Trump tried to block him from going
The United Nations’ 30th session of the
Conference of the Parties (COP30) gathers heads of state,
lawmakers, private sector leaders, environmental champions, and civil society
leaders from around the world for what is advertised as the largest and most
important venue for world governments to gather to solve the global climate
crisis.
While at COP30, Senator Whitehouse participated in
discussions on the future of offshore wind, clean shipping, and non-CO2
greenhouse gas emissions. He delivered a keynote at an SEEC Institute panel
discussion with other global elected officials on the implementation of climate
policies. Over the weekend, the Senator also participated in discussions on
methane regulations, net-zero policy implementation, and the impacts of climate
change on the world’s oceans, meeting with elected officials, international climate
leaders, and business leaders.
“I went there to deliver four messages,” said Senator Whitehouse to reporters.
- “Trump
does not represent the views of the United States on climate. He’s
captured and corrupted by the fossil fuel industry. What you’re hearing
from him is not the United States’ view; it’s the fossil fuel industry’s
view. (And by the way, when you watch what he’s doing, know that that is
the true face of the fossil fuel industry: not the smiling masks it puts
on when it comes to events like COP. If you want to see the real face of
the fossil fuel industry, look at Trump’s behavior.)
- “We’ve
got to get serious and put a price on carbon pollution. There are no
longer any scenarios in which we can reach climate safety without putting
a price on carbon pollution. The way I described it was that the things
being discussed might cause the plane to crash higher up the mountain, but
carbon pricing is needed to get the aircraft safely over the mountain.
Gaining altitude isn’t enough. Getting over the mountain is what matters.
I called the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which, at
this point, is the strongest global pricing mechanism, our last lifeboat.
- “I
also drew attention to what I call the great climate insurance collapse,
which is already well underway in Florida and which we’re seeing the
leading edges of here in Rhode Island. Wherever I went, we handed out a
list of some of the more prominent crash warnings, not from green or
environmental groups, but from the financial system, about where this was
headed, and constantly referred to Ernest Hemingway’s response about how
he went broke, which was “gradually, then all at once.” That’s what
happens with these collapses - they rock along gradually and then Boom! it
collapses all at once. We’re well into it gradually, and all at once could
happen anytime. The warnings are legion.
- “The
last point I made is that we’ve got to start talking about the villain of
the story. We cannot omit the work that the fossil fuel industry has done
through its climate denial fraud operation to mislead the public and
through its dark money corruption operation to influence Congress. That is
the dominant reason we are where we are, and to refuse to talk about it is
self-injurious and creates a false impression.
“So those were the big four points: Trump ain’t us, we’ve
got to price pollution, climate insurance collapse is coming, and put the
villains in the story.”
Reporter questions:
Joe Tasca - Ocean State Media: Climate change
obviously is a global issue. It certainly impacts Rhode Islanders, but why
should your Rhode Island constituents care that you attended this global
climate conference? To be blunt, what’s in it for them?
Senator Whitehouse: The sea is gradually
submerging the Rhode Island coast. You are seeing beach facilities having to
move backwards. You see coastal homes washing into the sea. You see risks to
entire neighborhoods, like the historic Point neighborhood in Newport. You see
flooding on perfectly nice days from king tides, and you see the leading edge
of the insurance market collapse, which will ultimately translate into a
significant hit to coastal property values. So there’s a lot at stake. The City
of Providence is trying to figure out how to avoid looking like Venice in the
years ahead as the ocean floods in. We’re working with the Army Corps on
various projects to create barriers to protect Downtown Providence, but the
risk to Rhode Island, while it lags behind that to Florida, is very real.
Joe Tasca: Given the lack of support for a US
delegation to this conference, what do you think you actually accomplished by
attending?
Senator Whitehouse: It depends on how well my
messages were taken. There was a lot of relief when I said Trump does not
represent the US view. He represents the fossil fuel industry’s view. But I
don’t think that changes anybody’s direction very much. That was to reassure
people. The COP has long dodged the hard work of pricing carbon pollution.
