Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here now for the 88th time to urge this body to wake up to the looming threat of climate change.

In the last few weeks, my Republican colleagues have talked about climate change here on the floor more than at any other time since I began giving these weekly speeches. We had heard next to nothing from Republicans about climate change since the 2010 Citizens United decision. That decision let loose the fossil fuel industry to cast an ever darker shadow of intimidation across this town. So this minor outbreak of dialogue, although minor, has been significant.

All but one of my Republican colleagues is now on the record saying they agree that climate change is real, and 15 voted that it is caused at least in some part by humans. That is some progress. Yet some still persist in their denial. Our scientists now tell us that warming of the climate system is ``unequivocal.'' Yet we equivocate. Scientists are a careful bunch. When they say something is unequivocal, we ought to take note.

The senior Senator from Oklahoma, our chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee, however, maintains that human-caused climate change is a hoax. He thinks it is arrogant to say that humans could cause the climate to change. What is really arrogant is thinking we can ignore the laws of nature, the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, the laws of biology. Whose laws do we think those are? Those laws were given to us by our Creator. They came with this world. They are immutable.

These laws of nature dictate that carbon dioxide is the byproduct of our burning of fossil fuels. These laws of nature, fresh from the hands of our Creator, explain why carbon traps heat in our atmosphere-- something we have known since Abraham Lincoln was riding around this town in his top hat.

Here in the Senate, we have no human power to amend or repeal those laws--and here in the Senate, we shouldn't cherry-pick from the scientific record. That is not fair play. Here on the floor, the EPW chairman paraphrased a 2013 paper from the journal Nature, saying:

. . . there is considerable uncertainty as to whether

[increases in extreme climate variability] is occurring.

The author of the paper, Dr. Chris Huntingford of the UK's National Environmental Research Council, took exception to his paper being mischaracterized. He said this:

Our Nature paper strictly analyzes only year-to-year

variability (fluctuations) in temperature. . . . We do not at

any point offer evidence against a general on-going

background and upwards warming trend. Detection and

attribution statistical studies show that the observed

average increasing temperatures are almost certainly a

consequence of the burning of fossil fuels.

In that same floor speech, my colleague from Oklahoma suggested we could relax about climate change because the Munich Reinsurance Company said weather-related disaster losses have declined as a proportion of GDP worldwide. He neglected to mention testimony before our EPW Committee last July by Munich Re's head of risk accumulation in the United States, Carl Hedde, to wit:

Due to our history of insuring natural catastrophe, Munich

Re was one of the first companies in the industry to

recognize the impact that weather-related events and a

changing climate could have on its business model and

customers. As a nation, we need to take steps to reduce the

societal impact of weather events as we see greater

variability and volatility in our climate.

The senior Senator from Oklahoma has even resurrected the ghost of Climategate, that faux scandal whipped up a few years ago by the polluters and their allies to suggest climate scientists were colluding to exaggerate global warming data. Turned out it was the cooked-up, phony scandal that was exaggerated and not the data. So-called ClimateGate should actually be accurately called ClimateGate-Gate. Yet years later this zombie falsehood still staggers about the floor of the Senate attempting to cast doubt on human-caused climate change. The polluters have relentlessly made it their business to misconstrue the findings of scientific works and to cling to discredited accusations.

We would do well to listen to the overwhelming majority of practicing, publishing climate scientists who agree our carbon pollution is altering the climate. Scientists who conduct experiments, who examine data, who arrive at conclusions, who submit their work through peer review, and who make their data accessible for due diligence by other researchers. It is the best science out there.

But I am afraid those scientists don't have the ear of the senior Senator from Oklahoma. He showed us whom he listens to. He brought a chart to the floor showing several dozen ``recognized'' scientists--as he called them--who don't buy the climate consensus. That chart was produced by an outfit called the Heartland Institute. You may remember them for associating climate scientists with the Unabomber--a classy group.

Their scientists, so-called, included bloggers, columnists, staff of conservative think tanks, a member of the European Parliament, and many scientists who have been funded by the fossil fuel industry.

I will side with the scientists affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science over a bunch of carefully selected bloggers. I will trust NASA and NOAA over scientists who shill for the fossil fuel industry. The Heartland Institute is not alone. It is part of a sophisticated network of climate denial propped up by the carbon-polluting fossil fuel industry. It is a front group fueled by the special interests and their dubious experts.

Interestingly, if we go to Oklahoma State University, we will find one of the experts on this. Dr. Riley Dunlap at Oklahoma State could tell his Senator all about it. Professor Dunlap is one of the preeminent researchers into the deliberate and coordinated effort by corporate interests to spread denial propaganda and distort public opinion on climate change--what he calls the ``organized climate-denial machine.'' Dunlap and a colleague found that nearly 90 percent of climate denial books coming out of publishing houses between 1982 and 2010--guess what--had ties to conservative fossil fuel-funded think tanks such as the Heartland Institute. The whole thing is a rigged game and a phony, and there is a very good professor at Oklahoma State University who keeps track of it.

I also have a fact sheet from the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, its statement on climate change and its implications for Oklahoma. Here is what it says in plain language: The Earth's climate has warmed during the last 100 years. The Earth's climate will continue to warm for the foreseeable future, and much of the global temperature increases over the last 50 years can be attributed to human activities, particularly increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That is actually a noncontroversial statement among regular scientists.

This is no radical with some political agenda. This is a fact sheet from a State scientific agency. It happens to be Oklahoma's. Here is what the agency expects this means for Oklahoma: earlier maturation of winter wheat and orchard crops, leaving them more vulnerable to late freeze events; drought frequency increases, especially during the summer; drier and warmer conditions increasing the risk of wildfires; rain-free periods lengthening with individual rainfall events becoming more intense, with more runoff and flash flooding occurring.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have this statement printed in the Record.

The National Climate Assessment estimates that by the end of the century the temperatures in the Southern Great Plains will increase up to 9 degrees. Mark Shafer is a researcher at the Oklahoma Climatological Survey who contributed to the National Climate Assessment. He told the Oklahoman newspaper that in a few decades Oklahoma could see 100-plus temperatures every summer. By century's end, daily temperatures could top 100 degrees for the entire summer. As the climate warms, droughts will probably get worse, both more severe and more frequent.

Nine Oklahoma professors from Oral Roberts University, Southern Nazarene University, and the University of Tulsa were among 200 evangelical scientists and academics to sign a 2013 letter to Congress imploring us to address climate change.

