again. Because it was at the University of East Anglia, the University of East Anglia did an investigation. Because it involved scientists at Penn State, Penn State did an investigation. Both of those universities gave a complete clean bill of health to the underlying science that was at the base of this.

The House of Commons--the British House of Commons did its investigation. That is how much fuss the deniers kicked up about this. They came back and they said: Nothing wrong with the science there. Nothing wrong with the science. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Science Foundation also did investigations, as did the inspector general of the Department of Commerce. Three for three, those investigations came back as well, saying: If they did say anything inappropriate, nothing wrong with the science.

After all that, after six published reviews whose results confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the science as a result of these emails, for people to continue to come to the floor and to suggest that the email chain revealed some flaw in the data or some flaw in the science, it is untrue. It is as simple as that. It is just not true.

In fact, if you wanted to nickname this properly, you would actually call it climategate-gate because the real scandal is the phony scandal that was whipped up about these emails when the underlying science had been confirmed by every single investigation that followed. So much for climategate or climategate-gate, more properly said.

He also indicated that because the IPCC report had said the Himalayan glaciers were retreating, but they weren't, that there was something obviously wrong with the science. Let us start with some glaciers closer to home. This is Grinell Glacier in Montana. Here is what it looked like in 1940. That is all snow. Here is what it looks like in 2004. It is melted down to this little puddle of snow and ice.

We are indeed losing our glaciers. Have a look in Washington at Lillian Glacier in Washington's Olympic National Park. This is in 1905. Look at the size of that glacier. Here it is, the same bowl, virtually dried of snow--glacier gone.

The fact that glaciers are disappearing is something people see in front of them all around the world. All you have to do is go to mountains with glaciers and look. I went with Senator Boxer to the glaciers in Greenland. You could see the glaciers retreat. You could see the increased speed as the ice moved more rapidly down and out to sea because of the melt.

Now the question of the Himalayan glaciers has also been reviewed. A recent article in Nature said:

The Tibetan plateau and surroundings contain the largest

number of glaciers outside polar regions. These glaciers are

at the headwaters of many prominent Asian rivers and are

largely experiencing shrinkage. . . .

Which is exactly what one would expect from the science of climate change.

Now the National Academy of Sciences recently did a report on this very subject about 6 months ago, and a quote on that report says:

The report examines how changes to glaciers in the Hindu

Kush-Himalayan region, which covers eight countries across

Asia, could affect the area's river systems, water supplies,

and the South Asian population. The mountains in the region

form the headwaters of several major river systems--including

the Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers--which serve

as sources of drinking water and irrigation supplies for

roughly 1.5 billion people. So the irrigation and drinking

water for 1.5 billion people is nothing to laugh about.

Here is the conclusion:

The entire Himalayan climate is changing, but how climate

change will impact specific places remains unclear. . . . The

eastern Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau are warming, and the

trend is more pronounced at higher elevations. Models suggest

that desert dust and black carbon, a component of soot, could

contribute to the rapid atmospheric warming, accelerated

snowpack melting, and glacier retreat.

The Senator also mentioned the cost of a carbon fee. Just to make the record completely clear, I would propose a carbon fee whose every dollar of revenue was returned to the American people if as a result of a carbon fee they end up paying more in their energy bill somewhere.

Every dollar of that should come back to the American people. It could come back in the form of a check to the head of a family. It could come back in the form of lower tax rates. It could come back in a variety of ways, and I hope soon we are actually having that discussion. But do not think there is any need for this to be a net cost to the economy. Every dollar can go back to the American people. Because of the nature of this tax, it is actually probably more efficient than others, so it should create economic lift for a net economic gain if you are truly offsetting the revenues. So I reject the proposition that this would create a cost. It would be easy to design it in such a way that it is actually net improvement.

Finally, I will agree with something Senator Inhofe said. He said this has to be international; and indeed it does have to be international. India has a vote. They have a lot of powerplants. China has a lot of powerplants. They have to work together. We can do that.

America can lead in the world. If the others are slow to come, we can erect tax adjustments at our border that protect us and our products. We can make this happen, and we should.

