Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in my ``Time to Wake Up'' climate speech--this is No. 154--I sometimes feel as if I am out here banging hopelessly against a tightly locked, barred, and soundproofed door. I make them anyway because, at a minimum, I want history to know what happened here when people look back and ask what the hell went wrong with American democracy. But I do admit that it can sometimes be discouraging. However, last week something important happened. A public servant won a victory against a massive special interest. A court in Massachusetts allowed the attorney general of that Commonwealth to obtain files and records from the ExxonMobil corporation about its climate denial enterprise. That is great news, and it is an important event. There is virtually universal scientific consensus--and even alarm--about climate and oceanic changes caused by burning the fossil fuel industry's products. In the face of that concern, the fossil fuel industry has gone to the mattresses to defend its business model. It is defending what the International Monetary Fund has described as a $700 billion--billion with a ``b''--annual subsidy just in the United States. To defend a prize of that magnitude, the industry has set up an array of front groups to obscure its hand and to propagate fake science designed to raise doubts about the real thing. With that fake science, they dupe the public and provide talking points for their political operatives.…”