U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered an important speech on the Senate floor (Feb. 14), standing up for the reality of a climate change crisis, its human causation, and the need for Congress to act to address the existential threat to the planet, our children, grandchildren and all of us right now.
Schumer issued a challenge to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Republican colleagues, most all of whom deny the reality of human-caused climate change. Schumer said:
"I challenge leader McConnell to say
that our climate change crisis is real, that it is caused by humans, and
that congress needs to act.
That is what two-thirds of the American
people agree with, two-thirds.
I would say to our Republican colleagues this is no game. It is no joke. Climate change is deadly serious. And the time for all of us to treat it that way is now before it is too late."
Schumer's speech was a response to McConnell's plan to bring the Democrats' non-binding 'Green New Deal' resolution up for a vote so that he and Republican Senators could vote against it.
Schumer said:
"I
hope the American people are paying attention because they need to see
what's going on here. The American people need to see that this is all
there is to the Republican plan to deal with climate
change. This is all they can muster. A political stunt, not designed to
make progress, not designed to move the ball forward."
"So when the Republican leader says he wants to bring the 'Green New Deal' up for a vote, I say go for it. Bring it on!"
Schumer concluded, "Let's
see if anything is changed since 2015 when only five brave Republicans
were able to vote yes on a resolution saying climate change is real and
caused by humans."
The full Senate session was taped by C-span. I made a Video clip of Schumer’s climate speech. To view the Video clip on the C-span website, click here.
Below is the Transcript of U.S. Senator Schumer's Climate Speech:
Walter Cooper, a labor union leader, stood on the steps of New York City Hall to fight for new kind of contract.
“We need a contract for a future of our state and for our
communities,” Cooper said in support of the Climate and Community
Protection Act, a bill making its way through the state legislature.
Cooper’s labor union is part of New York Renews, a broad coalition of
160 labor, climate, and community groups that has been pushing for
climate justice since 2015. The Climate and Community Protection Act
would move New York to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. The bill’s
labor and justice measures have garnered it wide grassroots support.
And increasingly, the attention of lawmakers.
On Thursday, as part of New York Senate’s first-ever hearing on climate change,
testimonies were heard on behalf of the bill. The legislation would
make its goals across energy, transportation, and buildings legally
enforceable — a contract with the environment.
The hearing, chaired by Senator Todd Kaminsky, signaled the Democrats’ fresh resolve to address climate change.
It’s not the first time the CCPA has come close to becoming law: Last
April, it passed in the Assembly for the third time. But the Senate’s
leaders didn’t allow it to come to the floor
for a vote. Now that Democrats control the Senate, the passage of the
bill — or a similarly ambitious climate bill — is looking more likely.
“The CCPA is the main vehicle through which we will address climate
change and these hearings will go a long way toward ensuring that all
stakeholders will have input in the legislative process,” Senate
Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement.
Along with mandated energy goals, the CCPA would require that state
agencies consider not only climate but also equity in their decisions.
It would require fair labor standards for jobs created in renewable
energy and would invest 40 percent of the state’s energy funds in
communities likely to be hardest hit by climate change.
By John S. Szalasny | 2.20.2019 | Another Voice - The Buffalo News
Food for thought as you sip your takeout coffee or bring your leftovers home from the restaurant in the clamshell takeout container. Expanded polystyrene (EPS), the foundation of these containers, was invented in 1939.
All of the foam ever made for these conveniences, 80 years worth, still exists either in landfills or as trash sitting on roadsides, fields or waterways. We are at risk of being buried in the volume of this lightweight material.
On Jan. 1, New York City joined a growing list of cities that have instituted a ban on EPS foam takeout cups and containers.
The city determined that EPS foam could not be recycled and that aligns with the guidelines of our major local waste handlers, Modern Disposal and Waste Management. Neither provide municipal recycling home collection of EPS containers or packing materials even though the plastic makes up about 30 percent by volume of the waste that ends up in a landfill.
The issues with waste management are bad enough. However, EPS foam is the only packaging used in food handling that is made of known carcinogens. When heated, styrenes and benzene leach into food and drinks. Toxic exposure can be airborne or by touch. Symptoms of exposure include chronic fatigue and a decreased ability to concentrate. In addition, chemicals from EPS foam can cause liver, kidney or circulatory system problems.
