At some point during his eight years in Washington, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse became the country’s most outspoken politician on climate change.
Maybe it was when he co-organized an all-night “#UP4CLIMATE” speech-a-thon. Or maybe it was when he published a BuzzFeed op-ed/listicle with a GIF showing how Rhode Island’s capital, Providence, may be swallowed by rising seas. Or maybe it was when he and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin visited each other’s state to talk coal mines and coastal erosion. But, most likely, it happened during one of Whitehouse’s 99 climate change-related speeches on the Senate floor – one for every week Congress has been in session since April 2012, with just a couple of exceptions.
By now, Whitehouse has approached the subject from almost every conceivable angle. He’s talked about how 2011 was the 36th year in a row with an annual global temperature above the 20th-century average; and how, in Greenland, in 2012, the National Snow and Ice Data Center recorded melting over a larger area than they’d seen in 30 years of satellite observation. He’s described how Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, “has called climate change the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific.” He’s talked about what mega-corporations like Apple, Walmart, Mars, and Disney are doing to address the issue. He’s called out media outlets for distorting or under-reporting the facts. (“All the major network Sunday TV talk shows, in all of 2013, discussed climate change for a grand total, all combined, of 27 minutes.”) And he’s offered a rebuttal to Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe’s infamous here’s-a-snowball-so-climate-change-is-a-hoax speech, in February.
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