Speaker Pelosi Speaks to NCSL
Read her full remarks as prepared >>
An excerpt of on protecting our planet:
"Also central to the strength of our states and our nation is energy independence. Energy independence is a national security issue. It is an environmental and health issue. It is an economic issue. And it is a moral issue."With a commitment to the future, last weekend Congress passed bipartisan legislation, the 'New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security, and Consumer Protection Act.'
"It will strengthen our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil; lower energy costs for consumers by $300 billion dollars with greater efficiency, cleaner energy, and smarter technology; create new and good-paying green collar American jobs, and reduce global warming.
"And it is paid for.
"This bill makes the largest investment in homegrown biofuels in American history. We know that America's farmers will fuel America's energy independence, creating jobs and prosperity across rural America. This bill will send our energy dollars to middle America; not the Middle East.
"As we address energy independence and global warming with innovation and market-based solutions, we will grow our economy.
"State legislators and governors, mayors and county executives know the consequences of global warming will be as local as our neighborhoods, and global as our entire planet. So too our solutions must be both local and global.
"In this challenge we are joined by faith-based organizations. They believe, as I do, that this planet is God's creation and we have a moral responsibility to preserve it.
"Protecting our country, growing our economy in a fiscally sound way, strengthening our families, and protecting our planet are all a part of our New Direction for America."
Related, from today's Washington Post front page:
Warming Draws Evangelicals Into Environmentalist Fold
Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post - August 8, 2007
At 8 on a Saturday morning, just as the heat was permeating this sprawling Orlando suburb, Denise Kirsop donned a white plastic moon suit and began sorting through the trash produced by Northland Church.She and several fellow parishioners picked apart the garbage to analyze exactly how much and what kind of waste their megachurch produces, looking for ways to reduce the congregation's contribution to global warming.
"I prayed about it, and God really revealed to me that I had a passion about creation," said Kirsop, who has since traded in her family's sport-utility vehicle for a hybrid Toyota Prius to help cut her greenhouse gas emissions. "Anything that draws me closer to God -- and this does -- increases my faith and helps my work for God."
Her conversion to environmentalism is the result of a years-long international campaign by British bishops and leaders of major U.S. environmental groups to bridge a long-standing divide between global-warming activists and American evangelicals.
The emerging rapprochement is regarded by some as a sign of how dramatically U.S. public sentiment has shifted on global warming in recent years. It also has begun, in modest ways, to transform how the two groups define themselves.