- 9 months ago
During remarks on the Senate floor Monday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) spoke about the Trump administration's energy policies.
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00:00Mr. President.
00:02Senator from Massachusetts.
00:04Thank you, Mr. President.
00:05Mr. President, today, Donald Trump's Department of Education,
00:12rather, Department of Energy,
00:15announced the largest deregulatory effort in the Department of Energy's history.
00:2347 regulations at the Department of Energy slashed in one fell swoop in the name of freedom.
00:32On the same day as the House Ways and Means Committee proposed to slash clean energy tax credits.
00:41And just a few days after, the House Energy and Commerce Committee proposed to destroy critical programs
00:49that reduce hazardous air pollution in exchange for fast-tracking dirty fossil fuels.
00:56This isn't one big, beautiful bill, as Donald Trump calls it.
01:02It's a big billionaire bailout.
01:06That's what this whole thing is about.
01:09And the only freedom this announcement guarantees is the freedom to pollute,
01:16overcharge, and mislead the American people.
01:19So let's be clear.
01:21These attacks are not common sense.
01:24These attacks on the energy policy, the environmental policy of the United States,
01:29is not common sense.
01:32It's nonsense, which they are trying to sell.
01:36They're not about choice.
01:37They're about giving fossil fuel corporations and manufacturers a license to pollute,
01:44on the one hand, and to be profiteers, on the other.
01:49This is not deregulation.
01:51It's desecration of decades of bipartisan progress on public health and on the truth.
02:00Republicans are willing to throw $420 billion in clean energy investments
02:07and 400,000 jobs in red and blue states right down the drain.
02:17This would be a disaster for our economy and good-paying jobs.
02:21What does that look like in action?
02:23Well, let's just go through it.
02:25Let's go through what they're doing.
02:26And by the way, Chris Wright is the Secretary of Energy.
02:30And Chris Wright says, well, I'm a reasonable man.
02:35And he seems like a very likable person.
02:38But in fact, Chris Wright is a radical.
02:42He is an absolute, outright radical trying to destroy the clean energy future of the United States.
02:51So while he says he believes in all of the above, we know he's an oil man.
02:57He's a gas man.
02:59He really believes in oil above all, not all of the above.
03:03That's for sure.
03:04And Chris Wright, with his radical, anti-capitalist attack upon the clean energy future of the United States,
03:16is absolutely destroying our ability to be able to compete with China in the clean energy sector for the rest of eternity.
03:25He's just deciding to completely and totally eviscerate our future.
03:31And he does so at the behest of Donald Trump, who is tied to, of course, the oil and gas and coal industry
03:38and their profit-making opportunities.
03:42Now, again, Chris Wright, that's where he made his money, oil and gas.
03:48So it's kind of natural for him to be a radical.
03:51A radical oil and gas guy wants to destroy wind, destroy solar, destroy new battery storage technologies.
04:00These are the technologies that compete against oil, gas, and coal, and their profits.
04:07And by the way, they would substitute technologies which would not pollute, not cause asthmas,
04:16not warm the planet dangerously that would cause the storms and the fires and the floods, which we have been seeing.
04:24And it would accomplish all that, but a radical, a radical like Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy,
04:31he'd rather destroy all of it in order to increase the profits of the oil and gas industry.
04:37That's what he's doing, creating this absolutely destructive policy that is going to ultimately have the next generation of young people today pay a huge price in the future.
04:56So let's just take a few of these tax credits, which they're destroying, which would create good-paying jobs, which would help to spur our economy.
05:07Let's just take a look at a few of them to just see what he is orchestrating in the House Ways and Means and House Energy and Commerce Committee.
05:15It would remove the tax credits that a local restaurant can use to lower its electricity bill by putting solar panels on the roof of the restaurant.
05:26Gone.
05:27Incentives that a local connoisseur could have used to buy electric delivery trucks and install charging stations.
05:37Gone.
05:38EV battery and offshore wind manufacturing factories that source steel from red states.
05:47Gone.
05:48And why is he doing it again?
05:50He's doing it to help the oil and gas industry from which he came.
05:54He's a radical.
05:56He sees the world in a rearview mirror.
05:59Let's just stay in the oil and gas era.
06:02Let's stay in the coal era.
06:04Let's not move to a new innovation economy.
06:08Let's not move to a clean energy economy.
06:11Let's just stay back in the past.