All of God's Creation . . . is groaning under the weight of our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels. . . . The threat to future generations and global prosperity means we can no longer afford complacency and endless debate. We as a society risk being counted among ``those who destroy the earth.''

Those who know the Bible will know that reference to ``those who destroy the earth'' comes from Revelations. I will quote from Revelations: ``And Thy wrath is come, and the time . . . that thou . . . shouldst destroy them which destroy the earth.''

The letter warns that the way we live harms our neighbors, threatening to create more empty wells, devastated cropland, loss of villages, environmental refugees, and disease.

I ask unanimous consent to have that letter from the 200 evangelical scientists printed in the Record.

Finally, Mr. President, at the University of Oklahoma Berrien Moore III is dean of the College of Atmosphere and Geographic Sciences. He is also Director of the National Weather Center. Dean Moore of the University of Oklahoma was a lead author on an intergovernmental panel on climate change report, which the Senator from Oklahoma is so fond of disparaging. Dr. Moore's work helped the IPCC earn the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He has won research accolades from NOAA and from NASA. In 2009 Dr. Moore testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Here is what he had to say about climate change:

On the increasing strength of Earth science, we now can

state that global warming is ``unequivocal,''--

There is that word again--

but this simply sets the challenge. We need now--

This is 5 years ago, by the way--

to develop the capability to monitor and thereby manage

greenhouse gas emissions through this century and beyond. . .

. The challenge is growing and will not go away.

The effects of climate change are all too real in Oklahoma, in Rhode Island,

and across the Nation. If you don't believe me, go to Oklahoma State and the University of Oklahoma and talk to the scientists I just mentioned. The outlook for us if we fail to act is increasingly dark.

But look again at Oklahoma. The Sooner State is the fourth largest producer of wind power in the country. Wind turbines there make progress toward energy independence and they give Oklahoma farmers steady income as a hedge against droughts and extreme weather. So people farm and they get paid for having a wind turbine located on your farm. It is a win-win. Gary McManus, the Oklahoma State climatologist, has given a number of presentations on climate change and its likely effects on his home State. He often prefaces those talks with this admonition:

This is the science. It is up to you to decide what you do

with it. You can either ignore it or you can use it.

In my view, there will be a high price in harm and in infamy to this democracy if we continue to ignore it. So I say let's use it, but first we will have to wake up.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

Reserving the right to object, during the Keystone debate, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chair said we

should get beyond the discussion as to whether climate change is real--

I object.

Reserving the right to object--it is not in the form of a question--but, as I said, during the Keystone debate, the energy committee chair said we should get beyond the discussion as to whether climate change is real and talk about what do we do. I will not take more time now than to say that I hope we soon do get to that question: What do we do?

With that, I will not object.

Mr. President, the underlying measure benefits specific investors, specific corporations, and pushes regulatory approval of a specific project. In that sense, it has all the earmarks of the biggest earmark ever.

We have learned from other history with earmarks that when you have a project that benefits specific investors and specific corporations and specific entities, there is a valuable premium on having the public know about the campaign contributions relative to that project.

This bill requires the disclosure of over $10,000 in campaign contributions from entities that will make more than $1 million off this project. It is the type of transparency that many of my Republican colleagues had been for before they were against it.

I urge an ``aye'' vote.

Mr. President, I am here now for the 87th consecutive week the Senate has been in session to urge action on climate change.

We have had an interesting couple of weeks on the Keystone Pipeline, but from a climate change and carbon pollution point of view, this would obviously not be helpful. Indeed, it would

be a disaster leading to as much as 27 million--27 million--metric tons of additional carbon dioxide emitted per year. To put that number into some perspective, that is the equivalent of adding 6 million cars and trucks to our roads for 50 years. So it is a very considerable carbon price to pay.

We have seen a poster used on the Senate Floor that says it will have no environmental effect. That is not precisely true. Indeed, precisely the opposite is true. This is the environmental effect it will have, and it is considerable. The report referred to went on to say that it would be offset by the fact that this fuel would go out by rail anyway. But that offset was conditioned on a fuel price above $75 per barrel of oil, and we are at $50. So there is no way that conclusion can stand, and the underlying fact is what prevails--27 million metric tons of additional carbon dioxide.

It is obviously very bad from an environmental perspective. It is a lot of ``not much'' from a jobs perspective. Every 4 days we add more jobs than the construction of this pipeline just through the economic recovery that is taking place.

This is a little bit hard to explain, particularly when you think that this bill is going to be dead on arrival at the White House. We have known from the beginning that this is going to be vetoed. But it has allowed the oil and the fossil fuel industry to show their hands. This is all being done on behalf of a foreign oil company and on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.

When we look at what we have been through in the past couple of days, there are some interesting choices the Senate has made if you are a foreign oil company. If you are a foreign oil company, we will let you use eminent domain to extinguish the property rights of farmers and ranchers and take their farms and ranches away. If you are a foreign oil company, we will exempt you from the oilspill recovery fund--the Federal excise tax on petroleum--so you don't have to pay the taxes American companies have to pay. If you are a foreign oil company, we will not require you to use American steel in a pipeline being built across America being touted as a source of American jobs. If you are a foreign oil company, we won't require you to sell it in the American market even though it is touted as a product that will help balance America's energy portfolio.

So, so far, not much good to show for all of this but one thing, and that is that this exercise has at last brought the issue of climate change to the floor of the Senate.

We have not had much debate about climate change since the Citizens United decision back in 2010 allowed the fossil fuel industry to cast a very long shadow of intimidation across this body. They spend a huge amount of the money that has been freed up by Citizens United. They spend a huge amount of dark money that flows post Citizens United. And since then, the Republican Party has been virtually muzzled on that subject. So having Republicans talk about climate change on the Senate floor was something of a revelation, and I don't think we should underestimate the importance of that or undervalue what was said.

The senior Senator from North Carolina came to the floor and said this:

The concept that climate change is real, I completely

understand and accept. To the point of how much man is

contributing, I don't know, but it does make sense that man-

made emissions are contributing.

. . . the greenhouse gas effect seems to me scientifically

sound. The problem is that how you fix this globally is going

to require more than just the U.S. being involved.

Which I think we all agree with.

The senior Senator from Alaska, who is our chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the floor manager on this very bill, agreed, stating that she hopes we can all, quoting her, get beyond the discussion as to whether or not climate change is real and talk about what do we do.

