Climate Change Keeps a Quarter of the Senate Up All Night

By Arlette Saenz March 10, 2014

Craig Caplan/C-SPAN

WASHINGTON - Get ready for another all-nighter in the Senate. Twenty-eight Democratic senators are expected to take turns speaking on the Senate floor this evening all the way through Tuesday morning, all in the name of climate change awareness.

While there is no specific legislation the senators will address, the all-night session is a sort of rallying cry for Democrats on the topic of climate change.

Led by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the senators are expected to talk about how climate change is affecting their home states and discuss the need to build momentum behind the issue. The all night talk-a-thon is expected to begin after votes conclude this evening and last until approximately 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday.

Five lucky senators - Whitehouse; Schatz; Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. - are taking the shifts in the dead of the night when most of their Senate colleagues will be tucked away in bed.

Other senators expected to participate in the overnight session include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.; Patty Murray, D-Wash.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla.; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md.; Bernard Sanders, I-Vt.; Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Mark Udall, D-Colo.; Tom Udall, D-N.M.; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Al Franken, D-Minn.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Angus King, I-Maine; Tim Kaine, D-Va.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and Edward Markey, D-Mass.

And how will the senators keep their energy up during the sleepless night? Schatz will give his colleagues an energy boost by providing kona coffee and macadamia nuts from Hawaii in the cloakroom, a spokeswoman for Schatz told ABC News, and Boxer will bring bagels to round up her colleagues in the morning.

Volunteers with the Sierra Club stopped by senators' offices today to deliver coffee to fuel their all-nighter.

The senators are part of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, which was formed in January to "wake up" Congress about the need to address climate change. Senators will promote their overnight session on social media using the hashtag #Up4Climate.

The Natural Resources Defense Council even got in on the social media campaign, devising a crafty meme comparing the all-night session and Whitehouse to Daft Punk.