Al Franken: “I rise today to talk about climate change. But I first do want to say how pleased I am that we just got cloture to move…”

“I rise today to talk about climate change. But I first do want to say how pleased I am that we just got cloture to move to debate on the Marketplace Fairness Act. I am a strong supporter of the legislation. As I said, I am a cosponsor. I look forward to the upcoming debate. I plan to speak on this legislation further tomorrow. Now I would like to talk about climate change. More specifically, I rise to suggest that we in this body talk more about climate change so that we can agree on taking action to address it. We need to address the environmental impacts that we are currently facing and the future impacts that will only become exponentially worse if we fail to act. 2012 was the hottest year on record in the continental United States. In fact, it beat the previous record by a full degree. To give you some idea about how remarkable a full degree of warming in 1 year is, scientists tell us since the last ice age 20,000 years ago the Earth has warmed only 16 degrees at the most. Since we began actually measuring temperatures in the continental United States and recording them 117 years ago, the variance between the coldest year and the warmest year has only been 4.2 degrees. So for the temperature to jump a full degree in 1 year is not just remarkable, it is alarming. Often when people consider the harmful consequences of climate change and its cost, they are talking about the future.…”