Political Quotes

“Madam President, yesterday I offered an amendment to the Keystone XL bill which is really straightforward and will not affect the underlying legislation. I do think it has the potential to get strong bipartisan support. That is because my amendment states a simple set of facts--that climate change is real and humans are contributing to it. This is an opportunity for people on either side of the Keystone debate to agree on something; that is, the facts. It will inform, I think, what happens next in energy policy. As intense as this debate over this pipeline is, the real question in front of us, after we dispose of this legislation and it goes to the President's desk for a certain veto, is that then we have to contend with our national energy policy. We need to agree on the set of facts that everyone outside of this Congress agrees on. These claims require evidence, and my amendment provides those pieces of evidence. It cites the final supplemental environmental impact statement prepared for the Keystone Pipeline by the State Department, which says that ``human activities . . . have added to the greenhouse gas accumulation and exacerbated the greenhouse . . . effect, resulting in greater amounts of heat being trapped in the atmosphere.'' Now, this is not controversial. It also states: ``These climate change shifts can . . .…”