[Music]
thank you and good afternoon everyone
I am going to spend my time with you
this afternoon talking about climate
change and I hope tell you two things
that you may not know about climate
change I think we have a fairly common
understanding of what’s going on with
climate change we burn fossil fuels the
carbon dioxide goes up into the air it
increases the concentration of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere that warms
things up on the planet and we have a
cooling system on the planet called the
ocean and the oceans have absorbed more
than 90 percent of the climate change
heat that we’ve added to the planet at a
rate of better than a Hiroshima atom
bomb per second thing so they’re warming
up and when things warm they expand so
that takes me to the first thing that we
have to look at which is our home state
of Rhode Island
this is Rhode Island two hundred and
forty years ago and if he went back
another two hundred and forty years from
the Narragansetts and the Wampanoags
were here it would have looked just
about the same the map of Rhode Island
is very distinctive if you look
carefully at my Wilson’s of Wickford tie
you can see the outline of the map of
Rhode Island on it right now so let’s
take a look up close at the northern
part of Narragansett Bay you’ll see
Warwick to our right and if you look
closely you can see the airport to the
far right and then you see the river
going up into Providence which is at the
top of the map and then down is Warren
and Bristol on the left and as I said
that’s kind of with the state that part
of the map has looked like for century
after century after century well because
of sea level rise
NOAA and our Coastal Resources
Management Council and our University of
Rhode Island have gotten really good at
predicting what is going to happen in
this century and this is their
prediction for the end of the century
everything that is blue on that map was
land and is now water so if you look at
Warwick neck you see that Warwick neck
is now Warwick neck Island and you go
across to that big blue area that’s now
Barrington Barrington becomes Lake
Barrington I guess down here in Warren
and Bristol you can see how Papa squash
is now gone and it’s broken up into a
number of islands
Rhode Island has become a new
archipelago by the end of this century
something a girl born today at women and
infants will see in her lifetime
if you move south down the bay you get
to Newport on the right and jamestown on
the left and you can see that there are
similar changes that we are to expect in
that part of our state as well there’s
the change jamestown becomes not one
island but three and as you’ll see where
the bridge connects Newport to Jamestown
you have to go through water to get to
the bridge so you’ll need a bridge to
get to the Newport Bridge on Jamestown
Newport itself the western end of
Newport breaks off entirely becomes a
new island off of that is little Castle
Hill Island a new island on the new
island and across our coasts this is the
type of change that we are now told to
expect go up to
Providence and this was what was
expected for Providence before the
latest NOAA estimates add added 20
inches to their estimate of global sea
level rise before under the latest
estimates this is what downtown
Providence comes to look like and if you
close in on City Hall you see that that
gondola ride may be something that you
need and it will take you right to the
top of the stairs of City Hall and then
you can come on in and weather this
becomes more like Venice or where they
have to abandon it it’s a very
significant problem or do we do Holland
and build dikes around Providence so
that’s the first point this is going to
hit home in Rhode Island in amazingly
consequential and new ways the second is
what the hell was going on where I come
from in Congress about this and why is
so little going on well when I got to
the Senate it was 2007 and in the years
that I was first there 2007 2008 and
2009 every single one of these
Republican senators was on a climate
change bill we had a robust conversation
we had a lot of energy we had bipartisan
hearings bipartisan bills we didn’t get
anything completed but we were on the
path to good legislation the way you’d
expect Congress to take on a big issue
and then it came to a shuddering halt
what happened what happened was the
decision of the United States Supreme
Court called citizens united and from
that moment forward things changed
citizens united allowed the biggest
special interest in the country
including the fossil fuel industry to
spend unlimited amounts of money in
politics and money in politics looks a
little bit different than just money
it looks like political
weaponry and here’s a picture of a
Soviet May Day Parade weaponry display
in a similar way the fossil fuel
industry rolled out 501 C 4 ‘s and super
PACs and shell corporations and front
groups and they even created a group
called donors trust whose whole purpose
is to hide the identity of a donor who
wants to make contributions into the
system the effect of that was basically
this if you could imagine a echo
cardiogram ticking away with good work
happening with all those six bipartisan
senators and then after January of 2010
after that decision flatline not one
Republican senator has been willing to
sign on to one significant piece of
carbon dioxide reduction legislation
these are some of the groups that make
that possible they not only help support
that political effort the weaponry that
is directed and the threats behind the
weaponry that is directed at our
political process but they also
propagate the phony science of climate
denial we’re all hearing a lot these
days about fake news folks climate
denial was the original fake news and
many of the people who propagated that
original climate denial fake news have
now moved into the larger business of
fake news more generally now those
aren’t just individual institutions
they’re connected this is a graphic done
by a professor named Robert Breughel at
Drexel University who’s made it his
academic field of study to figure out
how this all works to follow the money
and draw the diagram and show the
