Climate Action Now Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SABLAN. Mr. Chair, the people of the Northern Mariana Islands, whom I represent, are on the front line of climate change. In the past year, back-to-back typhoons struck our islands. Lives were lost. We suffered hundreds of millions in damage.

No single weather event can be attributed to climate change. But science tells us that global warming means more frequent and more intense storms of the kind that hit the Marianas.

And we know the sudden increase in intensity of one of those storms, Super Typhoon Yutu, just before landfall in the Marianas, is characteristic of a new normal caused by higher atmospheric temperatures and warmer ocean waters. We saw the same acceleration of force as Hurricane Michael came ashore in the Gulf last year.

Today, Congress has an opportunity to act to slow climate change and reduce the disasters being caused. We can vote to return the United States to the company of nations that is working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement of 2015. I support H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act.

There are those who argue it is too expensive to lower carbon pollution of our planet's atmosphere. I point to the disaster supplemental appropriation bills this House will take up shortly and previously passed in January. If we are willing to spend billions to repair the impact of climate change on communities around our nation, should we not be willing to spend to prevent that damage in the first place? Would that not be wise?

I make this plea especially for people in the Marianas and other Pacific islands. We are increasingly battered by storms. As sea levels rise, our islands are disappearing. And the coral reefs that protect our coasts and give us nourishment are dying before our eyes.

We are the front line of the consequences, yet had little to do with the decades of carbon pollution that are causing this destruction. Nevertheless, we in the islands are willing to transform, just as our nation as a whole must transform to reduce carbon emissions and protect our safety in the decades ahead.

A yes vote on H.R. 9 is an important first step.

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