[VIDEO] Senator Coons: “Science should not be a partisan issue. And neither, frankly, should climate change”

WASHINGTON – Yesterday, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) joined his colleagues on the Senate floor to call out the Koch brothers and fossil fuel industry-funded groups that have fashioned a web of denial to block action on climate change. Senator Coons discussed the so-called Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC), one of several front groups that played an instrumental role in obscuring the facts around health risks of smoking and the dangers posed by climate change. 

Full audio and video of Senator Coons’ speech available here: http://bit.ly/29tCMjC

 

Excerpts from Senator Coons’ remarks: 

It is troubling that today, in the 21^st century, there is any doubt about the importance of real, sound science to many facets of our lives. It is troubling that we still need to defend science here on the Senate floor.

Never have we had a greater ability to collect and analyze data than today. That’s why, more than ever, in today’s world, science should drive policy, not the other way around.

There are far too many organizations in existence today that have it backwards. These organizations have attempted to distort science for purely political ends because the facts threaten the bottom line of those who have created and sustained them.  

Existence of groups like TASSC…make clear that we must work even harder to defend and support science throughout our society.

Science should not be a partisan issue.  And neither, frankly, should climate change.

The challenges of climate change are daunting and urgent, and so we should be focused on using the best science available to tackle these challenges with the best policy solutions possible

Senator Coons’ full remarks below: 

Madam President, I'd like to thank my great colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island for his tireless efforts to keep climate change on this chamber’s radar. One day, I hope we can move it from our radar to our to-do list and, ultimately, the history books. 

Today, I’m pleased and proud to join my colleagues here to talk about something I thought we’d established in grade school, but apparently bears repeating: that is, the importance of science. 

It is troubling that today, in the 21^st century, there is any doubt about the importance of real, sound science to many facets of our lives. It is troubling that we still need to defend science here on the Senate floor. 

Scientific discovery and invention is the engine of our economy. Science leads to transformative technologies and new ways of thinking in a wide range of fields: healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, clean energy and national security.

Scientific inquiry is also the foundation of good public policy. It shapes and informs how we address global threats such as ozone depletion, an issue on which the international community has made real progress. Science must play an equally central role in how we address climate change. 

When we want to know what to do about a public health or environmental crisis, we turn to science. For example, rigorous, careful data collection and analysis is critical to understanding long-term trends.

Data can show the effectiveness of a medication in treating a disease, for example, or the ability of a new material to withstand extreme conditions over time.  And data can help us to make good decisions based on those trends. 

Never have we had a greater ability to collect and analyze data than today. That’s why, more than ever, in today’s world, science should drive policy, not the other way around. 

In a number of areas, I've worked with Republican colleagues on bipartisan bills that help advance scientific inquiry, from encouraging citizen science projects to improving public private partnerships with our national labs.

So why is climate science so threatening to some? 

Sadly, there are far too many organizations in existence today that have it backwards. These organizations have attempted to distort science for purely political ends because the facts threaten the bottom line of those who have created and sustained them.  These organizations claim to use “sound science” to support policy objectives, but their actions indicate that the only science they find sound is the kind that sounds like profits. 

One of these organizations is the now defunct Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, known as the TASSC – an organization that played a key role in obscuring the facts around the dangers of tobacco use. 

TASSC was originally founded back in 1993 under the guise of promoting, quote, “sound science in policymaking.” 

In reality, as was later uncovered in the documents that came to light as in the course of litigation against the tobacco industry, TASSC actually had the opposite goal. The year it was founded, it stated in private documents at the time that one of its goals was to lay the groundwork to help Phillip Morris advance its agenda – of promoting tobacco use – nationally and at the state and local level. How? By, and I quote from one of these discovered documents, “encouraging the public to question – from the grassroots up – the validity of scientific studies.” 

These are not the statements of an organization devoted to scientific inquiry and data-driven policy.

Let me be clear: the problem doesn't lie in industry hiring scientists to argue their case. That's well within the rights of industry and any organization in our country. The problem is when groups like this one misrepresent their very motives, hide their sources of funding and industry ties, and push out misleading or even incorrect information under the guise of “sound science.”

We all know today that smoking tobacco is harmful to our health, profoundly harmful to our health.  Yet these same organizations, the ones that decades ago promoted “science” that hid the truth about tobacco and threatened public health for far too long, are now, in sadly too many cases, doing the same with climate change.

Fortunately, today, this group I'm now discussing TASSC is now defunct. But its former executive director, Steve Milloy, is still an active climate change denier and editor of junkscience.com.

In fact, Milloy helped draft the 1998 “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan.”  It included the statement, quote, “Victory Will Be Achieved When Average citizens 'understand' the uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the 'conventional wisdom.’”

Quite simply, his goal was and continues to be to persuade people, using incorrect, scientifically unsound information, to doubt the science about climate change, one of the greatest global challenges we face. His policy goal is to halt action on climate change, and he is using science incorrectly to achieve this political end.

Frankly, this is dangerous, it is irresponsible, and it flies in the face of the foundation of the scientific method.  

As someone who trained in chemistry in college, I am familiar with how scientists are trained to formulate hypotheses, carefully construct experiments to test those hypotheses, and – without bias or preformed assumptions – then draw conclusions about those hypotheses.

Starting with the answer and only considering evidence that supports that answer -- that’s not science – that’s politics.

Madam President, the existence of groups like TASSC and others that my colleagues will speak about this evening and tomorrow make clear that we must work even harder to defend and support science throughout our society. 

That means providing robust funding for our national lab system.

That means establishing a federal effort to coordinate research in a new subfield of chemistry that I've been excited about promoting. 

That means promoting the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science methods in federal agencies.

That means supporting policies that will support industry-relevant training in engineering, including advanced manufacturing. 

All of these are efforts that I've been in involved and that enjoy bipartisan support.  My colleagues know that I make an effort to promote pragmatic, bipartisan policy ideas.  Science should not be a partisan issue.  And neither, frankly, should climate change.

Climate change is all too real for those of us who live in low lying coastal states like my home state of Delaware, where flooding has devastated homes and communities up and down our state.

The science is clear: this severe flooding is only going to increase as temperatures continue to rise around the globe and as the sea level rises as well. 

Madam President, we live in an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advances.  The NASA Juno spacecraft mission to Jupiter, the ability to use 3-D printing to manufacture custom products, specifically prosthetics, the evolution of new developments in robotics and genomics – these advances capture our imagination and can change our world. 

These developments happen because America’s best-trained scientists and engineers have spent decades undertaking rigorous and innovative research, and applying their findings to address the big questions of our world.

Certainly the challenges of climate change are daunting and urgent, and so we should be focused on using the best science available to tackle these challenges with the best policy solutions possible – not by convincing people who prefer denial and deception that the science isn’t even real. 

Madam President, I want to thank my friend and colleague Senator Whitehouse for his tireless leadership in addressing climate change and assembling today's important colloquy.