The last is job loss claims. If you go back through the history of regulation of big industries, every time you roll something out they say it is going to be a huge economic disaster. They said this about the ozone layer; the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act. In fact, in some cases such as in the Clean Air Act, subsequent review showed the

amount that is saved from not being polluted exceeds the cost of compliance by as much as 30-to-1. Why would we not want a deal like that, particularly where the costs of climate change are going to be so severe?

The Senator said it is important to look at what has happened since the original IPCC report. Here is what happened since the original IPCC report. They doubled down. They are even more sure than they were of their findings on climate change. Other scientific organizations such as NASA have chimed in in unflinching language. I happen to have a lot of respect for NASA. If you can put a vehicle the size of an SUV up and out of our atmosphere, into orbit, send it to Mars, land it safely on Mars, and then drive it around, I think there is a pretty safe bet that you have some good scientists who know what they are talking about. I will put them up against the scientists paid for by the polluters every day.

I will yield the floor first to Chairman Boxer.

If the Senator needs more time, I will not object.

Mr. President, all night long? Well, that is going to be fun.

By the way, the Oklahoma City Thunders are not playing tonight, so we may get a few more viewers.

It is nice to look over and see probably the most articulate and knowledgeable of all of the alarmists historically as our newest Senator from Massachusetts, Ed Markey.

You can be good friends and still disagree. The Senator from Rhode Island certainly knows that because we had a little disagreement last week. The Senator from California certainly knows this as well.

We have been working on this for a long time. This started with the Kyoto Treaty. I think most people have forgotten about that. During the Clinton-Gore administration, Gore came back from Rio de Janeiro and said we are all going to die from global warming. I will say that he knows what he is doing. The New York Times speculated that Al Gore is very likely the first environmental billionaire in existence, so I guess he knows what he is doing there.

In spite of the fact of what has happened recently, I think it is probably necessary to have something all night, something to get the attention of the American people, because they keep saying--and I hear it over and over--climate change is real, global warming is real; it is real; it is real; it is real. If you say it enough times, then people are going to think it is real.

Tonight, all night long, you can say ``it is real, it is real, it is real,'' but I think people have heard that before and times have changed. A couple of things have happened, and I know a lot of you regret this.

I remember so well when Lisa Jackson was the Administrator of the

There are more impacts that are taking place. The greenhouse gas regulations for existing powerplants are expected to be released in June of 2014.

The other regulations that are out there--and I am not going to spend any time on this because there are too many. But on the greenhouse gas legislation--even though when it started, it was Charles Rivers and the Wharton School and MIT--they came out with the approximation of $300 to $400 billion a year; and that is every year. The greenhouse gas regulatory costs under the Clean Air Act are totally different. No one has even calculated this yet.

I would like to make sure we understand that under the bill my good friend Ed Markey and Waxman put forth, it would regulate the emissions of those organizations that emit 25,000 tons or more. However, if you do it through the Clean Air Act, it would be 250 tons. So you are talking about instead of 25,000 tons--which might be only the very large organizations; refineries and that type of thing--under the Clean Air Act, which is what they are attempting to do today as we speak, it would be just 250 tons, which would be every school, every hospital, every shop, and many residences.

So the greenhouse gas regulatory costs--if it costs $300 to $400 billion to regulate organizations that emit 25,000 tons, how much would it be if they emitted 250 tons? It is something that has not even been calculated yet.

So we have all of these impacts of the regulations that take place. But the greatest of all would be, if you think about the cumulative impact study back--I have introduced legislation, along with several others. I know John Barrasso and several others have cosponsored legislation that would tell the public the cumulative effect of all these regulations.

For example, as to the ozone regulations: 77 Oklahoma counties would be out of attainment; 7 million jobs would be lost.

As to Utility MACT--that is something that did pass--a $100 billion cost--1.65 million jobs lost. It has already been implemented.

Boiler MACT--and every manufacturing company has a boiler; and ``MACT'' means ``maximum achievable control technology''--Boiler MACT is costing $63 billion, and 800,000 jobs have already been lost.

The BLM fracking regulations would be $100,000 per well--duplicative of effective State regulations, which have been doing very well now since 1948.

