[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12423-12424]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  0915
                          SAFE CLIMATE CAUCUS

  (Mr. WAXMAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

[[Page 12424]]


  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, every day a member of the 
Safe Climate Caucus has come to the floor to raise concern about 
climate change, and we know about climate change from hurricanes and 
tornadoes and droughts and all of the other things that we're seeing.
  But yesterday, the prestigious science journal, Nature, published an 
analysis of the cost of the rapid warming in the Arctic. That analysis 
found that the cost could range from $10 trillion to over $200 
trillion. The mean cost is $60 trillion. I'm not misspeaking. It's not 
$60 million, it's not $60 billion, but it's $60 trillion.
  These enormous costs are the consequence of the release of 50 
gigatons of methane now trapped in the Arctic ice shelves, which 
experts believe will be released into the air within the next 50 years, 
if not sooner, if we don't stop spewing carbon pollution into our 
atmosphere.
  The Arctic is pivotal to the functioning of the Earth's systems, such 
as the oceans and the climate, but we're recklessly endangering it. We 
need to stop acting like members of the Flat Earth Society and start 
listening to the urgent warnings of the scientists.

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