A resolution establishing the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Madam President.

Madam President, I object.

Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, many Democrats have called climate change the greatest challenge of our time.

House Representative Ocasio-Cortez is the Green New Deal's lead sponsor. She calls climate change ``our World War II.'' She said: ``The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.'' Senator Schumer said that climate change is ``an existential threat.''

When the Green New Deal was introduced just last month, Democrats lined up to support it, to cosponsor it, and to agree with it. Senator Markey of Massachusetts called it ``the kind of generational commitment that we need to transform our economy and our democracy.'' Every Democratic Senator running for President of the United States is a cosponsor--every single one.

When Leader McConnell called for a vote on the Green New Deal, Senator Schumer said: ``Go for it. Bring it on.'' He said it right here on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota agreed, saying that she will vote yes. That is how she said she will vote--will vote yes. We will see what she does today.

Well, today, the Senate will vote on the Green New Deal. All Senators will have a chance to go on the record, a chance to show whether they support this radical approach. But rather than voting for the Green New Deal that they introduced and cosponsored, it sounds like some Democrats are trying to run away from a vote on something they previously embraced.

If so many Democratic Party leaders support the Green New Deal, why aren't they willing to vote for it and stand up behind it today? The answer is obvious: The Democrats are ducking the vote. But why? The answer is pretty simple: The Green New Deal is unaffordable, it is unworkable, and it is unpopular.

When you add up all of the costs and the 10-year price tag of $93 trillion, that is enough to bankrupt America. The cost is astronomical. It would hit every American really hard--about $65,000 per family per year. That would empty just about every bank account in America. I believe it would drive a stake right through the heart of our strong and healthy and growing economy. The Green New Deal would massively increase the role of government in our lives and the size of government, the expense of government.

Let's be honest. The climate is changing. It continues to change. It requires a serious response--a serious response. The Green New Deal is not that response.

This plan would eliminate fossil fuels. It would require 100 percent renewable energy, carbon-free energy, in just 10 years. The goal is to meet all of our energy demands in the United States through ``clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources.'' We need more renewable energy, but the goal of going from where we are to where they want to be is absolutely impossible in the period of time outlined.

Robert Blohm from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation wrote in the Wall Street Journal: ``An all-renewable power grid is destined to collapse.''

America can't tolerate a collapsed power grid. Plus, it wouldn't solve the problem. Turning off America's economy will not lower global emissions. America is leading the way in reducing emissions--reducing emissions.

Since 2007, U.S. energy emissions have fallen by 14 percent, while global emissions continue to rise. In 2017 the United States produced just 13 percent of global emissions and China and India together produced over 33 percent. So emissions are going to continue to climb until these countries take action. Emissions in the United States continue to decline.

Shutting down our energy would also harm American workers. That is why major labor unions oppose the Green New Deal. The AFL-CIO labor union, which represents 12.5 million workers, says: ``We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families.'' I agree.

Even former President Obama's Energy Secretary, Ernie Moniz, called the Green New Deal impractical. He said it would hurt American progress in reducing emissions. That progress came from innovation, not from massive government taxation and regulation.

Congress must continue to support technologies like nuclear power and carbon capture utilization--things that we know make a difference--and we have done this in a bipartisan way in these areas. I want to continue to work with Democrats to find real solutions. We have passed legislation in a bipartisan way for advanced nuclear powerplants, for carbon capture and sequestration, and for using the carbon in productive ways, whether it is for medication or whether it is for construction products.

The Green New Deal is not the solution for America. It is a big green bomb that will blow a hole in our strong, healthy, and growing economy. That is exactly why Democrats aren't voting for it. That is exactly why Democrats

are ducking and dodging and distancing themselves from this so-called Green New Deal, because it is a radical plan, and it is exactly why Democrats are running away--running away--from the Green New Deal. I think we are going to see it today--running away as fast as they can.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I know the vote is scheduled at 4 o'clock. I am happy to answer a question.

