WASHINGTON, DC—This morning, CAP Action CEO John Podesta joined Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington on a conference call with reporters to discuss the urgent need for federal legislation to limit carbon emissions. Below is a series of selected quotations from the call.
CAP Action President and CEO John Podesta
“This has been an historic week in Washington, D.C. with respect to our clean-energy future.”
“We’re expecting a major victory in the House Energy and Commerce Committee where for the first time the House is going to pass legislation to reduce global warming pollution and put us on the path to create jobs and protect consumers.”
“We estimate at the Center for American Progress that the bill being marked up today will be finished this evening, and will take the equivalent of 500 million cars off the road in terms of reductions of carbon dioxide as a result of their actions today by 2020.”
“The leaders from business, from labor, and in the political community have made a choice between a clean-energy future and the policies of the past, which hobbled our economy, punished consumers, and left us hooked on foreign oil.”
“This is a week where there’s tremendous momentum, but none of that would have been possible if it had not been built on the tremendous effort that is going on in states across this country led by progressive governors who saw the future of their states being tied to moving from old dirty fossil fuels to a clean-energy future.”
Governor Chris Gregoire (D-WA)
“Thirty governors have signed on, bipartisan, with a set of principles for comprehensive federal legislation to improve clean-energy jobs, a break from foreign oil and to reduce the threat of global warming.”
“What we have discovered through our Western Climate Initiative, which is now comprised of seven western states and four Canadian provinces, is that while we can make good progress, we really do need the federal government to take this up and set ourselves on a path nationally to get the job done.”
“In 2005 we adopted the California clean car standards, and have been fighting ever since to make those such that we could adopt them and move forward with them, and I’m really very excited that the president has made that possible now.”
“We have adopted some of the most progressive stringent energy efficiency and green building codes in our state and are living up to gold standards.”
“We set a goal of having 20,000 green-collar jobs by 2020, and this year we already have 7,000 green-collar jobs already.”
“So it’s very clear that if states take the right action there is an absolute appetite by the people, business, and industry to make this happen.”
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