Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it is a great honor and pleasure to join the senior Senator from Connecticut on the floor today. We were both U.S. attorneys. We were attorneys general together. We now serve in the Senate together, and I consider him a friend outside of my day job as well. It is terrific to be here with him. It is also a happy coincidence that a Senator from another great fishing State, Louisiana, should be presiding while we speak about our fisheries. This is my 247th of these speeches. Rhode Island, of course, shares a border with Connecticut, as well as a proud fishing heritage and connection to the sea. Whether you are walking the docks of Stonington and New London or of Newport and Point Judith, the story from our fishermen is the same--that these are not the waters that our grandparents, parents, and great-grandparents fished. One fishermen told me: ``Sheldon, it's getting weird out there, and it's a big economic deal that it's getting weird out there.'' In 2017, commercial fishery landings from Connecticut and Rhode Island totaled over $114 million, and that was just the landings. That was not the ancillary fishing economy around it. Carbon pollution and warming, acidifying oceans put that whole economy at risk. Earlier this month, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that by 2100, around 17 percent of all ocean life, by biomass, will disappear.…”