network and as you can see this looks
rather like a web one of the things
we’re learning is that there are
defectors from this web who are
beginning to tell their story about what
goes on
inside of it one was reported in The
Washington Post recently this was a
person who said they had to remain
anonymous for fear of retaliation but
what they said to the Washington Post
reporter was there’s a whole web of
organizations out there who are designed
to do this and their purpose is to
create a cacophony of voices so it
doesn’t sound like it’s all coming from
one place and not just the fossil fuel
industry itself through all those
different front groups and another one
came out his name is Jerry Taylor I’ve
gotten to know Jerry he’s a very brave
and very intelligent and very
conservative person he used to be the
number two person at the Cato Institute
one of those groups and he was their
lead on climate denial and he learned
two things while he was working for the
Cato Institute the first was he
discovered to use his words that a lot
of the scientific narratives that I was
offering were really dodgy and as a
professional and as honest man that made
him increasingly anxious and he found
out also that on the economic side you
could not find an academic economist who
studies climate change who argued
against climate action not one single
one he has said this publicly and he
started his own Institute to work on
conservative solutions to climate change
but it shows what we’re up against now
on our side we’ve got some pretty cool
people I love Pope Francis he wrote an
entire encyclical about climate change
and is one of the most moving documents
I’ve ever read just last week he said we
all have a responsibility here all of us
small or large a moral responsibility
and we have to take it seriously history
will judge the decisions so I press on
as best I can
taking my little time to wake up sign
to the Senate floor every week it’s
getting increasingly dog-eared and beat
up as I pass through my hundred and
eightieth speech but you cannot stop
science and facts and increasingly my
colleagues are getting more and more
anxious about being held down by that
web of climate denial and political
threat and I really want you to know
that this is not partisanship in
Washington the fossil fuel industry has
done a very good job of going after only
Republicans to beat them into submission
to make it look like it’s partisan but
you remember those faces from 2007 2008
2009 many of them are still there John
McCain campaigned for president on the
Republican ticket with a terrific
climate platform this is old-fashioned
special interest special pleading the
kind of thing the Legislature’s have
seen for years but with the new
extraordinary made a parade of political
artillery backing it up that citizens
united unleashed so we can change that
this is not something that is doomed to
the partisan Wars of Washington we can
change this and with any luck in the
months ahead
you will see a dramatic change thank you
for giving me this chance to share these
thoughts with you
[Applause]
thank you and good afternoon everyone
I am going to spend my time with you
this afternoon talking about climate
change and I hope tell you two things
that you may not know about climate
change I think we have a fairly common
understanding of what’s going on with
climate change we burn fossil fuels the
carbon dioxide goes up into the air it
increases the concentration of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere that warms
things up on the planet and we have a
cooling system on the planet called the
ocean and the oceans have absorbed more
than 90 percent of the climate change
heat that we’ve added to the planet at a
rate of better than a Hiroshima atom
bomb per second thing so they’re warming
up and when things warm they expand so
that takes me to the first thing that we
have to look at which is our home state
of Rhode Island
this is Rhode Island two hundred and
forty years ago and if he went back
another two hundred and forty years from
the Narragansetts and the Wampanoags
were here it would have looked just
about the same the map of Rhode Island
is very distinctive if you look
carefully at my Wilson’s of Wickford tie
you can see the outline of the map of
Rhode Island on it right now so let’s
take a look up close at the northern
part of Narragansett Bay you’ll see
Warwick to our right and if you look
closely you can see the airport to the
far right and then you see the river
going up into Providence which is at the
top of the map and then down is Warren
and Bristol on the left and as I said
that’s kind of with the state that part
of the map has looked like for century
after century after century well because
of sea level rise
NOAA and our Coastal Resources
Management Council and our University of
Rhode Island have gotten really good at
predicting what is going to happen in
this century and this is their
prediction for the end of the century
everything that is blue on that map was
land and is now water so if you look at
Warwick neck you see that Warwick neck
is now Warwick neck Island and you go
across to that big blue area that’s now
Barrington Barrington becomes Lake
Barrington I guess down here in Warren
and Bristol you can see how Papa squash
is now gone and it’s broken up into a
number of islands
Rhode Island has become a new
archipelago by the end of this century
something a girl born today at women and
infants will see in her lifetime
if you move south down the bay you get
to Newport on the right and jamestown on
the left and you can see that there are
similar changes that we are to expect in
that part of our state as well there’s
the change jamestown becomes not one
island but three and as you’ll see where
the bridge connects Newport to Jamestown
you have to go through water to get to
the bridge so you’ll need a bridge to
get to the Newport Bridge on Jamestown
Newport itself the western end of
Newport breaks off entirely becomes a
new island off of that is little Castle
Hill Island a new island on the new
island and across our coasts this is the
type of change that we are now told to
expect go up to
Providence and this was what was
