[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 125 (Thursday, July 20, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3442-S3443]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Climate Change
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, before we begin, I would like to thank
Paige Rodrigues, who first came to my office 5 years ago and has been
working tirelessly over all of that time, working to protect the people
of Massachusetts and the people of our country and our entire planet
from the effects of climate change and environmental threats to our
country and to our planet.
She is heading off to law school, and we will miss her. We will miss
her brilliant work and her continual devotion to building a better
world for everyone, because this world is under immediate threat.
Earlier this month, we experienced what might have been Earth's
hottest day in 125,000 years. You heard that right: the hottest day in
125,000 years. And we are living through it right now. In Phoenix, AZ,
the temperature has been 110 degrees or higher for nearly 3 weeks in a
row.
The water off of the coast of Florida is now nearing 100 degrees. The
water is boiling in our oceans off of our coastlines.
On July 15, nearly one in three Americans was living under an extreme
heat alert. We are living under a heat dome right now in our Nation.
The forest fires in Canada are sending fumes down across our country.
It is like an exhaust pipe from an automobile just sending these toxic
fumes down across our country day after day, week after week, from
Canada, from their forest fires right above us.
This year, we have experienced 17 of the hottest days ever recorded.
This is nothing short of a public health crisis in our country. Extreme
heat causes heat stroke, pregnancy risk, and thousands of
hospitalizations and deaths every year in our country. And this extreme
heat isn't a coincidence; it is the climate crisis announcing its
arrival.
We did this. We did this to ourselves. Humankind's greed and
negligence--America's greed and negligence--is creating a literal hell
on Earth, right now. We are living through it. We took a first step
last year to pass climate and clean energy legislation that will inch
us closer to salvation, but it will not save us. We must take bolder
action to stop the climate crisis and secure a livable future, and we
also need to act with urgency to protect the people who, right now,
face extreme heat risk as a result of extreme heat in our country.
We have a moral and a planetary obligation to the American people to
deliver the resources communities need to combat extreme heat,
especially the frontline communities where the effects of heat are
worsened by unjust racial and economic divides.
We have to listen to the young people in our country. They are
warning us. They are saying that they have been let down, that their
generation has been left with this crisis, that not enough has been
done, and that the preceding generation just enjoyed all the benefits
of industrialization. And now this generation of young people who are
organizing, who are lifting their voices, who are demanding a change,
they understand this issue. They understand this issue better than
preceding generations because they are living with the consequences of
not dealing with this issue.
This generation--this young generation--are the issues-oriented
generation. They are the ones who understand this issue. They are the
ones who understand the problem and want even greater solutions to be
put in place.
I am working with my colleagues to reintroduce my legislation, the
Preventing HEAT Illness and Deaths Act, which will do just that, while
giving our Federal Government the resources and the authority to track
and to study and to alert Americans of all the threats posed by extreme
heat.
We must meet this public health crisis with the urgency that it
requires. Workers are collapsing. Wildfires are raging. And this heat
isn't going anywhere. The summers are getting hotter. The storms are
getting stronger. The seas are rising higher due to human-caused
climate change.
In Arizona, Texas, California, Nevada, and all around the country,
people are dying every single day because
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of this heat, and the risks of extreme heat having fallen more heavily
on low-income communities and communities of color, as well as on our
seniors and children in our Nation.
While most heat-related deaths and illnesses are preventable through
outreach and intervention, extreme heat events have been the leading
cause of weather-related deaths in the United States over the past 30
years. And our historic addiction to fossil fuels is what is driving
all of this devastation.
So let's think about this, like a doctor would. We can name the
source of this public health catastrophe: extreme heat. We know what
drives the extreme heat: fossil fuels. And we know how to cure it:
climate action now.
Our planet is sick. Our country is sick. Our country is running a
fever right now. And there are no emergency rooms for countries. We
have to engage in preventive care. We know how to cure this. It is
climate action now. And if we don't, because our country is sick,
because our planet is sick, it is killing us along with that planet
being slowly but surely burnt to a crisp.
This is why, earlier this year, I introduced the Green New Deal for
Health, a national treatment plan to build a healthcare system that
delivers the care people need in a dangerous world.
The Green New Deal for Health brings together the principles of the
Green New Deal--good-paying jobs, justice for all, and a livable
future--to create a healthcare system where everyone doesn't just
survive; they thrive.
The sirens are sounding. We are in a climate emergency, and Congress
should be the first responders, not holding the matches that continue
to exacerbate this crisis. A whole-of-government response is the only
way to fight this whole-of-planet threat: climate action that breaks
our fossil fuel addiction, a stronger healthcare system that works for
workers and patients, and a commitment to a livable future.
That is where we are. This is an emergency. This heat is a warning.
But it is no longer a warning of the future. It is a warning that right
now we are living with the consequences of the future. It is a warning
that right now we are living with the consequences of our inaction.
So my hope is that this institution can respond. Young people are
demanding that we respond. We should listen to the young people of our
country and the planet. We have to do more.
I see my good friend and the leader of the Environment Committee, Tom
Carper, who did just so much last year to pass historic legislation to
deal with methane and its impact and to deal with the need for us to
move to wind and solar and all-electric vehicles and battery
technologies. I can't thank Chairman Carper enough for all of his
incredible leadership to make sure that we took that first huge step.
But so much more needs to be done.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.