TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer Discusses The Cost Of Climate Change & Democrats’ Agenda To Reduce Energy Prices

Washington, D.C. - Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke at a spotlight forum, co-hosted by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, on the importance of clean energy to reduce costs for American families. Below is a transcript of Leader Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Climate change, seriously, is making our lives more expensive, and Trump's pro-fossil fuel, anti-climate agenda means communities are left to cover those costs. Climate change action is personal to me. I always think of my grandson. He was two weeks old, and I often go on bike rides along the southern shore of Brooklyn. It's a beautiful wetland that let the Atlantic lapse up on. And when he was two weeks old, I did my first bike ride after his birth, and it just hit me like a thunderbolt, as I was doing that bike ride, that he may never see it if I don't act, and act strongly, and if we don't, because if the ocean rose an inch or two, that would be it for that wetlands.

So, this is real. It's real to each one of us in different ways, but particularly when we think about the next generation. But it's also about rising costs today. And last night, I spoke at, I don't know how many of you were there, I spoke at LCV's annual meeting, and I talked, I shared a vision of how Democrats will lower energy costs when we take the majority in 2027.

We'll double down on clean energy, which is affordable energy. We're going to undo all the damage they did, the Republicans did to IRA, and their mania to kill clean energy because they're in the grip, the vice grip of the fossil fuel industry. We would prioritize making it easier to build clean energy and transmission projects. We will upgrade our aging grid with more transmission and storage. We will ensure that data centers pay their fair share and support healthy communities, and we will enshrine consumer protections that lower costs into our energy position.

Underpinning all these things is a basic and fundamental reality. If we don't act now, the climate crisis will get worse. If the climate crisis gets worse, then one of the many consequences is that costs go up. As this excellent panel will dive into, and thank you all for coming, climate change is making energy more expensive, groceries more expensive, property insurance more expensive, health care more expensive. And as Sheldon [Whitehouse] has focused so justifiably on, flood insurance and insurance in general, home insurance more expensive. So that in large parts of this country, people can't sell their homes, people can't buy a new home.

Donald Trump's failed policies are only making that worse, as we Democrats exposed in our recent broken promises report, and this week's news is a perfect example. This is one of the most-he does a lot of outrageous things in a lot of areas-but one of the most outrageous things he's done on the environment is, he bribed the French energy company TotalEnergies with one billion to forgo their offshore wind development, some of it off the coast of New York, and instead double down on expensive fossil fuels that not only pollutes the atmosphere, but it's more expensive, raises people's costs. People are going to have a higher electric bill to subsidize oil and gas and coal. It's outrageous. That's what you get with Donald Trump: broken promises, dirty deals, and higher bills.

And it's a unique opportunity for all of us in the environmental- who are part of the environmental movement one way or the other-to expand our base, because average folks who may never have cared about the effects on the environment, because they are longer term and not immediate of impact. When they get a higher electric bill, when they see that they can't pay their insurance, it hits them right away, and we have to make real efforts to reach out to these people, and this hearing is part of that resolution for doing it.

So, I want to thank you for convening the hearing, and we have to remain committed to climate action. And no one is more committed than the man to my left, Sheldon Whitehouse, so thank you.

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