Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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?

Mr. DURBIN. Until very recently, of course, the price of a barrel of oil was high enough to justify tar sands, their extraction, the cost of transportation and the additional cost of refining them into a final product. Since that time, the cost of oil is almost half today what it was when that report was written.

I don't remember the exact date, perhaps the Senator has it handy.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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.

Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island.

It is significant that the first bill of the Senate Republican majority is a bill to build a pipeline for a Canadian company to bring tar sands across the United States to be refined in Texas and then sold overseas. That is the highest priority of the Republican majority.

There are those who, based on what the Senator just said, question whether this is economically viable with the price of a barrel of oil today. I am not an economist in energy, but it strikes me there has been a significant change in the premise of this whole project.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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.

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