Political Quotes

“last week the former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Robert M. Hoyt, passed away at the age of 92. Dr. Hoyt served this Nation under five Presidents and pioneered the peaceful use of satellites to understand our weather and climate. He said: We do have environmental problems and they're serious ones, the preservation of species among them, but the climate is the environmental problem that's so pervasive in its effects on the society. . . . The climate is really the only environmental characteristic that can utterly change our society and our civilization. That was in 1977. That same year, James F. Black, a top scientific researcher at the Exxon Corporation, gave that company's executives a similar warning. ``[T]here is general scientific agreement,'' he told Exxon's Management Committee, ``that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.'' According to emerging reports, Exxon executives kept that warning a closely guarded company secret for years. I rise today for the 115th time to urge that we wake up to the threat of climate change. I rise in the midst of a decades-long purposeful corporate campaign of misinformation, which has held this Congress and this Nation back from taking meaningful action to prevent that utter change.…”