Sen. Tammy Duckworth: We Need a Carbon-Neutral Future

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: What do you think the president, you know, is going to be able to do, because it is also a big election issue, isn’t it, climate? I mean, certainly, young people, both on the Republican side, and of course on the Democrat side, are very concerned about a serious method of addressing this climate crisis.

SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): Well, what we need first is a commitment to a carbon neutral future, and we need to be energy agnostic in how we get there. And whether or not you believe in climate change — I mean, you should, the evidence is here. One of my military officers, a general, said to a bunch of us once, she said, I don’t care whether or not you believe in climate change, but the sea ice is melting in the Artic and that’s opening sea lanes and Russia is there, which means that U.S. military forces will have to go up into areas we’ve never had to go to before to defend those territories. So, I don’t care if you believe in climate change, the results are here, and we’re going to have to act to resolve it. And that’s exactly where we are. The wildfires are here. You can deny it all you want, but you’re not going to stop a wildfire. So, we need to do better, we need to get to that carbon neutral future, we need to get more efforts into conservation, and we have an opportunity to create jobs while doing it at a time when we desperately need jobs in this country.

AMANPOUR: So, many, many military commanders, many vets like yourself are saying that climate is a national security threat. I just want to play a little bit of what the governor of California has said about this, because what’s happening there is not just the fires, it’s the record heat, it’s the aridity, it’s the death of trees, it’s poison water, it’s poison air. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): Forgive me, I’m being a little bit long-winded but I’m a little bit exhausted that we have to continue to bait this issue. This is a climate damn emergency. This is real, and it’s happening. This is the perfect storm. It is happening in unprecedented ways year in, year out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: I mean, just the scene is apocalyptic. There he is standing, you know, in front of just — you can barely see through the smog behind him. Why do you think it’s taken the president, I mean, a long time to address it? This is the first time he’s going to be presumably addressing it when he meets and talks with the governor.

DUCKWORTH: Because he’s not a leader. Donald Trump hasn’t led anything his entire life. All he’s about is taking care of Donald Trump. This is something that needed leadership on day one. Instead of providing leadership on the climate crisis, he actually withdrew us from the Paris Accord. We should be rejoining the Paris Accord. We should be making these investments. And, you know, 100 military bases will be under water in the near future. You can see what’s happening in California, its loss of agriculture, its loss of people’s livelihoods, their homes. People are devastated and in need of leadership right now, not a guy who continues to try downplay things because he thinks it’s going to help him get re-elected.