{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-delivers-150th-time-to-wake-up-climate-speech", "Whitehouse Delivers 150th “Time to Wake Up” Climate Speech", "2016-11-29", "2016", "2016-11", "Democrat", "House", "RI", "Sheldon Whitehouse", "W000802", "www.whitehouse.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "11.29.16\n\t\t\t Whitehouse Delivers 150th \u201cTime to Wake Up\u201d Climate Speech \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t \n\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n        \n\t\t\t\t In milestone remarks, Senator calls on President-Elect Trump to \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d of special interests and heed \u201creason and expertise\u201d on climate change\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t Washington, DC \u2013 Today, for the 150th time, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took to the Senate floor to deliver his weekly \u201cTime to Wake Up\u201d speech about the urgent need to act on climate change.\u00a0 Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a Co-Chair of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, has spoken about the climate crisis every week the Senate has been in session since April 2012.\r\nIn his remarks, Whitehouse called on President-elect Donald Trump to heed the experts in the federal government who understand the threat posed by climate change to our economy, national security, and public health, and to make good on his campaign promise to \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d of special interest influence in Washington.\u00a0 \u201cThe new President will hear from our military, our national labs, and NASA (who with a rover driving around on Mars may actually know a little science) that this is deadly serious,\u201d said Whitehouse.\u00a0 \u201cI encourage President-elect Trump to listen to these voices of reason and expertise, not to the Swamp Things.\u00a0\r\n\u201cSolutions to climate change need be neither Republican nor Democratic.\u00a0 They do need to be based in sound science and healthy and open debate.\u00a0 And we will be a stronger and more respected country if they are American solutions,\u201d Whitehouse added.\u00a0 \u201cFor a country that claims to stand as an example\u2014as a city on a hill\u2014and benefits from the power of that example, this horrible example of out-of-control special interest influence will have lasting consequences.\u00a0 We have a role to play in this world, we Americans, and it\u2019s time we got about it.\u201d\u00a0\r\nBelow is the full text of Whitehouse\u2019s remarks, as prepared for delivery.\u00a0 The video is available here.\r\nMadam President, I started my weekly series of speeches about the dangers of climate change in the Spring of 2012.\u00a0 While my sign here is showing signs of wear and tear, I\u2019m as determined as ever to get us to act on climate, before it\u2019s too late.\u00a0\r\nIt is long past time to wake up to the industry-controlled campaign of calculated misinformation on the dangers of carbon pollution.\u00a0 Opponents of climate action relish operating in the dark.\u00a0 Their slimiest work, to undermine science and deny the harmful effects of our carbon on human health, natural systems, and the economy, is done by hidden hands, through front groups.\u00a0 If anything is to change, we first need to acknowledge peer-reviewed science, the expert assessments of our military and national security communities, and the business case for climate action iconic American companies are making.\u00a0 But if anything is really going to change, we need to shine a light on the sophisticated scheme of denial being foisted on the American people.\u00a0\r\nPresident Theodore Roosevelt once said, \u201cFar and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.\u201d\u00a0 We in Congress have the chance to do this worthy work.\u00a0 But big special interests don\u2019t want that to happen, so Congress keeps drifting toward climate catastrophe.\u00a0 And I keep delivering my weekly remarks; today for the 150th time.\r\nThankfully, I am not a lone voice on this matter.\u00a0 Many colleagues have been speaking out, particularly our Ranking Member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Boxer, and one of the Democratic Party\u2019s presidential contenders, Senator Sanders.\u00a0 Senator Markey has been speaking on climate longer than I\u2019ve been in the Senate.\u00a0 Senators Schumer, Nelson, Blumenthal, Schatz, King, Baldwin, Brown, and Coons have each joined me to speak of the effects of carbon pollution on their home states and economies.