Political Quotes

“I come to the floor most every week to discuss the issue that I think is the one that Members of Congress in this era are most likely to be judged on in the future; that is, the relentless carbon pollution of our atmosphere that we are engaged in and the changes in our climate and in our oceans that are very visibly happening as a result. I know there are many interests in Washington that would prefer us to ignore this issue, but just because they ignore it and just because they want us to ignore it doesn't mean it is going anywhere. The country, as we have heard in the last few weeks, has baked in record heat. I think it was Bloomberg News that described the Midwest farmers as farming in hell. It has been scorched by drought, driven by unprecedented wildfires, and that has resulted in an increasing amount of chatter in the news and even some conversation on the Senate floor about climate change. Some have tried to say there is no relation, but I want to talk a little bit about the science of what we see happening around our country and around the world. There is an interesting report that I would mention. I am not going to put it in the Record because it is too large. It is called ``The State of the Climate in 2011,'' a special supplement to the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.…”