Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D.-R.I.) (Screen Capture)

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday that those who stand in the way of regulations meant to control “climate change” are guilty of three grave “sins.”

“It is an evil mess we are in, and if there is any justice in this world, there will one day be a terrible price to pay if we keep listening to evil voices,” Whitehouse said.

Before he arrived at his point about the grave sins committed by opponents of climate change regulations, he urged Americans to “listen to the oceans” and “the oysters.”

“If you can listen quietly, you can listen to the oceans,” Whitehouse said. “They speak to us, the oceans do. They speak to us through thermometers, and they say: We are warming. They speak to us through tide gauges, and they say: We are rising along your shores. They speak to us through the howl of hurricanes powered up by their warmer sea surfaces. They speak to us through the quiet flight of fish species from their traditional grounds as the seawater warms beyond their tolerance.”

“We can go out and check and see the corals and the oysters and the pteropods corrode and die before our eyes,” said Whitehouse. “It is happening.”

“The climate change problems we are causing by failing to act are a sin, as Pope Francis has flatly declared, but that is not the only sin,” said Whitehouse.

“To jam Congress up, fossil fuel interests are interfering with and corrupting American democracy, and to corrupt American democracy is a second and a grave sin,” he said.

“The science denial apparatus—to mount a fraudulent challenge to the very enterprise of science, that is a third grave sin,” he said.

“Perhaps worst of all is that the world is watching,” he said. “It is watching us as the fossil fuel industry, its creepy billionaires, its front groups, its bogus think tanks all gang up and debauch our democracy.”