Whitehouse Warns of Global Climate Risk and Calls for Action at OSCE Parliamentary Assembly

Whitehouse calls out climate damage, insurance collapse, and corrupt fossil fuel influence

Industry, front groups, Russia and far-right comprise Axis of Climate Evil

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Senate Ranking Member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the "Helsinki Commission"), warned of the massive global risk posed by climate change and called for collective action at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly's 24^th Autumn Meeting.

As part of a bipartisan delegation, Whitehouse co-led a session of the OSCE Parliament entitled, "Strengthening Energy Sovereignty within the OSCE Area: Security, Efficiency, Sustainability." In his speech to the OSCE Parliament, the Senator warned of massive climate-driven disruption to Earth's natural systems collapsing insurance, mortgage and real estate markets, and called on governments to combat the new "Axis of Climate Evil" protecting the industry's wrongful "free-to-pollute" business model. An excerpt of his remarks is below:

"For our own safety, we need to get more serious about the politics of climate change if we're going to head this off. The fossil fuel industry fights fiercely to pollute for free. Its pollute-for-free business model is not only morally and economically a sin and a subsidy, it is now lethal to our climate safety as humankind.

"But they won't give it up. They depend on polluting for free. So a battle looms.

"In a battle, my friends, you need to know your adversary.

"Everywhere, fossil fuel operates through front groups. In most places, fossil fuel funds the far right, as paid allies. Vladimir Putin's covert schemes in Europe both disrupt democracy and prop up fossil fuel, his primary revenue. In the United States, the political right, fueled by dark money, still denies climate science. That is the enemy arrayed against you: fossil fuel, and all its front groups and dark money; Vladimir Putin, and all of Russia's anti-democracy mischief; and far-right political groups that deny climate change."

The meeting took place in Andorra la Vella, Andorra. Whitehouse and U.S. Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), Senate Chair of the Helsinki Commission, participated in committee meetings of the OSCE Parliament alongside Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Representative Marc Veasey (D-TX). Whitehouse attended bilateral meetings with the Ukrainian and Canadian delegations. Whitehouse also participated in events on authoritarian information manipulation, Russia's coercive recruitment of foreign nationals into its armed forces, and Hungary's democratic renewal.

In February, Whitehouse and Wicker participated in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Winter Meeting, where they pushed the U.S. and our European allies to cooperate to shut down Russia's shadow fleet that fuels the Russian oil and gas economy. In July, Whitehouse and Wicker again led a delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Annual Meeting, during which the OSCE Assembly overwhelmingly adopted two Whitehouse amendments to crack down on the Russian shadow fleet and spotlight the systemic and illegal Russian resettlement operation in occupied Ukraine.

Whitehouse's as-delivered speech to the OSCE Parliament this week is below. Video is available here.

Good morning.

I am going to start with one word: zettajoule. What is that? A joule is the unit of heat energy; zetta means it has 21 zeroes - not a billion joules, or a trillion joules, but a billion trillion joules. A billion trillions. A massive amount of heat.

All the energy generated in a year, by all of humankind, across all of Planet Earth, is only half a zettajoule. The price we pay for the fossil fuel component of that half-zettajoule, is that 14 zettajoules of excess heat go into our oceans every year. Multiple Hiroshima bombs per second worth of heat.

This is part of the uncounted price of fossil fuel energy. Those of you who have coasts, know what fossil fuel is doing to our oceans: the rising seas, the displaced fisheries, the dying coral reefs, the worsening storms.

Every energy question is subordinate to the question whether we will protect Earth's natural systems from unbounded fossil fuel pollution.

The damage humanity sustains from fossil fuels in climate-driven floods and wildfires has a leading indicator, in the insurance sector. Markets predict. Across my country, and probably yours, climate risks are making whole areas uninsurable. In my country, and perhaps yours, that means properties become unmortgageable. For most homeowners, that means a significant loss in property value.

This is a warning, but it's not my warning. There are many very clear financial warnings. They warn of a cascade. Climate risk crashes insurance markets, insurance collapse crashes mortgage markets, mortgage collapse crashes property values, and general economic collapse follows - like the global crash of 2008, but likely without the rebound.

These warnings aren't from green groups, liberal groups, progressive groups - they're coming from the top of the financial sector: from the top of big mortgage companies like Freddie Mac, big insurers like Allianz and Aon, key banks like the Federal Reserve and Bank of England, even the International Financial Stability Board. Economist magazine has warned of a $25 trillion hit to global real estate markets.

The author Ernest Hemingway talked about going bankrupt happening gradually, then all at once. This crash could well happen all at once, and it could happen soon.

For our own safety, we need to get more serious about the politics of climate change if we're going to head this off. The fossil fuel industry fights fiercely to pollute for free. Its pollute-for-free business model is not only morally and economically a sin and a subsidy, it is now lethal to our climate safety as humankind.

But they won't give it up. They depend on polluting for free. So a battle looms.

In a battle, my friends, you need to know your adversary.

Everywhere, fossil fuel operates through front groups. In most places, fossil fuel funds the far right, as paid allies. Vladimir Putin's covert schemes in Europe both disrupt democracy and prop up fossil fuel, his primary revenue. In the United States, the political right, fueled by dark money, still denies climate science. That is the enemy arrayed against you: fossil fuel, and all its front groups and dark money; Vladimir Putin, and all of Russia's anti-democracy mischief; and far-right political groups that deny climate change.

We face climate peril as fossil fuel disrupts Nature's systems; and we face the more immediate, systemic economic peril that prefigures it; so we must face up now to the political peril right now of the fossil fuel industry, its armada of front groups, its political meddling through far-right groups it funds, and the malign influence of the petro-state Russia.

Collectively, they amount to a new Axis of Evil, determined to ruin society's ability to meet the climate challenge that fossil fuel pollution causes. It's time to ready ourselves for battle.

When the zettajoules pile up, and something very bad happens all at once, we will bitterly regret any failure to prepare or failure to fight. Thank you.