Madam President, as a matter of fact, I would say to my friend, the Senator from New York, that he asked me those three identical questions on this floor about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and my answer today is the same as it was then. You are welcome to go back to the Congressional Record. I recommended this to the Senator from New York, and I bet I wrote in the New York Times in December that said: Yes, I do believe that climate change is real, and, yes, I believe that humans contribute to it, and, yes, I believe we have a responsibility to do something about it.

I highlighted the role of innovation, not taxation or regulation, in coming to those solutions. I highlighted legislation that has passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and was even signed into law by the President, something called the FUTURE Act, which works on capturing carbon dioxide and using it productively. We talked about a bill called the USE IT Act, which is now coming through the committee. We are working on it. It has bipartisan support, and it passed last session. It didn't get all the way to a signature. We talked about the future of nuclear power and the advanced nuclear powerplants that are being done, and we paved the way for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do things because nuclear power has zero emissions.

These are bipartisan pieces of legislation, passed with overwhelming support by the Senate and the House and signed by the President. These areas with carbon capture and nuclear power works are things that actually President Obama's Secretary of Energy, Ernie Moniz, testified to the Senate Energy Committee are the two things that actually can work at scale. Anything else that the United States, I will tell you, does unilaterally, will not contribute to a solution because emissions from the United States are only 13 percent of all the emissions in the world.

I would once again recommend to the Senator from New York an op-ed that I had written about dealing with climate change through innovation, not regulation or taxation, and I hope, in that way, that I have answered the Senator's three questions.

I would say to the Senator from New York that if he is actually serious about discussing climate change on the floor of the Senate and looking for solutions, then, what he ought to do today is instruct his Members--and I believe he may have instructed them to vote present--to vote to get on the bill, to get on this to discuss it and to debate it. But it doesn't sound like even the cosponsors are willing to stand up and vote for something they have cosponsored. A dozen of them have done it.

Three of them were leading a rally outside the steps of the Capitol within the last couple of hours, with one Senator chanting: What about the Green New Deal and having a vote on it? When do we want it? And the crowd was chanting: Now.

It will be instructive to see how those Senators--and one of these was a candidate for President--vote when their name is called as the roll is called here on today's vote on the Green New Deal.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would like to point out to my friend and colleague that the statement I had made earlier about my belief goes back a long time--that the climate is changing--to the point that one of his colleagues, Jeff Bingaman, a Senator from New Mexico, chaired the Energy Committee when he and I cosponsored legislation dealing with carbon and carbon capture and putting together an XPRIZE-type program. This is something I have long spoken about and understand.

I also hear the Senator from New York essentially trying to strip the EPW Committee of the jurisdiction we have over climate change. That is the wrong approach when we have made real progress working together not just on bills but on bills signed into law that are making a difference today.

This resolution the minority leader just introduced is an attempt by the Democrats to once again duck and dodge and distance themselves from the Green New Deal vote this afternoon. The Democrats seem to think that adding a layer of bureaucracy is an answer to every problem. That is the same instinct that gave us the Green New Deal. That climate is changing and humans play a role in the changing climate, there is no question in my mind about that.

I am going to continue to work closely with the ranking member of the committee, Senator Carper from Delaware, to pass meaningful legislation to promote nuclear power, carbon capture technologies, and to reduce emissions.

So Democrats can't hide from the fact that every Democratic Senator running for President has cosponsored the Green New Deal.

Here we are today, and I will just state that we have been passing bipartisan legislation. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently held a hearing on climate change. We do not need another committee. We don't need the Green New Deal; we need real solutions. For this reason, I object.

Madam President, I know that time has expired.

We had a hearing in the last couple of weeks. We had an expert in the specific area of carbon capture come to show how much more effective the technology has become. This is something I started working on 10 years ago. It is something researchers around the world are committed to because we are finding value in that carbon to create products that can be used either medically or for construction. The University of Wyoming has an integrated test center right next to a coal-fired powerplant, and the technology is there to take the carbon dioxide right from the stack and use it, some for enhanced oil recovery, some for production. They are continuing to work on the science of all of this.

