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Mr. President, one of the great moral issues of our time is the global crisis of climate change. Let me be very clear about climate change. Climate change is not a Democratic issue or a progressive issue. It is not a Republican issue or a conservative issue. What it is, is an issue that has everything to do with physics. It is an issue of physics. What we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that the debate is over, and that is that the vast majority of the scientists who have studied the issues are quite clear. What they tell us over and over again is that climate change is real, climate change is caused by human activity, and climate change is already causing devastating problems throughout our country and, in fact, throughout the world.

What the scientists also tell us is that we have a relatively short window of opportunity to bring about the fundamental changes we need in our global energy system to transform our energy system from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. We have a limited window of opportunity. What the scientists are telling us very clearly is if we do not seize that opportunity, if we do not lead the world--working with China, Russia, India and other countries--in transforming the global energy system, the planet we leave to our children and our grandchildren will be significantly less habitable than the planet we enjoy.

My nightmare is that 20, 30, 40 years from now our kids and our grandchildren will look Members of the Senate and the House in the eye, and they will say: The scientists told you what would happen and you did nothing. Why did you not react? How hard was it to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and transform our energy system away from coal and oil into energy efficiency and wind, solar, geothermal, and other sustainable energies?

Pope Francis recently made what I thought to be a very profound statement. He said that our planet is on a suicidal direction--a suicidal direction--in terms of climate change. What a frightening and horrible thought. How irresponsible can we be to ignore what the entire scientific community is saying?

I know there are many of my colleagues who refuse to acknowledge the reality. As perhaps the most progressive Member of the U.S. Senate let me simply say this: I have differences with my Republican colleagues on virtually every issue. That goes without saying, but there is something very different about this issue. I have been in hearings with my Republican colleagues where I heard doctors and scientists talk about cancer, about Alzheimer's, about diabetes, about all kinds of illnesses, and I may disagree with my Republican colleagues about how we go forward, how much we should fund NIH, but I have never heard my Republican colleagues attack doctors or researchers or scientists for their views on cancer research or Alzheimer's research. As I do, they respect that research. But somehow or another, when it comes to the issue of climate change, at best what we are seeing Republicans do--many Republicans, most Republicans--is ignore the issue or claim they are not scientists or, at worst, attack those scientists who are doing the research.

Why is that? Why is it that my Republican colleagues accept the researchon cancer, on Alzheimer's, on all kinds of illnesses, and they respect scientists who are working in all kinds of areas. But somehow or another when it comes to the issue of climate change, my Republican friends are in denial? What I will say is that this has nothing to do with science, and it has sadly and tragically everything to do with our corrupt campaign finance laws, which allow large corporations and billionaires to contribute as much money as they want into the political process. In my view, the reality is that any Republican--and I happen to believe that many Republicans understand the truth about climate change. But I also believe that any Republican who stood up and said ``You know what, I just talked to some scientists'' or ``I just read some of the literature, and this climate change is real, it is dangerous, and we have to do something about it''--I believe that on that day when that Republican stands up, the money will stop flowing from the fossil fuel industry, from the Koch brothers, and there will be a strong likelihood that Republican would be primaried in the next election.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, at the national level where companies have to report what they spend on lobbying and campaign contributions, the oil companies, coal companies, and electric utilities have spent a staggering $2.2 billion in Federal lobbying since 2009 and another $330 million in Federal campaign contributions. That is just at the Federal level--over $2.5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions in just 6 years. Even in Washington, DC, that is a lot of money, and that is just the money that we know about.

That is not all of it. That is not the end of it. As a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which allowed corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited sums of money, we know that the Koch brothers, who make most of their money in the fossil fuel industry, and a handful of their friends will be spending some $900 million--$900 million--from one family and a few of their friends in the 2016 election cycle. Clearly, one of the reasons they are investing so much in this election cycle is that they intend to continue doing everything they can to make sure Congress does not go forward to protect our kids and our grandchildren against the ravages of climate change.

According to an 8-month investigation by journalists at Inside Climate News, Exxon--now ExxonMobil--may have conducted extensive research on climate change as early as 1977, leading top Exxon scientists to conclude both that climate change is real and that it was caused, in part, by the carbon pollution resulting from the use of Exxon's petroleum-based products. In addition, the purported internal business memoranda accompanying the reporting asserted that Exxon's climate science program was launched in response to a perceived existential threat to its business model. In other words, the scientists at ExxonMobil, who are scientists, discovered the truth, and upon hearing the truth, ExxonMobil poured millions of dollars into organizations whose main function was to deny the reality of climate change.

