On the recordMarch 10, 2014
Joe Sewall, David Huber, Harry Richardson, Hoddy Hildreth, and Sherry Huber--those names mean nothing in this Chamber, but they meant everything in Maine in the 1970s. They were the parents of the environmental movement in our State. What do they all have in common? They are all Republicans. I rise tonight in puzzlement as to how this issue became a partisan one. It is a scientific issue. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. That is science. That is not a partisan or debatable issue. The science on this question is definitive. I would not call myself a denier, but I was a skeptic until several years when I encountered a chart, which I will show in a large version later this evening, that talks about CO<INF>2</INF> in the atmosphere for the last million years. Yes, it varied over time between 150 and 250 parts per million, but in the 1860s, at the dawn of the fossil fuel age, it started to go up, and now it is at 400 parts per million. That number has not been seen in this world for 3 million years. The last time we were at that figure, the sea level was 80 feet higher. We are playing with the future of this planet. We have to do something, and that is why we are here. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