I look forward to that discussion about what do we do. It is not enough just to say, OK, we finally concede that climate change is really happening. We really do have to get on to what do we do.

Even if you disagree with me that climate change is real and very significant and consequential for our country, if you will spot me that there is just a 10-percent chance that I am right--even just a 2- percent chance that I am right--when we consider the possible harms, it is something that grownup adults and responsible people ought to take a look at and come together and decide what to do.

We have been through some very notable benchmarks. We hit for the first time last year 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere for more than 3 months. They have been tracking this in Hawaii, at the top of the mountain at the Mauna Loa laboratory for decades now, and 400 parts per million for more than 3 months is a new record.

To put that in context: For as long as human beings have been on this planet, all the way back to when we were living in caves, the range of carbon in the atmosphere has been 170 to 300 parts per million. So we are well outside the range that has been our comfortable safe range for human habitation of this planet during our entire human experience, and 400 is a big move when our entire range is only 130 points and now we are 100 parts per million out of that.

Some of this lands in the oceans. The oceans have absorbed about a quarter of all our carbon emissions. We can measure their pH level. This isn't complicated. This isn't something we have to do with elaborate computer models.

What we see is that the pH level of the oceans is changing rapidly. The oceans are acidifying rapidly. When I say rapidly, they are acidifying at a rate that we have not seen in 25 to perhaps 30 or 50 million years. Indeed, some studies say nothing like this has been seen on the face of the Earth for as long as 300 million years. When we consider that our species has been around for about 200,000 years, that is a pretty long window to be launching new and dramatic changes in our oceans.

There is nothing new about the science that supports this. John Tyndall wrote the first report about the greenhouse gas effect to the British Academy of Sciences in 1861. The pages who are here and have studied history will know that 1861 was the year President Lincoln took office. So the scientific community has been aware of the greenhouse gas phenomenon since Abraham Lincoln was driving up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in a carriage with his top hat on.

There is not much new that is there, and the latest data is clearer and clearer that we just continue apace to warm the planet.

Professor Jonathan Overpeck is at the University of Arizona, and Arizona is certainly feeling the heat. Professor Overpeck said:

The global warmth of 2014 is just another reminder that the

planet is warming and warming fast. . . . Humans, and their

burning of fossil fuels, are dominating the Earth's climate

system like never before.

It is equally clear, when we look at the oceans, they not only absorb a lot of the carbon dioxide and acidify as a result--they absorb most of the heat. In fact, they absorb 90 percent of the excess heat that has been trapped by the greenhouse gases that we have flooded our atmosphere with.

I certainly see that in Rhode Island, where Narragansett Bay's mean winter water temperature is up 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit since we had our big hurricane of 1938. That is significant, because it means more likely storms. It is associated with sea level rise. We have 10 more inches of sea level at the Newport Naval Station. So if the 1938 hurricane were to repeat itself now, it would have 10 more inches of sea to hammer against our shores. And that is not a complicated measure, either. We do that with thermometers.

So since the Industrial Revolution, human beings have dumped 2 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air and into the atmosphere. Said another way, that is 2,000 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

The notion that has no effect, when we have known since Abraham Lincoln's day that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and when we put that much in and when we can measure that it is at 400 for the first time in human history--connect the dots. How much does it take? It is really pretty obvious.

Folks who remain skeptical--well, I know, I am not a scientist. I get that. So ask one. That is all I request. And I don't think that is too much to ask of colleagues. And, by the way, do me one favor. You can ask the scientist that you please, but please don't ask a scientist who is in the pay of the fossil

fuel and the denial industry. There are a bunch of them who are out there. They turn up at all the usual denial conferences. They write in the denial journals. They take money from the denial organizations that all have fossil fuel industry funding behind them. Go to someplace neutral.

For instance, go to your own State university, like the University of Arizona or the University of Oklahoma. The dean of the relevant department at the University of Oklahoma signed the IPCC report and started Climate Central. Ask your own university. Ask any major scientific organization. All the major recognized scientific organizations in the United States of America are on board, agree that this is real, agree that this is important, agree that it is vital, and believe that we are actually near the tipping point that may make the damage irrecoverable.

If you don't want to go to your home State university and if you don't want to go to America's major scientific societies, try NOAA and

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and I be allowed to call up my amendment, Whitehouse amendment No. 148.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Madam President, I just wish to speak briefly to this amendment, which I hope might help answer the mystery as to why the first order of business of the new majority in the Senate is S. 1, a bill that allows a foreign corporation to run a pipeline across our country, seizing American farms and ranches along the way. That would not ordinarily seem to be our country's first and highest order of business given all of the issues that we face.

We have seen news reports just today that the legendary Koch brothers are gearing up to spend $900 million in the coming election. We have seen news reports that compare their political operation to the Republican National Committee's political operation--favorably to the Koch brothers as having a bigger political operation.

We know that since Citizens United there has been a torrent of corporate money poured into our elections, and a great deal of it has come from the fossil fuel industry. We know also that beside that torrent of disclosed money has been another torrent of dark money that has poured into our elections. We don't know quite where that has come from, but there are plenty of reasons to suspect and to suggest that money has also come from the fossil fuel industry.

So we have a situation right now where I think reasonable people could look at the facts and draw a sensible inference that the Republican Party has been acquired by the fossil fuel industry as its political subsidiary. If that were the case, then that might be an explanation of why S. 1 does this extraordinary service to a foreign corporation at peril to all of the American farms and ranches and families whose land would be taken from them in order to give this foreign corporation this great boon.

This amendment would require that companies that will make more than $1 million off of the Keystone Pipeline should meet the disclosure obligations that we have voted on before in the Senate. These are disclosure obligations that Republican Senators have often supported in the past.

Indeed, until 2010 and until the Citizens United decision actually showed where the money was coming from and to whom it was going, one of the most ardent and eloquent advocates for disclosure was none other than the distinguished Senator from Kentucky who is now our majority leader. So it would not seem to be out of place to ask for a little bit of disclosure, a little bit of transparency, about where the political contributions went from the corporations that are going to make so much money from this, whether it is more than $1 million made off the pipeline or whether it is opening up the tar sands and having tar sands leases.

So I hope we will have a chance to vote on this, and if we are in favor of transparency and disclosure and voters understanding what is going on around here, this ought to be an amendment we ought to be able to support.

