Tag: climate change

Rep. Phillips Votes to Pass Climate Action Now Act

Bill ensures that the United States honors commitments detailed in the Paris Agreement

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03) voted in favor of H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act., which passed the House today. The bill aims to ensure the United States honors our commitments detailed in the Paris Agreement and lays the groundwork for further climate action.

“Climate change is real, it’s in our backyard, and our communities and businesses are paying the price,” said Phillips. “In Minnesota we have rising temperatures, more extreme storms, and more intense flooding due to climate change. The President’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement was shortsighted and wrong. I was proud to join my colleagues in the House today to lead on this issue, and pass legislation that would recommit the United States to the Agreement. I urge the Senate to join us, and put our nation on the right side of history.”

Earlier today, Rep. Phillips voiced his support for the bill on the House Floor.  Continue reading “Rep. Phillips Votes to Pass Climate Action Now Act”

Rep. Phillips Voices Support for Climate Action Now Act on House Floor

Phillips: “We must lead and we must be on the right side of history.”

WASHINGTON, DC – Yesterday, Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03) voiced his strong support for H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act, on the House Floor. The bill would ensure the United States honors our commitments detailed in the Paris Agreement and lays the groundwork for further climate action.

Watch Rep. Phillips’s full remarks here.

Below are Rep. Phillips’s remarks as prepared:

Continue reading “Rep. Phillips Voices Support for Climate Action Now Act on House Floor”

Dems want climate change, tax hikes in infrastructure deal

The top two Democratic leaders on Monday told President Trump that any bipartisan infrastructure package needs to take into consideration climate change and include “substantial, new and real revenue” — a preview of the coming fight over tax hikes.

Trump will host Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the White House on Tuesday for discussions on a major infrastructure bill, one of the few policy areas that could see action amid divided government and as the 2020 race heats up.

Democrats want the measure for roads, bridges, waterways and other projects to be paid for with tax increases, and with a final price tag of at least $1 trillion over 10 years. Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget calls for $200 billion in federal spending on infrastructure, which White House officials say will leverage an additional $800 billion in investment through public-private partnerships over the next decade.

View the complete April 29 article by Scott Wong on The Hill website here.

Climate change becomes key voter concern in Minnesota, across U.S.

After the 2016 election, Teresa Hasbrook decided to channel her frustration with the direction of the country and get active. The Rush City Democrat helped start a group for women who share her progressive views. Members spent the 2018 midterms writing thousands of postcards and knocking on doors for Democrats in Minnesota’s Republican-leaning Chisago County. Earlier this year, the women gathered at a local library to decide their goals for 2020 and beyond. Reaching a consensus was easy: Everyone saw combating climate change as a top concern.

“We knew we had an ethical, moral responsibility to our children,” said Hasbrook, a 67-year-old retiree. “We need to act fast and we need to take this stuff seriously. We’ll be all over this like a rash.”

Perennial campaign issues like the economy, health care and immigration have long driven voters to the polls. But, in the face of growing international concern about the planet’s future, climate change and the environment are emerging as key concerns among voters such as Hasbrook.

View the complete April 22 article by Torey Van Oot on The Star Tribune website here.

Climate change is the overlooked driver of Central American migration Living on Earth

As people from Guatemala and Honduras continue to seek sanctuary in the US for a variety of reasons, including violence and poverty, another factor driving their migration has gotten much less attention: climate disruption.

Many members of the migrant “caravans” that made headlines during the 2018 US midterm elections are fleeing a massive drought that has lasted for five years.

The drought has hit harder in some places than in others, says John Sutter, senior investigative reporter for CNN, who went to rural Honduras to report on climate change and immigration. In the area of Central America known as the “dry corridor,” for example, drought is not uncommon. But, Sutter says, some of the climate scientists he spoke with say they are seeing unprecedented effects.

View the complete February 6 article by Adam Wernick on the PRI website here.

GOP Senator Says Having More ‘American Babies’ Is The Solution To Climate Change

 

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah raised eyebrows with his strange and cheeky attack on the Green New Deal.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) tore into the Green New Deal on Tuesday, stating on the Senate floor that the only thing needed to combat climate change is for Americans to “fall in love” and have “more babies.”

