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

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. WHITEHOUSE: Thank you.

One of the first things that I asked Chairman Boxer when I came onto the Environment and Public Works Committee as a brand new senator was, could we please go to Greenland? And now we have, so I want to thank her particularly for making this possible. It was, as the other senators have said, a wonderful trip.

I come from Rhode Island, which is the Ocean State, and we know a little something about tide lines. If you go out on Narragansett Bay at low tide, you can see the high tide line along the shore. And one of these pictures, this one, shows a very interesting line right here which is, in its own way, sort of a high tide line.

That's the line of where the ice used to be. And what makes this darker above it are the little lichens and plants that have grown in the short time that it takes for them to grow, but have not grown since the ice has fallen this far. In all of these areas that you see they look like a construction site; it looks like its been driven around with heavy Earth-moving equipment -- dust, dirt, gravel, rock. There's a real visible change.

And to continue on the subject of tide lines for a second, if we don't get this under control, my state, the ocean state, like Maryland and other states, will be very vulnerable to the increases in ocean level that we're already seeing at small levels. So we really do have to get ahead of this, and that's why I'm so proud to support Bernie Sanders and Chairman Boxer's legislation, which is the strongest legislation on global warming, and I hope that we can accomplish our purpose of getting ahead of this problem before it gets too big for us to handle in thoughtful ways.

SEN. : Thank you.

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