On the recordDecember 10, 2015
I wish to express my gratitude to Senator Cardin for leading this great delegation of 10 Senators to the Paris Conference of Parties--the COP21, the global climate change conference in Paris--and to Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire for her tireless leadership on energy efficiency. The least expensive, most powerful way we can reduce our energy consumption is by investing in new technologies and new approaches that help create jobs and manufacturing in the United States and reduce our total energy consumption and footprint. I think the Paris conference has already been a success from the outset. As we heard directly from the head of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, 150 heads of state gathered at the very outset of that conference, and 184 countries made voluntary national commitments to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, to reducing their carbon footprint, and to working together to find sustainable solutions to this very real challenge. The other thing I found most encouraging about the many conversations we had with governmental leaders, with advocates, with nonprofit leaders was a commitment to bring together developed countries such as the United States and European and Asian allies of ours and the developing world--the very large countries such as India and China which have become major emitters of greenhouse gases--to bring them all together in one common agreement.…
