One Senator’s War Against Climate Change

Every week, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, heads to the floor of the Senate, sets up an easel and some poster board, and delivers a speech. He works hard on these speeches. They’re deeply researched and beautifully crafted. He delivers them with passion -- to a mostly empty room. His colleagues figure they have better things to do than listen. But 100 years from now, when our grandchildren look back and try to understand what we were doing while the world burned, these speeches may well be some of the most famed rhetoric of the age.

The speeches are on climate change. They range in tone from morally outraged to deeply wonky. One focused on how best to structure a carbon fee. “We should start by setting aside about $140 billion -- or 12 percent of the total -- to help lower-income households,” Whitehouse said.