Certainly, there are the climate alarmists who are out there, and it does seem that what they want to do is act immediately, drastically, and unilaterally in ways that will not solve the problem. It will hurt our country. It will hurt our economy. It will move the lifeblood of the U.S. economy to foreign countries, and I will do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen.

Thank you. I know the time has expired.

Madam President, last month our colleague, the Senator from New York, the Democratic leader, said:

So when the Republican leader says he wants to bring the

Green New Deal resolution up for a vote, I say: Go for it.

Bring it on.

Well, here we are. Senators will soon have a chance to vote on the Green New Deal, and we have already seen a lot of confusion and more than a little waffling from our friends on the other side of the aisle, some apparently confused on exactly what they should do on a resolution they themselves proposed.

When it was announced, the senior Senator from Massachusetts quickly pledged her support, as did the junior Senator from New Jersey. But I find it pretty curious that some of our colleagues who were among the first to join these Senators and voice their support for this proposal are now among those saying they will simply vote present--present.

Even more interesting is one of the bill's authors, the junior Senator from Massachusetts, who called this vote ``sabotage.''

Ordinarily, when proposing a piece of legislation around here, one is tickled pink when the majority leader schedules it for a vote, but somehow some of our colleagues will vote present--neither yea nor nay-- and others claim it is sabotage. As the vote approaches, we have seen many of our Democratic friends running for the hills, trying to provide space between them and this issue.

The Green New Deal is chock full of utopian ideas but completely devoid of concrete plans to implement any of its overreaching policies. Even the name is a little disorienting because the Green New Deal is not just a new radical environmental policy; it is that, but it is more. It encompasses much more than that with Medicare for All, free college, and guaranteed jobs. I might add, parenthetically, you might as well throw in free beer and pizza too.

What has been billed as an economy invigorator and job innovator in order to lift up the middle class is really anything but. The bottom line of this proposal is a solution in search of a problem. It is about a message; it is not about finding solutions to real problems.

Maybe it is useful to take a step back to look at what we have already done in this Congress to help the middle class and to generate job growth. Over the last 2 years, we have worked to roll back burdensome regulations left over from the previous administration and make much needed reforms to our outdated Tax Code--the first time in 30 years.

My constituents in Texas have taken notice, and I have heard from many of them who have seen an increase in their take-home pay, thanks to the tax reform bill, for example. Small businesses in Texas have been able to help give their employees more benefits. For example, Village Foods and Pharmacy in Bryan, TX, said that because of the tax reform bill, they were able to provide employee bonuses and implement a 401(k) retirement program, something they were previously unable to do. In San Antonio, my hometown, Hinee Gourmet Coffee said they used their tax cut savings to give their employees raises, as well as to increase employee benefits and upgrade their equipment.

The unemployment rate in Texas remains at 3.8 percent, near its historic 43-year low and on par with the national average. The Lone Star State has added 268,000-plus jobs since February 2018. If you go to Midland, TX, and the Permian Basin, the unemployment rate is 2.1 percent. Labor is tight, and employers are looking for workers because the economy is booming, and they need good people to fill these unfilled jobs.

I think my State is proof positive that when the government gets out of the way, the economy can flourish. That is why we have seen so many people flooding into Texas to take advantage of the low taxes and abundant job opportunities. It is also why I find it so ironic that a few weeks ago one of the Green New Deal creators, the Congresswoman from New York, chose South by Southwest in Austin to peddle her socialist agenda, because if implemented, the Green New Deal would wipe out most of this prosperity. It would cut job growth; it would dramatically increase taxes and cripple our red-hot economy.

One group has estimated that in order to achieve just one portion of this radical agenda--a net-zero emissions transportation system--the annual cost to families would be about $2,000. That is just for part of the Green New Deal.