With that, I yield the floor.

May I first inquire of the distinguished bill manager whether I may take a moment to seek to call up an amendment or whether they have present business they need to attend to on the floor?

Happily.

I simply wish to make my amendment pending, and at a convenient time I would like to do that. There was a bit of an aura of good feeling on the floor when the distinguished chairman of the energy committee and distinguished Senator from North Dakota were discussing an orderly approach for getting the amendments pending. Since then, we have heard a good deal about frustration and anger and a bad mood, so I am not sure--maybe a little time to revert to that previous aura might not be in order, but I am only seeking to get my amendment pending.

Rather than face an objection to my unanimous consent request, I will defer it until the chairman and her ranking member have a chance to go through that process, and I will come back at an appropriate time.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up my amendment No. 28.

I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, this is a measure that will allow a needed beam of daylight to be shown on the politics behind this bill we are on. As everybody knows, it is a little bit unusual to some that the opening measure of the new Republican majority would be a project that advantages a foreign oil company.

This measure would require the disclosure of political donations made by companies that stand to earn more than $1 million from this project. This is the kind of information the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly said citizens are entitled to know in order to make appropriate decisions, and in our democracy we should put our citizens first.

I will speak further about this amendment on a later occasion, and I yield the floor at this time.

I ask unanimous consent for just 1 minute to defend my amendment.

May I ask unanimous consent for just 1 minute?

I am honored to congratulate Mr. Vincent Petrarca of West Warwick, RI, a proud American veteran and beloved family man, on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

Vin enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 18 and served in the Pacific Fleet. He was a crewmember of the destroyer USS Newcomb when, in April 1945, that ship encountered heavy air bombardment from Japanese forces off the west coast of Okinawa. Although struck multiple times by kamikaze attackers and sustaining heavy casualties, the Newcomb drove off or shot down several aircraft. ``Nelson's accolade to his sailors, `They fought as one man, and that man a hero,''' wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison, ``could well be applied to her crew,'' which earned the Navy Unit Commendation.

Vin married Jeanne Lesniak, and their union, now in its 62nd year, has been blessed with 7 children, 12 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren. Vin remains active, continuing a formidable amateur golf career. His tournament victories span a half-century, from the 1962 West Warwick Country Club Championship to the 2012 Rhode Island Father/ Daughter State Championship.

On behalf of the State of Rhode Island and the Senate of the United States, I congratulate Vincent Petrarca on 90 remarkable years, and wish him health and happiness in the years to come.

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

Mr. President, I am on the floor to say a few words about my amendment No. 29, which we will be voting on shortly after 3 o'clock, I am told. That is the simple amendment that says it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.

It is, perhaps, a telling coincidence that we are having this conversation on the floor of the Senate now on the fifth anniversary of the Citizens United decision, because before Citizens United came along, there was actually a pretty robust conversation between Democrats and Republicans about carbon pollution, climate change, and what needed to be done about it.

For instance, Senator John McCain ran for President on a robust platform of addressing the carbon that causes climate change.

Senator Collins worked with the current energy ranking member, Senator Cantwell, on a very robust climate bill that would have put a cap on carbon pollution and paid a dividend back to the American people.

Senator Mark Kirk voted for Waxman-Markey when that bill was on the floor of the House, the famous cap-and-trade bill.

Senator Flake wrote an article in his home State paper expressing the value and merit of a carbon fee when it is offset by reductions in other taxes as a way to help workers and address the pollution problem.

Over and over again there were these joint actions all the way back to when I first came to the EPW Committee and Senator John Warner of Virginia was its then ranking member. He wrote Warner-Lieberman with our colleague, then Senator Lieberman.

Then came Citizens United. Then came the massive influx of polluter money into our political system, much of it dark money. At about the spring of 2010--and Citizens United was decided in January of 2010-- that was the end of the conversation.

So here we are today. We are just now reaching agreement on several votes by which I believe our Republican colleagues will, for the first time since Citizens United--some of them, at least--acknowledge that climate change is real.

Indeed, we just heard my friend Senator Graham come to the floor and speak--right there--saying that climate change is real, that humans had a significant role in causing it, and it was something we ought to pay attention to.

This is new. Today, after 5 years of more or less silence. I have spoken on this floor, as everybody knows, a great deal on this subject, and nobody has ever come from the other side of the aisle to respond to me, except for the now-chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, to maintain his view that climate change is actually a hoax that is perpetrated by the scientific community in order to get grants and funding.

So it has been a long drought. It has been a long, long drought. Frankly, it has been a drought that does not reflect the best traditions of this body.

This body has taken on big issues in the past. It took on civil rights. It tried to hold this country together over the issue of slavery.

This body has been significant in the history of the United States at important junctions, and here we are at this important junction where our energy policy needs to change and half of the body basically was mute.

Today that seems to have changed.

That, to me, is very significant. I look forward to a vote on my amendment. As I said, it is very simple. Climate change is real and not a hoax. I hope that is something we can agree on as a body. If we do, then it becomes a predicate for beginning to advance an important conversation.

I am not going to agree with all of my Republican colleagues about their views on how to respond to this problem, and I don't expect my Republican

colleagues to agree with all of my views on how we should respond to this problem. But the dark days of denying that there actually is a problem may very well have seen their first little break of dawn right now.

If that is so, that is exciting news because, as many Republicans have noted--Republicans such as Secretary Schultz, Republicans such as Secretary Paulson, Republicans such as Ronald Reagan's economic adviser, the economist Arthur Laffer--there are smart, conservative ways to address this problem.

I continue to think that the idea that Senator Flake signed off on all those years ago is still the right one to do: Raise a fee by putting a price on carbon that reflects the economic fact that it creates harm for so many other folks, the so-called externalities, what the economists would say. The costs that burning carbon causes to fishermen, to foresters, to homeowners, to people who live near the sea, those costs--build them into the price of the product. That is economics 101. Then take every single dollar that we raise and lower working people's taxes.

I am completely comfortable with that notion. That is one that has been over and over again brought up in the context of Republican and conservative discussions, including a very good recent paper jointly authored by a writer from the American Enterprise Institute.

I see the deputy minority leader on the floor. I had the pleasure of traveling with him and with our ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and other colleagues to Cuba. When we spent time with Cuban officials, Cuban religious leaders, Cuban--just regular folks on the street, over and over again we heard the same phrases coming at us, that it was a time of hope and it was a time of promise.

