Press Conference With Senator Barbara Boxer; Senator Amy Klobuchar; Senator Benjamin Cardin; Senator Bernard Sanders; Senator Frank Lautenberg; And S

Statement

Press Conference With Senator Barbara Boxer; Senator Amy Klobuchar; Senator Benjamin Cardin; Senator Bernard Sanders; Senator Frank Lautenberg; And Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: Global Warming ANd Greenland Codel

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SEN. SANDERS: We've got the wrong fish, we've got the wrong country, but we're making -- (laughter).

Thank you, Barbara, for taking us on this trip. Not only was it breathtaking, the vistas that we saw, but we learned a whole lot. And the bottom line: As goes Greenland, so goes the United States and so goes the Planet Earth. If the ice sheet in Greenland continues to melt, millions and millions of people from one end of this planet to the other, including some of the poorest people in the world in Asia, will be suffering terribly.

As you also heard, we met with the minister of the Environment from Denmark, and Denmark controls foreign policy for Greenland. And what she said, I think, expressed the exasperation that many of the Europeans feel, is that for many, many years, the United States of America was not part of the ballgame.

We were lagging in terms of recognizing the severity of global warming and certainly coming up with some of the solutions. I think with people like Barbara Boxer as chair of the environmental committee, that is now changing.

The bad news is that we have been very late to getting into the game. The good news is that all over the world, we know what has to be done. This is not a problem that we do not know how in a significant way to solve.

It makes no sense at all among other things that we continue to drive cars that get worse mileage per gallon today than 20 years ago. You don't have to be a great scientist to figure that out. It doesn't make any sense that in our homes and factories and offices, we're wasting all kinds of energy. We know that.

We know, to a significant degree, what we have to do. And I know that under Senator Boxer's leadership on this committee, we are going to do the right thing. We're going to demand energy efficiency in this country. We're going to demand a significant movement to sustainable energy.

It is sitting there. Solar is sitting there; wind is sitting there. And in the process, we can create millions of good-paying jobs, as we reverse global warming and significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions.

What we learned by going to Greenland is this problem does not only impact the fishermen of Greenland. It impacts the United States of America, every country on earth, and we have a moral responsibility to act. We've been too late getting into the process. But we have go to move forward boldly right now, and that's what we intend to do.

Thank you.

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