The efforts to transform our energy system are taking place not only here in Washington, the Nation's Capital, but at the State and local level as well. In States such as Arizona and Florida, roadblocks are being put up to stop people from gaining access to renewable energy sources such as wind and especially rooftop solar. In States such as Arizona and Florida and many of our Southern States with huge solar exposure, there is huge potential for solar. Yet we are now seeing politicians, at the behest of the fossil fuel industry, put up roadblock after roadblock to make it harder for people to move to solar or wind.

I have heard a lot of the arguments from the fossil fuel industry as to why we should not transform our energy system, and many of those arguments are repeated here on the floor by some of my colleagues. But the truth is that it turns out that transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy will create a significant number of new and decent-paying jobs, and it will lower energy bills in communities all across this country.

My own State of Vermont participates in a regional greenhouse gas initiative cap-and-trade program for the power sector. Since 2009, the program has created over 14,000 net jobs, and carbon pollution levels dropped by 15 percent at the same time consumers, businesses, and other energy users saw their electricity and heating bills go down by $459 million. The majority of those savings came from energy efficiency. All the while, jobs were created, not exported, and we relied on clean domestic energy instead of oil from the Middle East.

Energy efficiency clearly makes an enormous amount of sense. It is clearly the low-hanging fruit as we transform our energy system.

I have been in homes in Vermont that have been effectively weatherized, and they are seeing heating bills drop by 50 percent. People in those homes are living in more comfort, and jobs are being created by those people who install the insulation and other energy-efficient tools, not to mention all of the folks who are manufacturing the insulation, windows, and efficient roofing.

According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, energy efficiency provides a larger return on investment than any individual energy source because for every $1 invested in energy efficiency, we see $4 in total benefits for all consumers. For every $1 billion invested in efficiency upgrades, we see a creation of 19,000 direct and indirect jobs.

These numbers are great and speak for themselves, but acting on climate change is also a moral obligation. While we will all suffer--all over our country and all over the world--the impacts of climate change, the sad truth is that climate impacts fall especially hard upon the most vulnerable people in our society. Minority and low-income communities in the United States are disproportionately impacted by the causes of climate change. According to a 2012 study by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, the nearly 6 million people in the United States who live within 3 miles of a coal-burning powerplant have an average per capita annual income of just over $18,000 a year. Among the people who live within 3 miles of a coal powerplant, 39 percent are people of color, while people of color compromise only 36 percent of the total population of the United States.

The bottom line is that when we talk about climate change and its impact upon our planet and all the people, we should bear in mind that this is happening not only in the United States but all over the world. The people who will suffer the most are low-income people and people living in poverty.

I am introducing legislation called the American Clean Energy Investment Act of 2015. This legislation is built upon the fact that the prices for wind and solar power have plummeted over the last decade, cutting carbon pollution and creating tens of thousands of new jobs in the process. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry benefits from permanent subsidies worth tens of billions of dollars each year. Incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency are temporary and are too often allowed to elapse entirely.

My legislation permanently extends and makes refundable some of our most important renewable energy tax credits for energy efficiency and sustainable energy, including sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Permanently extending these incentives will drive over $500 billion in clean energy investments between now and 2030 and are an integral part of putting us on a pathway to more than doubling the size of our clean energy workforce to 10 million American workers. The costs for these incentives are completely offset by repealing the special interest corporate welfare in the Tax Code for the fossil fuel industries.

If we are going to be serious about dealing with the threat of climate change, we need to end the polluter welfare that subsidizes increased pollution from fossil fuels and instead invest those resources in clean energy solutions that reduce pollution. Doing this will save lives, protect our economy, and reduce the threats from climate change at the same time we are creating millions of good-paying jobs here in the United States.

Our legislation is supported by the Solar Energy Industries Association,
the American Wind Energy Association, 350.org, and cosponsored by Senators Merkley and Markey.

We have a national responsibility to protect the livelihoods of the working families and communities who help power and build this country. We must act now to reenergize our manufacturing base, bolster our clean energy economy, and protect the livelihoods of energy workers and the communities they support.

