Amy Klobuchar: “a few weeks ago, I came here and said that each week I was going to give a talk on the floor about another piece of the…”

“a few weeks ago, I came here and said that each week I was going to give a talk on the floor about another piece of the puzzle of why it is so important to pass climate change legislation this year; about how we cannot wait as we see tremendous changes to our environment and our way of life. We need to act and we need to act now. Last summer, I took a trip to Greenland with other members of the Environment and Public Works Committee to see firsthand the effects of global climate change. One of the scientists traveling with us described Greenland as a canary in the coal mine when it comes to global warming. Greenland has lost an amount of ice in 1 year equal to two times all the ice on the Alps. People in Greenland are planting potatoes in places where they used to run sled dogs on the ice. What we saw on that trip only confirmed for us what the scientific community has now asserted in an overwhelming consensus. Average global temperatures are up 1 degree in the last century. Now, that does not sound like much, but to put it in perspective, they are only up 5 degrees since the height of the Ice Age. The EPA forecasts an increase of 3 to 8 degrees for the next 100 years. It is up 1 degree in the last century, estimated 3 to 8 degrees in this 100 hundred years. Ice caps are melting, ocean levels are rising, and glaciers are shrinking.”