Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to address the motion to override the President's veto of S. 1, which would force approval of the construction of the Keystone Pipeline to transport tar sands heavy oil from Canada to the gulf coast. We will be having that vote in just a while from now. My key consideration today is this. What would the impact of this bill be on global warming? The reason that is the core question I am raising is that already we are seeing extensive damage to our rural resources around the world from our warming planet. We are seeing this in Oregon, and we are seeing, therefore, an impact on our future economic prospects. To put it very simply, the burning of fossil fuels is damaging our forests, our farming, and our fishing. By many estimates, to contain 2 degrees Celsius, which is almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit, we must transition aggressively and rapidly from burning conventional fossil fuels for energy toward the use of nonfossil renewable energy. Now, this shift is well within our power. It is well within our technology. But do we have the political will to make this happen? And that test is before us in the vote we are taking today. Building the Keystone Pipeline opens the faucet to rapid exploitation of massive, new, unconventional reserves called tar sands, and it takes us in exactly the opposite direction from where we need to go.…”