Add in another Green New Deal proposal, and it gets more expensive-- to

the tune of $26,000. No, I am not talking about somebody's annual paycheck. I am talking about the estimated cost for families to implement their universal healthcare program that would wipe out all employer-provided coverage and bankrupt Medicare. Families in Texas and across the country would be on the hook for more than $65,000 a year in order to finance the Green New Deal's expensive and extravagant promises.

Unfortunately, the list of expenses doesn't stop there. The Green New Deal calls for a move to 100-percent clean and renewable energy in just 10 years. Right now, Texas generates about 19 percent of our energy from renewables. We like renewables in Texas, but there needs to be a baseload that provides energy when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. The Green New Deal has no plan for how it expects States to actually scale up their number from the 19 percent Texas currently generates from renewables to this 100 percent--no plan at all.

Without a plan, Texans can forget about electricity that is affordable and reliable; instead, they need to ready themselves for electric bills that could jump to as high as $3,800 a year.

Instead of focusing on a grab bag of government mandates and overreaching regulations that we know would bankrupt our country, we need to follow existing models that point a way toward success. We know what works, and, if you will forgive me, I would suggest the Texas model is a good one. Our model values collaboration and partnership with the private sector in order to create affordable and cutting-edge solutions. We are all about innovation and experimentation. That is how we come up with better, smarter, more efficient, and more effective ideas to deal with problems. It is a model based on innovation that has been the backbone of our successful economy. The last thing we need is another Federal Government wet blanket that puts a damper on all of the great innovation and activity that has caused our economy to boom.

Texas is really the best example of this with companies like NET Power and NRG Energy, which are leading the way in innovation. NET Power, which has a plant in La Porte, outside of Houston, has developed a first-of-its-kind power system that generates affordable electricity from natural gas with zero emissions--zero emissions.

Our State is also proof positive that one can promote innovation while harnessing the traditional power of oil and gas development. In other words, we can be pro-energy, pro-innovation, pro-growth, and pro- environment. But if we implemented the Green New Deal, we wouldn't be talking only about the added costs and expenses to families; hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs and our export economy, which helps fuel our booming economy, would sharply decline. Our energy independence would evaporate, but our need for and reliance on natural gas, coal, and oil would remain. It would focus our efforts back on being more dependent on foreign energy sources rather than generating them domestically. I am sure Russia, for example, would be happy about that.

Some have called the Green New Deal the road map for solving climate change, but to be a road map, you have to have clear points on how to get from point A to point B. You actually need to be clear-eyed about the problem you are trying to solve, and you need details in terms of how you actually hope to get to where you want to go. But this proposal is a pie-in-the-sky, unattainable end destination with no details of how to arrive there.

So as the Senate prepares to vote on the Green New Deal, I ask that we keep in mind that our constituents didn't send us here to Washington to vote present. That is a copout. Voting present? Give me a break. People ought to vote their conviction. They ought to vote yes or no. To hide behind some copout vote like present is just to take the easy way out, and it is sad that appears to be the road many of our friends across the aisle are about to take, rather than doing the job they have been sent here to do and working with us to come up with actual, tangible solutions that can become law. I know that if we just tried a little bit harder and avoided these sorts of ideological talking points, we could actually solve more of these problems and ours could remain a strong economy. We could create jobs. We can maintain our energy self-sufficiency here in America, and we can deal with environmental emissions concerns. We can find solutions to those problems, but one big power grab by the Federal Government that ruins the economy, bankrupts us, and, frankly, doesn't really make things better is a bad deal for Texans, and I believe a bad deal for Americans.

Unsurprisingly, I intend to vote no, and I hope my colleagues will join me in doing the same.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, the Democrats on this side believe that climate change is a real and urgent problem. The Republican leader seems to believe it is not a problem at all.

The majority leader has scheduled votes today on a version of the Green New Deal. I was proud to be a cosponsor of that.

I want to make sure that nobody believes what is happening today on this floor is part of a serious debate. The fact is, it is a sham debate about the growing and urgent problem of climate change.

