Political Quotes

“I rise today for the 110th time to ask my colleagues to wake up to climate change. Long after today's debate has died down, it will still be looming and threatening. We stand now at the precipice of an environmental catastrophe. The burning of fossil fuels has unleashed a flood of carbon pollution that is pushing the climate system planetwide into conditions that are unprecedented in human history. It has already permanently altered the world that we will leave to future generations. If we keep sleepwalking through this and allow the carbon flood to continue, we will leave even bigger changes and risk absolute catastrophe. Last month marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. When that storm made landfall in Southeast Louisiana on August 29, 2005, it was a category 3 hurricane. Katrina's 125-mile-per-hour winds pushed a massive storm surge before it that overtopped New Orleans' systems of levees and flooded the city. By the end, Katrina killed an estimated 1,200 people and caused more than $100 billion in damage. Images of broken levees, flooded streets, and people stranded on their rooftops are seared into our national memory. This natural disaster--compounded by manmade errors--showed how vulnerable we are to major storms and how vigilant we must be in planning for these extreme events. We can't say that climate change caused Katrina, but we do know that climate change increases the risk posed by future storms.…”