And there are greenhouse gas costs of $300 to $400 billion.

So I guess what I am saying here--and I know I am using up quite a bit of time, but it is important to look and see what has happened since the time they were all talking about global warming. Everybody was talking about it, and how they are going to have an all-night thing to try to revive it because the public has gone in the other direction.

George Mason University had a study where they actually interviewed several hundred of the TV meteorological people. Mr. President, 63 percent of them said that if global warming is taking place, it is from natural causes, not from global warming.

Polar bears. Everyone is concerned about polar bears. I know my good friend from California gave me a polar bear. It is my favorite coffee cup and I use it all the time. But between the 1950s and 1960s, the number of polar bears that were wandering around out there was between 5,000 and 10,000. Today, it is between 15,000 and 25,000.

The threats. A lot of times when people cannot win an argument, then they threaten. NASA's James Hansen said this is ``high crimes against humanity.'' Robert Kennedy, Jr., called me a ``call girl,'' a ``prostitute.'' Robert Kennedy, Jr., also said: ``This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.'' In other words, we need to start killing people.

In 2006, the eco-magazine Grist called for Nuremberg-style trials for skeptics. September 29, 2007: Virginia State climatologist skeptical of global warming loses his job after a clash with the Governor. ``I was told that I could not speak in public.''

Barone: Warmists have a ``desire to kill heretics.''

The Weather Channel--Heidi Cullen, by the way, is a meteorologist on the Weather Channel. She is off with an environmental group right now, so she is not around anymore.

Polling--where the American people are going; I think it is important to understand--this is a Gallup poll that is a current one right now. According to a Gallup poll, climate change is the least important environmental issue among the voters.

In March of 2010, the same Gallup poll: Americans rank global warming dead last, 8 out of 8 environmental issues.

In March 2010, Rasmussen: 72 percent of American voters do not believe global warming is a ``very serious problem.''

The global warmist Robert Socolow laments:

We are losing the argument with the public, big time. . . .

I think the climate change activists, myself included, have

lost the American Middle.

So there are definitely some things going on here that are not in their favor.

I would like to mention this, though. I think a lot of people have talked about the various scientists. On my Web site you can look up several thousand--this is a long time ago--I think we passed through 1,000 qualified scientists way back in 2006, and it has gone up since that time to many, many, so it is something where there are a lot of scientists. One of my favorite scientists is one because he is a Nobel prize-winning Stanford University physicist. He said:

Please remain calm. The earth will heal itself--climate is

beyond our power to control. The earth doesn't care about

governments and legislation. Climate change is a matter of

geologic time . . . something the earth does on its own

without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.

Richard Lindzen of MIT was a former U.N. IPCC receiver. He said: If the government wants carbon control, that is the answer the NAS will provide. He is the one who also said: The ultimate controlling factor is once you control CO2, you control people.

The Harvard Smithsonian Study. The study examined the results of more than 240 peer-reviewed papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. The study covers a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators. They came to the conclusion that climate change is not real and that the science is not accurate.

Dr. Fred Seitz--he is the former president of the National Academy of Sciences--said: ``There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.''

So we have a lot of scientists on both sides of this issue. I think the American people have woken up. I use something quite often because it is a little bit comical--and this is just kind of from memory, but this is something that actually did happen. Mr. President, 1895 was the first time we had, in recent history--we have had cold spells before, and we had the medieval warm period and all of that stuff; that was a long time ago--but in 1895--starting with current, more modern history--they had a cold spell that came in. That is where, I say to my friend from New Hampshire, they first came up with a new ice age that was coming. That was in 1895. That lasted from 1895 to 1918. Then, in 1918, they came along with a warming period. That was the first time we heard the term ``global warming.'' That was in 1918, and that lasted until 1948.

And get this. These are about 30-year cycles. That lasted until about 1945. In 1945, all of a sudden it changed from this warming period to a cooling period. That lasted until 1975. Then it changed to a warming period. Now, since 2000, it has leveled off, and we are going into another cycle. You can almost set your watch by these cycles.

Here is an interesting thing about that. In 1948, when it changed from a warming period to a cooling period, that coincided with the greatest single release of CO2 in history. That was right after World War II.

