Political Quotes

“nearly 30 years ago, I joined a good friend, the late Hub Vogelmann, along with a Republican Congressman, a Democratic Governor, and President Reagan's EPA Administrator, on a hike to the summit of Vermont's iconic peak, Camel's Hump. We had a goal in mind. We wanted to observe first-hand the effects of acid raid. When we arrived at the summit, we saw the evidence we feared. You did not have to be a scientist to see it: a scar burned across the peak of Camel's Hump and across all of the peaks of the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks. Due to human action, weather patterns had changed, altering the very chemistry of rainfall on a grand scale. As a result, we caused profound and large-scale damage to life sustaining ecosystems. There were Democrats and Republicans, scientists and bureaucrats on that mountain. We returned to Washington, united and eager to address the problem. It was not easy. We had to overcome strong objections from industry and develop an entirely new cap-and-trade regulatory framework. In the end, a Democratic majority in Congress passed, and Republican President George H.W. Bush signed into law, the Clean Air Act amendments. Once again, we are confronted with irrefutable evidence that humans have altered not just the weather of a region, but the climate of the entire planet. This time, we do not need to climb mountains to see the damage.…”