Political Quotes

“I rise to share a little bit of details about the climate talks that are going on in Paris at this very moment. A number of us in the Senate were able to go to Paris last weekend and to be engaged in that dialogue. What I was terrifically struck by was that 150 heads of state had come together to kick off these climate talks. That is the largest gathering of heads of state in human history. Why did that landmark event occur? It occurred because the challenge of global warming is the most grave concern facing human civilization on this planet, so heads of state wanted to be there to acknowledge the fact that we must come together as a community of nations across this globe and work together to take this on for the good of our stewardship of this planet. A larger number of nations have put forward pledges on the efforts they are going to make to reduce global warming gases, and 186 nations have put forward those pledges. One of the issues that is embedded in these climate talks is how ambitious the international community should be. There is this broad goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees centigrade over the course of this century. We have already gone up to 0.9. We are almost halfway to that level that has been identified by scientists as a catastrophic level, but the pledges that are being made in Paris are not sufficient to keep us to 2 degrees. So that is one of the points of discussion-- how can the community of nations be more ambitious.…”