The Green New Deal is all about offering a mission statement--a statement of direction on the urgency of climate change. It is about recognizing the staggering threat and encouraging everybody to come forward to bring up good ways to tackle it. As the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, I will outline just one of them this afternoon. It is not a bill; it is a resolution. That is why it is a head- scratcher to hear all these far-fetched attacks on the Green New Deal in the media and here on this floor.

Let's be clear about what this resolution, the Green New Deal, says. Nobody is out there banning cheeseburgers. If you want to eat an ice cream sandwich and wash it down with a milkshake, nobody is going to be taking that milkshake out of your hands, either. I don't know what this anti-food legislation is that I keep hearing opponents talk about, but it certainly isn't the Green New Deal. I will tell you that my son, William Peter Wyden, age 11, is specifically going to make sure that his papa doesn't sign on to something like that. There is no building trains to Hawaii. Nobody is banning airplanes, and nobody is trying to take people's cars. The Green New Deal is about bringing good ideas to bear in the fight against climate change. That is what the American people are demanding action on.

I will tell you that this issue comes up at every townhall meeting I hold. Just over the last week, I was in rural counties where Donald Trump won by an enormous percentage, and people understood what climate change was all about because of the wildfires we had.

These are not your grandfather's wildfires; these are infernos. We have had them leap the Columbia River. They are more powerful. They are more dangerous. Fire season isn't for just a couple of months in the summer; it is almost year-round. In my home State, we have had to get used to what amounts to the idea of clean air refugees when fires burn near populated areas. This is where folks--particularly folks who are of modest income--have literally nowhere to go and can't go outside. Anybody who hasn't been to the Columbia River Gorge should know that when a fire leaps the Columbia River, you are talking about something very different. Rivers have historically blocked the spread of wildfires but not anymore. Last year, dozens of people were killed and more than 10,000 structures destroyed by the Camp Fire, the most destructive fire in California history. These infernos are happening across the West--Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, and elsewhere.

Climate change isn't just about fires; it drives extreme temperatures in both directions. Extreme cold is a danger to millions of people during the winter. Warmer temperatures in spring and summer bring more rain and more floods to so much of the country. Elsewhere, especially in the West, the threat of drought looms continuously. The hurricanes battering the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico are intensifying. It seems as if every week, another group of prominent scientists warns about mass-extinction events, ecological failures, and runaway temperature increases.

There are great economic impacts as a result of all this. When Americans face a future of extreme temperatures, bigger storms, and hotter fires, it will mean that it will cost more money to rebuild the city that has been flooded by a hurricane or burned in an inferno. We are going to see increases in insurance premiums when weather-related damage becomes more common. If you really want to know how serious this problem is, look at these private insurance premiums. The market is telling us how serious this problem is. It requires more energy to heat and cool homes and workplaces in extreme temperatures.

I want to make one last point because I think there is a little bit of confusion about the direction the Senate ought to go.

I had mentioned that the Green New Deal is really a mission statement, a resolution, a sense of urgency that we ought to be all about. I want to contrast that with the original new deal, which was actual legislation, something like 15 bills--certainly, more than a dozen major ones. My sense is that this is what Congress is going to have to do in the years ahead with respect to climate. Let me give an example.

We have talked about the mission of the resolution, where we would like to go. Here is an example of what we ought to work together on with respect to legislation. As the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, I pointed out that there were more than 40 separate tax breaks for energy on the Federal tax books--40 separate tax breaks for energy. In fact, the Tax Code, as it relates to energy, is essentially anchored in dirty energy tax relics of yesteryear.

Given the fact that taxpayers now write out big annual checks to the dirtiest energy companies, what I have

proposed is that we replace that. You can't stand up to climate change as long as you are ladling out all of those tax subsidies to dirty energy. What I have proposed is to take those 40-plus energy tax breaks and just basically throw them in the trash can--in effect, throw them into the trash can that is right next to our desks. For those 40 energy tax breaks that are disproportionately for dirty energy, we would then substitute three new ones--one for clean energy, one for clean transportation fuel, and one for energy efficiency.

