ICYMI: Reps. Donald McEachin and Elaine Luria & State Senator Jennifer McClellan Hold Virtual Roundtable on the Impacts of Climate Change in VA
Nearly 200 Virginians attended the roundtable
Today, Members of Congress Donald McEachin and Elaine Luria and State Senator Jennifer McClellan held a virtual roundtable with nearly 200 Virginians to discuss the impact of climate change on Virginia and why Joe Biden is the best candidate to tackle climate change head on.
See below for some key quotes from the roundtable discussion:
“That’s exactly what Joe Biden is going to do. He’s going to turn to the [environmental justice] communities and say, ‘You tell us what works.’ Because each community is unique. Each community has its own separate issues, and each community has its own separate solutions. And together, we sort of meld them all together and come up with this wonderful approach to how to tackle [environmental justice] issues. And so you can count on the Vice President — as President Biden — to do just that. He will double the amount of money that we’re investing in clean water and in clean air, and he will make sure that, again, that the environmental justice community is at the table and being heard — not just at the table for window dressing,” said Congressman Donald McEachin.
“First, it would be refreshing to have an Administration that respected and valued [Congress’s power of appropriations], and, you know, there’s things that we’ve been working on — the idea of stopping offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast, or truly all of our coastlines…and having a partner that will help us in that objective is incredibly important. And I think that there are things that we can do, even if we were to find ourselves divided between the House and the Senate… I think that we need to have leadership at the top with Joe Biden as President to help guide us in the right direction,” said Congresswoman Elaine Luria.
“We’re making progress in Virginia — we can not do it alone. It does us no good if we don’t have a national partner. We have great partners in Congress already but we need a partner in the White House. As you’ve heard, as you know, Donald Trump has allowed the fossil fuel industry and big polluters to write climate policy law that pollutes our air and our water and does not address the effects of climate change. So we need to elect Joe Biden so that Virginia has a partner to tackle climate change in the White House, and as you’ve already heard, Joe Biden is ready to act on day one. As I traveled across Virginia during the campaign in 2019 to flip the Virginia House and Senate, I heard an urgency among Virginians, especially young Virginians — that the number one issue they wanted addressed was climate change. We’re seeing the impacts in our daily lives… but again, one state can not act alone. We need partners at the federal level. And that’s why I’m so proud to support Joe Biden for President so that we can have that partner in him,” said State Senator Jennifer McClellan. |
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