Washington, DC – Today, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a Senate climate champion, issued the following statement on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new report on the steps necessary to mitigate the effects of climate change. The IPCC notes that “pricing carbon has been one of the most widely used and effective options to reduce GHG emissions,” but that “the power of incumbent fossil fuel interests… block[s] initiatives towards decarbonization.”
“This new report lights a pathway toward climate safety. It also confirms what I’ve been saying in Time to Wake Up speeches for years: that the challenge of tackling climate change is more political than technological or economic. The fossil fuel industry maintains a massive dark-money apparatus to obstruct all meaningful efforts toward decarbonization and to block and harass competing technologies like wind, solar, batteries and hydrogen. The grip of the fossil fuel industry over the Republican Party blocks simple solutions like charging polluters for the costs of their pollution. The answers are at hand. When we break the hold of those fossil fuel interests, we can move quickly to save our planet.”
Whitehouse’s carbon-pricing legislation, the Save Our Future Act, would drastically drive down the harmful emissions causing climate change and putting Americans’ health and the global economy at risk. The bill would cut emissions by roughly 50 percent after ten years, which is in line with scientific targets.
Meaghan McCabe, (401) 453-5294
