‘The Economic Danger Is Deadly Real’: Sheldon Whitehouse Issues Dire Warning About Climate Change

4 months ago

During a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) gave opening remarks about Big Oil’s role in climate change and its impact on the economy.

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Transcript

00:00 With that, I turn to my opening remarks.

00:05 Ranking Member Grassley, members of the committee, witnesses, and guests, welcome.

00:11 It has not gone unnoticed that my Republican colleagues disapprove of my work as Budget Committee Chairman

00:20 to warn about the economic and budgetary dangers of disruption to our climate by fossil fuel emissions.

00:28 But the warnings are deadly serious across multiple vectors of danger.

00:35 The witnesses we brought in were often accomplished experts with fiduciary responsibilities.

00:41 Yet the response, almost without fail, was mockery or changing the subject.

00:48 Perhaps my friends are right.

00:51 Perhaps history will show that climate upheaval caused by fossil fuel emissions won't have any serious economic impact on our economy or our budget.

01:01 Perhaps history will show that the economic shocks from the mortgage meltdown and from COVID, which produced a third of our national debt,

01:11 don't prefigure an even worse economic shock from our failure of stewardship on climate.

01:18 Perhaps. But I doubt it. I believe the economic danger is deadly real.

01:26 You all have your views, and I have mine, and time will tell. History will judge us.

01:35 In the meantime, I will try to fend off as best I can from this chair the massive economic shocks we've been warned of.

01:44 Economic shock from disruptions in agriculture and shipping, whose early signals we already see in grocery store aisles.

01:53 Economic shock from unprecedented storm and wildfire damage already burdening our emergency funding needs.

02:01 Economic shock from collapsing insurance markets already stressed in Florida, Louisiana, coastal Texas, and California.

02:10 And global economic shock from the carbon bubble bursting on a fossil fuel industry stubbornly oblivious to the dangers.

02:19 The obvious way to fend off these economic shocks is to head off the cause of those shocks, fossil fuel emissions.

02:26 To head off that cause, we have to understand first what is protecting enormous fossil fuel subsidies now pegged at approximately $750 billion per year in America.

02:38 And second, what is preventing us from adopting policies to prevent the worst dangers?

02:44 That's what this hearing is about. Because what is protecting the massive fossil fuel subsidies,

02:49 and what is preventing policies to reduce the danger, is the same thing. The fossil fuel industry itself.

02:56 And when I say itself, I include its apparatus of political influence, its armada of front groups spreading disinformation,

03:06 and its rivers of political dark money made possible by the Citizens United decision.

03:12 This hearing looks at what the industry's own documents reveal. That is why ranking member Raskin is here today.

03:19 Two and a half years ago, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents from four oil companies and two fossil fuel trade associations

03:26 about their response to climate change. After much delay and obstruction, the six entities produced more than two million pages of documents.

03:35 During the 117th Congress, the Oversight Committee held three hearings and released two public memoranda setting out its initial findings.

03:44 But more than a million pages of those documents were not reviewed. This hearing is drawn from those unreviewed documents.

03:53 Yesterday, ranking member Raskin made public approximately 4,500 new documents of interest from this latest review,

04:00 exposing new details about the fossil fuel industry's decades-long campaign of denial and deception.

04:08 The collective record shows the fossil fuel industry going through four phases.

04:13 Phase one was its own scientists' warning, very clearly and accurately, about the climate dangers from unchecked fossil fuel emissions.

04:25 Fossil fuel industry scientists began ringing climate alarm bells nearly 65 years ago.

04:33 In one example, the American Petroleum Institute had physicist Edward Teller of Oppenheimer fame

04:40 report that continued fossil fuel combustion could raise sea level dozens of feet. The year was 1959.

04:49 In another, an Exxon senior scientist in 1977 reported to Exxon's management committee,

04:56 "general scientific agreement" that burning fossil fuels was changing the Earth's climate.

05:04 There were many such warnings. Phase two was the industry looking at what those warnings meant for profits

05:14 and setting up an elaborate covert operation to undermine the very science its own scientists had revealed

05:23 and to bring industry influence to bear and politics to prevent any remedies.

05:29 It set up an armada of front groups depicted in this graphic.

05:37 Phase three was the hoax phase, using that elaborate covert operation to spread lies that climate change was a hoax,

05:47 that the science wasn't settled, and that remedies would do more harm than good.

05:53 In its now infamous 1998 victory memo, API wrote that victory will be achieved when average citizens "understand,

06:01 recognize uncertainties in climate science" with the stated goal that climate change becomes a non-issue.

06:10 The victory memo laid out a massive campaign to spend millions of dollars,

06:16 but climate change would not become a non-issue. It began to wreak visible havoc around the world.

06:24 The hoax strategy collapsed and big oil had to evolve from denial to duplicity.

06:34 This hearing documents phase four, the industry pivoting to pretending it is taking climate change seriously

06:42 while secretly undermining its own publicly stated goals.

06:47 Phase four is nominally expressing alignment with the Paris Agreement climate goals,

06:54 while internally making them unachievable.

06:57 Phase four is stating emissions reduction targets too far out to matter,

07:03 and internally not taking the steps necessary to meet them.

07:08 Phase four is advertising your interest in climate safety technologies,

07:13 but refusing to put the investments behind them to make them real.

07:18 Phase four, put simply, is climate denial light,

07:23 a green-leaning cover for the industry's continued covert operation through dark money,

07:29 phony front groups, false economics, and relentless exertion of political influence

07:36 to block meaningful climate safety progress.

07:41 Our investigation uncovered public pledges undermined by private memos,

07:47 public support for climate policies contradicted by private emails,

07:53 rampant evidence of deception, and corporate doublespeak.

07:58 Here's how it went. Play the tape.

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08:12 - Big Oil used to pretend that climate change wasn't real.

08:16 The new version is to pretend that they're trying to be part of the solution.

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08:52 - Give us a moment to get through the technical difficulties,

08:55 and we'll get back to the tape.

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19:37 big oil accountable.

19:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]

‘The Economic Danger Is Deadly Real’: Sheldon Whitehouse Issues Dire Warning About Climate Change

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