I would like to think that the Democrats and Republicans who are playing off this idea are going to be able to say: Hey, we can find common ground on this because for companies all across the country, when they buy new pieces of equipment for their companies, they will invariably make sure they will be cleaner and more energy efficient than what will have been on their factory floors. So they would qualify for two out of the three new energy incentives I am talking about. That is something we could have a real debate about. That is not a sham debate. That is a real debate.

Yesterday, Senator Alexander, our Republican colleague from the Presiding Officer's State, said he believed climate change was real. He said he believed it was caused by man, and he called for a new Manhattan Project for Clean Energy. I heard it. It sounded like he had plenty of ideas that could make for a real debate between Democrats and Republicans. Senator Alexander sits right over there, not far from our colleague from Iowa, Senator Ernst. He was talking about real ideas after acknowledging that climate change was a problem and that man contributed to it.

I hope some of my colleagues on the other side will follow Senator Alexander's lead. This is a debate the Senate ought to have. It ought to have a debate about what Senator Alexander was talking about. We ought to have a debate about throwing the 40 separate tax breaks for energy into the garbage and substituting for them three new ones that reflect our most current challenges. That is the way the Senate is supposed to function: You recognize a problem; you come forward with ideas in a serious debate; and you try to build common ground.

I see my colleague from Iowa is here. I am interested in working with her, and we have worked together on other issues. I am interested in working with all of my colleagues as I have with respect to this question of making the Tax Code neutral regarding energy sources. We are not doing that today. What we are doing is playing a political game.

I say to my colleagues that nobody ought to take part in this political game. You don't play political games when the consequences for the American people are so serious. Instead, you have a serious debate about what to do about the serious problem. That is not what is going on today.

I close by saying that years into the future, our children and our grandchildren are going to deal with the consequences of inaction, and they are going to look at something like this so-called debate--because I call it a sham debate--and they are going to be angry. The American people deserve a lot better than this kind of fake debate that is being held on the Senate floor right now.

I want to make it clear: As the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, I am very interested in working with my colleagues on real and bipartisan approaches to deal with this staggering challenge. That is not what we are having today, and our country is going to regret it.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 6 minutes, please.

Thanks very much.

Madam President, I rise again today to speak on an upcoming vote later on the majority leader's Green New Deal resolution.

To my colleagues, I would just say that I think we have a serious choice to make. Either we can acknowledge the climate crisis that our planet faces and confront it head-on, or we can turn our backs to it and walk away. I think the clock is ticking, and we need to not walk away.

While it is clear that a majority of Americans are calling on Congress to work together to address climate change, a number of our Republican colleagues--not all--have chosen to devote their time to deriding the Green New Deal instead of acknowledging the 800-pound gorilla in the room and crafting an action plan to do something about it while we still have time.

Madam President, I will ask unanimous consent to offer a very simple resolution here in a few minutes. I think my friend from Wisconsin is probably here to reserve the right to object to that, which is his right.

It is a pretty simple resolution. There are three parts to it. The first part of the resolution that I will be offering is that climate change is real. The second part of the resolution is that we as human beings have a lot to do with this problem. The last part of it is that we ought to do something about it. ``We'' includes the U.S. Congress.

I have been asked a fair amount today: Well, what should we do about it? What should we do about it?

If you look at the Green New Deal, the first part of the Green New Deal--especially the findings--gives a pretty good roadmap that I think we ought to seriously consider. I would just suggest that some items that have come up before the Environment and Public Works Committee in recent weeks and months--hearings that we held--could also help us figure out what the Congress might want to do about it.

If you think climate change is real--and I do, and I think most of us do. It is becoming a more urgent matter, not a less urgent matter. What are some of the things we can do? I will mention a few.