If there is going to be a time of hope and a time of promise in Cuba, let's hope it can be a time of hope and a time of promise in this body on climate change. It starts with admitting that you have a problem, just like in so many other areas of human life. So I hope that, frankly, every Member of the Senate will vote for my amendment. We appreciate the opportunity to work with the new majority on ways that we can address this telling problem.

I will close by saying this. I am never going away on this subject. It is too important to my home State of Rhode Island. There is no Senator in this body who, if they had an issue as important to their home State as this issue is to Rhode Island, I would not expect and respect to fight all the way through to the bitter end for the interests of their State. My fishermen are not finding the fish where they have been for generations. People who have built homes on the shore are losing them into the sea in big storms. These are real consequences, and we--I promise you one way or the other--are going to do something about it. I hope this is the dawn of that new day.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

May I inquire of the Senator--we will be shortly voting on a number of measures. One is a side-by-side to the Schatz amendment which includes a quotation from an environmental impact statement, and the quotation is as follows:

. . . approval or denial of any one crude oil transport

project, including the proposed Project, is unlikely to

significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands

or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in

the United States based on expected oil prices, oil-sands

supply costs, transport costs, and supply-demand scenarios.

Does the Senator recall when the EIS was written and what the oil prices were that were expected at the time this document was prepared?

Indeed, I would say the breakpoint for that study was at $75 per barrel, and it was at that point that the environmental impact became very real from this harmful tar sands fuel. Not only are we not just under $75 per barrel, we have hit as low as below $50 per barrel.

So I just want to make sure, as long as we are voting on this language very

shortly, that it is clear in the Record of the Senate that the environmental impact statement was hinged on that the ``expected oil prices'' were north of $75 per barrel; that they are now well below that, around $50 per barrel. And, indeed, I would add that the Canadian Research Institute has said the tar sands can't be properly extracted at prices less than $85 per barrel.

So that puts in context what we will be voting on that I thought should be in the Record.

Indeed, in my remarks earlier, I referred to this pipeline as possibly an economic zombie at the current oil prices. I have not seen a single report that this pipeline can be built and operated properly at oil prices where they are right now.

I yield the floor.

Colleagues, I almost hate to use my minute because I am so eager to hear what will be said during the minute when our energy chairman will follow me, but I am hoping that after many years of darkness and blockade, this vote will be a first little beam of light through the wall that will allow us to at least start having an honest conversation about what carbon pollution is doing to our climate and to our oceans. This is a matter of vital consequence to my home State, the Ocean State, my home, Rhode Island, and to many of yours as well.

I hope this is a place where we can get together and have a strong, positive vote that sends a signal that this Senate, at this time in history, is ready to deal with reality.

In the time remaining, I recognize and thank the cosponsors on my side of the aisle, Senator Sanders, Senator Manchin, and Senator Leahy. Senator Inhofe and I are not alone on this bill.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the DISCLOSE Act of 2015.

Simply put, this bill would end the massive undisclosed spending in elections that is undermining public faith in our democracy, creating what one newspaper called ``a tsunami of slime.''

Today marks the 5-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's disastrous 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. With that feat of judicial activism, which will likely go down with Lochner v. New York as one of the Supreme Court's worst decisions, the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court overturned the laws of Congress protecting our elections' integrity, thwarted the will of the American people, and allowed unlimited anonymous corporate money to flood into our elections.

Worse still, even though the justices decided 8-1 that laws promoting disclosure of outside spending were necessary and appropriate, everything that has happened since has shown a concerted effort to prevent and frustrate disclosure. So the billionaires and corporations spending tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars on elections can continue to do so with no public knowledge and no accountability.

The Citizens United decision hangs on a series of irretrievably flawed assertions. Among them is the premise that unlimited corporate expenditures would be fine because there would be a regime of ``effective disclosure'' that would ``provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.''

However, following Citizens United, that regime of ``effective disclosure'' has completely broken down, with billionaires and corporations spending unlimited secret money in elections. In the 2014 elections, the most expensive midterm elections in our history, with over $3.6 billion spent, the Washington Post reported that at least 31 percent of all independent spending was spent by groups that are not required to disclose their donors. And that doesn't even count spending on so-called ``issue ads,'' which is also not reported.

The first line of defense for campaign finance laws is supposed to be the Federal Election Commission. However, 5 years after the fact, the FEC just held a public meeting to consider rules to implement the Court's decision in Citizens United, and incredibly, the commissioners did not even consider rules to require disclosure.

That has left the problem largely to the Internal Revenue Service, because so many of the offending organizations are non-profits. And they mangled this. First, they failed to investigate big non-profit groups spending hundreds of millions of dollars on elections making what appeared to be illegal, material

false statements about election spending on these IRS forms. Then the IRS singled out organizations for scrutiny based on words in their names suggesting that they were politically active. Recently, the Treasury Department and the IRS proposed new rules to require disclosure by 501(c)(4) groups. Along with fifteen of my colleagues, I commended the effort to ensure disclosure by these non-profits. However, the IRS withdrew the proposed rules, and the latest reporting says that new rules won't be ready for the 2016 elections, another failure of disclosure.

The DISCLOSE Act would put some transparency into the ``tsunami of slime.'' The bill, which is unchanged from the version introduced last Congress, would require organizations spending money in elections-- including super PACS and tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups--to promptly disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle. The bill includes robust transfer provisions to prevent political operatives from using complex webs of entities to game the system and hide donor identities. This is not a new idea. Many Republicans, including several in the Senate, used to support disclosure.

Senator Alexander has said, ``I support campaign finance reform, but to me that means individual contributions, free speech, and full disclosure.''

``I don't like it when a large source of money is out there funding ads and is unaccountable,'' said Senator Sessions. ``To the extent we can, I tend to favor disclosure.''

Or as Senator Cornyn put it, ``I think the system needs more transparency, so people can more easily reach their own conclusions.''

Senator McConnell once summed it up nicely: ``Virtually everybody in the Senate is in favor of enhanced disclosure, greater disclosure. That's really hardly a controversial subject.''

And he was right--until Citizens United. Suddenly Republicans are fighting to keep the American people in the dark to protect their wealthy funders.

The high disclosure threshold and other provisions in the bill protect membership organizations from having to disclose their member lists, and from having to disclose any donor who does not wish his or her contribution to be used for political purposes.

