For nine years, US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat representing Rhode Island since 2007, made weekly speeches called “Time To Wake Up” urging the Senate to take action on the climate emergency.
Whitehouse spoke about the devastating effects of global heating on different parts of the US as well as the world’s oceans. He also warned about the influence of corporate “dark money” undermining American democracy, including by fossil fuel companies resisting action on the climate crisis.
In January 2021, when Joe Biden became president, Whitehouse called a halt to his weekly speech ritual by saying: “The conditions are at last in place for a real solution” with Democrats controlling not only the presidency but both houses of Congress.
In February, Whitehouse reversed himself with his 240th Senate speech on the climate crisis.
The Guardian spoke to Whitehouse in early March, starting with the senator’s decision to bring back “Time To Wake Up”.
“I revived the speech series because I lost confidence in the momentum for a climate solution. There’s a legislation route. There’s a regulation route. There’s a litigation route. At the end of a year of this administration, we’ve made no visible progress on any of those fronts. So I went back at it.”
Why has there been no visible progress when there is a Democrat in the White House and Democrats control Congress?
“The Democratic party has never taken climate change as seriously as it should. It has never put the energy into it that would create a public reaction of support that would then encourage more activity.
More specifically, we put all of our eggs in the basket of the big reconciliation bill (Build Back Better legislation), and the belief that everything was going to be made right by that. To the extent we needed to keep the caucus together for that piece of legislation, we weren’t going to do anything serious on regulation or on litigation lest it disturb the process. That was not the best way to go. We need to reboot. We need to do what we can through legislation but we also need to really push the throttle forward on regulation and on litigation.”
You’ve spoken in the past about the impact of corporate dark money, the oil industry’s climate denialism and fossil fuel company strategies to delay environmental regulation and policies. But it sounds as if the issue is a lack of political will as much as resistance by financial and industrial interests to push forward the climate agenda.
“The two are related. We probably would have succeeded at the legislation were it not for the organised opposition by fossil fuel interests to prevent those things from happening. You need to be prepared to step up your counter pressure on the fossil fuel industry in order to succeed. I think it’s in that area that we’ve been particularly derelict.
But as powerful as the oil and gas industry disinformation machinery is, it does have an Achilles heel. The more it’s exposed, the more it’s brought to light, the more the public understands what the industry has been up to, the more the pressure of public opinion and of the vote can be brought to bear.”
To that end, you have sponsored legislation to expose the flow of what you have described as dark money from the fossil fuel industry and others that, in your words, has infiltrated deep into politics, captured the supreme court, and threatens American democracy. The Disclose Act would require organisations spending money in federal elections to reveal the sources of their funding. What are the prospects for that legislation?
“The president asked us to have a vote on it in the state of the union, so that’s an important fulcrum for further activity. I think he sees the vote as an opportunity to apply significant political leverage because the public hates this dark money corruption.
In the short run, Republicans are not going to want to vote for this. Mitch McConnell (the Republican minority leader…
Read More: Climate action has been ‘a calamity’, says Senate Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse | Climate crisis