Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank my colleagues from Connecticut and Maryland and Rhode Island who are down here sharing their stories and their concerns about carbon pollution and its impact on climate around the world. Indeed, it was just last October that I was engaged in a triathlon. In the first stage, the swimming was in the ocean in North Carolina. I had been told to expect temperatures of 62 to 65 degrees. As I went down to the water with the first group of participants getting off the transport bus, the first in front of me stepped in the water and said: Hey, folks, this water is really warm. Come on in. The temperature was not 62 degrees or 65 degrees, the temperature of the ocean was 72 degrees. A week later Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeast with incredibly devastating consequences, powered by this much warmer ocean water. That is one of the many effects we are seeing of increased carbon in the atmosphere, trapping the Earth's heat. Perhaps the most important number we should all be aware of is the number 400. I put the number 400 on a chart so we could ponder it--400 parts per million. What that represents is a roughly 50-percent increase in carbon dioxide as it is represented in the broader atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution, going from 270 to 400. That is a lot of heat-trapping gases added to the atmosphere.…”