 I love that this event is focused on climate change, and I am amazingly honored to be standing between two incredible climate activists, Peter Walsh and Anne Markey, thank you guys. I think, like the politicians on this stage, and probably a lot of you, sustainability has been a journey. And I can kind of give you a visual, okay? In 1984, when we started manufacturing Burton snowboards in Vermont, we had to wear these masks that vented outside because we were taking wood and we were dipping it into polyurethane. And we lived right in front of a trailer park, and when the wind blew the wrong way, they all started calling, what the fuck is that smell? What are you doing over there people? And you know, Vermont had these amazing cottage industry laws, which I always say allowed us to succeed in Vermont, but it also allowed us to do light manufacturing that was probably not very sustainable. And I think that the men on this stage as well as many of you have had a turn in sustainability, and that was our journey. We didn't know, right? Right from the beginning, Burton snowboards was more interested in the long-term sustainability of the sport than profits. 30 years ago, we didn't know that meant climate change. We didn't know. We thought that meant investing in ski resorts, investing in learn to ride equipment. We were going to get more people out there, and all of a sudden, we had what I call an old fucking shit moment. I don't know if we have to be bleeped out on that. He said we didn't. I asked him, I said, do you have to bleep me? And he said, no. So we had an old fucking shit moment where we were like, we are committed to the long-term sustainability of this sport. We want this sport to live way beyond us, and we're not talking climate change. And so 10 years ago, we made a really big commitment to go from behind the curve. And I want to say this, we are a privately held company. Burton Snowbirds has one shareholder. And I give a fuck. And so we are young, and we can move the needle, right? So 10 years ago, we had this old shit moment where we were like, we've always been more concerned about the long-term sustainability of snowboarding and the sport. But we weren't addressing climate change. And it's because we made a petroleum-based product. My journey has a visual. In 1985, I was wearing a mask and dipping snowboards in the polyurethane while the neighbors complained. And now I'm introducing two of the most amazing climate advocates for our government. Amazing journey. We've come a long way. Two years into our... Jake and I were always concerned because we made harbors. We make equipment. And you need petroleum-based products to do that. I'm sorry, you can be fucking Patagonian and say, I'm not going to make whatever, but we make harbors. And by the way, we are way ahead of Patagonia and all of our sustainability goals. Just look up Burton Sustainability Goals 2025. But we were like, how do we... we can't free-wash this, right? Like, we don't want to be seen as a company who relies on fossil fuels, who relies on nasty fucking chemicals, and a shit ton of water to make our out of it. By the way, we just partnered with Gore to come up with the first powdered dye for our out of wear. We no longer need water to make our out of wear. And we partnered with... or to do that. So we now have a waterless dye. But it was like, how are we going to talk about this? How are we going to talk about climate change? When we're over here in our trailer park, neighbors are going, fuck you, the smell is like really bad. We decided we wanted to be in the forefront and that you can't do it as an individual. You can't even do it as an individual company. I remember two years into our sustainability journey, which I'll call it, Jeremy Jones. I don't know if a lot of you guys know, but he's from Vermont. He's from still Vermont. Yay, Jeremy. He started something called Protect Our Winters. And he saw 15, 20 years ago that the glaciers that he was riding, the backcountry shit he was riding, it was melting, it was done. And he was like, why won't the snowboard industry talk about this? Why won't they talk about this? Let me tell you what's happening. And I will never forget two years into our sustainability journey. About eight years ago, I saw Jeremy Jones at a trade show. And he said, I need Burton to join Protect Our Winners, because that will give Protect Our Winners so much credibility. And I said, Jeremy, we make a fossil fuel product. We are talking out of both sides of our house. And I need to clean my house before I can advocate. And you know what he said? He said, Donna, the outdoor industry is bigger than big pharma. Think about that. The clothes, the equipment, everything, the ski resorts, we are bigger than big pharma. And we've got to leverage that. We've got to save. And he said, you can green your house all day long. You will not move the needle. Until you join forces with this industry and say we are bigger than big pharma. And you know what? When you take outdoor clothing, outdoor recreation or whatever, we are powerful. And we've never leveraged that. So what Jeremy Jones taught me, it's bigger than us. And we need climate champions. And we need winners and make a goddamn difference in the policy. Because you know what? We don't have much time. By 2025, carbon has to plateau. By 2030, we have to have our carbon emissions. We can only do that. With Peter Walsh in the Senate. I would like to introduce now one of our climate champions. One of the guys we're going to depend on to make these policy changes. And to work with Peter as the new senator from the state of Vermont. Thank you, Ed. Thank you so much. Thank you, Donna. Thank you, Donna, so much. That was a great presentation. And since I run for elective office, I'm