06:15We'll let China have the future.
06:17We'll let Germany have the future.
06:19We'll let India have the future.
06:20But we own the past, says Chris Wright.
06:23We own the energy past, and we're going to protect it against any innovation in America that would in any way inhibit the ability of the past to continue to reap profits from America.
06:37And by the way, one of the things which he killed is my offshore wind manufacturing bill, which was going to give incentives to companies in the United States to manufacture the offshore wind technologies to be deployed.
06:55Killed that.
06:56Killed that.
06:57That was going to keep the jobs here.
06:59That was going to incentivize American companies to innovate in the manufacture of offshore wind technologies.
07:07He wants to kill that because he wants to kill the offshore wind industry.
07:11Why does he want to kill the offshore wind industry?
07:13What's Chris Wright's thinking?
07:15Here's what he's thinking.
07:16Here's what Donald Trump is thinking.
07:18Ah, the more that you deploy offshore wind is the less natural gas you need to generate electricity.
07:25And since that's where he comes from, that's the past.
07:29So he has to protect the past.
07:30He's a radical, Chris Wright.
07:32Just an absolutely rabid radical looking in a rearview mirror at the past.
07:38And anything that would interfere with that, including massive deployment of offshore wind, must be killed.
07:45So that's what he's recommended here in the House Ways and Means and the House Energy and Commerce Committee bill.
07:52But that's not all.
07:53That's not all that Chris Wright is engaging in, that Republicans engaging in, Donald Trump is engaging in.
07:59They're also cutting billions in historic investments from the Inflation Reduction Act, in environmental justice, in air pollution reduction programs.
08:11Even at schools, even where kids are exposed to the pollution, they're removing any of the protections against kids breathing in this dangerous asthma-inducing air that's been polluted by oil and gas and coal.
08:28And that includes $20 billion in the climate bank, the green bank, which Chris Van Hollen and I secured in the Inflation Reduction Act.
08:40Also, it's called the Inflation Reduction Act because Joe Manchin, who voted for it, did not want it to be called the biggest climate bill, the biggest clean energy bill in the history of the world.
08:50But that's what it is. It's the biggest clean energy bill in history.
08:57And what McKenzie has analyzed is that the $20 billion Green Bank will unleash $250 billion worth of private sector investment in clean energy technologies.
09:11Well, if you're Chris Wright, you have to kill that.
09:14You can't allow for a massive revolution in clean energy to come out of the Green Energy Bank.
09:22So, Chris Wright, Mr. Radical, reactionary, look at the world in a rearview mirror, Secretary of Energy, he's killed that too.
09:34At Donald Trump's behest, by the way. Donald Trump's behest.
09:38Again, he looks like a very nice man. But that's not what the job of the Secretary of Energy requires.
09:46It requires vision. It requires looking ahead, leading the way.
09:50Having America be competitive with the Chinese in new technology.
09:54We're in a big battle with China over trade.
09:57Well, we won't have anything to send to them in clean energy.
10:00It's going to be a one-way street. One-way street coming from them to us after they finish off our clean energy industry,
10:08which is what they're trying to do.
10:09In the same way they have massive cuts to the National Institutes of Health.
10:13Research in Alzheimer's and cancer and diabetes and other diseases is going to finish off our ability to be competitive in biotech.
10:23This is the next step. Let's finish off the clean energy industry as well.
10:29Unfortunately, the investments in the clean energy technologies would have created jobs by the millions.
10:37It would have strengthened our energy independence because all of that energy, by definition, is produced here in the United States of America.
10:46It's our sun. It's our wind. It would be our batteries that we could store that electricity with.
10:53We don't need the Chinese. We don't need anybody else. We could just do it right here.
10:57What could be more conducive to being able to have a headline of energy independence than capturing all of these God-given gifts which we have in our country?
11:07Destroyed across the board and they're going to be killing the funding that would save consumers' money at the pump by increasing the fuel economy standards of the vehicles which we drive in our country.
11:24The one thing the oil industry hates, I just talked about the natural gas industry, they hate wind and solar and batteries generating new electricity.
11:36What does the oil industry hate? Well, the oil industry hates vehicles that are twice as energy efficient as all vehicles.
11:44Instead of 27 miles a gallon, they get 54 miles a gallon. Instead of 54 miles a gallon, they get 108 miles a gallon.
