On the recordNovember 10, 2015
it is my habit to give my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches once a week when the Senate is in session. It is also a practice of mine to go to other States--particularly States that have Republican Senators--to look at what is happening in the States and get a sense of where the local universities and the local experts are with respect to climate change. My last visit was to Ohio. I have also been to New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Iowa. The thing that is common across all of those trips is that there is no denying climate change in those States. The denial is the function of this building, and it is the function of the wall of money the fossil fuel industry has erected around this building. But pick a State university in the country and go there, and we find there is simply not climate denial. I am joined today by my friend Sherrod Brown, Ohio's senior Senator, who was kind enough to accompany me on the trip--on several parts of it, anyway. We went to Cleveland. We had a couple of meetings there together. Another one of my visits was to Lake Erie, which got clobbered by the cyanotic bacteria that shut down Toledo's water system, which is also climate change-related. Let me yield to the Senator from Ohio for a few moments, and then we can talk about Cleveland and the lake.
