On the recordDecember 6, 2018
I rise to discuss the urgency of addressing climate change. I will also address the nomination of Mr. Bernard McNamee to be a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which we are debating on the Senate floor today. Recently, the Trump administration released the latest installment of the National Climate Assessment. This report is the work of over 300 expert scientists and 13 different government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, NASA, and others. The report makes an urgent case for action by detailing the extreme threat that is posed to our Nation and to our world by climate change. The need for forward-looking environmental and energy policies is obvious to anyone who reads this report, and it is telling that this report was mandated by a law signed by the late George H. W. Bush in 1990--a President whose life we came together to celebrate yesterday. The Trump administration doesn't want to talk about the report's findings, but the problems of a changing climate are already well known to us in Minnesota. Our winters are milder than they used to be. Rain patterns are changing. We are now prone to long, hot dry spells in the summer, but when the rains do come, they are more intense. Big storms used to be rare in Minnesota, but now we suffer more than almost anywhere else in the country from these climate-driven increases in so- called mega-rain events.…
