Political Quotes

“I have just returned this last week from participation in the United Nations World Summit for Sustainable Development. It was truly an amazing experience, Mr. Speaker. It was the largest conference ever conducted by the United Nations. It was attended by over 100 heads of state who took part in the summit, joined by over 21,000 people, 9,000 delegates, 8,000 representatives of a variety of nongovernmental organizations and 4,000 members of the press. It was something that I will remember for a variety of reasons. In one respect it was interesting in terms of the context in which the summit was taking place. Amidst news of drought, forest fires, devastating storms and flooding around the world, millions of people had been displaced in Asia, there were disastrous floods in central Europe, everybody that I met with and I had the opportunity to visit with the representatives of over two dozen countries, there was not one person when did not feel that the terrible ecological disasters that provided the backdrop in the news were not somehow connected to the cavalier treatment that we have accorded to the environment. There was virtually no skepticism expressed on behalf of the concerns for global climate change, for instance.”