Washington State Senator Maria Cantwell has put forward this bill, which is a good stake in the ground. Worth remembering when you vote next year, that Republicans have no plan to stop or slow climate change. Their plan is to drill more and remove all regulations that might slow more extraction of oil. They have also worked to end any and all clean energy government subsidies. They are on the wrong side of history, and unfortunately, all of us are paying the price. We are not yet climate refugees here on the Peninsula, but our neighbors in the North Cascades, and the thousands of people throughout the American west who have lost their lives and homes to the largest forest fires in recorded history this summer, are. With the Pope actively working to build public awareness on this, and the President, and even the president of China, who is visiting this week, we need to vote out idiots who stand in the way of saving us from our own inability to change. At this point the Republican Congress seems to be like lemmings, heading right off the cliff and taking us with them. We know who pays these politician’s campaigns, and it is not the majority of the American people, or even the people in their districts. It’s a small lobby of business leaders who cannot see the forest for their trees. I welcome any Republican who wants to work for the future of the planet to say that they are going to go against the grain and vote for this Democratic proposal.
Senate Democratic leaders on Tuesday introduced a measure intended to signal their support of President Obama’s aggressive climate change agenda to 2016 voters and to the rest of the world.