Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I am glad to have a chance to join with you today. I appreciate very much Senator Sanders convening us on this day when we have agreed, it appears, to extend the payroll tax; we have agreed, it appears, to extend unemployment insurance; and we have agreed, it appears, to extend the payments for doctors under Medicare, under the so-called doc fix. And the one piece that has fallen out was the tax extenders that support our clean energy industry.

Our clean energy industry has more employees than Big Oil, and there are well-paying jobs. It is a growing industry, and it creates American manufacturing and American installation.

Senator Udall was talking about the economic value of these wind farms. I know that in his home State, there are plenty of wind farms that are built on the land. In my home State, we are working toward having wind farms that are built offshore. And the ability to construct those giant turbines at Quonset Point in Rhode Island, in order to install them offshore and enjoy the power and the jobs that result, is something that is really important to us.

So I am glad the Senator has called us together to focus on this question of the tax extenders and also to focus on the environmental harm of climate change. I will turn it back to the Senator, but I wish to make one last point before I do, which is that there is a certain amount of sort of snickering around Washington about climate change, which is a unique feature to Washington. If you go out in the scientific community, nobody is laughing. They are very anxious. They are worried.

The major scientific organizations have all signed off on public letters urging us to do something about this because it is so significant. We have looked out at the first dozen billion-dollar storms year that we have had. Wherever you look around the world, we are seeing extreme weather. And the notion that when the scientists predicted extreme weather and now we are seeing it--if that should not be cause for additional concern, that really flies in the face of both prudence and reality.

The last area where we are really getting clobbered is with our oceans. As we pump, in human time, unprecedented amounts of carbon into our atmosphere, it is taken up by the oceans. It is absorbed by the oceans. During the course of the Industrial Revolution and to now, the oceans have absorbed enormous amounts of carbon. It is changing the oceans. It is killing off coral reefs in the tropical areas. It is making the oceans so acidic that the little organisms that are at the base of the food chain are having trouble growing to their proper size. It is becoming a hostile environment. Creatures do not live well in an environment in which they are increasingly soluble.

These are not theories, these are measurements by scientists who go out and actually measure what is happening. The blindness in Washington to this problem is something that is not only a cause for concern now but is going to be a cause for harsh judgment in history's eyes.