Speeches
Time to Wake Up 273: Change the Chamber
Mr. President, I am back again, thee and me once again together, to discuss climate change as unprecedented wildfires scorch the west coast and a deadly hurricane season turns in the Atlantic and Americans cry out for action. Powerful players outside this Chamber hear that cry, including, recently, over 200 CEOs of major American corporations who form the Business Roundtable. Here are some of the 200 companies represented by those CEOs. As I discussed last week, the Business Roundtable just ea… Continue Reading
09.22.20
Time to Wake Up: Business Roundtable vs. Corporate Inaction
Mr. President, this is a ``Time to Wake Up'' good news-bad news speech. The good news from last week is on business community support for carbon pricing. What is carbon pricing? Well, remember that IMF--the International Monetary Fund--pegs the fossil fuel subsidy in the United States at more than $600 billion per year, so the energy market is dramatically tilted to favor fossil fuels. Carbon pricing helps set that right, helps make an even playing field. It is economics 101. And carbon pricing… Continue Reading
09.15.20
Time to Wake Up: Recent Reports
Mr./Mdm. President, I rise for the 271st time to call this chamber's attention to two reports on the defining issue of our generation. As I speak, wildfires devour the American West, and consume American lives: in East of Salem, Oregon, two people dead in a scorched vehicle; in Butte County, California, three dead, overrun by a fast-moving fire; in Ashland, a 1-year-old boy; almost the entire town of Malden, Washington burned down. Half a million Oregonians evacuated due to fire; one out of ten… Continue Reading
09.09.20
Time to Wake Up: Ocean Warnings
Mr./Mdm. President, I rise today for the 270th time to call this chamber to action on the issue of climate change. The world is in the clutches of a pandemic disease that touches, directly or indirectly, virtually every human being on the face of the earth. It is costing us in lives, money, and immeasurable human pain. It didn't have to be this way. We could have been better prepared. President Trump was left a detailed playbook from his predecessor, but he ignored it. Trump did away with key … Continue Reading
09.09.20
Sen. Whitehouse Condemns Pres. Trump's Disrespectful Comments About Veterans
Mr. President, I am honored to join Senator Duckworth in supporting this proposal. It gives me great pride to serve in the Senate with her. She is the living embodiment of the kind of sacrifice that our President does not understand. There are two things here, though, that are very wrong. One is a President who thinks that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who have laid down their lives for this country are ``suckers'' and ``losers'' and that it is OK to say that about them. It is beyo… Continue Reading
08.05.20
Sen. Whitehouse on the Nursing Home COVID-19 Protection and Prevention Act
Mr. President, I am grateful to have the chance to follow my friend from Pennsylvania, who has shown such great leadership with respect to healthcare and particularly with respect to the nursing home population. I am delighted to join him to discuss what COVID is doing to the elder Americans who are in our nursing homes and long-term care facilities, because this illness has swept like a savage scythe through those facilities. In my small State of Rhode Island, 750 residents of long-term care f… Continue Reading
08.04.20
Time to Wake Up: Same Crew
Mr. President, I am here today for a different topic. I am here for the 269th time with my increasingly battered ``Time to Wake Up'' poster to try to alert this Chamber to the threat of climate change--something, obviously, Louisiana knows very well--and to the forces that are blocking action on climate. In these climate speeches, I have talked often about the insidious encroachment on American Government of special interest power, which is what is behind all this climate denial and obstruction… Continue Reading
03.11.20
Time to Wake Up: Blaring Economic Alarms
Mr./Mdm. President, I rise today, for number 268, to urge colleagues here in the Senate: wake up, and see the looming danger we face from climate change. Look at recent climate effects in our Southern Hemisphere. The most devastating wildfires anyone can remember have ripped across Australia, burned more than a fifth of Australia's forests, destroying thousands of homes, killing an estimated 1 billion animals, and making a day of breathing air in Sydney like smoking 37 cigarettes. In the oce… Continue Reading
03.03.20
Time to Wake Up: The Chamber Knew
Mr./Mdm. President, I am here today for the 267th time to call this chamber to wake up to the threat of climate change. Let me dive right in with a report from over 30 years ago that was presented to a major conference here in Washington, D.C. On the first page, it reads: Increases in atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other key gases . . . that are opaque to portions of the infrared spectrum result in the "greenhouse effect" or global warming. When short wavelength infrare… Continue Reading
02.25.20
Time to Wake Up: Dwindling Catches
Mr./Mdm. President, I come to again raise an alarm about the massive carbon pollution we are dumping into our natural world, and to tell the stories of two ocean creatures suffering from that pollution. We may mock or ignore these creatures, these lesser creatures so far down the food chain from us, but we are fools to ignore the message of what is happening to them. Matthew 25:41 admonishes, "as you did it to one of the least of these . . . , you did it to me." So we ought not mock and igno… Continue Reading