going to have to aspire to a slightly higher percentage of my thoughts going unspoken. But everything that Donna said is absolutely on the money. I would like to revise and extend and have my remarks identified with her. So this is what a great day for America. You have a great delegation in Bernie Sanders and in Pat Lady. A great replacement. We need somebody who is ready on day one at 8am to be on the Senate floor and every time that he speaks, people listen. And that will be Peter Walsh. And he, I've known Peter since the day that he was elected in 2006. He came to Congress and on every single issue. My father used to say, when two people agree on absolutely everything, you don't need one of those. But he was not talking about the United States Congress. So Peter and I, we have to agree on every single issue in order to make sure that there is a chorus going up that actually reflects what the highest aspirations for our country represent in 2022. And so he is a very special candidate who will be somebody to be reckoned with immediately. I saw him in action in the United States House of Representatives where I served with Peter. We partnered on energy issues. We partnered on climate issues during the time that he and I served together. The energy efficiency portions of the Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House of Representatives in 2009, were Peter Walsh's energy efficiency. And you know, my mother always said, my mother always just said, Eddie, you have to learn how to work smarter and not harder. And that's what energy efficiency is. It's just reducing the amount of consumption. And my mother would say, if you don't learn how to do that, your father and I are going to donate your brain to Hobbit Medical School. It's a completely unused human organ. So that's who Peter is. Peter is just working smarter, not harder on all of the issues which are central to the United States moving forward. And Donna talked a lot about what the sustainability goals have to be. But the beauty is that you can do well and do good at the same time. And that's what Donna is doing with her company. You don't have to choose. You can get fabulously wealthy over in the renewables, the sustainability industries. It's not a question of whether or not they are capable of producing great wealth while reducing greenhouse gases. It's just that the politics is wrong, not the technology. And we just have to get the politics right in Washington, D.C. So Peter is leaving the House of Representatives where the politics is right, where it does work. It's the Senate where it is broken. And we need someone with Peter's great political skills in order to be able to change that. The planet is running a fever. There are no emergency rooms for our planet. We need to engage in preventative care. When I introduced the Green New Deal with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in January of 2019, Peter was with us on that day. And on that day, the Republicans and Fox News, they immediately started to say, that is socialism. That's all the Green New Deal is. And what I say is, what do you call 100 years of tax breaks for the oil, the gas, and the coal industry? Looks like socialism to me. And if you give us some of that socialism for wind and solar and all electric vehicles and battery storage technologies and all of the sustainability industries, we will bury the oil, gas, and coal industry and the generation. So we know that we can do this. We know that a revolution is already in place, is already happening. I'll ask you one question. In Massachusetts, how much of all electricity was solar last year in Massachusetts? Ten percent. Fourteen percent. Fourteen percent. And we are not the perfectly sunny state anymore than Vermont is. But the technologies are so much better than they have ever been before. That if the incentives are put in place for wind, for solar, for all electric vehicles, for charging stations which are available to everyone on a universal basis, then this revolution is going to move and move rapidly. It's the same kind of change that took place with the cell phone industry. We moved from no one having a cell phone in 1993 to 2005. A young guy invents a device which all of us now have in our pocket. And it only took 10 to 12 years for that whole revolution to take place. And as we see people fleeing Ukraine, fleeing Afghanistan, they all have one of them in their hands. So the United States can't be the laggard. We have to be the leader. We have to be the ones that show that we can unleash technological revolutions in order to save, solve big problems. And if we do that, all over the world, those technologies which are deployed in the United States will be deployed across the planet. So we need Peter. We need Peter because he is already an expert on all of these issues. He is actually an expert. He is ready to go. He understands them in great detail. But he also understands justice. He understands that when a draft opinion from Justice Alito makes clear that the goal of the Republican Party is to repeal Roe versus Wade, we need Peter Welsh on the floor of the United States Senate. We need his voice. When the language which is used by Justice Alito makes it very clear that the right to contraception, LGBTQ protections, et cetera, et cetera, are all also potentially in jeopardy. We need the brilliance of Peter Welsh on the floor of the United States Senate. Because when he speaks, Republicans are going to be docked away from their microphones because he is a warrior. He is fierce in his beliefs and his ability to be able to articulate the deepest aspirations which all of you have for our country. So I can go on and on about this great man. But all I can tell you is that you need a number of things in order to... I