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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I wish to join with my two very good friends and colleagues who have highlighted an issue that concerns the whole country, not just Hawaii, Rhode Island--and no two States are farther apart geographically--but we share this very dire and dangerous problem, often characterized as climate change. I think it is climate disruption. It is global destruction.
One of the myths that surrounds this area that my two colleagues have sought to expose is the supposed incompatibility of reducing destruction of our planet and, at the same time, growing our economy. Often, economic growth is thought to be in conflict with environmental protection and responsibility.
In fact, ecology and economy go together. We can expand our economy by developing new sources of fuel, renewables such as wind and solar, but also fuel cells, which in my State of Connecticut are a growing source of energy responsibility and economic growth.
Far from being incompatible, these two goals are complementary. More jobs, more economic growth, can be the result of controlling carbon pollution.
In fact, the President's program for controlling carbon pollution, which would dramatically cut the magnitude of our air contamination and make us a more responsible nation, will increase jobs and economic growth. It will also put us in a position of leadership around the globe and enable us to regain the position of trust and leadership that we have exercised on so many other issues. We cannot be a leader if we don't lead ourselves.
We cannot tell others what to do when we don't follow the example that we should be setting. It should be and it must be leadership by example.
My colleague Senator Murphy and I--and he will be shortly speaking about another subject--brought together a very powerful coalition in Connecticut last week to highlight this issue of climate change and to dramatize how many different interests and ages have commonality in this goal: labor leaders, environmental activists, young people wearing T-shirts and carrying signs.
They get it. They know. The science is there. The reality is pressing, urgent, and we must address it.
I wish to thank all of my colleagues who are uniting on this historic cause. I hope we can join together in colloquies going forward.
The Presiding Officer has been a leader in the House and will be now in the Senate; most especially, my friend and colleague Senator Whitehouse, who literally week after week, in many different themes and widely diverse ways, has brought our attention, riveting our minds, on this very important subject. I congratulate him on the 40th speech, and I look forward to participating more with him.
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