Political Quotes

“Mr. President, each week that you see me standing here means another week in which the Senate of the United States has sat out doing anything to address climate change and another week of carbon pollution streaming into our atmosphere and oceans. Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing our atmosphere and our oceans. We see it everywhere. We see it in storm-damaged homes and flooded cities. We see it in drought-stricken farms and raging wildfires. We see it in fish disappearing from warming, acidifying waters. We see it in shifting habitats and migrating contagions. All these harms we see carry costs--real economic costs--to homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers. That cost to homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers is known as the social cost of carbon pollution. It is the damage that people and communities and States suffer from carbon pollution and climate change. The Office of Management and Budget last calculated the social cost of carbon to be around $49 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted. If you just do some simple math, you can multiply the total measured U.S. emissions coming from energy production alone in 2016--that is emissions of over 5.7 billion tons of CO<INF>2</INF>--by the $49 cost per ton. It is pretty simple math: $49 times 5.7 billion tons gives you about $280 billion. So $280 billion is the annual cost that the fossil fuel industry offloads onto the American public in harm from the carbon dioxide emissions.…”