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.
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.
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.
The American dream has always been about chasing opportunity and pursuing a brighter future for ourselves and our children.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Internet, arguably the fastest world-changing invention since the Gutenberg printing press, has become the core of our social and business lives.
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.
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.
