Political Quotes

“On another issue, Mr. President, since the first Earth Day in 1970, Americans have gathered to celebrate the steps we have taken to clean up our environment and to call attention to what still needs to be done. The early Earth Day events helped create the modern environmental movement. They led directly to enactment of the first major environmental legislation, the Clean Air Act. I remember with pride serving here with Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, knowing what he had done to help spark that movement. But I ask Senators and the administration to look back at the debate that took place when we drafted this remarkable piece of legislation. At the time of that first Earth Day, the laws to limit air pollution were disjointed, they were limited in scope. But since passage of the Clean Air Act, we have made considerable strides in reducing some pollutants. The level of lead pollution we and our children breathe today is one-tenth what it was a decade ago--one-tenth. We have healthier children as a result. In fact, just using that figure itself is a tribute to the success of the original Clean Air Act. One thing we do know is Americans do not want to stop the progress we made and say, look what we did back then, 10 years ago; it is what we do today to keep moving forward in cleaning up our environment.”