Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague from Maryland. I thank him for all his work on the Chesapeake and so many important issues as it relates to this issue and for being here up all night with my colleagues on this important climate issue. I thank Senators Boxer and Whitehouse and Schatz for organizing this endeavor and for everybody participating. Obviously we are here to talk about climate change, but like my colleagues we know climate change is actually impacting jobs now because it is impacting our climate now. So while we are here to talk about what might happen in the future, I am here right now to specifically talk about what is happening to our economy and why we need to take action because ocean acidification is an economic issue and it affects so many different people in our economy in the Pacific Northwest. It affects our shellfish growers, which is a major industry. We have three and four generations of shellfish growers who are threatened now by the impact of carbon in our oceans and the warming of our oceans. So when you talk about climate and you talk about acidification of our oceans, you are talking about an industry that is key to the Northwest that is being affected today. Also, our crab fishermen are being affected today, which is an important part of our fishing industry all the way to the Bering Sea. A lot of people do not realize that the Alaska crab fishermen are based in Alaska and in Washington State.…”