Political Quotes

“So on the subject of what we leave to our children and grandchildren, let me turn to the point of my remarks, which is that it is time to wake up in this body to the reality of what we are doing to our climate. It is time to wake up. Madam President, 2012 was the warmest year in the continental United States since records began being kept in 1895. It is not a unique single anomaly of a year. If you look at the first 12 years of this century, 2000 to 2012, they are all in the 14 warmest years on record. This is not just about future generations, it is not just about polar bears and sea turtles. These trends are being felt right now in real places by real people. The recent draft of the Federal Government's National Climate Assessment shows, at a local level, why every one of us should care that carbon emissions are causing climate change. Let's take a little tour. I will start in the Northeast, which includes my home State of Rhode Island. In this region, which is defined in the assessment as from West Virginia to Maine--that is not the Northeast we usually talk about, but that is the way it is defined in this report--annual temperatures have increased by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit since records began. The entire range between high and low is only about 4.2 degrees, so an increase of 2 full degrees is a big deal in that scale.…”