On the recordFebruary 26, 2020
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from New York, Representative Espaillat, for holding this incredibly important hour on not just the climate crisis but the Green New Deal, in particular. As I was preparing for this evening, I would be remiss but to say that, last night, we had a national Democratic debate, and not a single question was asked about our climate crisis. Right now, the global consensus, the IPCC report coming out the U.N., is sounding the alarm on what will happen if we do not keep emissions down to contain our warming levels below 1.5 degrees Celsius. But if you look at today, we are on track to hit 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. This can bring unprecedented chaos to our order. Throughout this entire year, as we discussed the Green New Deal, I have noticed that there has been an awful lot of misinformation about what is inside this resolution. A tremendous amount of wild claims, everything from saying we are seeking to ban airplanes to ending ice cream. As a consequence, I realized that many of my colleagues have never even read the resolution that they are speaking on. They haven't opened a single word of it. It is actually only about--I have it right in front of me--14 pages long. So I have decided that since some of my colleagues across the aisle could not, for some reason, read the resolution, that perhaps this hour would be spent best reading it to them for the public record.…





