Cop28
Floor Speech
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Mr. CARPER. Madam President, one of the joys for me of serving here is serving as the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, right next to Ben Cardin and about two seats away from Sheldon Whitehouse. And we appreciate your participation and leadership and membership on our committee as well, Madam President.
We have a bunch of pages down here in the well--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. They are high school juniors or seniors, and they are probably like 16, 17, or maybe 18 years old. Pretty soon, they are going to head out into the world and, hopefully, go on and do bigger and better things than we have and than their parents and grandparents have done. I want to make sure, and I think my colleagues want to make sure, that they actually have a planet to grow up on and a planet to grow old on.
When I was about their age, I became a Navy midshipman and raised my right hand to defend the country and the Constitution, in those days. I learned a little bit about leadership when I was not much older than these guys. One of the things I learned about leadership is the importance that leadership by example is not ``do what I say'' but, rather, ``do what I do.''
One of the great things about going to the COP, with the leadership of Senator Cardin and with our colleagues, was that we didn't just go and sit and tell the rest of the world: Do x, y, or z.
We went and said: This is what we are doing, and this is why it is important. We want you to join us in this.
And, more and more, folks around the country--around the world, rather--are doing that. Today, I think the majority of Americans agree that climate change actually is a major threat--maybe the major threat facing our planet and the people who inhabit it. Every day, Americans see the impacts of climate crises, particularly in the form of more frequent and destructive storms throughout the--really, throughout the planet.
A decade ago, the United States experienced, I am told, 10 weather disasters--10--that cost at least a billion dollars each--10 that cost at least a billion dollars each. This year, there have been 25--25--of these billion-dollar events. That includes this summer's wildfire on the Hawaiian island of Maui, which, tragically, took some 100 lives-- our Nation's deadliest wildfire in a century.
We also know that 2023 was not one of the hottest years on this planet; it was the hottest year on our planet, without question. Scientists tell us that global temperatures are going to keep rising if we don't do more to transition away from fossil fuels.
So, Madam President, the question that I am asking myself and I think we need to ask ourselves is, What are we going to do about it? And as Senator Cardin and Senator Whitehouse have laid out, we are doing a lot. Can we do more? Yes, we can do more. Are we going to do more? Yes, we are going to do more.
We will hear from the chairman of the Finance Committee here in a little bit, and he will talk a bit about the great work that has been done under his leadership in the Finance Committee to make sure that we follow through and build on what we have already done.
But the United States, while I think we are getting our act together on this front, for a long time, we were the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet--far and away the biggest--and I think we have a moral obligation. Having put so much greenhouse gases up into the air, I think we have a moral obligation to actually lead in the reduction of emissions and make sure that these young people up here and my grandchildren and your grandchildren and all have a planet to grow up on.
I want to just commend Senator Cardin. I think he did a great job leading our codel. It was an honor to be a part of that codel. I want to say how much I enjoyed it. It was bipartisan. We ran into a bunch of folks from the House of Representatives over there, Democrats and Republicans. So it had a good bipartisan, bicameral feel, and we came away and felt good about it--really good about it.
As for COP28, Senator Cardin has already mentioned this, but our message to the rest of the world was that the United States is--I am tempted to say ``once again,'' but I will just say is again--leading the global effort to tackle the climate crisis, and my colleagues have already mentioned a couple of ways that we are doing that.
It has been mentioned--Kigali. There may be good people at home watching this saying: What in the world is Kigali? Well, it refers to a treaty, a treaty that actually reduces the emission of something called HFCs.
What are HFCs? My wife told me about a year or 2 ago: Stop talking about HFCs. Nobody really cares about HFCs.
Well, here is why they do. They are refrigerants. We all have refrigerators. We have air-conditioners. We have freezers and chillers and coolers. And the ingredient that helps make all of those work is HFCs, or hydrofluorocarbons. That is the good news: they work. It cools things off. But the bad news is it is bad when those HFCs leak into the atmosphere. They are 1,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. I will say that again: 1,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
So the idea of reducing those and phasing out those HFCs is a big deal. That is what we are doing. We are doing that. That one thing alone is worth about half a degree centigrade toward meeting our goals coming out of the Paris accords a year or 2 years ago. The agreement out of Paris was 1\1/2\ degrees Celsius reduction, and from this one thing alone with the HFCs, we are going to get a third of that.
Following that COP26, we put our heads down, and we got to work. After months of intense negotiations, we passed the Inflation Reduction Act. Big provisions in the legislation came out of our committee, Mr. Chairman, which included almost $370 billion in incentives for clean energy and climate change--the largest ever investment in climate action and environmental justice. Where I come from, that is real money, and, hopefully, we will do even more on that.
But soon after we had done that, the Senate came together on a bipartisan basis to ratify the Kigali Amendment that I talked about. That is a big deal, and we have to make sure that we actually implement it as intended.
But, if taken together, these historic wins are advancing our Nation's climate goals, and, importantly, they are also helping to create hundreds of thousands--hundreds of thousands--of good-paying clean-energy jobs in our country and many more around the world.
We have heard for years: We can't address climate change; we can't address the warming of our planet and create jobs and economic opportunity. Hogwash. We can do both. And if you look at the inflation numbers, inflation is down. If you look at employment numbers, employment numbers are up. And the work that we are doing on the greenhouse gas side is going forward. So we are doing it all. We are doing it all. But still, we are clear-eyed that there is more work to be done. COP28 resulted in--Senator Cardin had mentioned that--a historic global agreement that called for transitioning away from fossil fuels which are causing global warming. And our success in achieving our shared climate goals will depend on the actions we take in the decade to come.
With that in mind, as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I remain focused on overseeing the implementation of our recent climate wins.
And over the next year, I hope we are going to build on our Nation's climate goals, including advancing bipartisan legislation to strengthen our Nation's nuclear industry--I think Senator Cardin may have referred to that--and helping confirm President Biden's nominees for key leadership posts.
I believe the last time I checked, nuclear energy is providing, I don't know, a half or more than half of our carbon-free electricity in this country. We have the potential to build on that, and we need to do that. Hopefully, we will.
I want to close by words spoken down at the other Chamber. A couple of years ago, French President Macron came and spoke to a bipartisan House-Senate gathering. In talking to us about climate change and global warming, he said: ``There is no planet B.'' That is what he said: ``There is no planet B.''
This is the only planet we are going to have--no planet B. We have to make every day count. And I think what we heard coming out of the COP28, we have every intention of helping lead this planet to that direction.
I want to again thank Senator Cardin and yield back to him, thanking him for terrific leadership in the COP and so many other forums.
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