Our campaign finance system is broken. Immediate action is required to fix it. Americans of all political stripes are disgusted by the influence of unlimited, anonymous corporate cash in our elections, and by campaigns that succeed or fail depending on how many billionaires the candidates have in their pockets.

Passing this law would remove the dark cloud of unlimited, anonymous money from our elections, and would prove to the American people that Congress is committed to fairness, equality, and the fundamental principle of a government ``of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' As Republican former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter has said, the DISCLOSE Act is ``appropriately targeted, narrowly tailored, clearly constitutional and desperately needed.''

I thank our 35 cosponsors of this bill so far, and Representative Van Hollen for introducing in the House, and I urge my colleagues to support the DISCLOSE Act of 2015.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, this week marks a somewhat dark milestone, which is the 5-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's, in my view, reprehensible decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This was some fete of activism by the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court. It overturned the laws of Congress, it overturned the will of the American people, and it gave wildly outside influence over our elections to corporations and big-money interests, creating what one newspaper in Kentucky called a ``tsunami of slime.''

Well, 5 years on and the evidence is in. The evidence is in our elections, where this dam burst of outside cash that has wiped out previous campaign spending records, and the evidence is in this Chamber, where we once had a thriving bipartisan conversation on climate change, and instead of that we have now been reduced to this Keystone XL Pipeline bill--a show of force from the fossil fuel industry and virtual silence from the other side of the aisle on climate change.

I will say that today marked an unusually bright spot in that darkness when 98 out of 99 Senators voting voted that climate change was real and not a hoax and when we came so close to an amendment that stated that climate change was real and caused by human activity that the sponsor of the amendment had to vote against his own amendment in order to keep the number under 60 because there were enough votes at one stage in the vote count for that bill to have passed even the filibuster threshold. So that made it an interesting day today. But normally we are in blockade.

The purpose of the effort that we have been on has been to fast-track the Keystone XL Pipeline--a tar sands pipeline that may, at the present oil price, be an economic zombie, basically a dead pipeline walking.

Canadian authorities say that the tar sands can't be extracted profitably at under $85 a barrel. The report from the State Department said that the break price where they could take it out by train as an alternative to the pipeline was at $75 per barrel, and the price today is around $50 per barrel. So we really don't know whether this pipeline has an economic future. What we do know is that if it were to operate, it would pass enough tar sands through it to unleash additional carbon pollution equal to 6 million added cars on the road each year for 50 years.

If we take a look at this conversation here, other than the votes we forced today, the effect of Citizens United on our politics is pretty plain to see. Citizens United has not expanded debate in the Senate; it has crushed debate in the Senate. Why? Because since the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, the big fossil fuel polluters and their network of associated interests have become among the biggest spenders--relying heavily, by the way, on undisclosed, untraceable dark money.

According to the Center for American Progress, oil, gas, and coal companies and electric utilities alone reported spending more than $84 million on the 2014 elections. And that is just what they reported. The industry's undisclosed spending in that election through groups not required to disclose their donors or on so-called issue ads that don't need to be disclosed--the total is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, money talks, and in politics it talks plenty loud, and $100 million has a lot to say.

One example is Americans for Prosperity--a Koch brothers' venture-- disclosed election spending of $6.4 million to the FEC for last year's midterm elections, but that group's own officials have boasted that the real number is as much as $130 million--$130 million in just one election by just one group. It is that kind of extravagant spending which has bought the Koch brothers a vast political network, with employees in critical States, with voter bases tied into our consumer data, with advertising and media-buying specialists. Indeed, that sophisticated Koch brothers electioneering capacity has now been reported in the general media to rival or exceed that of the Republican National Committee. Think about that. A few very wealthy individuals in the fossil fuel business--huge polluters--are now such big players in our politics that they rival our national parties. It is small wonder that it is hard to have an honest conversation about carbon pollution in the Senate.

Most of it is hidden. The Washington Post has reported that at least 31 percent of all independent spending in the 2014 elections--which were, by the way, the most expensive midterm elections in American history. At least 31 percent of that was spent by groups not required to disclose their donors. The Washington Post also noted that the 31 percent doesn't even include those issue ads. They are also not disclosed. So we don't know fully how bad the influence of the fossil fuel polluters is, but we sure know it is bad.

Interestingly, the same Supreme Court that decided Citizens United as a part of that decision decided by a margin of 8 to 1 that disclosure of outside spending was necessary and appropriate. The majority said this, and I will quote the decision:

Prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders

and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations

and elected officials accountable . . .

These intervening 5 years have seen a concerted effort to prevent and frustrate disclosure. Dark money spending by so-called independent groups with no disclosure requirements has more than doubled since 2010.

Ludicrous factfinding by the Court's five conservative activists concluded that corporate spending could not ever corrupt elections. It is laughable on its face, but that laughable conclusion also overlooks a very clear fact: limitless, untraceable political money doesn't even have to be spent to corrupt our democracy. It can corrupt through the threat of spending or through the promise of spending. What Citizens United gave corporations and their political instruments the power to do, it also gave them the power to threaten or promise to do, and we in the public will never see those backroom corporate threats and promises or the deals that result. The candidate will know, the special interests will know, but the public will be the ones left in the dark.

Some lobby groups are a little bolder. The Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity openly promised to wipe out candidates who support curbs on carbon pollution. The group's president said if the Republicans support a carbon tax or climate regulations, they would ``be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process. . . . We would absolutely make that a crucial issue.''

The threat is plain. Step out of line and here come the attack ads and the primary challengers--all funded by the deep pockets of the fossil fuel industry, enabled by Citizens United and largely protected from disclosure, so the public cannot see what is going on.

The effect of Citizens United has been particularly clear in the Senate. There once was an active heartbeat of Republican activity on climate change. Senator McCain ran for President on an active, robust program of addressing climate change. Senator Collins did a bipartisan bill on climate change. Senator Kirk voted in the House for the Waxman- Markey cap-and-trade bill. Senator Flake wrote articles supporting a carbon fee as long as the taxes were reduced elsewhere to offset the increased revenue from the carbon fee and on and on. My first exposure to this was the Warner-Lieberman bill and the Warner was Republican Senator John Warner.

That has been a while. Since 2010, the year Citizens United was decided, this honest debate about how we address this problem for the benefit of the American people has flat-lined. Since 2010 the climate evidence has only become stronger. NASA and NOAA just officially declared 2014 the hottest year ever recorded--ever--easily breaking the previous records, the agencies say.

