Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want the 31 colleagues who have been on the floor to know how proud I am. As I have watched throughout the evening and this morning, I have seen our colleagues continue to hold this floor to try to bring attention to climate change. I am very proud of them. I have the privilege of being the cleanup hitter in this session that has gone on for hours and hours. I want to speak from the perspective of the part of the United States that is going to be and is most affected by sea level rise, which is a consequence of climate change; that is, the State of Florida. I also want to speak from the perspective of outer space. When someone looks back at the planet through the window of a spacecraft--which I had the privilege of doing 28 years ago in the early part of the space shuttle program, the space shuttle Columbia, which was piloted by now-retired Marine Gen. Charlie Bolden, who is the head of NASA and has been for the past 5 years--when we look back at our home, we see this incredible creation that is so colorful suspended in the midst of nothing. Space is nothing. Space is an airless vacuum that goes on and on for billions of light years, and there is our home and it is so beautiful, yet it looks so fragile from that perspective of miles and miles away. What the naked eye can see from that altitude as we orbit the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour is incredible in the detail we can see, but some of that detail is quite disturbing.…”