Political Quotes

“I rise now for the 284th time with my increasingly tattered and battered ``Time to Wake up'' poster to urge this Chamber to wake up on the issue of climate change. Human beings dumped 36.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere last year--last year. After all our big talk, after all the plans and the COPS and the commitments, 36.3 billion tons. That is the highest total ever recorded. We are not doing any better. We continue to do worse, and here in Congress, we continue to do nothing. We have seen this coming for many years. And even with all that warning, nothing. NOAA reports there is currently more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than at any time during the last 4 million years. Humankind has never experienced what we are putting ourselves through. Here is a look at it. Over centuries, wobbling, wobbling, back and forth quite steadily. And now--whoops--and all the way up to where we are, out of the historic range of this planet back into geological time. All that carbon pollution has us hurtling toward climate catastrophe. With every ton of carbon dioxide we add, comes a higher risk of destructive changes to our world: ever-stronger hurricanes, rising seas, severe droughts, flooding, heat waves, disease, hunger, and more. We have a simple choice: We act swiftly to address the carbon pollution scorching our planet or we tip our climate over the edge into a cycle of destruction mankind cannot halt.…”