Building A Greener Planet

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASTEN. Madam Speaker, climate change is an existential treat to our species. Atmospheric CO2 levels are now higher than at any point in the last 3 million years. Half of all those emissions were released since 1985. We are in trouble, and that trouble is accelerating, but addressing that trouble is a massive economic opportunity.

Rather than being paralyzed by fear, let's inspire Americans toward that opportunity, because virtually anything we do to reduce CO2 emissions makes us wealthier. Making heat and power without burning fossil fuel means you don't have to pay for fossil fuel. Clean energy is cheap energy.

For those who still like pollution, all that future generations ask you is to love being rich a little bit more. And that is why I was so heartened to see President Biden's recent executive orders procuring clean energy for the Federal Government, phasing out market-distorting fossil fuel subsidies, incorporating the social cost of carbon into our decisionmaking, to name just a few, and that is just the start.

Madam Speaker, let us all in this body now build on that leadership. Let us build back better and build back greener. Let us leave our children a better planet than the one we inherited. Let us embrace science. But most of all, let us lead.

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