{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/sen-whitehouse-speech-at-nyu-institute-for-policy-integrity-fall-conference", "Sen. Whitehouse Speech at NYU Institute for Policy Integrity fall conference", "2014-10-28", "2014", "2014-10", "Democrat", "House", "RI", "Sheldon Whitehouse", "W000802", "www.whitehouse.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "10.28.14\n\t\t\t Sen. Whitehouse Speech at NYU Institute for Policy Integrity fall conference \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 As Prepared for Delivery\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t I\u2019m happy to be with you today, here in New York City.\u00a0 Just a few weeks ago, four hundred thousand people marched in this great city to demand action on climate change.\u00a0 I was honored to be among them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThe world has just set some dubious records.\u00a0 Five of the past six calendar months\u2014April, May, June, August, and September\u2014were each the hottest ever recorded.\u00a0 (July came in at fourth hottest.)\u00a0 2014 is on pace to tie or become the hottest year on record.\u00a0 This decade was warmer than the last, which was warmer than the one before that, which was warmer than the one before that.\u00a0 This is what climate change looks like.\u00a0\r\nThe reason is clear.\u00a0 Scientists tell us with near certainty that the flood of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere and the oceans.\u00a0\r\nLook at what carbon pollution is doing in our oceans.\u00a0 We know that the oceans are warming.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a theory, that\u2019s a measurement.\u00a0 It\u2019s done with thermometers.\u00a0 We know that as polar ice melts and as ocean water warms and expands, sea level is rising.\u00a0 That\u2019s another measurement.\u00a0 You can do it with a yard stick.\u00a0 We know that as the oceans absorb more carbon, they are becoming more acidic.\u00a0 Every American with an aquarium can measure acidity with litmus paper.\u00a0 Again, simple measurements, proven facts.\u00a0\r\nWe everywhere see the harm carbon pollution is causing.\u00a0 We see it all around us, in storm-damaged homes and flooded cities; in drought-stricken farms and raging wildfires; in fish disappearing from warming, acidifying waters; in shifting habitats and migrating contagions.\u00a0 These changes carry real economic costs to homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers.\u00a0 And they come as a result of carbon pollution.\r\nPollution-driven climate change hurts our economy, damages our infrastructure, and harms public health.\u00a0 However, none of these costs are factored into the price of the coal or oil that\u2019s burned to release this carbon.\u00a0 The big oil and coal companies have offloaded those costs onto society.\u00a0 Economics 101 tells us that\u2019s a market failure; in the jargon, that negative externalities are inefficient.\u00a0 If a company participates in an activity that causes harm, it should have to compensate those harmed.\r\nTorts 101 tells us the same thing.\u00a0 Seventy years ago, a soda bottle exploded and injured the hand of a waitress named Gladys Escola.\u00a0 In a famous concurrence in the case of Escola v Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Justice Traynor said that economic common sense made the bottler responsible for the exploding bottle, to create the incentive not to make exploding bottles.\u00a0 As the judge said it, \u201cpublic policy demands that responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the hazards.\u201d\u00a0 So this idea that you shouldn\u2019t be able to offload your costs\u2014and in this case have Ms. Escola pay the price\u2014is not new or unusual.\u00a0 It\u2019s really Fairness 101.\u00a0\r\nIf we expect any measure of integrity in energy policy, we must incorporate these climate change costs into the price of fossil fuels to correct the market failure.\u00a0\r\nThe financial burden borne by people living in a changing climate is known as the \u201csocial cost of carbon.\u201d\u00a0 It is the sum total of costs like property loss from sea level rise, the increased cost of treating mosquito-borne diseases, and loss from heat waves, drought, and other extreme weather.\u00a0 A recent study of the economic risks posed by climate change showed that sea level rise, for instance, will inundate up to $100 billion of U.S. real estate by mid-century.\u00a0 That is part of the social cost of carbon.\u00a0\r\nScientists and economists will tell you that some costs of climate change are hard to quantify.\u00a0 How do you calculate the cost of an extinct species?\u00a0 What does it cost to leave future generations with warmer, more acidic, less bio-diverse oceans?\u00a0 It is hard to price it all out, but the costs are still real.\u00a0\r\nU.S. government estimates of the social cost of carbon are just over forty dollars per ton of carbon dioxide emitted today.\u00a0 The current price on carbon pollution is effectively zero.\u00a0\r\nBy making carbon pollution free, we subsidize fossil fuel companies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually.