Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in a Chamber where the debate on climate change has become woefully one-sided and in a Congress where House Republicans just voted unanimously to oppose the only climate solution Republicans have come to, I want to use my 140th climate speech to remind us of a time when global warming concerns came from both sides of the aisle. Nearly 30 years ago this week, a Republican chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution, who also served twice as Governor of my State and as Secretary of the Navy, convened a 2-day, 5-panel hearing on ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and climate change. It was June, 1986, and Senator John Chafee, a Republican of Rhode Island, gave opening remarks warning of ``the buildup of greenhouse gases, which threaten to warm the Earth to unprecedented levels. Such a warming could, within the next 50 to 75 years, produce enormous changes in a climate that has remained fairly stable for thousands of years.'' ``[T]here is a very real possibility,'' Senator Chafee went on to say, ``that man--through ignorance or indifference, or both--is irreversibly altering the ability of our atmosphere to perform basic life support functions for the planet.'' Last weekend, the Washington Post wrote an article recalling this historic hearing, entitled ``30 years ago scientists warned Congress on global warming. What they said sounds eerily familiar.'' Mr.…”