Lee, who has expressed doubt before over the climate science finding that human activity is the main driver of global warming, bashed a resolution laying out the tenets of the Green New Deal. The congressional resolution was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) last month.

“I’m not immediately afraid of what carbon emissions unaddressed might do to our environment in the near future, or our civilization or our planet in the next few years,” Lee said during a Senate debate. “I’m mostly afraid of not being able to get through this speech with a straight face.”

View the complete March 26 article by Hayley Miller on the Huffington Post website here.

Ignoring historic floods, EPA’s Wheeler says climate impacts are ’50 to 75 years out’

Meanwhile, Nebraska, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe are all underwater.

In his first televised interview since being confirmed as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Andrew Wheeler said, “most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out.” However, major scientific reports, coupled with the rise in catastrophic fires, floods, and heatwaves around the world, contradict this statement.

In fact, the very first line of the government’s own National Climate Assessment states, “The impacts of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country.”

It’s unclear to what extent Wheeler has read the assessment; during his confirmation hearing in January, he told lawmakers he was still waiting for additional briefings. He has also made similar statements in the past, stating climate change “is not the greatest crisis.”

View the complete March 20 article by Kyla Mandel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Federal judge demands Trump administration reveal how its drilling plans will fuel climate change

The ruling temporarily blocks drilling on 300,000 acres of leases in Wyoming.

A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to take into account the climate impact of its oil and gas leasing in the West.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington could force the Trump administration to account for the full climate impact of its energy-dominance agenda, and it could signal trouble for the president’s plan to boost fossil fuel production across the country. Contreras concluded that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management “did not sufficiently consider climate change” when making decisions to auction off federal land in Wyoming to oil and gas drilling under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016. The judge temporarily blocked drilling on about 300,000 acres of land in the state. Continue reading “Federal judge demands Trump administration reveal how its drilling plans will fuel climate change”

GOP Denial Of Science Is A Danger To Every Living Thing

A week ago, a series of tornadoes ripped through eastern Alabama and western Georgia, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. A rural area of Lee County, Alabama — the county that is home to my alma mater, Auburn University — caught the brunt of the killer storms, which left 23 people there dead. Mobile homes were blown apart; brick houses were flattened; cars and trucks were wrapped around trees.

Tornadoes such as this brutal one — nearly a mile wide and bringing winds that had the force of a Category 5 hurricane — don’t strike only on the flat plains of Kansas and Oklahoma. Parts of Alabama, too, have long been a part of “Dixie alley,” where tornadoes are common. As a native of the southern part of the state, I remember them from my childhood.

But over the last 20 or so years, climate scientists say, tornadoes have increased in frequency and severity, in Alabama and elsewhere. Columbia University professor Michael K. Tippett has published research indicating that tornadoes have become more common since the 1970s. “The frequency of tornado outbreaks (clusters of tornadoes) and the number of extremely powerful tornado events have been increasing over nearly the past half-century in the United States,” he and fellow researchers wrote in Science in 2016.

View the complete March 9 article by Cynthia Tucker on the National Memo website here.

Climate deniers reveal true fear about Green New Deal: That it will force Republicans to the left

A hiker in Glacier National Park. Credit: Ben Herndon

“Green New Deal-lite.”

Climate science deniers fear the building momentum behind the Green New Deal will force Republicans to introduce their own version of climate action, a so-called “Green New Deal-lite.”

Speaking at a policy forum Wednesday hosted by the Congressional Western Caucus and chaired by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), longtime climate science deniers and opponents of the ambitious climate resolution expressed concerns that calls for climate action will push all politicians to the left.

One of the “dangers” of the Green New Deal, said Myron Ebell, director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is that “by expanding the political spectrum of what’s in the debate, it’s moving the debate left and it’s creating a very large space for a certain class of people, many of them in the Republican Party, to start talking about how we need to have moderate solutions, or reasonable solutions.”

View the complete February 27 article by Kyla Mandel on the ThinkProgress website here.