On average, global warming is not going to harm the developing world.
It seems incontrovertible to me that there is a global warming effect and that it is going to be serious, probably not in the amount of, say, six degrees warming, but it's likely that we'll get two to three degrees warming and that will be serious enough.
One of the gaps in our international development efforts is the provision of global public goods - that is, goods or conditions we need that no individual or country can secure on their own, such as halting global warming, financial stability and peace and security.
Global warming is not a conqueror to kneel before - but a challenge to rise to. A challenge we must rise to.
Today, we can see with our own eyes what global warming is doing. In that context it becomes truly irresponsible, if not immoral, for us not to do something.
The Administration should never have walked away from the Kyoto Treaty. Global warming is real and it is here today. The facts aren't the issue. The policy is the issue. I think the Administration's policy on global warming is dead wrong.
Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.
In fact, even the current administration now is releasing recent reports indicating that climate change is real, that global warming is occurring, that it is heavily influenced by man-made objects and that it is something we cannot ignore any longer.
When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy.
Mr. Vice President, the most fiscally conservative thing this government has ever done, is to invest massively in the green part of the recovery. Because those green dollars are the hardest working dollars in the history of American politics. That same dollar that is being used to cut energy bills, is also cutting global warming gas emissions, is also cutting unemployment, is also cutting poverty, through retrofits it's also raising the value of homes, is also by cleaning the air, cutting asthma rates.
So we are now still dependent on foreign oil, have a problem with global warming, and are losing jobs rapidly to the Japanese in fuel-efficient vehicles as a result of that very shortsighted progress.
Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.
When the President was asked about global warming at a public appearance yesterday, he responded by talking about America's addiction to oil. You make the connection.
The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.
And then of course, obviously as far as issues such as global warming, something has to be done on the corporate side, there has to be some mandate or some legislation.