John Garamendi: “We will turn to another topic, I think, of interest, if my colleagues would just excuse me for a moment. I always try to…”

“We will turn to another topic, I think, of interest, if my colleagues would just excuse me for a moment. I always try to start these sessions with purpose. What are we all about here? And I often use this from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.'' While I always use this, I am trying to figure now, how does this figure into climate change? What would the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt have to do with climate change in the era of greenhouse gas emissions? I thought about it for a while and I said, it may be difficult to make the connection, but there really is one. And I really want to start with this: What is our purpose here? If we think about climate change, we are going to have to understand and read and pay attention to this. This is the cover of an extraordinarily important document that the Federal Government, the Government of the United States of America, issued last Friday when most of America was out shopping, Black Friday. Now, maybe there is some reason that the administration chose to issue this critical report on that day. If it was to bury the report, they are not going to be successful, because this document, required by Congress over the last 20-plus years, gives a clarion call to every human being on this planet today.…”