\u00a0 Our Democratic Leader, Senator Reid, has pressed the Senate to face up to the challenge.\u00a0 And 18 fellow Democratic colleagues, including climate champs Merkley, Warren, and Schumer, joined me in calling out the industry-controlled, many-tentacled apparatus deliberately polluting our discourse with climate science denial.\u00a0\r\nThe climate science that deniers try to undermine dates back to the 1800s, predating Henry Ford\u2019s first production Model T [1908], Thomas Edison\u2019s first light bulb demonstration [1879], and the first commercial oil well in the United States [1859].\u00a0 In 1824, around the time President Monroe added the South Portico to the White House, French scientist Joseph Fourier explained that Earth\u2019s temperature would be much lower if the planet lacked an atmosphere, providing one of the first descriptions of the greenhouse effect.\u00a0 In 1861, the same year President Lincoln took office, Irish physicist John Tyndall described the trace components of the atmosphere that were responsible for the greenhouse effect, including carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor.\u00a0 In 1896, the year Utah joined the Union, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius published the first calculation of global warming due to the addition of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.\u00a0\r\nThe concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at that time was 295 parts per million.\u00a0 Today, it\u2019s 400 ppm and rising, indeed rising at a pace not seen for 66 million years.\u00a0 Scientific research continues to demonstrate evidence of planetary warming and the changes that come with it.\u00a0\r\nWe can look at the oceans to see the devastating effects of climate change.\u00a0 Of course, the great, corrupt denial machine the fossil fuel industry supports rarely talks about oceans.\u00a0 Remember: the machine doesn\u2019t care about evidence.\u00a0 It just wants to create phony doubt.\u00a0 But there\u2019s not much room for doubt in measurements of warming, rising, and acidifying seas, measured with everyday thermometers, yardsticks, and pH tests, so they don\u2019t go there.\u00a0\r\nOur unfettered burning of fossil fuels has made our oceans warmer.\u00a0 The oceans have absorbed the vast majority of the heat trapped in our atmosphere by our carbon pollution: the heat equivalent to several Hiroshima atomic bombs being set off in the sea every second for the last 20 years.\u00a0 One result is the calamity now taking place in the world\u2019s coral reefs.\u00a0\r\nAustralia\u2019s Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral ecosystem on Earth.\u00a0 Severe bleaching has hit between 60 and 100 percent of corals on the Great Barrier Reef, according to Dr. Terry Hughes of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.\u00a0 Research led by Dr. Andrew King at the University of Melbourne determined that the ocean warming that led to widespread and devastating coral bleaching was made 175 times more likely by human-caused climate change.\u00a0 As one researcher put it, climate change \u201cis the smoking gun.\u201d\r\nBecause carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid when it dissolves in water, the seas are acidifying at the fastest rate in 50 million years.\u00a0 On America\u2019s Northwest coast, oyster hatcheries have already experienced significant losses when their new hatches were unable to grow their shells in the acidified seawater.\u00a0 Off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California, 50 percent of tiny sea snails called pteropods were measured to have \u201csevere shell damage,\u201d mostly from acidified seas.\u00a0 A NOAA study released just last week detailed for the first time the extent to which that damage was caused by human carbon pollution. \u00a0If that species collapses, the bottom falls out of the oceanic food chain.\u00a0\r\nIn Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay\u2019s mean winter water temperature is up nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit.\u00a0 Our Rhode Island lobster fishery is crashing, and our winter flounder fishery is practically gone.\u00a0 Rhode Island\u2019s clammers, lobstermen, fish farmers, and shellfish growers are watching with real alarm the damage acidified seas are doing.\u00a0\r\nThis is the cost of climate change in the oceans. Madam President, we\u2019re approaching a point of no return.\u00a0 The UN Environment Programme\u2019s Emissions Gap Report, released earlier this month, warned that unless reductions in carbon pollution from the energy sector are taken swiftly, it will be nearly impossible to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius and avoid widespread catastrophe.