Climate Action Now Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I commend him for his leadership.

This issue of infrastructure resiliency is so important. We are now discussing doing major infrastructure legislation to rebuild America in a way that is making it safer, by promoting commerce and improving the quality of life by decreasing the amount of time people have to spend in their cars. By increasing broadband and all of the things that enable people, whether it is healthcare, education, or commerce, the infrastructure is so central to that.

When we talk about infrastructure, we have to talk about resiliency; and when we talk about climate change, we have to talk about infrastructure. So this is a very important amendment, and I rise to support it.

I thank the gentleman for sharing his New Jersey experience in terms of the need for resiliency in this very wise amendment.

I also want to rise in support of H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act. I commend Chairwoman Kathy Castor who is the chair of our House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and also the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Engel, for his leadership on this important issue which is under the jurisdiction of his committee. They bring vision, they bring values, and they bring the voices of Members and the American people to make a difference.

We thank our freshman Members, in particular, who have carried the priorities of their communities to Congress to demand climate action now. And I think it is very appropriate that the gentleman in the chair is on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and has been a leader in the private sector, now in the public sector, on this important issue as we go forward.

It is time, Mr. Chairman, to end denial about this and start listening to the facts. This is about science, science, science. An overwhelming number, 86 percent, of Americans know that this is a crisis. They know that human behavior has an impact on it, and they want us to act.

We all have stories from our communities.

One of my constituents wrote:

My daughter has developed asthma. It wrenches me to see her used as a canary in a coal mine. We are literally choking on the denial and inaction.

Another writes:

Green jobs are guaranteed local jobs and will put people to work. Survival is now poised to become a viable economic sector.

Let me just say that this is about jobs, jobs, jobs. It is very important for our country to be preeminent in the world on the green technologies, and this legislation is in recognition of that. It is about public health, about clean air and clean water, the air our children breathe and the water they drink, and it is about environmental justice in that regard as well that all children will be able to live in a safe, clean environment in which they can thrive.

It is about our national security. Over and over again the national security experts, the generals and the admirals, have come to us and said that this is a global security issue, because of what impact the climate change crisis is doing to the use of water and access to food and how natural disasters affect migration and also how that can lead to initiation of hostilities among people. It is a national security issue in terms of how we use our resources for our national security as well.

It is a moral issue. If you believe, as I and some in the evangelical community do, that this planet is God's creation and we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of it, then you would be sure to be a good steward and sign up for climate action now.

But even if you don't share that religious belief, we all know that we have a moral responsibility to the next generation to pass this planet on in a better way than we found it in a very responsible way.

So it is we must take action. The bill demands action now, by keeping us in the only international agreement dedicated to ending the climate crisis and demanding a plan of action from the administration, and Mr. Kim has put forth that plan to recognize infrastructure resiliency as the administration comes forward.

We are sending a signal to the world that the U.S. is in denial about the overwhelming science about climate, but this bill is a step in the right direction.

I am very proud of the work the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and other committees of jurisdiction are doing. But it is a task for every committee of the Congress to look at the jurisdiction of the committee and to see how, in terms of jobs, public health, national security, and, again, our moral responsibility to our children and future generations--it is everybody's responsibility in the Congress. It is a Congress-wide responsibility.

I do thank the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis for the focus that it is placing on all of this. We will be able to accommodate so many entrepreneurial ideas, new thinking on the subject, being current on the data and on the science. So we have a tremendous generational opportunity and responsibility.

I thank all who are involved in this for their extraordinary leadership. Anyone who cares about our planet and our children's future is deeply in debt to those who have taken the lead on this.

Under President Bush's leadership when he was President and we had our select committee then, we passed the biggest energy bill in history. While everyone was not in agreement on the climate crisis, we all agreed that we had to take action. President Bush signed the bill in a big ceremony, and it was the equivalent of taking tens of millions of cars off the road in how we raised the emissions standards. It was important, and that legislation was the basis for many of the executive actions that President Obama was able to take under the authority of that legislation.

So that was very important, and it was bipartisan. Hopefully, we can be bipartisan as we go forward for the next big steps that we have to take.

Technology has come a long way since then. Science informs us better. Current events have made it very clear: we have an imperative to have climate action now.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I urge our colleagues to vote for Mr. Kim's amendment to H.R. 9.

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