11:52Or, if it's plug-in all-electric or plug-in hybrid, it's pretty much an infinity sign that's next to how efficient that vehicle is and how little oil they need.
12:05And that's a death star for the oil industry. So they've got to kill the fuel economy standards that make all of the vehicles which we drive more efficient because it's just going to protect the past, which is what Donald Trump's all about.
12:20There's some kind of nostalgia he has for 1958. He wants to go back in time. But America can't afford to be looking in the rear of a mirror because our European, our Asian, our South American competitors, they're coming for us.
12:41We're only 5% of the world's population. And up until the Trump administration, what has given us our edge is innovation.
12:48It's investment in research. It's looking ahead. And it's trying to lead the way. And that's where young people in our country want to go.
12:57But instead of the dawn of a clean energy future, Republicans are sunsetting incentives that would spur clean domestic manufacturing for industries inside of the United States.
13:11And by the way, let me say it again. Just a very brief period of time, about three years since the passage of the biggest climate bill in history,
13:23we've created 400,000 new jobs in the clean energy sector in the United States and already unleashed $400 billion worth of energy investment.
13:33So they are committed, the Republicans, and they're proud of it, led by Chris Wright, an oil and gas man, to be the world's laggard, not leader, to just fall behind everybody in the clean energy sector.
13:49That's what their plan is, to destroy everything that has been unleashed in our nation.
13:57And we not only won't be the leader in the global economy or the clean energy economy, we're just going to cede the jobs.
14:05We're going to cede the progress to our economic rivals led by the Chinese.
14:11And who is making this worse?
14:15Again, it's Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, the fracker in chief.
14:20He's a fracker.
14:22He really believes in fracking for oil, fracking for gas.
14:26A man who just last week told the Congress that his agency had paid all its bills canceled,
14:32no clean energy grants, laid off barely a handful of staff, and wasn't freezing funding.
14:38Every one of those statements is false.
14:41Now he's doubling down with a thoughtless regulatory bonfire.
14:47And this deregulatory blitz eliminates standards for everyday appliances in our homes.
14:54Microwaves, refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines.
14:59All the regulations say is make all those devices more energy efficient so you don't have to burn coal
15:06in order to have the washing machine work, in order to have the refrigerator work.
15:11We're not asking for anyone to put a mission to Mars in place.
15:17We're not asking for anyone to be a rocket scientist.
15:22We're asking for people to make dishwashers more efficient.
15:27Washing machines more efficient.
15:29And you know what Chris Wright says?
15:31Impossible.
15:32Impossible.
15:33We can't figure out how to do that.
15:36So we're just going to stop all progress that we're making in ensuring that all these electricity-consuming appliances are more efficient.
15:47And the less efficient they are is the bigger the electricity bill for every single American.
15:53That's their goal.
15:55And what happens when you have to consume more electricity?
15:58You've got to pay the natural gas industry for all the extra electricity which is coming into your home.
16:05That's the plan.
16:06Oil industry wants automobiles, trucks to be less efficient.
16:12The natural gas industry wants all appliances, homes, everything less efficient, and not to use wind and solar and battery storage technology.
16:23Okay?
16:24They each have two simple business plans, which Chris Wright, who is one of the most radical people who has ever had a position in the American government, wants to put in place.
16:35The fracker in chief.
16:37I wrote the law.
16:38I'm the author of the law that the Department of Energy uses to set the standards for dishwashers, for refrigeration in our country.
16:50I put that law on the books in 1987.
16:53And so far, it has saved somewhere around the need for about 200 coal burning plants to ever have been built in the first place, because those devices never needed the electricity that otherwise would have been needed if there was less efficiency.
17:09And the bill itself, according to experts, has now saved $2 trillion in energy bills since 1987.
17:20Can I say that again?
17:21I'm very proud of this.
17:22My bill has helped to save $2 trillion that consumers otherwise would have had to have paid in their electricity bills to have inefficient refrigeration, inefficient dishwashers in their house.
17:35Inefficient air conditioning in their house.
17:39$2 trillion has been saved.
17:41And it has also prevented 3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from going up.
17:49That's a lot of greenhouse gases that never went up because we made those appliances so much more energy efficient.
17:58And it then saved consumers $500 a year because they never had to pay those electricity bills.
18:05So you would think the Secretary of Energy would say, let's keep moving forward.
18:11Let's keep making all of these devices more and more efficient.