\u00a0 The report says the next three years are \u201clikely the last chance\u201d to limit global warming to safe limits in this century.\u00a0 Likely the last chance to make a difference.\u00a0 But Republicans in this Senate want to do nothing about it.\u00a0\r\nOnce upon a time, Madam President, Republicans joined Democrats in pushing for action on climate.\u00a0 Senator McCain ran for President on a strong climate change platform, and was the lead cosponsor of the Climate Stewardship Act, which would have created a market-based emissions cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants from the biggest U.S. sources.\u00a0 Here is what Senator McCain said at the time:\r\nWhile we cannot say with 100 percent confidence what will happen in the future, we do know the emission of greenhouse gases is not healthy for the environment.\u00a0 As many of the top scientists through the world have stated, the sooner we start to reduce these emissions, the better off we will be in the future.\r\nOther Republicans got behind cap-and-trade proposals: Senator Carper\u2019s \u201cClean Air Planning Act,\u201d at one time or another, counted Senators Alexander, Graham, and Collins among its supporters.\u00a0 Senator Collins later coauthored an important cap-and-trade bill with Senator Cantwell.\u00a0\r\nSenator Kirk voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the House and Senator Flake, then representing Arizona in the House, was an original cosponsor of the \u201cRaise Wages, Cut Carbon Act,\u201d to reduce payroll taxes for employers and employees in exchange for equal revenue from a carbon tax.\u00a0\r\nSo what happened?\u00a0 Why did this steady heartbeat of Republican climate action suddenly flat-line?\u00a0 Something happened, right around 2010.\u00a0\r\nWhat happened was the Supreme Court\u2019s disgraceful 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission where, in a nutshell, the court ruled: corporations are people; money is speech; so there can be no limit to corporate money influencing American elections.\u00a0 When Citizens United uncorked all that big, dark money, and allowed it to cast its bullying shadow over Congress, Republicans walked back from any major climate legislation.\u00a0 Rather than freeing up open debate, Citizens United effectively ended any honest debate in Congress on the climate crisis.\u00a0\r\nUnlimited corporate spending in politics can indeed corrupt, and not just through floods of anonymous attack advertisements.\u00a0 It can corrupt, secretly and more dangerously, through the mere threat of that spending, through private threats and promises.\u00a0 And sometimes, the fossil fuel industry threat to politicians who don\u2019t toe their line is not so subtle.\u00a0 The Koch brothers-backed political juggernaut, Americans for Prosperity, has openly promised to punish candidates who support curbs on carbon pollution, and openly take credit for the \u201cpolitical peril\u201d it created for Republicans on climate change.\u00a0\r\nSince 2010, the fossil fuel industry\u2019s strategy has been to crush Republican opposition, to prohibit Republicans from working with Democrats on climate change, so that the industry can disguise its special-interest pleading as a partisan issue in America\u2019s culture wars.\u00a0 Do you remember the alien in the movie \u201cMen in Black\u201d who climbed into the skin and clothing of the farmer?\u00a0 That\u2019s what the fossil fuel industry has done to the Republican Party since Citizens United.\r\nThe industry has a lot at stake.\u00a0 The International Monetary Fund has reported the American subsidy for the United States\u2019 fossil fuel industry at nearly $700 billion a year.\u00a0 How much trouble would an industry go to protect a $700-billion-per-year subsidy?\r\nA growing body of scholarship is examining the science denial apparatus protecting the fossil fuel industry\u2014how it is funded, how it communicates, and how it propagates the denial message.\u00a0 That research includes work by Harvard\u2019s Naomi Oreskes, Michigan State\u2019s Aaron McCright, Oklahoma State\u2019s Riley Dunlap, Yale\u2019s Justin Farrell, Drexel\u2019s Robert Brulle, and others.\u00a0\r\nIndustrial powers fighting to obscure the harms their products cause isn\u2019t new.\u00a0 They operate from a well-worn playbook.\u00a0 It was used for industrial contaminants and health hazards like DDT, CFCs, and of course tobacco.\u00a0 It\u2019s the ultimate special-interest lobbying.\r\nPresident-elect Trump campaigned on a pledge of draining the swamp of big special interests controlling Washington.