Political Quotes

“Madam President, I am delighted to follow my distinguished chairman on the Finance Committee as he gives assurances about our important work on climate change. The majority leader has announced that the final vote on the bipartisan infrastructure package will be tomorrow at 11 a.m., and we will then roll into the rather ignominious spectacle of the Senate known as vote-arama. What vote-arama does, however, it allows us to go to budget reconciliation, which allows us to pass measures with a simple majority. We should do that bearing in mind what just came out--the latest IPCC report on climate change. It is getting increasingly dire. The IPCC report uses words like ``unequivocal,'' ``unprecedented,'' ``irreversible.'' Unequivocal is the link between fossil fuel pollution and the climate damage we are doing to our oceans and atmosphere--unequivocal. Unprecedented. We talk about unprecedented around here if it hasn't happened in a decade. They talk about unprecedented across many centuries or many thousands of years. We are undoing the basic operating systems of our planet as humankind has come to know them. Irreversible means, for some of this, there is no going back. We were warned and warned and warned. We ignored it and ignored it and ignored it, and now we are in it. We can make it less bad, but parts are irreversible. As one United Nations spokesman said, this is red alert for humanity. It doesn't take the IPCC or the U.N.…”