18:16But no, he works in natural gas.
18:20He works in oil, so his goal is to roll it all back because it harms the business model of the natural gas industry or the oil industry.
18:32So here's the thing.
18:34I personally believe in Darwinian paranoia-inducing competition.
18:42That's what I believe.
18:44I'm a capitalist.
18:45Let's just have everybody be able to do everything.
18:49That's not the socialistic attitude that Chris Wright has.
18:53He wants to use socialism to protect the oil and gas industry from real competition.
18:59Is he going to take the tax breaks for the oil and gas industry off the books?
19:02Oh, no.
19:03He's not taking those tax breaks off the books.
19:05Is he going to take off favorable regulatory protections for the oil and gas industry?
19:10He's not going to do that.
19:12No.
19:13No.
19:14This is all the old boys' network, the billionaire boys' club network in the energy industry,
19:20to thwart the movement that young people want to a future of clean energy, of the solar and wind, all-electric vehicle future for our country.
19:32So Chris Wright and Trump want to throw everything out because nothing says freedom more than smog and higher utility bills.
19:44They want us to have the freedom to have more smog.
19:47They want us to have the freedom to have more asthma.
19:51They want us, as a nation, to have the freedom to pay higher utility bills for natural gas, generated electricity.
19:58That's his idea of freedom, Chris Wright.
20:00And again, it just goes back to the bottom line of those companies that he used to run before he just became Secretary of Energy.
20:08Now, I don't mind him saying that he wants to have a new future for our country, but you can't say it simultaneously when you're killing the future.
20:25You're killing it, Chris Wright.
20:28You are the worst example of what the Trump administration is bringing to Washington.
20:34You are going to make us more dependent on fossil fuels.
20:38Consumers will have to pay higher prices.
20:41It's going to lead to higher levels of disease in our nation.
20:46And we're going to see more storms like Hurricane Milton and Helene last year that caused $300 billion worth of damage.
20:55We're going to see more fires like that, which we saw in L.A., which caused $140 billion worth of damage.
21:01Those are just three storms that caused $440 billion worth of damage, those three storms alone.
21:08So, you know, you just say, hey, Chris, hey, Mr. Secretary, what's your answer to that?
21:15And you know what his answer is?
21:16More fossil fuels.
21:18Warm up the planet even more.
21:19Turn it up a few more degrees.
21:21The temperature's too low.
21:23Let's put the temperature up higher.
21:25And what are young people saying?
21:27They're saying, turn the thermostat down.
21:30This planet's getting too warm.
21:32Just turn it down.
21:33And that's renewables.
21:35That's the way in which you do it.
21:37So we've seen Chris Wright make outlandishly false claims before.
21:43Back in March, Chris Wright took the stage in front of oil and gas executives
21:48and delivered what might go down as the most egregious fossil-fueled fiction ever spoken at a podium.
21:56And that's saying a lot.
21:58It was part sermon, part stand-up, and part 100% spin.
22:05Chris Wright said, and I quote, the previous administration's policy was focused myopically on climate change with people as simply collateral damage.
22:18That's his statement.
22:19The Inflation Reduction Act, on the other hand, did create 400,000 clean energy jobs.
22:26It unleashed $400 billion worth of investments.
22:30That's not collateral damage.
22:32That's a climate comeback.
22:34That's a middle-class revival in our country.
22:38That's 400,000 middle-class jobs in our nation that the Inflation Reduction Act, also known as the biggest climate bill in history, has produced.
22:47And they're committed to stopping it.
22:50And that's what Republicans are willing to tank with their latest proposal.
22:56So now I'm going to give you the killer stat.
22:59This is why they have to kill it.
23:01Last year in the United States, 94% of all new electrical generation capacity installed was wind and solar and batteries.
23:13So the natural gas industry is saying, that can't happen.
23:16You mean we were left with 6%?
23:18Yeah, that's right.
23:20This thing is moving.
23:21Wind, solar, and battery storage for electrical generation in our country.
23:25And if you do it every year for the next 10 years or the next 25 years, then the natural gas industry just won't be able to compete in the marketplace.
23:34So Adam Smith is spinning in his grave, looking at what Chris Wright is doing today.
23:41Tampering with the free market, tampering with incentives for the competition to oil and gas who have received tax breaks for 100 years.
23:52Adam Smith's spinning in his grave, thinking how capitalism is being completely distorted.
