This is not an elitist issue, this is a quality of life issue.
You want to tell people that their concern
and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist?
Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx,
which are suffering from the highest rates
of childhood asthma in the country.
Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have their blood
ascending in lead levels.
Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives.
Call them elitist.
You’re telling them, that those kids are trying to get on a plane to Davos?
People are dying! They are dying!
And the response across the other side of the aisle
is to introduce an amendment five minutes before
a hearing in a markup?
This is serious!
This should not be a partisan issue.
This is about our constituents and all of our lives.
Iowa, Nebraska, broad swathes of the midwest are drowning
right now, under water.
Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back.
And we're here, and people are more concerned
about helping oil companies than helping their own families?
I don't think so! I don't think so!
This is about our lives. This is about American lives.
And it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan.
We are facing a national crisis and if we do not ascend to that crisis,
if we do not ascend to the levels in which we were threatened
at the Great Depression, when we were threatened
in World War Two, if we do not ascend to those levels,
if we tell the American public that we are more willing invest
and bail out big banks than we are willing to invest
in our farmers and our urban families, then I don't know what
we are out here doing.
I don't know what we are here doing.
The government knew that climate change was real
starting as far back as 1989, when Nasa was reporting this
and the private sector knew way back in the 1970s.
So, we had until around the time I was born to address this issue.
I wish it didn't have to cost so much.
But I’m going to turn 30 this year
and for the entire 30 years of my lifetime,
we did not make substantial investments
to prepare our entire country for what we knew was coming.
So now it's coming all up at the end.
It's like when we live our whole lives and we don't eat healthily
and we don't move and we pursue unhealthy activities and then at
the end of our lives our healthcare costs are very high.
We have the choice to lower the cost now
because I can tell you the cost of pursuing a Green New Deal
will be far less than the cost of not passing it.