Political Quotes

“One of the things that I want to return to is why we are so concerned about this complex matrix of corruption, of dark money changing the outcome of campaigns, changing the makeup of the Senate, changing the type of rules that are adopted and the laws that are passed, because behind it all is a rising tide of pollution that is changing the chemistry of our air and changing the temperature of our planet. This is a very simple chart here, and this shows temperature and carbon dioxide. If we look at this carefully, you can see that the carbon dioxide rises and the temperature rises. This is what has happened. The scientists have looked back hundreds of thousands of years. Carbon dioxide goes down, and the temperature goes down. Carbon dioxide goes up, and the temperature goes up because carbon dioxide is essentially a blanket. If you increase the thickness of that blanket--that is, the density of the carbon dioxide--more heat is trapped on the Earth's surface. When we realize the age of the Earth, which is measured in billions of years, the time that we have been here in human civilization is pretty brief. And the time that we have been burning fossil fuels for energy is very brief--150 years--a very small blink of the eye. In that time, we have changed the chemistry of the air. We have increased the size and the weight of the blanket substantially.…”