23:58Although he wrote a whole chapter in Wealth of Nations, and the chapter was just about how much he hated monopolies, how much he hated oligopolies, who are anathema when it comes to competition, when it comes to capitalism.
24:13He really wanted Darwinian paranoia-inducing competition, Adam Smith.
24:18That's not what Chris Wright wants.
24:19That's not what Donald Trump wants.
24:20Donald Trump wants to be able to put his thumb on the scale for the oil and gas industry, for the coal industry, just to destroy the future competition.
24:28And meanwhile, the Trump administration has already cost America more than 50,000 clean energy jobs and over $8 billion in private sector clean energy projects.
24:40If anything is collateral damage, it's our economy under Donald Trump and the Chris Wright chaos agenda in the marketplace for the clean energy industry.
24:55Here's what Chris Wright also said.
24:58He also said, quote, natural gas has been the fastest growing source of energy over the last 15 years.
25:05Wind and solar, he said, supplied roughly 3% of global primary energy.
25:14Chris Wright must have brought a calculator from 2005, because those numbers are just completely wrong.
25:24In reality, wind and solar are the fastest growing electricity sources in history.
25:31In 2024, as I've already said, they made up over 90% of all new electrical generation in the United States.
25:40And listen to this. This is scary for the oil and gas industry.
25:4396% of all new electrical generation installed worldwide last year was wind and solar in battery.
25:5396% globally wind and solar.
25:56So he's saying, oh, it's just such a small part.
25:59No, it's not.
26:01And it's going to grow and grow and grow and grow.
26:04And that's what is putting the fear into the hearts of the oil and gas industry.
26:10They've got to stop it.
26:12And so they've ordered the House Republicans to kill it in the Ways and Means Committee,
26:17kill it in the Energy and Commerce Committee, and then they want to send it over here
26:23so that Republicans can rubber stamp this decision to kill the future.
26:27And I guess that's inaccurate. It's not the future. It's right now.
26:33It's over 90% of the United States and 96% globally last year,
26:38the installation of new electrical generation capacity.
26:43And so they're desperate, totally desperate.
26:46They wish they had killed the Affordable Care Act like 10 years ago
26:50because now they don't have the nerve to try to kill the Affordable Care Act
26:53because now people already are benefiting from those changes.
26:57So they're trying to kill this, kill it right now,
27:00kill it before it gets more momentum
27:02and destroys the business model of 100 years of the oil, gas and coal industry.
27:07And by the way, in the United States alone,
27:10we added 50 new megawatts of new solar in 2024.
27:18Think of it like this.
27:19In 2009, we only had 2,000 megawatts of solar from the beginning of time until 2009.
27:26Last year, 50,000 new megawatts of solar was installed in our country.
27:33And if there was 50,000 next year, and the year after, and the year after,
27:38and when 10 years is done, you have a half a million new megawatts of solar.
27:44So the oil and gas industry, listening to Donald Trump, who said,
27:50if you raise a billion dollars for me, he said this last April,
27:55in the middle of his campaign, I will kill the clean energy revolution.
27:59I will kill it.
28:00So this is just pay to play.
28:03Here's an industry that's growing, creating new jobs, hand over fist,
28:09just growing at a faster rate than the economy itself.
28:13Growing way faster than the economy itself.
28:16And what we now see are the fossil fuel apologists
28:23saying that new solar just doesn't work.
28:28When in fact, new solar is now cheaper than simply operating an existing coal plant.
28:34Offshore wind, half the cost of building a new gas plant.
28:39That's what offshore wind amounts to.
28:43Half the price.
28:44They have to kill it.
28:45It's too efficient.
28:46It's too clean.
28:47It doesn't pollute.
28:49It doesn't cause asthma.
28:51They've got to kill it now, says Chris Wright, says the oil and gas industry.
28:56Chris Wright also said, quote, wind has been singled out because it's had a singularly poor record of driving up prices and increasing citizen outrage.
29:06Well, that's just not true.
29:07In fact, the states with the most wind and solar, Iowa, South Dakota, Texas, they also have lower electricity rates than other parts of the country.
29:20Clean energy isn't just clean, it is cheap.
29:23If Republicans really cared about communities, they would stop exporting our liquefied natural gas, which drives up prices at home.
29:34So let's stop these fossil fuel companies from gouging families with price spikes and pretending that pollution is patriotism.
