Setting U.S. on Path to Reach Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Floor Speech

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Ms. BROWNLEY of California. Mr. Speaker, in December 2017, the Thomas fire destroyed over 280,000 acres, with almost all of it in my district in Ventura County. It is the second largest wildfire in all of California's recorded history.

The day it started, my constituents Trisha and Jed received a terrifying call. Evacuation orders were just issued. A wildfire was fast approaching their home, and their children were put in a car and whisked away.

It was an unbearable week for Trisha and Jed. They couldn't stop thinking of what might have happened to their children, all while mourning the loss of their home that was burned to the ground, including the invaluable keepsakes Jed had just moved to the house after his father's passing.

Natural disasters like these are becoming all too common, not only in Ventura County, but throughout California and the Western States.

Floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes, from Texas to Florida and all along the East Coast, are increasing with alarming frequency. Glaciers in the Arctic are melting faster than ever before. Ocean temperatures have increased in the last three decades at a pace greater than recorded history. Sea level rise is accelerating. Atmospheric temperatures are also on the rise.

These are facts. They are destroying homes. They are taking lives. They are wreaking havoc on our communities and communities across the planet.

Over the last year and a half, the Select Committee on Climate Crisis has been tasked with finding bold and transformative solutions to tackle this global emergency.

This report, the most comprehensive report on the impact of climate change and how to address it in the history of Congress, lays out policies, legislation, and a roadmap that will put the brakes on global warming while creating equitable, good-paying jobs of the future, and, at the same time, putting American innovation and ingenuity first.

The select committee has written a report that identifies 12 pillars on which Congress can make actionable changes and sets the U.S. on a path of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The report takes a deep and wide dive into all the sectors of our economy that contribute to climate change, from agriculture and transportation to how we build our buildings; to water, electric, and telecommunications infrastructure; to energy production, manufacturing, tax policy, and national security.

The impact of climate change is broad, and it can be addressed only through comprehensive and bold solutions.

I am very proud that the select committee offers up so many of those solutions, and where solutions don't exist, it lays out the challenge that American ingenuity can and will overcome.

Today, we face what appears to be an even more imminent crisis: a pandemic that has crushed the global economy and taken almost 130,000 American lives and half a million lives worldwide.

We are struggling with long, deep racial injustice and how to address it. But we will rise from this darkness, and how we rise from it will impact everyone on the planet, not only alive today, but for generations to come.

I hope that we will search for solutions that draw on the ideals that created this great Nation: equity, justice, and ingenuity.

As we rebuild our economy, let's do so by investing in the technologies, practices, and methods for the future and with the urgency of now that our changing climate demands.

As we seek to right injustice and inequity, let's not forget the role the rise of American industry played in creating some of that injustice and inequity, as it did with the climate crisis we have before us, and let's choose a path forward that rights that ship.

We are suffering now, but we should, we must, rise up with a clearer vision for a better future.

Climate change provides the greatest existential threat to human existence, but it also offers the greatest opportunity for mankind and womankind to meet that threat and to beat it.

I know that everyone in this Chamber came here to make their mark, to better their communities, to strengthen our Nation. We must seize this moment. We must seize it for Trisha and Jed. We must seize it for their children. We must seize it for their children's children.

We must show the Nation that Congress is up to the task that is before us now. We must and will act now.

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