So these are the things that are happening. I know they are going to enjoy staying up all night. They will have an audience of themselves, and I hope they enjoy it.

But I have to say this in all sincerity. When you see something, and instead of going right along with the public and saying, it must be true because everybody is saying it--and everybody goes over and over again and talks about the climate is real and the science is real, and all that--well, that happens when it is not real, and that is what we have been going through.

Right now I know President Obama is going through all kinds of efforts to try to do through regulations what the elected people would not do in the House, as well as in the Senate. When people realize--and they will be reminded again, even though it has been a while--now, I think it might be clever that after several years now where people have been talking about global warming that now they are trying to revive it, and that is what you are going to hear all night long here tonight.

It is kind of interesting that this is happening at a time that we are going through this cold spell. It certainly has not been much fun in Oklahoma.

So I think the American people are not ready to pass the largest tax increase in the history of America, and we will have to wait and see.

With that, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for an observation, since the Senator mentioned my name?

The reason I did not use the word ``hoax'' is because then I might be guilty of advertising my book, and I certainly did not want to do that.

Thank you, Mr. President. I thank Senator Boxer and Senator Schatz and Senator Whitehouse for organizing this.

I rise tonight to talk about climate change, along with 25 to 30 of my colleagues who will be speaking through the night.

The recent extreme weather events we have experienced across the United States are our call to action. We in this body need not just to talk about climate change but to take action to address it. If we fail to act, the extreme weather events we have seen will only grow more extreme in the future.

This winter has been exceptionally cold in many areas of the United States, including Minnesota. Some deniers have taken this as a sign that climate change isn't happening. They have pointed to the cold weather as evidence that global warming is not occurring. But they are missing the point. We already know that on average the Earth is warming. This isn't complicated. We have been using thermometers to make measurements around the globe for a long time. We know average temperatures have gone up significantly in recent years.

But climate change isn't just about the average temperature. As the average temperature continues to rise, most experts agree we will see ever more frequent extreme weather events, including drought, storms, floods, and other extreme events. It is important to remember that we are not attributing any one event to climate change, but we can say there will be more extreme weather events as the Earth grows warmer.

As the Presiding Officer knows, we have seen the polar vortex bring Arctic weather to much of the United States during this winter. According to White House Science Adviser Dr. John Holdren, we can expect to see more of this kind of extreme cold as global warming continues. This is going to have serious consequences--it already has.

In my home State of Minnesota, the extreme cold has contributed to very serious propane shortages. Many rural residents are unable to properly heat their homes. Turkey growers are finding it difficult to heat their barns and, therefore, their turkeys. This is not just a problem in Minnesota. Other areas of the country have been affected. We in the Senate have to talk about what is happening and start taking action in the face of climate change threats.

The ongoing drought in California and other States is another example. The situation is particularly grave in California where vast regions have been classified as D4, which is the most severe drought category. This has cost farmers their crops and livestock and created severe water shortages for residents and businesses. Farmers have had to stop farming half a million acres of what normally is irrigated land. That is about 6 percent of the entire State of California. According to the California Farm Water Coalition, it is already costing that State $5 billion. These costs get passed on to every American. As a result of this drought, Americans have to pay more and will continue to pay more for groceries this winter.

Unfortunately, droughts such as this are becoming commonplace. In 2012, drought caused more than 70 percent of U.S. counties to be declared disaster areas. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated the economic impact of droughts to be $30 billion. The droughts destroyed or damaged major crops all over this country, making corn and soybeans more expensive and increasing animal feed costs. Again, Americans pay more for meats and other animal-based products because of drought.

In the Midwest, the 2012 drought dramatically lowered water levels in the Mississippi River, seriously interfering with our ability to transport our agricultural goods to market to compete with those from other countries. So that barges wouldn't run aground, shippers sent them down the Mississippi only half full with, say, soybeans. This made Minnesota soybeans less competitive with Brazilian soybeans.

