Political Quotes

“Madam President, climate change is already wreaking havoc on the American economy, and anyone who cares today about having a strong economy in 10, 20, or 30 years needs to be committed to acting now. We are already seeing the economic risks related to climate change. Temperatures are rising, sea levels are rising, and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe. Ask families in California whose homes and businesses have been burned to the ground in record-setting fires or construction workers in Texas who have to cut their hours because of the heat or farmers in Nebraska, where the State Farm Bureau estimates that this spring's flood will cost ranchers $500 million and will cost grain farmers $400 million. Farm bankruptcies were already at a 10-year high even before the flooding. We are getting closer to long-term tipping points. Within 30 years, which is a typical span of a mortgage, nearly 400,000 existing homes in the U.S. coastal areas are at risk of being uninhabitable. These homes collectively are worth about $210 billion. That is more than four times the estimated insured losses of Hurricane Katrina. The ``National Climate Assessment'' says that $1 trillion worth of coastal real estate in the United States is threatened by the effects of climate change. The assessment also shows that labor productivity will take a hit. Under one scenario, the Southeast United States alone could lose $47 billion in productivity each year.…”