[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 120 (Tuesday, June 30, 2020)]
[House]
[Page H2675]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       CONGRESS MUST SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO END CLIMATE CHANGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Casten) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, in 1896 Svante Arrhenius 
hypothesized that carbon dioxide pollution would trigger a greenhouse 
effect.
  Since then, we have emitted 1.4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, and 
it has gotten hotter.
  In 1987, the Reagan administration crafted the Montreal Protocol to 
close the ozone hole. It used market tools to solve environmental 
problems, and it worked.
  The Kyoto Protocol was supposed to apply that logic to carbon 
dioxide. But as many of you know, we then decided to just go 
collectively crazy. Scientific truths got politicized. Crackpot 
theories got weaponized. Meanwhile, it got hotter.
  Today, the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis will release a 
comprehensive report with a roadmap to turn this ship around. It 
provides policy recommendations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 
almost 90 percent, save our country $9 trillion, and save 62,000 lives 
per year by 2050.
  It goes further than that. It identifies negative emission tools to 
take us back to the sustainable carbon dioxide levels we had in 1985. 
1985 by the way, is that point in history where prior to that point we 
had emitted 50 percent of all the CO2 emissions as a species 
we have emitted up to this point. Back to the future indeed.
  I urge my colleagues to seize this opportunity. This is an 
opportunity to grow the economy and to protect the environment, but 
more importantly, it is an opportunity to tell your children that when 
the times called on you to act, you rose to that challenge.
  Please. Seize this opportunity.

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