Climate change is also exacerbating our Nation's wildfires, as we heard Senator Wyden from Oregon describe about his State. When Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell testified in 2012 before the Senate Energy Committee, I asked him about the link between climate change and forest fires. He told us that throughout the country we are seeing longer fire seasons--more than 2 months longer--compared to fire seasons in the 1970s. Wildfires are also larger and more intense. I asked Chief Tidwell whether scientists at the Forest Service thought climate change was causing this increase in the size and intensity of wildfires and extending their season, and without hesitation he said yes. The Forest Service is spending more and more fighting wildfires--now about half of its entire budget.

Longer fires and larger, more intense fires are going to eat up more and more of that budget. In addition, these wildfires--especially ones that occur at the wildland-urban interface--are increasingly threatening homes and property. Most importantly, more intense fires are costing lives. The 19 brave firefighters who perished in Arizona last June should be a reminder of the gravity of this issue.

Of course, we cannot talk about climate change without talking about sea level rise. As I said, I serve on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. In 2012, I attended a hearing on sea level rise and heard testimony about how rising sea levels are increasing the size of flood zones and increasing damage from storm surges. One example they used--they said this is a possibility--is that a few inches of sea level rise could result in a storm surge that could flood the New York City subway system. It sounded like something out of science fiction. Yet 6 months later, that is exactly what happened when Hurricane Sandy hit New York City and flooded the subways. My colleagues do not need to be reminded of the cost of Hurricane Sandy. It cost taxpayers a staggering $60 billion.

So when people talk about the harmful consequences of climate change and its costs in terms of homes and dollars and lives, they are not talking about some far-off future problem. Climate change is already hurting us.

Unfortunately, only one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle--the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Murkowski from Alaska--attended that hearing. This has been pretty much the case whenever we have a hearing that even tangentially relates to climate change.

A number of my colleagues in Congress don't believe human activity is contributing to climate change. Many others, I suspect, don't talk about climate change because addressing it requires that we make some difficult choices.

This is despite the fact that even some of the major fossil fuel companies that previously funded anti-climate change efforts have turned the page on this issue. ExxonMobil used to fund the Heartland Institute, one of the leading organizations spreading climate change denial propaganda. But if we go to ExxonMobil's Web site today, it states: ``Rising greenhouse gas emissions pose significant risks to society and ecosystems.'' That is ExxonMobil.

Shell Oil states on its Web site: ``CO2 emissions must be reduced to avoid serious climate change.'' That is Shell Oil.

So even the major oil and gas companies have begun to acknowledge that climate change is real. I would respectfully suggest that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle here in Congress also need to engage in a serious conversation on climate change.

At a time when Americans are dealing with record droughts and other extreme weather events, the Senate cannot afford to simply ignore climate change. Ultimately, we have to come together to start addressing climate change before its damage and costs to society get out of control.

I know this is not going to be easy. Some will point out that climate change is a global problem--sometimes called global climate change--and that we can't solve it alone. They are right. Emissions in the developing world are on the rise. China now surpasses the U.S. in total greenhouse gas emissions. But China is also starting to wake up to its serious pollution problem. In fact, at the opening of the annual meeting of its parliament last week, the Chinese Premier stated that his country is declaring a war on pollution. Overcoming pollution challenges will require China to invest heavily in renewable and other environmentally friendly technologies. It is going to make the global clean energy race even more competitive. If we are going to

win this race and create good-paying jobs for Americans, we have to invest in clean energy.

We know that government investment in energy can pay off. Take the example of natural gas. We are currently experiencing a natural gas boom in this country. Sometimes my colleagues forget that this boom happened in large part because of years of Federal support to develop hydraulic fracturing technology. The Eastern Gas Shales Project was an initiative the Federal Government began back in 1976, before hydraulic fracturing was a mature industry. The project set up and funded dozens of pilot demonstration projects with universities and private gas companies that tested drilling and fracturing methods. This investment by the Federal Government was instrumental in the development of the commercial extraction of natural gas from shale. In fact, microseismic imaging--a critical tool used in fracking--was originally developed by Sandia National Laboratory, a Federal energy laboratory.

The industry was also supported through tax breaks and subsidies. In fact, Mitchell Energy Vice President Dan Stewart said in an interview that Mitchell Energy's first horizontal well was subsidized by the Federal Government. Mr. Mitchell said: