Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am a friend of the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, but on this matter, we disagree quite a lot. I think, clearly, everybody likes clean air and clean water. My opposition to Lee Zeldin is founded on where he is likely to be on a different issue--climate change. Climate change is coming at us, and the context for Lee Zeldin's nomination, I believe, is this: We went through a long period of science on climate change, starting with the early days of Dr. Hansen and NASA's work, work by Exxon and other Big Oil majors themselves, lots of work at universities and in U.S. and State government. And the science pretty well nailed it. They pretty much got it right. They warned what was going to happen, and it began to happen, and it has continued to happen. Based on those warnings, we moved into phase 2, which was the political era of climate, where it was our job here in this building to listen to those warnings and figure out what the best and smartest thing was to do about them. The problem was that the fossil fuel industry got involved with Citizens United climate money in the hundreds of millions behind it, and they squelched that conversation. As a result, Congress has failed to address the looming climate crisis purely from fossil fuel-funded Republican opposition.…”