What is a fish without a river? What is a bird without a tree to nest in? What is an Endangered Species Act without any enforcement mechanism to ensure their habitat is protected? It is nothing.
Jay Inslee
Renewable energy also creates more jobs than other sources of energy - most of these will be created in the struggling manufacturing sector, which will pioneer the new energy future by investment that allows manufacturers to retool and adopt new technologies and methods.
For millions of Americans, climate change is no longer just a chart or a graph. It's the smoke on our tongues from massive wildfires. It's the floodwater invading our homes and record-breaking hurricanes and heat waves.
Compassion, hope, and opportunity are some of the most fundamentally American values that we should fight like hell to protect.
Climate change is a matter of great peril but also one of great promise. We can pioneer the industries of the future, create millions of good-paying jobs, and build the clean energy economy of the future.
From floods in Iowa and Nebraska to fires in California to hurricanes in Houston and Puerto Rico, we can no longer escape the fact that climate change is not happening in some far-off, distant future.
We need to get our sons and daughters home and their responsibility for the security of Iraq needs to be assumed by Iraqis who will stand up and toe the line for their countries.
The American dream has always been about chasing opportunity and pursuing a brighter future for ourselves and our children.
Nations around the world - including Canada - are working to shift the global economy from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy. We must be vigilant in working to accelerate this transition, not slow or reverse it.
Because of the Internet's open platform, entrepreneurs have started small businesses, innovators have created online services, and webcasters have produced a diversity of news-information sources. We must make sure that winners and losers are decided by the marketplace and not your Internet service provider.
The oil companies, the big polluters, and the climate deniers are incredibly powerful. They will do everything they can to protect their profits.
The Internet, arguably the fastest world-changing invention since the Gutenberg printing press, has become the core of our social and business lives.
Freedom of expression, innovation, and choice drive our economy.
For years, my state of Washington tried to pass its own state Dream Act. Many Republicans weren't interested. But some thought differently after they met Dreamers and heard stories that revealed their courage, grit, and determination. It is the same determination that built America and will help it continue to thrive.
But most importantly, we can all be donors. It does not matter how old you are, your race, where you live; all of us can give the gift of life.
On Earth, we still have a beautiful atmosphere that precisely maintains a thermally driven climatic system that shelters, shields and sustains our natural treasures.
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.
Third issue, and again I think it is important to note, anyone can make a mistake and any administration can make a mistake once in a while, but this is just a long train of abuses, an unbroken chain of following special interests rather than the health of the American people.
Lincoln said that the Patent Office adds the flame of interest to the light of creativity. And that is why we need to improve the effectiveness of our Patent Office.
Unfortunately, bureaucratic problems at the federal level are causing many other small Washington companies to be denied federal funding that would help transfer their ideas from their laboratories into our homes and hospitals.
We consume about 25 percent of the world's oil every year, but we only have reserves, including that which has not been pumped, of about 3 percent of the oil reserves in the world.
There is no excuse for this administration shielding information about Iraq and the fact that we have great difficulties there from the American people.
I am not one for half measures or half-hearted efforts.
I do care about the mercury contamination which this country will be experiencing because of the attempted sellout by this administration to special interests which will result in more mercury in the blood of young children in America.
Healing is a moral thing to do.
We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country.
I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.
I am going to leave everything on the field. I am going everywhere, and I am going to listen to everybody.
We must ask ourselves: Are we a confident, forward-looking nation that builds monuments - like DACA - to hope and determination? Or are we a nation that is turned inward, lauding monuments to intolerance and division?
We can all be heroes, joining together in a grand mission to save those living on this little blue planet.
I am a relatively new Member to this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic process.
The fact is that we cannot drill our way to independence. We cannot drill our way to freedom, and we cannot drill our way to create jobs in this country.
With millions of family wage manufacturing jobs lost since 2001, we need an energy bill that takes bold action to tap into American ingenuity in order to lead the world in new clean energy technology, rather than playing catch-up to the Japanese, Danish, and Germans.
I really love being governor. I've been extremely successful.
The 1st Congressional District contains almost half of the biotech and biomedical companies in Washington, and my job often allows me to meet the people responsible for this exciting research.
Our lands and waters share incredible bounty and beauty. Trekking across forests and mountains, exploring beaches in search of shellfish, and fishing from clear waters are all part of our regional way of life and economy.
Back in the mid-1970s, we adopted some fairly ambitious goals to improve efficiency of our cars. What did we get? We got a tremendous boost in efficiency.
President Bush's proposal to focus our resources on sending humans to Mars is intriguing, but it is not the most compelling reason that Americans ought to focus our interest on the Red Planet.
It's time for all of us to unite across the state of Washington to build a working Washington. Let's get to work.
I've dedicated my life in public service to defeating climate change.
Because the sad fact is that the Enron Corporation and others manipulated with unfortunately great effect the energy market in the West Coast starting in 2000.
ISIS is a terrorist organization. It is a terrorist organization that the world must unite against.
We clearly need to break our addiction on Saudi Arabian oil that is a security threat to the United States.
If this ice melts in Greenland it can shut down the Gulf Current.
The need to help spread democracy and the ability to do that will be much greater if we break this addiction to oil, which gives the oil princes and sultans the power in the Mideast.
Things are difficult enough about Iraq without the Federal Government suppressing the truth about Iraq.
Tolerance is the value that was selected to put on here, and tolerance is as American as apple pie.
Tolerance is carved into the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives and intolerance should not be carved into the U.S. Constitution.
Investing in industries and technology for the 21st century generates high-skilled, high-wage jobs for industries of the future.
I am excited about focusing full-time on talking about my job-creation agenda and building a new economy for Washington state. We have a great chance to seize our own destiny, build our own industries, and create our own technological revolutions right here at home.
