The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WILDFIRES” mentioning the Department of Interior was published in the Senate section on pages S5676-S5678 on Aug. 16, 2018.
The Department oversees more than 500 million acres of land. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the department has contributed to a growing water crisis and holds many lands which could be better managed.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WILDFIRES
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse not just for today, as we talk about wildfires, but because, year after year, he has been on this floor, prosecuting the consequences--playing out the consequences of the failure of dealing with climate change. Certainly, it is hotter and dryer in the West. What I am going to do is to spend some of this short period we have together in describing these wildfires. They are not your grandfather's wildfires. They are bigger, they are hotter, and they are more powerful.
In my home State last summer, we saw a fire leap the Columbia River. The Columbia River has always been a break in terms of fire, and the fire just leaped over it. We are seeing that around the country. It is getting worse. The fires are so bad today and the smoke is so thick that people in my home State are fleeing their communities to find pockets of breathable air. In Portland, residents are being warned against spending time outside and are being advised to wear respirators if they must. Those without homes to provide safe air are being told to seek shelter from the smoke in public places, like libraries and government buildings.
So I would say to my friend and to the Presiding Officer, who is also a westerner and a friend, that this is not the stuff of fiction. This is real life--right now--for communities across the West that are just getting clobbered by fire. This is climate change at work.
As Senator Whitehouse and I speak today, there are more than 100 large wildfires that are destroying homes and businesses across Oregon and the West, burning almost 1.8 million acres. Farmers have watched as crops have burned to the ground. Families who are located in evacuation zones have fled their homes. Choking smoke throughout my State has left children and seniors afraid to go outside, and schools have canceled sporting events because of the unhealthy air quality.
I remember when I began in public service that westerners would prepare for individual fire seasons and that some would be a bit worse than others. Yet now we are basically in a situation in which we have infernos raging throughout the year. In California, for example, the Thomas fire set the all-time record--wouldn't want to have it--as the State's largest recorded wildfire in December. It was not exactly a Christmas gift. The record didn't stand long, as my colleague just mentioned last week's fire in Mendocino.
In Oregon, the Taylor Creek fire and the Garner Complex fire led agencies to issue evacuation notices to more than 1,000 people. This is the second year in a row that the air quality in southern Oregon has ranked among the worst in the Nation. When I was driving to southern Oregon recently in order to get a briefing from fire officials, the smoke, in effect, was going north, drifting 100 miles north of Medford. In my hometown of Portland, now--this week--air is at unhealthy levels.
Fires have gotten so big that the plumes of thick, choking smoke have shown up on NASA's satellite images from space. My colleague and I served on the Intelligence Committee together, and I think, increasingly, we are going to see folks at the Forest Service and at weather agencies who will be interested in a lot of those kinds of satellite opportunities in order to get a better handle on the dimensions of the problem. A huge portion of my State is blanketed with smoke, and this is taking place when hikers, fishermen, rafters, and guides, along with countless tourists from around the country, ought to be enjoying the outdoors. Talking about economic consequences, recreation has become a big economic engine in the West.
I am very pleased to have been the sponsor of a bill with Chairman Rob Bishop, who I think would be pleased if I called him one of the most conservative Members of the other body. Our bill is called the RNR bill, Recreation Not Red-Tape. It is just sensible suggestions for putting permitting information online--those sorts of things.
It is pretty hard to recreate in the West, Senator Sullivan, if everything is burning up. It is pretty hard to really cap the potential of this extraordinary new recreation engine, but right now dangerous fires and unhealthy smoke are blocking recreation opportunities for folks in the West to get outside. It is an economic nightmare, in addition to being a danger to life and property.
We don't remember wildfires this catastrophic happening 30 years ago, and people want to know why. My view is it is not a coincidence that the megafires now happen routinely and are getting bigger, and a significant factor in this is climate change.
According to research by Oregon State University, our average temperature has increased by more than 2 degrees over the past century. Last week, the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for the Willamette Valley, advising that the heat could touch 100 degrees. This is not Death Valley. The Presiding Officer knows our area. We don't get roasted by triple-digit heat--or we didn't used to. But we are today.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the contiguous United States experienced the warmest July in recorded history. The temperature hikes bake forests and landscapes. They dry out materials, and they are magnets--magnets--for fuel for the infernos. Yet the Trump administration, as Senator Whitehouse has talked about, seems to be working overtime to say that this isn't a problem.