As a result of these concerns, this bill provides up to 3 years of unemployment insurance, health care, and pensions for workers who lose their jobs due to our transition to a clean energy economy. In other words, we understand--as was very much the case with our moving away from tobacco farming in this country--that the people who do the work in coal, oil, and other fossil fuels are not to blame for the fact that the product they produce is causing so many problems in our country. Our job is to protect and transition them to other decent-paying jobs, and the government has a responsibility to help with that transition.

Based on what the scientists are telling us, we need to make very significant cuts in carbon pollution emissions and we need to do it as soon as possible. It is absolutely vital that we do what many economists tell us we must do, and that is to put a price on carbon. It is the simplest and most direct way to make the kinds of cuts in carbon pollution that we have to make if we are going to successfully transition from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. That is why within the Climate Protection and Justice Act that I am introducing, there will be a tax on carbon. Directly pricing carbon is a key part of the solution of transforming our energy system. Many experts support a fee on carbon pollution emissions, including liberal, moderates, and even prominent conservatives such as George Shultz, Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker, Mitt Romney's former adviser Gregory Mankiw, former Reagan adviser Art Laffer, former Republican Bob Inglis, and many others. The idea of a price on carbon is not just a progressive concept, it is one that is being supported by economists throughout the political spectrum.

The Nation's leading corporations, including the Nation's five biggest oil giants, are already planning their future budgets with the assumptions that there will be a cost applied to carbon emissions. In other words, some of the very companies that have strongly opposed action to address climate change are recognizing the reality in front of them, and that is that the United States is going to--hopefully sooner rather than later--address the crisis of climate change and that there will be a tax on carbon. This tax works by setting enforceable pollution-reduction targets for each decade, including a 40-percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2030 and a more than 80-percent reduction level by 2050.

This legislation sets a price on carbon pollution for fossil fuel producers or importers. Proceeds from the carbon pollution fee are returned to the bottom 80 percent of households making less than $100,000 a year to offset them for any increase they might experience in increased energy costs as a result of this transition. For an average family of four, this will amount to a rebate of roughly $900 in 2017 and will grow to an annual rebate of $1,900 in 2030. It would only apply upstream, meaning at the oil refinery, coal mine, natural gas processing plant, or point of importation.

It would apply to fewer than 3,000 of the largest fossil fuel polluters in this country.

EPA's existing authority to regulate carbon pollution, sources from powerplants, vehicles, and other sources is reaffirmed, and if the United States is not on track to meet its emissions reduction targets, the EPA shall issue new regulations to ensure that it does.

Importantly, based on lessons learned from the cap-and-trade law in California, a Federal interagency council will oversee the creation and distribution of a climate justice resiliency fund block grant program to States, territories, tribes, municipalities, counties, localities, and nonprofit community organizations. The council will provide $20 billion annually for these grants in communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change for important programs they are running.

This legislation strengthens our manufacturing sector through a border tariff adjustment mechanism which shields energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries such as steel, aluminum, glass, pulp and paper, from unfair international trade policies. The monies raised by the green tariff are used to help improve industrial energy efficiency.

Farmers receive dedicated funding through the USDA's Rural Energy for America Program to improve on farm energy efficiency and to adopt onsite renewable energy. The bill includes incentives for farmers to adopt no-till practices and creates an incentive program to encourage the adoption of sustainable fertilizer application practices.

Finally, the bill includes Federal electricity market reforms that reduce pollution, increase efficiency, and reduce costs by ensuring equitable grid access for demand response programs.

At the end of the day, the Congress of the United States is going to have to make some very important and fundamental decisions, and the most important is whether we believe in science. We can have many disagreements on many issues, but we should not have a disagreement about whether we base public policy on science rather than campaign contributions. That really is the issue we are dealing with right now.

We are in a critical moment in world history. Our planet is becoming warmer, sea levels are rising, and communities all over the world that are on seacoasts are being threatened. The ocean is being acidified to an unprecedented level, which has huge impacts in so many areas, including the ability of people to fish and gain nutrients from the ocean.

We are looking at unprecedented levels of heat waves in India, Pakistan, and Europe that have killed thousands of people. We are looking at forest fires on the west coast of that country that are unprecedented in terms of their duration and their ferocity.

So we have to make a decision about whether we stand with our children and our grandchildren or whether we stand with campaign contributors from the fossil fuel industry.

Climate change is real. Climate change is caused by human activity. Climate change is already causing devastating damage on this planet. Our job is now to stand with our children, to stand with our grandchildren, and to make certain that they have a planet that is healthy and that is habitable. That is what the legislation I am introducing will do.

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