CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Raul Grijalva

Interview

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Congressman Raul Grijalva is a Democratic representative from Arizona and is the chair of the House Natural Resources Committee. Congressman, so good to see you, glad you could be with us. So how concerned are you that Senator Manchin and other Democratic moderates could derail the president's agenda as he tries to take on climate change?

REP. RAUL GRIJALVA (D-AZ): Obviously, concerned. Concerned because of the urgency that's before us. The climate crisis is at an urgent state. Scientists, meteorologists, et cetera, have been telling us, world organizations, the U.N., our own academic and scientific studies, over and over again.

As this crisis is no longer looming, it is upon us. and I think that making a blanket statement about how much to include on reconciliation in the build back better agenda of Biden and Harris, I think is concerning. Yes, and I think you've got to accept this urgency and you've got to accept the fact that we are in a climate crisis no less.

WHITFIELD: And is it your feeling that this reconciliation bill, Biden's infrastructure bill, will indeed help address climate change?

GRIJALVA: It is a huge and historic down payment on beginning to deal with the issue of climate change and the climate crisis before us. On a domestic scale and the ramifications worldwide, because this is a worldwide issue. And you've gone from denial by my Republican colleagues to now delays, to minimize the investment that we have been asked to make going into the future, and to minimize the urgency or the speed that we need to undertake to make the transition to something sustainable and resilient in terms of our energy uses.

The effect that we're having from our public plans and waters is 25 percent of the problem. We want to make it 25 percent of the solution with conservation and respond to the crisis of climate change. Ida and the devastation both human and every form, the mega drought in the basin states and in the southwest and the west, the catastrophic wildfires, all those are not just symptoms.

They're a direct cause and effect of climate change. And there is, in that bill, to recover and provide relief and to do fire suppression and deal with the consequences of these catastrophes for human life and for the country in general.

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But there also has to be, and that's what all the committees are working on, there has to be a look at the future, Fredricka, about what this country is going to be like and the investments that we're being asked to make. I hope my Republican colleagues don't decide that they can win this by attrition. The attrition that's going on is the climate crisis and the very deadly and ugly effects that we're seeing nationwide.

WHITFIELD: And according to a Gallup poll from earlier this year, there's a huge partisan divide when it comes to considering climate change to be a critical threat to this country -- 86 percent of Democrats say yes, but only 27 percent of Republicans agree. So how do you get your message across so that there is a bipartisan consensus? GRIJALVA: I think step number one, and that is what the Resources

Committee and every committee in the House of Representatives under Democratic majorities that we have there, our job is to do the $3.5 billion that was the instructions that we got from the Senate, and that's what we're doing. And within that, responding to that climate crisis in a significant way, that's our job.

So what the Senate will get from the House is $3.5 billion because that is the urgency. Many of us felt there should have been more. It was instructed by the Senate, but that's not the case. So there is already a bipartisan agreement to move forward.

And I hope that the senators that are having second thoughts about that original bipartisan agreement reconsider, because this is an urgency, and it's not just climate change. The ramifications from not doing anything and the cost to the American people is going to pale next to what's being proposed in the reconciliation bill.

WHITFIELD: Congressman Raul Grijalva, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you joining us.

GRIJALVA: Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Fredricka.

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