I think most people believe that carbon dioxide contributes to climate change, and that is true. With respect to climate change, there are other pollutants that are a lot worse than carbon. I want to mention a couple of them.

One of them is black carbon. Where does black carbon come from? It comes from diesel engines--think of trucks, cars, locomotives, trains, and boats. If you have ever been at a traffic intersection and have seen those big diesel trucks that pull away from the traffic intersection and the huge plumes of black smoke that appear as they pull off, they include black carbon. Black carbon is more than 100 times more dangerous than regular carbon dioxide in terms of its climate potential.

We have American-made technology that can be used on diesel engines-- all diesel engines; there are millions of them--to reduce those emissions by 90 percent.

We have a program called the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, which helps to fund and make monies available for States and local governments and private businesses to reduce their diesel emissions, especially black carbon. That is one.

Two, think about our National Highway System in this country. Through most of our National Highway System, we don't provide charging stations for electric vehicles that have batteries. We don't have fueling stations for vehicles that are powered by hydrogen in conjunction with fuel cells that create movement for all kinds of vehicles.

We need to put money into tax credits and grants for fueling stations for hydrogen and charging stations for electricity. We have an electric vehicle credit that has expired or is about to expire. It needs to be extended so that when people in this country are thinking about buying a vehicle, they will consider buying an electric vehicle, which doesn't put out any carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, or CO2.

Another thing we could do is provide an investment tax credit, which Susan Collins and I have proposed doing for some time, where, for the first 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind that is deployed, the business gets a 30-percent investment tax credit. That is one thing we can do.

The chairman of our Environment and Public Works Committee is here. He and I believe another good idea--and we are joined in this by Republicans and Democrats--is to develop technology, which we think is very promising, that would literally pull

carbon out of the air--not out of a smokestack but literally out of the air--and turn it into something more useful. That is something we can do.

We had a hearing on legislation called the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act, the NEIC. Part of what we want to do is, instead of running nuclear powerplants and ending up with a whole lot of spent fuel, we want to have technology where, when the heat is so high, those nuclear plants would use most of the spent fuel. Instead of having it stacked up around the country, we use it up and we create electricity from it.

Two more things, and I am done. There are HFCs, hydrofluorocarbons, which replaced CFCs. CFCs put a hole in the ozone. They are a coolant. They are a refrigerant. CFCs put a hole in the ozone. They were replaced by HFCs. HFCs didn't put a hole in the ozone. They are better for the ozone layer but not good for climate change. Now we have a follow-on product, a successor to HFCs. They are good for the ozone layer and good for climate change. We ought to make sure that we pass a treaty here in this body so we can actually use that technology.

Finally, the last thing we can do is provide for our auto industry. It is something they are asking for.

I ask for 30 more seconds, please, Madam President.

Thank you.

The last thing we can do is--the auto industry has been saying, with respect to fuel efficiency standards, CAFE and so forth, that we ought to give them some near-term flexibility in terms of meeting more efficient fuel requirements, more efficient mileage requirements, and more stringent requirements going forward in the future. That is what they are asking for to provide certainty. It is a 50-State deal. California is at the table. We ought to do that.

Those are just a couple of things we can do in Congress to actually address this, and we ought to do them. While we successfully help do good things for our planet, we are also going to create jobs and economic opportunity.

I think that is something the chairman of our committee and I might just agree on.

Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged from further consideration of S.J. Res. 9 and that the resolution be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

This resolution says that climate change is real; that as people on this planet, we have something to do with it; and three, that Congress is part of the solution.

That is my resolution.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I stand today with my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle to talk about the real impacts of climate change.

Climate change is real. It is happening in our communities, and it is harming our country. It is impacting our economy, and it is threatening the future of our kids.

You can see it clearly in my home State of Nevada. The last 4 years have been the hottest ever on record, and we are on track to break that record again in 2019. In Nevada, we are seeing longer, more dangerous heat waves, prolonged droughts, and more severe wildfire seasons. Just this past year, more than 660,000 acres of private, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Forest Service land burned in 138 fires starting in June of 2018. The biggest fire in our State's history and also one of the biggest in our country's history happened just this past year. The Martin Fire burned more than 439,000 acres. That is an area about five times the size of Las Vegas.

