Chris Coons: “this amendment recognizes that climate change is not a hoax, that climate change is a reality, and that we need to do…”

“this amendment recognizes that climate change is not a hoax, that climate change is a reality, and that we need to do some things together to begin to plan for and prepare for the inevitable consequences and impacts on our infrastructure. As someone who was in local government for a long time before coming to this body--I was a county executive--I have a sense of what it means for our States, our municipalities, and our county governments to have to plan for and deal with the inevitable consequence, the impacts on our local infrastructure of the coming changes through climate change. I happen to represent the lowest mean elevation State in America, and our Governor Jack Markell and his able folks in the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control have led a grassroots statewide effort to begin planning for the future impacts of climate change. Because of the combination of subsidence and sea level rise, Delaware will see earlier than many States impacts on vital local infrastructure. So whether it is our sewer systems, our roads, our water systems or other infrastructure, we need to begin to plan now to bake resiliency into the future of our community.…”