WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a senior member of both the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the follow statement in response to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

“Climate change is real. We are already seeing its impacts around the world and its effects are going to get worse. As the latest report from the IPCC recommends, countries the world over need to start taking greater measures to adapt and become more resilient to the future effects of climate change. We are going to see a more dramatic and more negative affect on our environment, our infrastructure, our health and our economy if we let the deniers take root and jeopardize action and innovation that can develop American-made solutions.

“We can create good-paying clean energy jobs to help mitigate the causes of climate change, increase energy efficiency, reduce our carbon footprint and better prepare us for the extreme weather. We can green our infrastructure, and restore and integrate natural defenses against sea level rise and destructive storms, to make both human communities and natural ecosystems more resilient to the destructive effects of climate change.  We can change the course that we are on. We’ve already done a significant amount of work. But the U.S. must lead globally – and we must lead by example. Pollution, storms and droughts do not abide by border signs. From the Chesapeake Bay to China, we must all cooperate and coordinate plans to reduce the risks to our people, our businesses and our communities.”

Senator Cardin is a co-chairman of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change and a member of the Senate Climate Action Task Force.