\u00a0 Yet leading the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency for the Trump administration is Myron Ebell, the poster child of industry-backed climate denial.\u00a0 Mr. Ebell is the Director of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a corporate front group that has specialized in undermining tobacco, climate, and other science.\u00a0 CEI received millions of dollars from ExxonMobil, from the Koch family, from coal companies Murray and Massey, and from the identity-laundering groups Donors Trust and Donors Capital.\u00a0 CEI and Ebell are the quintessential DC swamp creatures.\u00a0\r\nPolitico reports Ebell as a veteran of the tobacco regulation wars.\u00a0 Jeremy Symons of the Environmental Defense Fund credits Ebell with \u201ctaking the tobacco playbook and applying it to climate change.\u201d\u00a0 On climate, Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Niskanen Center says Ebell was \u201cinvolved in marshalling allies, building a skeptic movement and enforcing that political orthodoxy as best he could in the Republican Party.\u201d\r\nEbell criticizes scientists for working outside their degreed fields, but it turns out, he isn\u2019t a scientist himself.\u00a0 After college, he studied political theory at the London School of Economics and history at Cambridge.\u00a0\r\nHe\u2019s even criticized Pope Francis\u2019s encyclical on climate change, calling it \u201cscientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s rich, an outspoken climate contrarian, whose organization receives fossil fuel money, calling Pope Francis \u201cmorally obtuse.\u201d\r\nWhile the President-elect mocked Republican politicians groveling before the Koch brothers at their \u201cbeg-a-thon,\u201d as he called it, he is busy filling his staff with Koch operatives.\u00a0 Donald Trump may have won the presidency.\u00a0 But with operatives like Myron Ebell, the Koch brothers are moving in to run it.\u00a0\r\nThe new President will hear from our military, our national labs, and NASA (who with a rover driving around on Mars may actually know a little science) that this is deadly serious.\u00a0 I encourage President-elect Trump to listen to these voices of reason and expertise, not to the Swamp Things.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be taken in by industry lobbyists and front groups, scratching and clawing to protect a $700 billion conflict of interest.\u00a0\r\nConsider listening to your children, who joined you just seven years ago in saying climate science was \u201cirrefutable,\u201d and portends \u201ccatastrophic and irreversible\u201d consequences.\r\nMadam President, let\u2019s assume that all our national labs, NASA and NOAA, our military leaders, our home-state universities, hundreds of major American companies, and the more than 190 nations that signed the Paris climate agreement are actually not deluded about climate change, and not part of a hoax.\u00a0 If that\u2019s so, then the fossil fuel industry\u2019s science denial operation is a fraud.\u00a0 As a fraud, it is a particularly evil one because in order to achieve its goal, the industry has to drag down the government of the United States\u2014or at least the Congress of the United States\u2014to its level.\u00a0 The fossil fuel industry maintains a science denial operation and a political influence operation designed and intended to willfully sabotage the proper operation of a branch of the government of the United States.\u00a0 We all have a problem when a powerful special interest is willing to damage our experiment in democracy to achieve its selfish ends.\u00a0\r\nAs a Senator, John F. Kennedy once said, \u201cLet us not despair but act.\u00a0 Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.\u00a0 Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past\u2014let us accept our own responsibility for the future.\u201d\r\nSolutions to climate change need be neither Republican nor Democratic.\u00a0 They do need to be based in sound science and healthy and open debate.\u00a0 And we will be a stronger and more respected country if they are American solutions.\u00a0 For a country that claims to stand as an example\u2014as a city on a hill\u2014and benefits from the power of that example, this horrible example of out-of-control special interest influence will have lasting consequences.\u00a0 We have a role to play in this world, we Americans, and it\u2019s time we got about it.\u00a0\r\nI yield the floor.\u00a0\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-delivers-150th-time-to-wake-up-climate-speech"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6712730284780264, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}