Whitehouse Introduces 16 Evidence-Based Climate and Clean Air Resolutions, Urges Senate to Stand with Facts

While the Trump Administration sides with the fossil fuel industry to cover up the harms of climate change, the EPW Ranking Member is calling on the Senate to protect Americans' health, safety, and economic stability

Washington, D.C.- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), introduced 16 resolutions to formally acknowledge the widespread harms from climate change and toxic air pollution.

While the Trump Administration is poised to roll back the endangerment finding, effectively denying the existence of human-caused climate change and blocking the government's ability to protect the public from its harms, Ranking Member Whitehouse is calling on the Senate to recognize the reality of climate change and the risks it poses to national health, public safety, and the economy.

"These are statements of fact, backed up by decades of scientific evidence," said Ranking Member Whitehouse. "An industry corruptly denying the dangers of climate change doesn't change the science; it's a choice between truth and falsehood. So we want to put the Senate on record, as insurance costs skyrocket for homes on the front lines of climate change, and the looming Great Climate Insurance Collapse threatens to trash our entire economy. Protecting public health, public safety, and economic stability is a duty we all share, and I urge all my colleagues to take this chance to stand with the facts and pass these commonsense resolutions."

Resolutions were cosponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Ed Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Tina Smith (D-MN), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE).

The resolutions are available below. Full text and the co-sponsors are available here.

1. Recognizing that climate change is not a hoax, but sound science.
2. Recognizing that sea levels are rising at accelerated rates due to human-caused climate change.
3. Recognizing that oceans are warming due to human-caused climate change.
4. Recognizing that climate change is real.
5. Recognizing the strong link between climate change and skyrocketing insurance premiums.
6. Recognizing that climate change poses a threat to the mortgage market and to home values.
7. Recognizing that Florida's insurance market is gravely stressed by climate risks.
8. Recognizing that climate change portends a cascade of financial market collapses that would destabilize the national and global economies.
9. Recognizing that climate change-driven extreme weather events are increasing at the same time that the government is dismantling weather monitoring and alert systems.
10. Recognizing that climate change is making wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more destructive.
11. Recognizing that mercury pollution can cause severe health problems including permanent brain damage, kidney damage, and birth defects.
12. Recognizing that particulate matter pollution can cause heart attacks, asthma, strokes, and premature death.
13. Recognizing that ozone pollution can cause lung disease, asthma attacks, cardiovascular problems, and reproductive issues.
14. Affirming that the federal government should support school district investment in clean school buses.
15. Recognizing the ability of solar, storage, and wind to quickly and cheaply meet power demand growth.
16. Recognizing that facilities that produce renewable electricity are the cheapest power-generating facilities to operate and reliance on fossil fuel-generating facilities to meet growing power demand drives up wholesale electricity prices.