On the recordMay 25, 2011
It has been my privilege to work on issues of reduction of greenhouse gases for over 25 years. I was Portland's commissioner of public works when we became the first American city with a comprehensive approach to deal with greenhouse gases. For 4 years I was pleased to serve on Speaker Pelosi's Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, where we had an opportunity to work with people around the world looking at climate impacts, dealing with dozens of hearings, hundreds of experts concerned with the challenge, the even greater problems that we are facing in the future. Yet, I would say that in the years that I have been working on this issue, I have never seen a better, more effective statement than what appeared in yesterday's Washington Post, an essay by Bill McKibben entitled ``See no climate change.'' He said, you should not wonder, is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak 3 weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, or the enormous outbreak a couple weeks before with the most active tornado season in America's history. You should not connect in your mind the fires burning across Texas, fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires in previous years. Or that the adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico are drier now than they have ever been, much worse than during the Dust Bowl.…
