“Florida and Rhode Island have a lot in common,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in a floor speech yesterday, “like a beautiful coastline, an economy and a way of life that is tied to the sea and as a result risk from the ocean from a changing climate.”
Whitehouse recently went on a fact-finding mission down the southeast coast looking for local solutions to coastal climate change, you can listen to Miami public radio interview him about it here), Upon his return, he invited Florida Senator Ben Nelson to join him in his weekly climate speech on the Senate floor.
“At high tide, they are already having flooding in the streets of Miami Beach,” Nelson said.
Whitehouse added, “One of the scientists I met in Florida said it this way, very simply, ‘if we don’t do something about this people are going to get hurt and it’s going to cost a lot of money.'”