\u00a0 By making carbon pollution free, we fix the game, favoring polluters over newer and cleaner technologies that harvest the wind, sun, and waves.\u00a0 Corporate polluters, not bearing the costs of their products, are in effect cheating their competitors.\u00a0\r\nAs University of Chicago Economics Professor Michael Greenstone recently explained, this concept is widely accepted in his field:\r\n\"The media always reports that there\u2019s near consensus amongst scientists about the fact that human activity impacts climate change.\u00a0 What does not receive as much attention is that there\u2019s even greater consensus amongst economists, starting from Milton Friedman and moving into the most left-wing economists that you could find, that the obvious correct public policy solution to this is to put a price on carbon.\u00a0 It\u2019s not controversial.\"\r\nOnce upon a time, climate change wasn\u2019t so controversial in Washington either.\u00a0 Not long ago, Republicans joined Democrats in pushing for action on climate.\u00a0 Leading Republican voices agreed that the dangers of climate change were real. Leading Republican voices agreed that carbon emissions were the culprit. And leading Republican voices agreed that Congress had the responsibility to act.\u00a0 I have Republican colleagues in the Senate who introduced, cosponsored, or voted for climate legislation in the past.\u00a0 Some of the proposals were market-based, revenue-neutral, tools, aligned with Republican free-market values.\u00a0 Some called for a fee on carbon pollution to cut income taxes.\u00a0 There was a steady pulse of activity\u2014an exchange of ideas and real debate.\u00a0\r\nThen, the heartbeat flatlined.\u00a0 Republican calls for climate action fell silent.\u00a0 Something happened, right around 2010.\u00a0\r\nIt was the Supreme Court\u2019s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission\u2014one of the Court\u2019s most disgraceful decisions.\r\nIn a nutshell, Citizens United says this: corporations are people; money is speech; so there can be no limit to corporate money influencing American elections.\u00a0 If that doesn\u2019t seem right, it\u2019s because it\u2019s not.\r\nImproper fact-finding by the five conservative activists on the Supreme Court concluded that corporate spending could not ever corrupt elections\u2014just couldn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 By some magic, it\u2019s pure.\u00a0\r\nThat\u2019s a bad enough finding on its face, but they also didn\u2019t get that limitless, untraceable political money doesn\u2019t have to be spent to damage our democracy.\u00a0 Unlimited corporate spending in politics can corrupt publicly, through the floods of anonymous attack advertisements we all see; it can also corrupt, secretly and more dangerously, through threat of that spending.\u00a0 What Citizens United gave corporations the power to do, it also gave them the power to threaten to do.\r\nAs Senator John McCain and I wrote in an amicus brief in another campaign finance case, \u201cThe dominating influence of super PACs makes it all the easier for those seeking legislative favors and results to discreetly threaten such expenditures if Members of Congress do not accede to their demands.\u201d\r\nBear in mind that since Citizens United, a lot of this special interest money has been used against Republicans.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had Republican friends ask me, \u201cWhat are you complaining about?\u00a0 They\u2019re spending more against us, than against you.\u201d\u00a0 When the Koch Brothers\u2019 attack machine can come in and bombard you in a small Republican primary election, that\u2019s pretty scary.\u00a0\r\nThe timing is telling.\u00a0 Before Citizens United, there was an active heartbeat of Republican activity on climate change.\u00a0 The evidence of climate change has only mounted, along with sea levels.\u00a0\u00a0 But after Citizens United uncorked all that big, dark money, and allowed it to cast its bullying shadow of intimidation over our democracy, Republicans have backed away from any real work on major climate legislation.\r\nI work alongside Republican Senators who represent historic native villages, now washing into the rising sea.\u00a0 We have Republican Senators who represent great American coastal cities, now overwashed by high tides.\u00a0 We have Republican Senators representing states swept by drought and wildfire.\u00a0 We have Republican Senators whose home-state forests\u2014by the hundreds of square miles\u2014are being killed by the marauding pine beetle.\u00a0 We have Republican Senators whose home states\u2019 glaciers are disappearing.\u00a0 We have Republican Senators whose states are having to jack up bridges and highways above the reach of intensifying storm surges.\u00a0\r\nYet none will work on a carbon price bill.\u00a0 Most won\u2019t even utter the words \u201cclimate change\u201d on the floor of the Senate at all.\u00a0 It\u2019s not safe to, ever since Citizens United allowed the bullying, polluting special interests to bombard our elections with their attack ads and their threats.