I have heard from Nevada ranchers who are facing the tough choice to abandon the land their families have worked for generations due to the cost of recovery and the threat of even worse fire seasons. I have met with parents in Las Vegas and Reno who are worried about the impact that worsening air quality, because of climate change and these wildfires, will have on the health of their children.

It is not happening just in Nevada; throughout our country, Americans are being displaced and communities are being ravaged by devastating hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and floods that are causing millions of dollars in damage to homes, businesses, and local economies. Worldwide, carbon emissions levels reached a record high last year, increasing 3.1 percent in the United States alone, despite evidence that high emissions are driving changes in our climate and fueling extreme weather patterns. Yet this administration and the Republican leader have done nothing to act despite overwhelming support from Americans who want us to protect our planet and our communities.

In my home State, Nevadans know the stakes. In 2016, Colorado College polled voters in six Western States about their views on climate change. At the time, 58 percent of Nevadans expressed concerns that climate change was a serious problem. In January, Nevadans were polled again. This time, almost 75 percent of Nevadans expressed serious concerns about climate change. That is a 16-percent jump in 3 years and comes months after 60 percent of Nevadans supported a ballot initiative to expand Nevada's renewable energy portfolio to 50 percent by 2030.

Across the country, Americans are worried about the impacts of pollution and carbon emissions on our climate, health, and our economy. They have seen the harm it has caused just over the last decade, and they are afraid it is getting worse.

You don't have to look far to see that our climate is changing. It is already happening in our own backyards. We have the evidence. There is scientific consensus. This isn't a fringe theory or a hypothesis asking to be debunked; it is a serious crisis that must be met with serious action. It is clear to younger generations of Americans who

actually walked out of schools this month to demand climate action from their representatives in Washington.

Despite overwhelming evidence that climate change is currently threatening our country, Leader McConnell and this administration are sitting on their hands. This administration has repeatedly tried to scrub climate change information from Federal Agency websites, supported Agency officials with deep ties to fossil fuel industries, and pulled the United States out of a critical international agreement that we need to collectively work together to avert climate disaster.

In the Senate, instead of working to find bipartisan solutions to one of our country's greatest threats, Leader McConnell is setting up a vote designed to be nothing more than a political stunt. My Democratic colleagues and I take the threat of climate change seriously. We won't support the Republican leader's newest political game to address climate change. We call it a sham vote. This isn't a vote about legislation; it is a cynical attempt to distract from the challenge confronting our country.

The fact is, Democrats all agree that we need to take urgent action to protect our environment and avert climate catastrophe. Senate Democrats have put forth many new ideas on how to grow our economy and support American prosperity, while addressing our world's growing climate crisis. We would be happy to work with our colleagues to debate them on the floor.

From my seat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I am continuing to fight for legislation to tackle climate change by supporting renewable energy production, protecting workers, and creating good-paying, green jobs in Nevada and across the country.

I call on Leader McConnell and my Republican colleagues: If you are serious about addressing climate change, then join us. Senate Democrats will continue to fight for commonsense policies that reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and combat climate change, and we will continue to call on our colleagues across the aisle to work with us to tackle this challenge in both the House and Senate.

Democrats are working every day to craft smart and effective policies that will help safeguard our planet and help grow our economy. By forcing a vote now, Senator McConnell is denying us all the chance to come together to craft bipartisan, comprehensive climate change legislation through the legislative process. The American people want action now.

I won't stand for Republican leaders using this vote in a cynical attempt to divide Democrats and stall progress. I intend to keep my promise to fight on this issue and to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized, who often bear the brunt of the effects of unchecked climate change.

The American people continue to speak out for action on climate change, and Senate Democrats will keep fighting because our planet and our future depend on it.

I yield the floor.