Sheldon Whitehouse: “well, first of all, congratulations to Chairman Cardin for his fifth COP delegation that he led. I have been on all five…”

“well, first of all, congratulations to Chairman Cardin for his fifth COP delegation that he led. I have been on all five of them, and I am really grateful that he has organized them and organized them well. A couple of topics on this one: Going in, we had acquired from the UNFCCC the requirement that people showing up would have to disclose their fossil fuel affiliations--like who are you really working for, if you have come to the COP--and we have worked since then with the environmental community to put some real teeth into that disclosure so that you actually know what the questions are and you have to answer them, and you can't just send it to the PR department and get a bit of fluff to file. We have sent that in to Professor Raskin, who is the intermediary on the subject of transparency with the UNFCCC. So we didn't get it done for this one, and this one was swarming with lobbyists and undisclosed mischief makers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for instance, was present. We know, particularly in this building, that they are constantly up to no good. But we are hoping that, by the next COP, there will be far better transparency and people who are actively working to defeat climate legislation, to defeat climate progress have to disclose that they are up to that. They can still come, but everybody needs to know what jersey they are wearing.…”