This is not an elitist issue,
this is a quality of life issue.
You want to tell people
that their concern
and their desire for clean air
and clean water is elitist?
Tell that to the kids
in the South Bronx,
which are suffering from
the highest rates
of childhood asthma
in the country.
Tell that to the families in Flint,
whose kids have their blood
ascending in lead levels.
Their brains are damaged
for the rest of their lives.
Call them elitist.
You’re telling them, that those kids
are trying to get on a plane to Davos?
People are dying!
They are dying!
And the response across
the other side of the aisle
is to introduce an amendment
five minutes before
a hearing in a markup?
This is serious!
This should not be
a partisan issue.
This is about our constituents
and all of our lives.
Iowa, Nebraska, broad swathes
of the midwest are drowning
right now, under water.
Farms, towns that will never be
recovered and never come back.
And we're here, and people
are more concerned
about helping oil companies
than helping their own families?
I don't think so!
I don't think so!
This is about our lives.
This is about American lives.
And it should not be partisan.
Science should not be partisan.
We are facing a national crisis
and if we do not ascend to that crisis,
if we do not ascend to the levels
in which we were threatened
at the Great Depression,
when we were threatened
in World War Two,
if we do not ascend to those levels,
if we tell the American public
that we are more willing invest
and bail out big banks
than we are willing to invest
in our farmers and our urban families,
then I don't know what
we are out here doing.
I don't know what
we are here doing.
The government knew
that climate change was real
starting as far back as 1989,
when Nasa was reporting this
and the private sector knew
way back in the 1970s.
So, we had until around the time
I was born to address this issue.
I wish it didn't have
to cost so much.
But I’m going to turn
30 this year
and for the entire
30 years of my lifetime,
we did not make
substantial investments
to prepare our entire country
for what we knew was coming.
So now it's coming all up at the end.
It's like when we live our whole lives
and we don't eat healthily
and we don't move and we pursue
unhealthy activities and then at
the end of our lives our healthcare
costs are very high.
We have the choice to lower
the cost now
because I can tell you the cost
of pursuing a Green New Deal
will be far less than the cost
of not passing it.