02.11.20
Time to Wake Up: Bad Ads
Mr./Mdm. President, I am here again as the Senate returns to its regular business, to call us to respond to the threat of climate change. Here on the floor today, things seem back to normal. The floor is empty. The quorum calls descend between speakers. Our new pages are figuring out the routine. Mr./Mdm. President, things are anything but normal. The threat of climate change worsens by the minute. Carbon emissions continue to rise globally. We hurtle toward calamity. And yet we do not act. … Continue Reading
01.14.20
Time to Wake Up: 7 Charts
Mr./Mdm. President, Grist did an article recently about climate change, with images. I grabbed a few, and added a few. They give a pretty good overview of the mess we're in on climate change. The most devastating wildfires anyone can remember are ripping across Australia. Those fires have destroyed thousands of homes; killed an estimated 1 billion animals; and made a day of breathing air in Sydney the equivalent of smoking 37 cigarettes. Why? According to the Australian Bureau of Meteoro… Continue Reading
01.07.20
Time to Wake Up: 2019 in Review
Mr./Mdm. President, here we are in 2020 and I am still coming to the floor to try to wake this chamber up to the perils of climate change. Pathetic. Why do I have to be doing another of these speeches? Why don't we heed the warnings of our foremost scientists, of our military, of top financial institutions, of our own home-state universities? What does it take to get our attention here? Why is the fossil fuel industry's unlimited dark money still flooding our politics? Why are the biggest lob… Continue Reading
12.18.19
Time to Wake Up: Methane and the Captured EPA
We're rapidly running out of time to protect our future, and that of our children and grandchildren, from worsening climate upheaval. America ought to be taking every measure available to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, from legislative action, to legal action, to diplomatic action, to regulatory action. But we're not, because of corruption. Regulatory action means enforcing the laws on the books. We have a Clean Air Act that requires the Environmental Protection Agency to stop dangerous p… Continue Reading
12.11.19
Time to Wake Up: No COP Out
Mr./Mdm. President, I rise to again call this chamber to wake up to the threat of climate change - and to say about Paris, in chorus with millions of Americans, "we're still in." And in truth, America is still in The Paris Agreement. When you look at the states that are still in; when you look at the cities that are still in; when you look at the companies and universities that are still in; it's the vast majority of the American economy. Despite President Trump's fossil fuel nonsense, we rea… Continue Reading
12.04.19
Time to Wake Up: 10,000 Papers
Mdm./Mr. President, On the occasion of new atmospheric carbon dioxide records being broken in our atmosphere - the highest in the history of humankind - I rise today for the 260th time to call this chamber to wake up. As we venture further into uncharted, dangerous climate change, the National Council for Science and the Environment issued this report, Climate Science Research in the United States and U.S. Territories. This report surveys climate research papers from public universities across… Continue Reading
12.04.19
Whitehouse Remarks at the National Press Club
It is an honor to be with you today at the National Press Club. At Bunker Hill, Daniel Webster remarked on how America "set the world an example of founding civil institutions on the great and united principles of human freedom and human knowledge." A free press stands proudly among those institutions. You are not the enemy of the people, but a pillar of American democracy and a safeguard against corrupt influence. So thank you. I seem to be in recurring combat against corporate and partis… Continue Reading
11.19.19
Time to Wake Up: Corruption Scheme
For this 259th climate speech, I'm going back to the theme of corruption. Before diving into the "how," let's start with the "why," because the scale and the remorselessness of the scheme of corruption the fossil fuel industry has run is hard to comprehend without understanding "why." Here's the "why." The fossil fuel industry reaps the biggest subsidy in the history of the planet. The IMF estimates the global subsidy in the trillions every year. That's globally. In the United States alo… Continue Reading
11.13.19
Time to Wake Up 258: Rough Seas Ahead
Mr./Mdm. President, today in my 258th Time to Wake Up Speech, I want to take us back to our oceans. The oceans are a clear and consistent signal of climate change, a signal untainted by fossil fuel industry propaganda attacks. And for good reason. It's hard to dispute sea level rise measured with tide gauges; acidification measured with the kind of pH test kit in a middle school science classroom; or rising temperature measured with a thermometer. Even the fossil fuel industry can't foul th… Continue Reading
11.06.19
Time to Wake Up: Colorado
Mr./Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Lucia Simonelli, a AAAS fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress. I rise today for the 257th time to call this chamber to wake up to the threat of climate change. Today, I report on my trip to Colorado to see how climate change is affecting life in the Centennial State, and to learn more about the remarkable action Coloradans are taking to confront climate change. Colorado is the 18th state I have vi… Continue Reading