They’ve been much more interested in these nationally defined contributions and
so forth, and I hope it began to sink in that that wasn’t going to get us
there. Those improvements aren’t enough to get us on a pathway to climate
safety. We have to address that seriously. We’ll see. Time will tell. The great
climate insurance collapse is coming. Very few people had connected the dots,
but many asked me to do more on this and to figure out how to explain it
better.
At a minimum, what came out of it is much more attention to
the insurance/mortgage/property values problem that climate risk is causing,
and we want to take advantage of those opportunities. I’ll continue to work
with groups around the country and the world to emphasize that message.
And people are ready for the villain’s message to come
through. I think the Biden administration missed a huge opportunity by not
being candid with the American public about what was really going on here, and
trying to be Mr. Nice guy and focusing on green jobs rather than focusing on
how a particular corrupt industry is creating a massive public peril. There’s
much more interest in that narrative.
One of the last events I went to and one of the
best-attended included every member of the panel; there were five of them, and
I was the wrap-up speaker for that narrative. This is my seventh COP, and I’ve
never heard that narrative from anyone except me. So that is beginning to turn.
We’ll see what the COP produces, but you have a chance when you go there to
offer a message to the global environmental climate community, and time will
prove how effective I was. But I didn’t want to miss the chance to do that,
because these are important shifts to make if we’re going to fulfill our duty
to future generations and solve this problem in time.
Rob Smith - ecoRI: In a couple of weeks,
probably about a month, the state will release its climate action strategy that
will show how the state meets its climate goals under the Act on Climate. Do
you have any ideas on how the state should be, including any of the messages
you’ve taken to COP, in its climate action strategy?
Senator Whitehouse: We’ve been talking a fair
amount about ensuring that there’s awareness of what a coastal insurance
collapse means for Rhode Island. I’ve been working with the League of Cities
and Towns because those coastal communities are going to take it very, very
hard. They’re beginning to see it show up in their municipal bond ratings.
They’re getting new questions about how much of their tax revenue comes from
coastal properties that might not be there long or might not have the kind of
value that can be taxed at current rates. So yeah, that’s going to figure in.
One of the witnesses I brought to Washington for my budget
committee hearings was Ernest Shaghalian Jr., who runs a prominent
insurance agency here. We’ve been talking with him to set up some meetings that
bring realtors, local community bankers, credit unions, and insurance agents
together to prepare for that.
The price of the carbon piece is very important. Luckily,
we’re in RGGI (Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative), which is a light price on carbon. I hope the
state will consider raising the RGGI price. RGGI has been very good for Rhode
Island. It’s a money maker. When the money that goes out comes back, it gets
spent in ways that are more economically advantageous than the loss of revenue
in the first place. So that’s been a win.
The last piece is something local, so I didn’t bring it up
at COP - although I met with a lot of offshore wind people - and that is the
legal success of Revolution Wind getting back online and back into construction
mode after the illegal stop-work order that the President’s minions issued on
his behalf. Fun fact on that: If you read the pleadings, you’ll see that the
lawyers for the government in the District of Columbia Federal Court, where the
first stop work order was made, had been in that same courthouse arguing about
Revolution Wind defending it from the very same charges that the Trump
Administration then made to back up its stop work order. So they had to do a
180, and in the same courthouse on the same project, start making the exact
opposite arguments from the ones they’d been making previously.
In a normal administration, that would’ve filtered back up
and somebody would’ve said, “Hey, doofus, don’t do this. We’ve been making the
exact opposite argument in court. We’re on the record about this project in
this courthouse. Really bad idea here.” But the Trump Administration is very
bad at listening when the fossil fuel industry cracks its whip. So they ended
up in a terrible position in court, and as a result, they’re in no rush to
continue to litigate because they took a beating. It’s an interesting sidebar:
they didn’t bother to do the due diligence or legal prep needed to realize they
were reversing themselves.
And if you haven’t seen it, I can get you my little clip from a friend who went out to see the new offshore wind turbines, and while he is there, a mellow humpback whale comes easing to the surface, blows, goes back down, cruises all chill around the [wind turbine] piling, and goes on. He thought the whale was there getting fish, attracted to the artificial reef effect of the piling, but it was a good visual image that shows that whales do not despise wind turbines. This one was really cool with it. Part of the villainy is the lying.
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