Tom Udall: “I just want to tell you how proud I am to join Senator Whitehouse today on the floor. I want to thank the Senator from…”

“I just want to tell you how proud I am to join Senator Whitehouse today on the floor. I want to thank the Senator from Rhode Island for continuing to bring the urgency of combating climate change to the attention of this body. I admire his passion and intellectual clout, which he has brought specifically to climate change a number of times here on the Senate floor. He has been a great advocate for his State of Rhode Island, where we all know there are going to be very serious impacts--sea level rise is one of the major ones, but there are many others--as a result of how climate change and global warming are playing out. Let's state several things here that are clear. One is that the science is clear. The Earth's atmosphere is warming at an alarming rate, and human activity is the principle cause. What we see every day with our own eyes--extreme weather events around the globe--is clearer and clearer. But worse and most clear is the harm being done to millions of Americans and people all around the world as a result of the destructive effects of climate change. People are losing their homes, their lands, and their farms. We now have a new kind of refugee--climate refugees--who are displaced from their homes by catastrophic weather disasters, including drought and floods. In 2017 roughly 68.5 million people were climate refugees, and that number is expected to double to over 140 million by 2050. Hundreds of thousands are losing their lives.…”