But as the climate alarm bells grow louder, as the Earth sends her signals to us through our scientists' measurements about what has happened to the oceans, measuring the acidification of the oceans, about what is happening in our atmosphere, measuring the carbon concentrations in the atmosphere--as all that information has advanced, there has been just silence in this building since then. Instead of talking about what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans, instead, No. 1, the first agenda of the new majority: We are talking about letting polluters pump more tar sands crude, one of the most toxic fossil fuels on the planet, out onto the global market. Citizens United did not enhance speech in our democracy. Instead it allowed wealthy special interests to suppress and silence real debate.

So I have filed an amendment to the Keystone bill to see what corporate influence pervades this effort. My amendment would require any company that stands to make over $1 billion from the pipeline or from the development of the tar sands to disclose its campaign spending over $10,000 from the last election cycle and going forward. The public needs to be able to connect the dots.

I am also reintroducing the general disclosure act, called the DISCLOSE Act, to require all groups spending on elections to report their large expenditures and their high-dollar donors. The Supreme Court has said we cannot keep corporate interests from meddling in our popular elections. They are people, too, now. So now that the corporations are people, too, let's at least show the voters who it is who is trying to sway their votes. It is a pretty simple idea. It is what the Supreme Court Justices themselves prescribed, and it is an idea that Republicans over and over and over have supported in the past.

The fact we must face in the Senate is that polluter money has polluted our democracy, just as their carbon pollution has polluted our atmosphere and oceans. So it is time to disclose. On climate change where we have an overwhelming scientific consensus, where we have the American people, majorities of Democrats and Republicans, supporting strong congressional action on climate, where we have American businesses small and large that see the folly of ignoring the looming risk, and where we have the national security community, our Armed Forces actively preparing to face the threat climate change poses to American safety and international stability--here, by the way, just as an example, is the Department of the Army's high-level climate change vulnerability assessment. I don't think they are kidding us and I don't think they are part of a hoax.

Mr. President, I thank you for your patience this evening and I will conclude with the remark that I ordinarily conclude these speeches with: It is time to wake up.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendment so that I may call up my amendment No. 29.

Mr. President, I first wish to thank the distinguished chairman of the energy committee and her ranking member for allowing this process to go forward to the point where I am able to call up this amendment.

It is a convention here when amendments are called up to ask unanimous consent that the reading be dispensed with, but in this amendment, the effective language is only eight words: ``Climate change is real and not a hoax.'' So I went ahead and allowed the clerical staff to read the whole operative text of this amendment.

This is an extremely simple amendment. We are here in this remarkable body in which so much history has taken place and in which so many great achievements have been fought through, many of them with powerful interests and strong arguments on opposite sides. And through that conflict, here in this body, we have been able to generate some of the great compromises and some of the great resolutions that have defined the course of the history of this country. So what a wonderful place this is to have the opportunity to serve.

Now, in this great deliberative body, called by many the greatest deliberative body, we have a great issue before us--perhaps as many say, the issue of our time--and that is what our carbon pollution--the excess carbon that we burn when we burn fossil fuels--is doing to our atmosphere and what it is doing to our oceans. There is no factual debate about what it is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans. It is crystal clear, and the consequences are crystal clear as well.

If my colleagues don't believe me, fine, go ask the U.S. military. Ask Admiral Locklear. Ask the Secretary of the Navy. Ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If my colleagues don't want to believe in the military, ask our religious leaders. Ask the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. If my colleagues only believe what corporations tell us, ask some of our biggest and most successful American corporations. Ask Walmart. Ask Coca-Cola. Ask Nike, ask Apple, ask Google. Go on through the corporate heraldry, and virtually every American corporation that is not actively involved in the fossil fuel industry will tell us this is a real and serious problem. And many of them are dedicating an enormous amount of internal effort to try to solve it within their corporate boundaries. Again, Walmart and Coca-Cola come right to the head of the list.

Of course, we don't have to ask our scientists any longer. They are pretty clear. They use words such as ``unequivocal'' and ``undeniable'' at every single scientific society that represents the major elements of the profession in this country. Every single one has made this a priority. If people just want to go out to farmers, foresters, and fishermen, they are already seeing the changes around them.

So here we are in this great deliberative body with this extraordinarily important issue that we have to face, and what do we see? Silence, virtually dead silence, because one side of this body won't even discuss the question. Many refuse to believe that climate change even exists, and for those who do, the political perils of using that phrase have now become so great that there is no serious conversation back and forth about climate change.

In the first week we debated the Keystone Pipeline, which the environmental impact statement said will have a dramatic effect on climate change--the equivalent of 6 million added cars on our highways for 50 years, not to mention the petcoke and the byproducts, and just the carbon effect of it--no mention. The only time it was mentioned was when our distinguished energy committee chairman mentioned the testimony of a witness in her committee. She was good enough to make sure that climate change was raised in her committee, and she mentioned that there had been a witness who in turn mentioned climate change. But there was no direct mention in all of the debate that we heard in that week about climate change. It is the word that cannot be said.

That is wrong. We cannot ignore this problem. It is too real for my fishermen in Rhode Island. It is to real for the people who are living near coasts and are seeing beaches they used to be able to play on eaten away. It is too real for the people whose homes have fallen into the sea. It is too real for us not to discuss it.

Now, it is not going to be easy, and we have to start somewhere. So this is a start. I am going to ask my colleagues to vote on such a simple question: Is climate change real or is it a hoax? Both points of view have been expressed in this body. Where do we come down? Let's actually find out if there are people on the Republican side of the aisle who are willing to say climate change is real. My moose up in New Hampshire, one could say, are suffering unprecedented infestations of ticks because there is no snow for them to fall off and die, and the moose are getting overwhelmed. We could say that in the University of Oklahoma, the leading dean is an IPCC member and led the establishment of Climate Central. One could go to the Carolina coasts and hear from the coastal agencies about sea level rise. One could go to Arizona and hear about the desertification and the drought. We can go all over the place and find these things, and they are real.

We have to have this conversation. It has to begin with as simple a proposition as this. Then, I hope if we can build off this if we can find a few Republican Senators who will say publicly that climate change is real. We can then go on to if it is real, let's have a conversation about what we do about it, because recklessly continuing to dump megatons of carbon into the atmosphere every year is not a solution. And I don't want to be a part of a generation of which our kids and our grandchildren look back and ask: Where were they? Why could they not address this question? There they were in this great deliberative body. There they were with this great issue of our time. Why would they not even discuss it?

