Political Quotes

“I rise today to join my colleagues in commending President Obama for putting forth his Clean Power Plan. Theodore Roosevelt said: Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendents than it is for us. I think it captured very well the challenge we face with carbon pollution and global warming because we are facing that great central task of leaving this land better for our descendents than it is for us. We are facing a situation in which there is an accelerating quantity of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere, and it is having a profound impact on, basically, the temperature of our planet. If we simply look at the carbon pollution itself, scientists have said that we are in trouble if it rises over 350 parts per million. Well, here we are with pollution that last year hit 400 parts per million. So we are above the danger zone. We are going deeper into the danger zone--let me put it that way--and that is not where we need to be. Furthermore, we are accelerating the rate at which we are polluting the planet with carbon dioxide. It was just a few decades ago that the rate of carbon pollution was increasing by about 1 part per million per year, and now it is increasing by something closer to 2 parts per million per year.…”