Environmentally, EPS foam is a nightmare. An estimated 25 billion EPS coffee cups were thrown out last year in the United States. These cups (as well as the takeout containers) are made from fossil fuels and never biodegrade. In landfills, bulldozers moving the trash pile break down EPS into smaller pieces. The smaller pieces are very attractive to wildlife as a possible food source. Birds and fish starve to death with stomachs filled with plastics.
The Climate Kids are Coming With a Green New Deal and Student Strikes for Climate, will young people save us yet?
By Mark Hertsgaard | January 28, 2019 | The Nation
If you don’t know who Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg is, you can think of her as an international climate-change counterpart to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Like the rock-star congresswoman from New York, Thunberg is a charismatic young woman whose social-media savvy, moral clarity, and fearless speaking truth to power have inspired throngs of admirers to take to the streets for a better world and call out the politicians and CEOs who are standing in the way.
Ocasio-Cortez, 29, is known for championing the #GreenNewDeal and schooling right-wing haters on Twitter. Thunberg, 16, is known for launching the #SchoolStrike4Climate movement—tens of thousands of high-school students worldwide are skipping school on Fridays until their governments treat the climate crisis as an emergency—and for torching billionaires and heads of state at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
Demolishing the convenient notion that we are all to blame for climate change, Thunberg told a Davos panel that included president Trump’s former chief economics adviser Gary Cohn, “Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.” She paused before a final thrust of the knife: “I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”
Call them the Climate Kids. Like Ocasio-Cortez and Thunberg themselves,
the grassroots activist movements they have roused are comprised almost
exclusively of teenagers and twenty-somethings. These are not your
father’s environmentalists: supplicant, “realistic,” and accepting of
failure. These young people are angry about the increasingly dire
climate future awaiting them and clear-eyed about who’s to blame and how
to fix it. And they seem to have the bad guys worried.
Below is a repost of my article posted at Re-ENERGIZE Buffalo (Dec.16, 2018) along with an UPDATE:
Young Activist Condemns World's Inaction on Climate Change at U.N. Summit
Greta Thunberg, a 15 year-old high school student from Sweden, realized at a young age the difference in what climate
experts were saying needed to be done and the actions that were being taken in
society.
She decided
to take matters into her own hands.
With focus and poise beyond her years, Greta spoke truth to power in an
audience of adults including U.N. officials and world government
representatives at the recent Climate Summit (COP 24) in Poland. She
cited inaction on climate change as a burden that adults are leaving on
their children:
You say you love your children above all else, and yet you're stealing
their future in front of their very eyes. Until you start focusing on
what needs to be done, rather than its what is politically possible,
there is no hope.
Watch a short video of Greta's powerful and moving speech at the U.N. Climate Summit below:
On Hope:
Elsewhere, in a TEDx Talk, Greta said, "Yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere."
School Strike for the Climate:
The U.N. Summit speech was not Greta’s first climate action. Earlier this year, Greta demanded that her government in Sweden undertake a radical response to climate change. She protested for more than a month in Stockholm, sitting on the steps of the parliament building, every day during school hours for three weeks. She has returned to school for four days a week; she now spends her Fridays on the steps of parliament. Read more about Greta and what makes her special in The New Yorker
UPDATE: Greta was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Here is part of Greta's message to Davos before leaving by train from Stockholm to Switzerland:
“Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we all have created. But that is just another convenient lie because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame.
Some people, some companies, and some decision-makers in particular have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.
I want to challenge those companies and those decision makers into real and bold climate action. To set their economic goals aside and to safeguard the future living conditions for humankind.”
Watch the video below and Listen to this articulate young human being:
~ ~ ~
Greta's Speech at the World Economic Forum
Greta’s bottom line:
“I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
Watch a short video of Greta’s speech and read the full text of her speech at The Guardian
School Strikes over Climate Change continue to Snowball:
Greta
Thunberg, whose solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament has snowballed
across the globe, will join a strike by Swiss school children in the Davos ski resort on Friday — the final day of the World Economic
Forum. Read the report atGrist