So I hope this amendment gets the conversation under way. It is one I look forward to. I think there are very sensible ways to solve this problem, including ways that have been supported by everyone from Republican Secretaries of the Treasury to the lead economist for Ronald Reagan, the famous Mr. Laffer. There are ways we can make these adjustments. But we have to have the conversation, and I hope this begins it.

With that, I yield the floor. Again, I thank the distinguished chairman of the energy committee for her courtesy in allowing us to proceed.

Mr. President, with all of the issues our country faces, here we are debating a Canadian pipeline. What are we doing? A new majority has taken over the Senate and their first bill--their opening gambit--is the Keystone Pipeline. What is going on?

Is it about jobs? There has been an awful lot of talk about jobs over the last couple of days, but this opening gambit--both obviously and demonstrably--has nothing to do about jobs. If this were about jobs, instead bring up the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill, the bipartisan bill the Republicans spiked last year. That bill has been estimated to produce nearly 200,000 jobs, more than quadruple the 42,000 jobs supported by the construction of the pipeline.

If this were about jobs, bring up the highway bill, which came out of EPW unanimously last year. That bill was estimated to support 3 million jobs a year, 70 times the number of jobs the Keystone Pipeline will produce. Forty-two thousand is a pittance compared to that.

Right now the economy is adding over 70,000 jobs every week. In the 3 weeks we spend arguing about this bill, we will add five times as many jobs as the Keystone Pipeline would provide. We matched Keystone in just 4 average days of job growth. Yet we are going to spend 3 weeks on this issue?

If this were truly about jobs, bring up an infrastructure bill--the kind our Republican friends have relentlessly stymied when they were in the minority. Set up an infrastructure fund. God knows wherever we look American infrastructure is crumbling. Schools, airports, trains, water, health information infrastructure, smart grids, and broadband are all yearning for activity.

We could do very big things on jobs. We get 13,000 jobs on average for every $1 billion spent on infrastructure, and we need the infrastructure, but instead we are doing this. It is definitely not about jobs.

Is it about the merits of the pipeline? Hardly. With oil prices at $50 per barrel, it is not even clear that the pipeline is viable. The State Department calculated that crude oil prices below $75 per barrel would limit the development of tar sands crude.

According to a recent report from the Canadian Energy Research Institute, due to a steep increase in production costs, new tar sands projects require crude prices of at least $85 per barrel to break even. We are around $50 per barrel. The U.S. Energy Information Agency predicts that crude oil prices will average below $65 well into 2015.

Shell, Total, and Statoil have all canceled or postponed major tar sands expansion projects. Southern Pacific Resources has nearly gone broke transporting heavy crude to the gulf by rail. The Canexus terminal in Alberta has run far below capacity, plagued by logistical problems, lost contracts with developers, and has been put up for sale. At $50 per barrel this pipeline could already be a zombie pipeline-- dead man walking.

Moreover, Keystone XL would be an environmental disaster. Notwithstanding the talking points to the contrary, the facts prove otherwise. As a source of carbon pollution alone, it will produce the equivalent of as many as 6 million added cars on our roads for 50 years. That is enough added carbon pollution to erase 70 percent of the carbon reductions from the recent motor vehicle emission standards that the automobile companies agreed to.

The cost of that carbon pollution adds up. Using official U.S. estimates of the social cost of carbon, the economic damage of the emissions from the Keystone Pipeline will amount to $128 billion in harm over the lifetime of the project. These are enormous costs that we will pay, borne out as parched farmland, harms to our health, and flooded businesses and homes. It is not about jobs and it is not about the merits of this pipeline. Unfortunately, it is not even a venue for a serious discussion about climate change--for a conversation about what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans.

In all of last week's conversation about the Keystone Pipeline tar sands bill, the number of times Republicans mentioned climate change was exactly one time, and that was only when Chairman Murkowski summarized testimony submitted to her energy committee by an opponent of the pipeline. She used the term while describing the witness's testimony. There was one reference to a Democratic witness's committee testimony, and that is it. There were ``zero'' serious conversations.

We are long past time for a serious bipartisan conversation about carbon pollution and climate change. What a great thing it would be if part of the new majority's new responsibility was just to take an honest look at those issues. But for sure this isn't that. Republicans remain politically incapable of addressing climate change. Forget addressing climate change, Republicans remain politically incapable of even discussing it.

It is not jobs, it is not the merits of the pipeline, it is not an opening on carbon pollution and climate change, and the President has already told us he is going to veto this bill.

What the heck are we doing? I will tell you what I think we are doing--and I think the facts support this conclusion--but first what you have to understand to understand what is going on is that the Republican Party has become the political wing of the fossil fuels industry. There has always been a trend of this within the Republican Party, but since the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court gave the fossil fuel industry the great, fat, juicy gift of its Citizens United decision, fossil fuel industry control over the Republican Party in Congress has become near absolute.

According to the Center for American Progress, the fossil fuel industry spent nearly three-quarters of $1 billion over the last 2 years on lobbying and direct and third-party campaign contributions. That is just what is reported. That doesn't even count the anonymous dark money that is preferred by many special interest donors. It certainly doesn't include the pungent fact that even if a special interest never spends the money, just quiet, private, backroom threats of attack ads can influence political behavior.

We can argue this point more on another day. I have talked about it frequently, and I think I have made the case pretty convincingly in other ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches that the evidence points to this as the present state of affairs within the Republican Party. So for purposes of this discussion, take it as my premise, anyway,

that the Republican Party in Congress is now effectively the political wing of the fossil fuel industry.

That premise clarifies what is happening here. The fossil fuel industry has a shiny new Republican Senate majority, and it wants to take it out for a spin. It wants to take its new Republican-controlled Congress out for a spin. That is what this Keystone opening gambit is all about. This is somewhere between performance art, a show of obedience, and a show of force.

Well, fine. Take us out for a spin. Have your fun. But the laws of nature that turn carbon pollution into climate change and into ocean acidification aren't going away. God laid down those laws, and they are not subject to repeal by man. Ignore them all you want. Worship at the altar of the fossil fuel Baal all you want, but there will be a price to pay for this negligence and inaction. It is truly time for this body to wake up.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Joseph Majkut, who is an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.