LEAHY STATEMENT ON SECOND U.S. CONTRIBUTION OF $500 MILLION TO THE GREEN CLIMATE FUND

WASHINGTON (TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2017) – U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the State Department and Foreign Operations, reaction to the State Department announcement of the second U.S. contribution of $500 million to the green climate fund:

“I commend the Administration for making this contribution, which has bipartisan support in the Senate.  It will help give us a ‘seat at the table’ in future climate change negotiations which even President–elect Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of State endorsed as part of our nation’s global leadership.  The human causes of climate change, which 11 national academies of science and the vast majority of the world’s scientists have recognized, pose as grave a threat to world peace and security as anything in human history.  These funds will help countries mitigate their climate change impacts and adapt to the devastating droughts, floods, and other weather extremes we are already experiencing.  In helping to advance this global effort, it will serve our own national security interests. 

“To continue to use the tired excuse that the science is inconclusive or that there is no imminent threat, as the EPA nominee and some Members of Congress still do, is willful political obstruction and a denial of the abundant and compelling scientific record.  It is also reckless and it trifles with the lives and livelihoods of future generations.”

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