29:45The administration has made its trade-off clear.
29:49Your future for their profit, that's Trump's art of the deal.
29:53They get to be rich, and young people don't have a future when it comes to clean energy or protecting against climate change.
30:02That's the art of the deal.
30:04It's an intergenerational deal.
30:07The older generation gets all the money, and the next generations take all the risk.
30:13That's his deal.
30:15And he's expecting everyone to respond like a candidate on The Apprentice.
30:20Well, they're not going to.
30:21Young people are going to rise up.
30:23The word's going to get out.
30:25This is very dangerous, what he is doing.
30:28The Trump administration, said Chris Wright, will end the Biden administration's irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.
30:42That's Chris Wright.
30:44This is kind of radical, irrational, non-fact-based, but ultimately Trumpian at its soul, policies that Chris Wright has to defend.
31:03Now, you would hope that he knows better, but I think it's different.
31:08I think that what Chris Wright has is a remarkable ability to harness voluminous amounts of information to defend a knowingly erroneous premise.
31:17And that erroneous premise is that wind and solar and batteries aren't working right now.
31:22So he has to just tell lies about it.
31:25Plain and simple.
31:26Lie, lie, lie.
31:28And I get it.
31:29This is a religious war, pitting economic stimulus policies that drove investment in the free market,
31:35against their religion of pure Trumpism,
31:39pitting corporate profits against breathable air, drinkable water, and a habitable planet.
31:46Do you place their aims at the foot of an effigy of Harold Hamm?
31:53Well, Republicans do.
31:55He's the biggest natural gas guy in the country, and he said he would raise the money for Donald Trump.
32:00Here's the real gospel.
32:02Clean energy is not polarizing.
32:05It's popular in the polls.
32:07Not only do people not like it, 70% of registered voters support the biggest climate bill in history,
32:16with over 70% of registered voters saying the U.S. needs to use more renewable energy than it does today.
32:23That's not religion.
32:26That is stimulus in solar panels.
32:29And, again, it's the public saying move to the future.
32:34Move away from oil and gas.
32:36If we want to talk about sacrifice, it's our communities who are sacrificing their lungs to pollution,
32:43their homes to floods, their paychecks to fossil fuel price spikes, all for the religion of climate denialism.
32:54I think all these guys, they must have got their climate degree from Trump University.
33:02I think Chris Wright and all of them inside of his administration because it's just the opposite of what is happening out there.
33:10The planet is dangerously warming.
33:12We've got a response that is massively capturing a private sector investment all across our country
33:19to deploy the renewable energy resources that reduces greenhouse gases.
33:23And yet, again, I'm going to come back to Chris Wright.
33:26He claims the previous administration's climate policies have been impoverishing to our citizens,
33:33economically destructive to our businesses, and politically polarizing.
33:38The cure, this is Chris Wright, was far more destructive than the disease.
33:44There are no winners in that world except for politicians in rapidly growing interest groups.
33:51Is he talking about the 450,000 asthma deaths every year worldwide?
33:59Let me say that again.
34:01Is he talking about the 450,000 people who die from asthma every year globally?
34:07Or the billions in extreme weather and climate change related damage every year?
34:13That disease sounds pretty damaging.
34:17The cure?
34:18Well, regulations that this administration is going to try to roll back right now.
34:23They're going to try to roll back the protections that are now in place to reduce dramatically the number of people who die from asthma.
34:30And the rest of the world, of course, is also deploying the cure, the renewable energy technologies.
34:38So, is there too little mercury up in the air?
34:43Is there too few air toxics up in the air right now?
34:47That Chris Wright says we need more of them?
34:50We need more of them in the lungs of young people?
34:53That we need more of them in the lungs of young mothers, pregnant women across our country and across the planet?
34:59I don't hear anyone calling for more mercury, more toxics in the air.
35:06And if the regulations stayed in place, it would save 11,000 deaths every year.
35:12And speaking of interest groups, let us not pretend this administration is for the people.
35:18The only group Trump has ever prioritized is the fossil fuel elite.
35:23And so now we come back to Chris Wright again, who is bringing that same attitude towards governing.
35:31And he just doesn't get the attention he deserves for the malevolent way in which he is trying to destroy the clean energy future of our country.
35:42Today's energy regulatory rollback today is a kamikaze mission against clean energy, against efficiency, against accountability.
