Climate Legislation Quotes

When I was sworn in, we had Republican-sponsored climate-change bills all over the place. You had John McCain running for President in 2008 on a strong climate platform. You could see American democracy actually starting to work at solving a difficult problem.

Ever since the collapse of cap and trade legislation and the realization that President Obama is unlikely to ever utter the words 'climate change' in public again, much less use the bully pulpit to prepare the nation for the catastrophic risks of inaction, the movement has been in a funk.

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints.

California continues to pass the most ambitious laws in the world to expand clean energy and combat climate change.

As soon as it was clear, in Copenhagen in 2009, that the Senate was blocking Obama from introducing meaningful climate legislation, the push was for him to use executive authority, use the EPA, use the tool of federal leases, and there was just a refusal to do it.

We need policy change, and the most important thing people can do is to contribute and participate in the political process. We have to vote climate change deniers and people who will create subsidies for the fossil fuel industry out of office. We have to protest when bad decisions are being made about fracking or tar sands.

I would suggest that a Green Real Deal is something to be far more excited about than the Green New Deal because the Green New Deal will never happen.

Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself - Climate is beyond our power to control...Earth doesn't care about governments or their legislation. You can't find much actual global warming in present-day weather observations. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.

Comprehensive climate legislation must be passed so that we can ensure a world where this and future generations can experience the bliss of breathing clean crisp air, while fishing in the Adirondacks... and being able to eat the fish afterwards.

The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was voted on last Friday. Proponents claim this bill will help the environment, but what it really does is put another nail in the economy’s coffin.

When I am president of the United States of America, there will never be any cap-and-trade in the United States.

Local and state governments have outrun the federal government. The EPA has served notice that it will enact a rule requiring CO2 reductions by major emitters in the absence of major legislation. But it's a blunt instrument that is a little more difficult to use than a legislative remedy.

I wanted to repeat we cannot vote confidence at any point on a confidence motion in a government that fails to have a climate target that's ground in science and consistent with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we must do.

The U.K.'s climate change act was passed by a majority of 463 votes to three. That is really quite extraordinary. The will of parliament has rarely been expressed so strongly and unambiguously.

To be labeled a 'science-denier' in 2017 often just means you've upset someone who insists on teaching strict, Darwinian orthodoxy in schools or who advocates particular climate legislation or who supports ethically fraught research on embryos.

You can't solve climate change by everybody individually buying a more efficient car and throwing out less stuff. You have to make national changes through national policy.

From Portland's ban on large, fossil fuel terminals to Oregon's Clean Fuels Standard and the Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Act, our local actions send ripples through the energy landscape nationwide.

The Clean Energy Jobs legislation will provide predictability and certainty for large carbon emitters.

It seems like every week we are considering bills that would make it harder to limit the amount of carbon we are dumping into our atmosphere, and prevent implementation of clean technologies. The voters who sent us here deserve better.

Washington agencies are now trying a backdoor approach to regulate our climate by abusing existing laws.

Among all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change.

I attended the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, and back then, national governments waited until days before to submit climate plans, and the U.S. based its pledge on a proposed bill that would fail in the Senate.

History will judge Senator Inhofe. You know he has a lot or responsibility on his hands for keeping any kind of movement and serious, meaningful action on global warming happening in the Congress.

We think climate change is important enough to get its own select committee. It would be in addition to the Energy and Commerce Committee's jurisdiction.

I voted against the climate-change legislation. Not that I don't believe we should move to a clean-energy economy, and it can be good for South Dakota's economy to do so, but it was started out as a very partisan bill in the committee.