love the interactive nature of Vermont politics. I just love this. This is absolutely phenomenal, you know, the back to the town meeting. It's almost like you invented the town meeting. Now, it still lives, but it takes place at the beer gardens. So from my perspective, we are at the low point... And I will say this, this is my 46th year as a member of the United States Congress. And we are clearly at the bottom. The Republican Party has lost its soul. It is a holy umpteenth city area of Donald Trump. It is incapable any longer of standing up for the principles which our country needs. And if there is anyone that is going to walk onto the floor of the United States Senate in January of next year and make a difference, it is going to be Peter Welch. So my great friends, Jane and Bill Stetson, these great environmentalists who helped me in my race for the United States Senate, they've been telling me over and over again how Vermont is rallying behind Peter Welch. So all I can say to you is that you got to do everything you can. We have the issues and no one is better. We have the candidate. He will be a special senator. We have an organization that has to go out there and do the work. And we have the money if you give him the support which he needs. We cannot agonize. We have to agonize for Peter Welch. That's why we're here this afternoon. Sign up. I give you the next great senator for the Senate reward. I got to say I really appreciated what you said. First of all, thank you everyone for being here on Green Update. Something we started in Vermont years and years ago, decades ago. And it's really been a Vermont commitment, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, all of us know we've got to do our share. And it's wonderful to be here. And Senator Markey, my goodness, is wonderful. We both grew up in Massachusetts. We're both basketball fans. And the only thing he left out of his presentation was his memory of me playing high school basketball, where every time he talks about it, I get better. I can jump higher. I can shoot like Stefan Curry. So I just want that to be incorporated in the future. But I want to tell a little story. You know, I grew up in Massachusetts. And Eddie Markey was this young man who got out of BC Law School. We were just talking about this because we made similar decisions. He had a chance to work at probably the most prominent Boston Brahmin law firm, Hill & Doer. And he made a decision early in his life. You know what? I'm going to run for the state house and be a representative in the House of Representatives in Boston, on Beacon Hill. And three years later, after making a mark and so much so that he annoyed the speaker of the House, the speaker moved his desk from inside the chamber to out in the hall. Okay? He was speaking up and acting out. Donna, you've got a kindred spirit here. And Eddie Markey. And from there, after three years in the state house, he went to the United States House of Representatives. In 1976 and began what has been an extraordinarily productive and illustrious career. And it's everything from climate change to nuclear arms control to talent communications to consumer protection. One of the most extraordinary legislators we've had in the last 40 years is right here with us today. When I got out of Berkeley, I grew up in Springfield, Mass, just down the road from him. I had a chance to work on a Wall Street firm or a Washington firm. The Washington firm was called at that time Wilmer Cutler & Pickering. But I made a similar decision as Eddie did. Instead of going to Wall Street or K Street, I went to Bridge Street and White River Junction. And what we both realized in talking is that because of the decisions we made, instead of being lawyers in the same firm because Wilmer Cutler merged with Hanlon Dorr, we could be lawyers together. But now we want to be U.S. senators together. And I want to tell a little bit about him too. I got on the Energy and Commerce Committee early in my career and that was the most coveted committee in the House of Representatives. And it is because it had jurisdiction over healthcare, it had jurisdiction over climate, it had jurisdiction over telecommunications, just about everything. In fact, John Dingell used to point to a globe, the world, whatever is covered in that globe is what we have jurisdiction over in that committee. But while we were on it, he was senior member, the Affordable Care Act is when we passed him. And when he was on it, and this was something that was really important to him and Henry Waxman, and also our great speaker Nancy Pelosi, we introduced and passed in the House the Waxman-Markey Bill. And that was hard. It was really hard to do and it was no Republicans were going to help us. And there were real conflicts with Democrats between the green dogs, as we called them, and the brown dogs. But we had him as our leader with Henry Waxman. And just to give an indication of how good a legislator he was, even though he was at the top of the dais, right there with Henry Waxman, he walked over to my office when I was really almost the most junior member of the committee and said, Peter, I'd like you to work on having your energy efficiency provisions in the bill in that title I want you to take charge of. He expressed his confidence in a junior member and gave me the opportunity to play a constructive role. And as we were working on that, we were having dinners over at my apartment with some of the folks, the Democrats who were the leaders of the green dogs, Jay Inslee, now the governor of Washington, but then some members who represented steel country and where they were really concerned, what's the impact? And we had to take that seriously. We had to take seriously what are the impacts on folks when we make this