Senator Schatz: Let’s Have an Open Discussion About How to Address Climate Change
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) spoke on the Senate floor to call for bipartisan solutions to climate change.
“One solution to climate change is putting a fair price on carbon pollution,” said Senator Schatz. “Last week, Senator Whitehouse and I introduced a bill – S. 1548 – to do just that and return all of the revenue to American families and businesses. A price on carbon is a market based solution that can appeal to people of multiple ideologies but share a common goal of solving one of the great challenges of our time.”
Last week, Senator Schatz joined U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in introducing new legislation to address climate change and boost the economy by putting a price on carbon pollution. The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act would significantly lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions while generating substantial revenue – all of which would be returned to the American people.
The full text of Senator Schatz’s floor speech and colloquy with U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, follow:
SENATOR SCHATZ: Mr. President, the facts are undeniable. Climate change is real, it’s caused by humans, it's happening now, and it’s solvable.
One solution to climate change is putting a fair price on carbon pollution. Last week, Senator Whitehouse and I introduced a bill – S. 1548 – to do just that and to return all of the revenue to American families and businesses.
I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership on this bill. We want a Republican dance partner. We want conservative leadership on this great challenge of our time.
Climate change increases the severity and frequency of storms and natural disasters. This is not only a humanitarian problem but also an economic issue. A heat wave in Texas in 2011, for example, caused $5 billion in livestock and crop losses. Climate change makes events like this 20 times more likely to occur today than in the 1960s.
Climate change’s impact on the economy is particularly damaging because it creates so much uncertainty. There is a role for the government here. The Administration is doing everything that it can to reduce carbon pollution within the statutory constraints of the Clean Air Act. But it won’t get us the reductions that we need.
Congress needs to step in and legislate to get the reductions we need to make sure we’re protecting low-income and working families, and still growing our economy.
Regulations like the Clean Power Plan and market mechanisms like a price on carbon are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they work together. They are mutually reinforcing. If power plants reduce emissions under the Clean Power Plan, they’ll pay less in carbon fees.
Market mechanisms for reducing pollution work. In the 1990s, President George H. W. Bush used cap-and-trade to reduce emissions from sulfur dioxide in order to combat acid rain.
The program was successful in slashing emissions, which not only meant healthier lakes and waterways but healthier communities. The health benefits for humans linked to lower sulfur dioxide emissions were estimated at $50 billion annually by 2010.
SENATOR BOXER: I want to thank the Senator, and I want to just welcome his remarks.
We are in a space, here in the Senate, where there are some people who still say climate change isn't happening, even though as you and I know, Senator, 98%, 99% of the scientists in this country say it's obvious, and I'm also so pleased my friend is here today because he's talking about cap-and-trade and that will be the essence of my question, and I will ask him two questions.
One, how does he feels about the Pope and the encyclical where the Pope is basically saying it the way it is, and it needs to be heard by everyone, and I wonder how my friend responded to that welcoming development?
And also I wanted to make sure that my friend knew in California we have a cap-and-trade program, and I thought it was so good that you reminded people this was a creation by a Republican president dealing with acid rain, and it was so successful, and the public health benefits so outweigh the costs, so I wanted to make sure that my friend was aware we had this cap-and-trade system in California, that it's working well.
We've balanced our budget in large part because of this and business likes it. They like the certainty of it. And also if he could respond to the issue of the Pope's entry into this debate.
SENATOR SCHATZ: I thank the Senator from California. Through the Chair, I will answer the first question first. When it comes to the Pope's encyclical, it seems to me he is displaying the moral leadership that is going to be necessary in all sectors – in the private sector, in the public sector. Democrats, Republicans, people across the planet are starting to understand the magnitude of the climate challenge.
One of the reasons I have been coming to the floor so frequently is not to lambast the other party but rather to encourage there to be conservative leadership in this space, progressive leadership in this space. And there is increasingly corporate leadership. There is leadership in the Department of Defense, in the scientific community, but what we really need is for conservatives to step up and to acknowledge the reality of this problem and propose their own set of solutions.
They may disagree with a carbon fee or a cap-and-trade program or the President's Clean Power Plan, but let's have that debate out in the open. Come down and beat up on our bill or on the President's proposal, that's fine, but we need to have this great debate in this great chamber because this is one of the greatest challenges of our time.
To the Senator's second question, talking a little bit about how cap-and-trade has worked in California but also how market-based mechanisms have worked all over North America and across the planet.
You're right, there's a cap and trade program in California and the economy has continued to improve, the state's fiscal situation has continued to improve. We have the Hawai‘i Clean Energy Initiative. We've tripled clean energy in a very short period of time, all while unemployment has gone down.
In 2008, British Columbia became the first and only jurisdiction in North America with an economy-wide price on carbon emissions. Seven years later, evidence shows that even going it alone, British Columbia was able to reduce petroleum consumption more than the rest of Canada and without any negative impact on the region’s economic growth. So the Senator from California is right. We can do this and grow our economy, but we're going to need bipartisan leadership.
Market mechanisms are one of the most straightforward solutions to climate change and they have growing support across the ideological spectrum.
The carbon fee in our bill is predictable, it can start right away, there’s no need for complex financial transactions or trading. It is simple, relatively easy to administer, and gets the reductions that we need – an estimated 40% of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030.
This bill importantly is revenue neutral. The original carbon fee legislation poured back the new revenue into a bunch of goodies that I liked in terms of dealing with the challenge of climate change. But we understand that if we're going to get Republican support this needs to be revenue neutral or close to it, and we need to use the revenue to ameliorate the challenges that are going to occur as we transition into a clean energy economy.
It also lowers corporate tax rates, which will make our tax code more competitive with other countries, but reducing carbon emissions and growing our economy ought to go hand-in-hand. This bill lays out a clear framework for how we to accomplish that.
Climate change demands leadership from both progressives and conservatives. A price on carbon is a market based solution that can appeal to people of multiple ideologies but share a common goal of solving one of the great challenges of our time.
In the traditions of Margaret Thatcher and Barry Goldwater, we need conservatives to embrace their own market-based solutions to our climate challenge.
There is nothing conservative about ignoring the collective knowledge of the scientific establishment, there’s nothing conservative about ignoring the warnings from our Defense Department, there’s nothing conservative about shirking our responsibility for global leadership, and there’s nothing conservative about conducting a dangerous experiment on the only planet that we’ve got.
So we have no desire for this to continue to be an issue where only one party talks about it. Let's have the argument about what the right solution set ought to be, but let's have it out in the open and let's have it together.
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
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