\u00a0\r\nYet, despite the Citizens United debacle, I remain confident\u2014for several reasons\u2014that eventually Republicans will have to turn back toward policy integrity and political integrity.\u00a0\r\nThe first source of my confidence is the Obama Administration regulations that will for the first time limit carbon pollution from our power plants.\u00a0 Our fifty worst-emitting power plants alone put out more carbon than all of Canada or Korea.\u00a0\u00a0 The new standard will not only reduce those emissions, it will change the way the polluters think. Once it\u2019s no longer free to pollute, the whole equation changes for them.\u00a0 And I suspect that some new thinking by polluters will be followed in short order by some new thinking on the other side of the aisle in the Senate.\u00a0\r\nThe second reason is the politics of climate change.\u00a0 The public is with us\u2014even increasing numbers of Republicans.\u00a0 Sixty-one percent of Americans agree that climate change is occurring and that action should be taken, and 67 percent of Americans support the Administration\u2019s proposed rule to limit carbon pollution from power plants.\u00a0 Another poll found that more than half of young Republican voters\u201453 percent of Republicans under the age of thirty-five\u2014would describe a politician who denies climate change is happening as \u201cignorant,\u201d \u201cout-of-touch,\u201d or \u201ccrazy.\u201d\r\nA modern political party that has built its climate change policy on a theory of denial that its own young voters think is ignorant, out of touch, or crazy\u2014that is a castle built on sand, doomed to fall.\u00a0\r\nA third factor is what\u2019s happening with American businesses.\u00a0 Yes, the fossil fuel polluters control the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, and they are vocal players in the opposition to responsible climate policy.\u00a0 But look at big brand name American corporations, like Coke and Pepsi, Apple and Google, WalMart and Target, Mars and Nestle, UPS and Federal Express, GM and Ford.\u00a0 Look at the property casualty insurance industry, or the great bulk of the electric utility industry.\u00a0 These corporate leaders recognize that climate change is a real problem; they understand the undeniable science of what carbon pollution does to the Earth\u2019s atmosphere and oceans; and they are becoming more active. So, by the way, is the U.S. Military.\u00a0 That difference will help us tear down the denial castle.\u00a0\r\nAnd when the denial castle falls, a fee on carbon pollution is the answer.\u00a0 I am preparing a carbon fee bill, which I plan to introduce next month, and I look forward to announcing more details about that in the weeks ahead.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\nThe Harvard School of Public Health estimates that such a fee could reduce carbon emissions by up to 59 percent from 2005 levels.\u00a0 The improvements in air quality from the transition away from dirty power would decrease hospitalizations and prevent an estimated 3,200 premature deaths from heart attack, asthma, and respiratory disease every year.\u00a0 Honestly tallying the costs of carbon pollution on the ledgers will let market forces lead toward more balanced and efficient use of fossil fuels and toward carbon-free renewable energy.\r\nThen there are the financial benefits.\u00a0 My legislation will generate significant new federal revenue\u2014perhaps as much as two trillion dollars over the first decade.\u00a0\u00a0 Every dollar of this revenue should be returned to the American people.\u00a0 We can do this lots of ways:\u00a0 cutting personal or corporate taxes, relieving student loan debt, boosting Social Security benefits to seniors, providing transition assistance to workers in fossil-fuel industries, or even paying out direct dividends to families.\u00a0 The list goes on.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\r\nIt\u2019s win-win-win. We can use this revenue to do big things; repair a marketplace failure; and guide the economy toward lower emissions, enhanced productivity, and a sustainable future.\u00a0\r\nDespite all the dark money, despite the threats and intimidation, I still believe this can be achieved.\u00a0 We simply need conscientious Republicans and Democrats to work together, in good faith, on a common platform of fact and common sense.\u00a0 Congress needs to shed the shackles of corrupting influence and rise to our duty.\u00a0\r\nIn courageous times, Americans have done far more than stand up to polluters to serve this Great Republic.\u00a0 We know it can be done, because it\u2019s been done.\u00a0\r\nAt the end of a speech about the American Revolution, the historian David McCullough was asked why it was that our Founding Fathers had the courage to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of independence.\u00a0 He answered simply: \u201cIt was a courageous time.\u201d\u00a0 It only takes courage to make this a courageous time.", 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/speeches/sen-whitehouse-speech-at-nyu-institute-for-policy-integrity-fall-conference"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.6515431236475706, "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"}