transition. And it was by working together and by finding ways to accommodate the legitimate interest of people that we were able in the House of Representatives to pass the Waxman-Markey Energy Bill. Thank you, Joe Lieberman. It didn't get through the Senate. Literally, that's what it was. And had that been enacted in the long, President Obama was ready to sign it. Our carbon emissions would be half what they are right now, literally. And we would be having that momentum that we need in order to get to the zero emissions that ultimately is what this plan requires. So it's the kind of legislator that Senator Markey is. And you have been a real role model for me where you work hard on the substance. You really try to listen to the challenges that other people face and try to meet them in reasonable ways because ultimately it's about being successful for the American people. So I do hope I get to the opportunity to work side-by-side with Eddie Markey on the Green New Deal. And yes, that's right. That was bold when it was presented. You and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It was socialism. But unfortunately, not the socialism of the oil and coal and gas industry where money actually followed aspiration. So we're going to be getting to work on it. Let me just say a little bit about this race. In Vermont, we're off to a good start in this race. And I'm working hard. You know, it's been wonderful to be a colleague of Senator Leahy for all these years. His campaign, by the way, his first one in 1974, that's the first political campaign in Vermont that I worked on. It's the year I came to Vermont and I was a volunteer for Senator Leahy in 1974 when he won that upset victory. I'm the first and at this point only Democratic Senator from the state of Vermont. And of course, I've been working side-by-side with Bernie and my goal is not to replace Patrick. No one can replace him. My goal is to succeed him and to carry on the values that he has so fiercely defended and promoted as our Senator. But this race, I'm confident, but here's the reality. We've got a 50-50 Senate. We're in a post-Citizens United world. And what that means is that there is the opportunity for unlimited money, undisclosed sources of that money to come into any race in the country. And as we're here today, there are folks who are surveying the entire Senate map, trying to see where they possibly can pick up a seat and put the gavel back in the hands of Mitch McConnell. That's what it's about. Hey, hey, Peter, Vermonters don't put up with that shit. They don't put up with the outsider. Well, that's the, that's, we gotta show that. They don't put up with the outsiders coming in. And thank you. Thank you, Donald. And that's, that's what we, but we have to be mindful that that's the, that's the effort they're going to make. And Rick Scott, your colleague from Florida, who's the Republican head of the Senatorial Campaign Committee, is claiming they're going to expand the map by going into Washington and targeting Patty Murray, going to Colorado and targeting Michael Bennett and coming to Vermont and support the Republican, the likely Republican candidate. So we cannot take this at all for granted. And my determination with your help is to make certain, no matter what they do, no matter what they do, we're successful in sending me to follow in the footsteps as best I can of Patrick Leigh. You mentioned, you mentioned Roe v. Wade, you know, as much as we all expected that was going to happen, we were all shocked that it actually did. Thank you. Senator Mark, you mentioned the language that was used, and there were two things in the language. One was how dismissive Justice Alito was when talking about women and their aspirations and who they were. It was dismissive. It wasn't just a legal analysis. It was a narration of the experience that so many women in this country have had. It was astonishingly cruel. But the second thing is what Eddie Markey just mentioned. It doesn't stop. It doesn't stop with abortion. This was about being legally able to define people that you don't see as similar to you as other, as not being worthy of the full protection of the laws. This was a radical, radical decision. And I just want to tell you what the choice is here. The day that decision came out, there were many Vermonters all across the state who came out and protested. I joined folks at the federal courthouse here in Burling. That evening, my likely Republican opponent was at a fundraiser in Washington headlined by the person who was the architect of stacking a Supreme Court with people who had been vetted by the Federalist Society to make certain that when they got the opportunity, they would repeal Roe v. Wade, Mitch McConnell. So that's the stark choice that we have here. It's about climate. It's about reproductive freedom. It's about the acceptance of every American, no matter what their race or gender, no matter what their view of religion, that all of us are part of this society and we've got to be in it together. So I say to you, this is the most crucial election that we've had. And that is even before we get into the whole question of what's going to happen to our democracy. We know what happened on January 6th. We had senators and House members voting to overturn the election. And we now have states across the country that are passing laws not only to take away the right of reproductive freedom, but to take away the right to vote. And that can't happen. This is all hands on deck. And I am going to do every single thing that I can within my power to make certain that we keep this United States Senate seat where Patrick Leahy has served so well and so faithfully for 48 years. In Democratic hands. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you.