Global Climate Change

Floor Speech

Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month, I and 19 of my colleagues wrote to the Energy and Commerce Committee urging them to engage us in a debate on the House floor as to what our national policy should be in response to climate change. That request has been met with silence, but that's a more preferable response than the 53 votes that the House undertook during the last session to block the Obama administration from using its existing authority to address climate change.

In fact, for the year 2012, when this House voted to overturn a scientific finding that, in fact, climate change was occurring, we experienced the warmest year on record. More than half of this Nation's counties were declared Federal disaster areas, due mostly to drought, but also to extreme weather events. We experienced the second worst year of extreme weather events. In fact, Hurricane Sandy cost the Federal Government more than $65 billion and took the lives of 147 Americans, and we experienced the third worst year for wildland fires; more than 9 million acres were burned.

These severe temperatures and extreme weather events we are experiencing all fit the predictive pattern of global climate change. Our failure to take action dooms future generations to ever more powerful and destructive weather events, altered coastlines, more devastating droughts and wildland fires, and greater food scarcity. It's time to take action on climate change.

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