expected for Providence before the
latest NOAA estimates add added 20
inches to their estimate of global sea
level rise before under the latest
estimates this is what downtown
Providence comes to look like and if you
close in on City Hall you see that that
gondola ride may be something that you
need and it will take you right to the
top of the stairs of City Hall and then
you can come on in and weather this
becomes more like Venice or where they
have to abandon it it’s a very
significant problem or do we do Holland
and build dikes around Providence so
that’s the first point this is going to
hit home in Rhode Island in amazingly
consequential and new ways the second is
what the hell was going on where I come
from in Congress about this and why is
so little going on well when I got to
the Senate it was 2007 and in the years
that I was first there 2007 2008 and
2009 every single one of these
Republican senators was on a climate
change bill we had a robust conversation
we had a lot of energy we had bipartisan
hearings bipartisan bills we didn’t get
anything completed but we were on the
path to good legislation the way you’d
expect Congress to take on a big issue
and then it came to a shuddering halt
what happened what happened was the
decision of the United States Supreme
Court called citizens united and from
that moment forward things changed
citizens united allowed the biggest
special interest in the country
including the fossil fuel industry to
spend unlimited amounts of money in
politics and money in politics looks a
little bit different than just money
it looks like political
weaponry and here’s a picture of a
Soviet May Day Parade weaponry display
in a similar way the fossil fuel
industry rolled out 501 C 4 ‘s and super
PACs and shell corporations and front
groups and they even created a group
called donors trust whose whole purpose
is to hide the identity of a donor who
wants to make contributions into the
system the effect of that was basically
this if you could imagine a echo
cardiogram ticking away with good work
happening with all those six bipartisan
senators and then after January of 2010
after that decision flatline not one
Republican senator has been willing to
sign on to one significant piece of
carbon dioxide reduction legislation
these are some of the groups that make
that possible they not only help support
that political effort the weaponry that
is directed and the threats behind the
weaponry that is directed at our
political process but they also
propagate the phony science of climate
denial we’re all hearing a lot these
days about fake news folks climate
denial was the original fake news and
many of the people who propagated that
original climate denial fake news have
now moved into the larger business of
fake news more generally now those
aren’t just individual institutions
they’re connected this is a graphic done
by a professor named Robert Breughel at
Drexel University who’s made it his
academic field of study to figure out
how this all works to follow the money
and draw the diagram and show the
network and as you can see this looks
rather like a web one of the things
we’re learning is that there are
defectors from this web who are
beginning to tell their story about what
goes on
inside of it one was reported in The
Washington Post recently this was a
person who said they had to remain
anonymous for fear of retaliation but
what they said to the Washington Post
reporter was there’s a whole web of
organizations out there who are designed
to do this and their purpose is to
create a cacophony of voices so it
doesn’t sound like it’s all coming from
one place and not just the fossil fuel
industry itself through all those
different front groups and another one
came out his name is Jerry Taylor I’ve
gotten to know Jerry he’s a very brave
and very intelligent and very
conservative person he used to be the
number two person at the Cato Institute
one of those groups and he was their
lead on climate denial and he learned
two things while he was working for the
Cato Institute the first was he
discovered to use his words that a lot
of the scientific narratives that I was
offering were really dodgy and as a
professional and as honest man that made
him increasingly anxious and he found
out also that on the economic side you
could not find an academic economist who
studies climate change who argued
against climate action not one single
one he has said this publicly and he
started his own Institute to work on
conservative solutions to climate change
but it shows what we’re up against now
on our side we’ve got some pretty cool
people I love Pope Francis he wrote an
entire encyclical about climate change
and is one of the most moving documents
I’ve ever read just last week he said we
all have a responsibility here all of us
small or large a moral responsibility
and we have to take it seriously history
will judge the decisions so I press on
as best I can
taking my little time to wake up sign
to the Senate floor every week it’s
getting increasingly dog-eared and beat
up as I pass through my hundred and
eightieth speech but you cannot stop
science and facts and increasingly my
colleagues are getting more and more
anxious about being held down by that
web of climate denial and political
threat and I really want you to know
that this is not partisanship in
Washington the fossil fuel industry has
done a very good job of going after only
Republicans to beat them into submission
to make it look like it’s partisan but
you remember those faces from 2007 2008
2009 many of them are still there John
McCain campaigned for president on the
Republican ticket with a terrific
climate platform this is old-fashioned
special interest special pleading the
kind of thing the Legislature’s have
seen for years but with the new
extraordinary made a parade of political
artillery backing it up that citizens
united unleashed so we can change that
this is not something that is doomed to
the partisan Wars of Washington we can
change this and with any luck in the
months ahead
you will see a dramatic change thank you
for giving me this chance to share these
thoughts with you
[Applause]
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