Time to wake up

This senator has given 150 pleas for climate action. Now, he has a few words for Trump.

All of these Senate floor speeches have urged the same thing since 2012: Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island keeps warning his political peers of the perils of ignoring climate science.

In his 150th speech delivered Tuesday, Whitehouse says:

While the president-elect mocked Republican politicians groveling before the Koch brothers at their “beg-a-thon,” as he called it, he is busy filling his staff with Koch operatives. Donald Trump may have won the presidency. But with operatives like Myron Ebell, the Koch brothers are moving in to run it. The new president will hear from our military, our national labs, and NASA (who, with a rover driving around on Mars, may actually know a little science) that this is deadly serious. I encourage President-elect Trump to listen to these voices of reason and expertise, not to the Swamp Things. Don’t be taken in by industry lobbyists and front groups, scratching and clawing to protect a $700 billion conflict of interest.

Trump isn’t keen on listening to scientists, but he does seem to care what his family members think. Whitehouse adds, “Consider listening to your children, who joined you just seven years ago in saying climate science was ‘irrefutable,’ and portends ‘catastrophic and irreversible’ consequences.”

Trump and co. really did say that. They signed a letter arguing for global climate action, which Grist uncovered this summer.