35:54And Republicans are more than happy to sign our planet's death sentence.
35:59That's what they're doing.
36:00That's what their plan is this year, on the floor of the Senate, and in the rollback of all the regulations that have been propagated over the years at the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.
36:14A death sentence for the planet.
36:18We're talking about rescinding energy and water conservation standards for dozens of products that most Americans have in their homes.
36:26Microwaves, faucets, that save billions of dollars and billions of gallons of water annually.
36:32And what are we going to get instead?
36:34What's Chris Wright promising?
36:35What's Donald Trump promising us?
36:38A rubric written by and for fossil fuel companies.
36:45That's what we're going to have.
36:47Fossil fuel profiteers.
36:49No science, no data, just the same old special interests pushing the same old lies.
36:56So when Chris Wright and Republicans say they want to cut red tape, what he really means is cut clean air.
37:04Cut consumer savings.
37:08Cut climate future.
37:11Cut clean water.
37:14Cut safe lands.
37:18Cut, cut, cut.
37:21So let's call this what it is.
37:24The Trump deregulation doctrine.
37:28If it saves money, repeal it.
37:31If it protects public health, gut it.
37:35If it curbs emissions, cancel it.
37:38And if it benefits the American people, sabotage it.
37:43This isn't a regulatory review.
37:45It's a regulatory revenge tour.
37:48And it's not just about energy efficiency.
37:51It's about justice.
37:53Because it's frontline communities.
37:55The poorest communities.
37:57Black and brown communities.
37:58Poor communities.
38:00Already overburdened by asthma.
38:03Heat.
38:04Energy insecurity.
38:05Who are going to pay a disproportionate price.
38:09Because of what Trump is doing.
38:12Because of what Chris Wright is doing.
38:14It's almost unconscionable.
38:16What Chris Wright is attempting to perpetrate upon the poorest.
38:22The most vulnerable in our society.
38:25But he's doing it.
38:26All because they're not rich enough.
38:28The oil barons.
38:29The natural gas barons.
38:31The coal barons.
38:32They're not rich enough.
38:33We have to have more people die.
38:35We have to have more people get sick.
38:38Madam.
38:40Madam America.
38:44Mr. America.
38:45The American people deserve better than this.
38:48They deserve an energy secretary.
38:50Who believes in science.
38:52Who tells the truth.
38:53Who doesn't measure progress in barrels sold.
38:56Or rules repealed.
38:57We should be investing in the future.
38:59Not dismantling the future.
39:01We should be building cleaner.
39:03Safer.
39:04And more affordable systems.
39:05Not resurrecting pollution.
39:07In the name of profit.
39:08So to Chris Wright and Donald Trump.
39:10I say we will fight you in the courts.
39:12We will fight you in the states.
39:14We will fight you on the floor of this chamber.
39:17Because every rule you tear down.
39:19We are going to rebuild stronger.
39:21Every lie you tell.
39:22We are going to counter with the truth.
39:24And every time you try to sell out the American people.
39:27To pad a corporate balance sheet.
39:30So that the rich become even richer.
39:33We will be back there.
39:35To push against you.
39:37To protect the American public.
39:39To attempt to protect those who are most vulnerable in our society.
39:43So you're not going to back down.
39:45We're not going to back down.
39:47This is a fight for the future.
39:51This is a fight for the planet.
39:54They're trying to write the death certificate of the planet.
39:57Right now.
39:59And we're not going to let them get away with it.
40:02They're in for a historic resistance.
40:05Coming up from the streets of our country.
40:08Because this is too important just to be another source of revenue.
40:13For the tax breaks for the already too rich in our society.
40:17And I'll just finish with this.
40:19The three richest guys in America who sat behind Donald Trump at the inauguration.
40:25They control more wealth than the bottom 50% of our population combined.
40:30Do they really need more?
40:32Do oil and gas barons really need more?
40:35Does it have to come at the expense of the future of all the young people in our country?
40:40Does it have to come at the expense of the health of everyone in our nation?
40:45Aren't we better than this?
40:48Aren't we really the innovation country?
40:51So that would be my message.
40:53You're in for a fight.
40:55It's a fight for the future against those who want to pull us back towards a past.
41:01Which ultimately has created the issues.
41:05The problems.
41:06The risks.
41:07That we're confronted with today.
41:09So with that, Mr. President, I yield back.
41:13And I thank you for your courtesy.
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