For starters, the President pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, which would make us the only country to reject it. Senator Whitehouse knows more about this than any other Senator. What I was particularly troubled about is that the arguments they made weren't tethered to the facts. They kept saying that there were all kinds of mandates in the agreement. As my colleague knows, there really aren't. It is voluntary. There is a wide berth for countries to pursue strategies that make sense for them.
It is not just pulling out of the international agreement. At the Department of the Interior, Secretary Zinke is doing everything he can to roll back environmental protections.
I say to my colleague: I was one who voted for Secretary Zinke. He said that he was going to be a Roosevelt Republican. The Presiding Officer would be interested in this. He said that nine times in his hearing in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I thought, he is a Duck; he said he was a football player. I was a basketball player. I would give it a shot. I now consider that one of the worst votes I have cast in my time in public service because he is doing everything he can to roll back environmental protections, giving oil and gas executives free rein to exploit public lands, and he is putting an end to commonsense regulations to curb emissions of methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas.
The story doesn't get better at the Energy Department. They are there wrapping themselves into a legal pretzel to figure out how to waste taxpayer money to prop up the coal industry, an energy source whose costs are too great for the market to bear.
Over at the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, they are rolling back fuel standards for cars. That is a double loser. It is bad for the environment and bad for the consumers who are going to have to pony up $1 trillion more at the pump. While the Federal Government is abandoning leadership, they are also browbeating the States to do the same thing.
The Trump administration now threatens California's ability to set its own air quality standards under the Clean Air Act, which affects 12 other States, including Oregon. How many times, colleagues, have we heard Senators come to the floor of the Senate and virtually pound on their chests and say that the States are the laboratories of democracy?
Basically, on climate change, Senator Whitehouse, what the Trump administration is saying is that they are for State's rights if they think the State is right. That is their position on climate change. It is clear that we are not seeing any real movement from the Trump administration.
Two weeks ago, the President tweeted several times that water from Northern California is being diverted to the Pacific Ocean rather than being used for firefighting. State officials and Republicans--
California veteran Republicans--essentially said that this was nonsense. When the President's press office was asked about the tweet, really, they went completely silent.
The megafires are the new normal, so westerners are going to have to embrace new, cooperative, and collaborative ways of dealing with the effects of climate change. Our priority ought to be to work with the States. Government at all levels should continue to develop more efficient, low-carbon energy technologies, renewables, and energy storage. It is a winner all around for Oregon, the West, and our country. Not only are solar and wind cleaner, they are also cheaper than a number of the plants that burn fossil fuels.
What we said in our tax reform bill is that there are more than 40 separate breaks in energy, many of them just monuments to yesteryear. We proposed throwing them in the trash can. Out they go, $40 billion worth over a few years, substituting the $40 billion for clean energy, clean transportation fuel, and energy efficiency. That is going to be in line with what Senator Whitehouse has said, which is that America can get more green for less green, or fewer taxpayer dollars.
I very much appreciate my colleague coming to the floor today. I want to close with just one point. More than any other factor of my time in public service--I think I have discussed this with both the Presiding Officer and Senator Whitehouse--what I have been interested in finding is what I call principled bipartisanship. Bipartisanship is not about Republicans and Democrats taking each other's dumb ideas. Anybody can do that. Then you can pat yourself on the back and say: Oh, my goodness, we are being bipartisan. What it is all about is finding good ideas.
What Senator Whitehouse has done--and, boy, do the fires in the West right now convey the urgency; in effect, he has tried to take markets, marketplace forces, and fuse them together with the best environmental practices we know of. Both sides ought to find that pretty attractive. Conservatives can say: Senator Whitehouse is talking about using marketplace forces--and he has attracted some pretty prominent Republicans to his ideas, as well--and Democrats can say: We are not going to dawdle in terms of trying to improve the environment, and we are not going to turn back the clock on environmental practices.
I very much appreciate Senator Whitehouse's leadership. I am going to have to run off to another meeting. I will just say that I appreciate his including me.
I say to my colleagues: It might not be that wildfires are happening in your State this morning, but climate change affects every single American in one way or another, and we have to find a way to create a bipartisan path to address this growing harm.
With thanks to Senator Whitehouse, I yield the floor.
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