Political Quotes

“I appreciate the questions from my colleague from Hawaii. As we stand here tonight, I think about how Hawaii is a State completely surrounded by water. It is very vulnerable to changes in the environment, very vulnerable to the introduction of invasive species, very vulnerable to changes in the acidity of the ocean, which is affected by carbon dioxide, and very vulnerable to the rising sea level. I appreciate so much that as a citizen of Hawaii as well as now a leader for the voice of the State here in this Chamber, he keeps going back to his fundamentals of concern for our broader environment. As you were asking this question, I was thinking about President Richard Nixon creating the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. He recognized that we all share ``a profound commitment to the rescue of our natural environment and the preservation of the Earth as a place both habitable by and hospitable to man.'' Well, that is a pretty clear statement that things were in trouble and we needed to operate a rescue. I think about that in the context of growing up in Oregon and, as I grew up, through my church and through my Boy Scout troop, we would go and do different projects to try to clean up messes that had been left.…”