The warming of our earth is more than an inconvenient truth; it is the challenge of our generation. It is a challenge we should meet with hope not fear, and a challenge that will make us stronger as a nation and as a people if we meet it head-on. The leading scientists of the world tell us clearly that global warming is happening now and human activities are the cause.

Now, Senators are not climate scientists. But we are policy makers.

Just as our nation took action based on scientific consensus before, we must take action now – starting immediately – to confront the problem. In the past, our nation has swiftly responded to scientific consensus, and solved major problems.

When scientists told us that the reason the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Ohio in l969 was because toxic pollution was accumulating there, we didn’t walk away from the challenge: we passed the Clean Water Act; or told us why the air had become so polluted we could see it and were choking on it, we didn’t walk away from the challenge; we passed the Clean Air Act in l970. When they told us that contaminated tap water was causing widespread waterborne disease and exposing people to cancer, we didn’t walk away from the challenge: we passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974.

There are many other examples…the Superfund program, the Brownfields program, the Endangered Species Act. In none of these cases have we walked away from the challenge and in every one of these cases, we are the better for it.

Our generation faces a choice. Will we, in the stirring words of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, give our children “a world of beauty and wonder?”

I encourage you to use the information and resources here to take a step to counter global warming, and join in the effort to change not only the way we conduct industry on this Earth, but the the way we share our lives on this amazing planet, our home.