Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague, the Senator from Rhode Island, for calling Senator Blumenthal and me and others together and for taking action on climate change. There has been no one in this body who has done more to sound the alarm about climate change. I have enjoyed his regular ``time to wake up'' speeches. I guess this is number 49--excuse me, 48. One of them was so good I read it twice. He has been relentless on this issue in a positive, articulate, and superb way. There could not be a better day to talk about climate change than today because we are at the 1-year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. Senators Whitehouse and Blumenthal and I remember it vividly. We each visited our communities on the days afterwards and saw the terrible blow that Sandy delivered to New York and the whole east coast. It created such damage and upheaval to communities and lives. Sandy was a horrible event, but the one silver lining in this large awful cloud is that people take climate change more seriously. I think most Americans agreed that climate change is real, but there was not a sense of urgency about climate change pre-Sandy. People said, well, it is happening 25 years from now or 50 years from now. Unlike Senator Whitehouse, who has a sense of passion and a sense of urgency daily and immediately about this, most people said we can let things wait. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of the Senator from Rhode Island and others, our bodies are not doing enough on climate change.…”