 You all know Shelly, I don't need to tell you who she is, but we love you Shelly. Thank you for all you're doing in Congress. So, I've got a few announcements to make first. I was asked particularly to say that all the power in this thing is coming from green power. So, thank you for that. And thank you for the Center for Fermentation Innovation. I have to read it up there because I can't remember it all. Because the fermentation is so good that it's difficult to remember things. And thank you all for coming here. You probably know why we are here. We are here with the Citizens Climate Lobby. And I happen to be the co-ordinator. I have the honor of being the co-ordinator of the Citizens Climate Lobby in Maine. And we have eight soon to be nine or ten groups in Maine that meet on a monthly basis. And there's certainly a group here in Portland that is the one that is getting this going. There's also a group nearby in Brunswick Park. And there are other groups in the Waterville area. And there's also groups in the second district. The second district is one group in Bangor. There's another in Dover Fox Park. There's another in Belfast. And a third in Western Maine that meets in Norway. So, we're a very active group. And we have a proposal to put before, which is already before Congress, called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. And HR 763, if you've got your pen out and writing it all down. But we particularly want to thank you, Shelly, for being a co-sponsor of that act. I don't know, Shelly, but as perhaps not all of you know, that this is the most significant bipartisan Climate Change Act to have been put before Congress for ten years. And it deserves to get as much hearing as we can possibly give it. And that includes all of us, all of us writing. By the way, it's only in the House so far. Why isn't it in the Senate? We need to put the pressure on. Write letters, make phone calls to Senators Collins and King. And to your friends in other states to make the same comment to their Senators. We need to get this thing passed. So, I probably, oh, I have some more thank yous. We have thank yous for the endorsers of the HR 763, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. And I think some of you in the room, if you're an endorser, a business endorser of that act, would you raise your hand please? Okay, a few of you right like that. Very good. I think, Shelly, that you'd agree that the more endorsers we have, the more likely it is that members of Congress are going to pay attention. Okay, so Shelly, over to you. You know about public speaking, right? Thank you everybody for coming out tonight, Peter. Thank you for all your nice words and this wonderful place, which is a great place to have a party. Thank you for opening up and sharing it with us and to that band. You don't get to see Tuba as much anymore, you know? So, they sounded wonderful. So, thank you. You see Kaya Saliz in the room. He's the city councilor here in Portland. I don't know if there's any other politicians that I should just... Oh, there you go. Wonderful. So, the citizens climate lobby and it's so exciting that there are groups all over the state of Maine. Thank you for anywhere that you've traveled from or if you just came from down the road in Portland. It's just great to be in the same room with all of you. Thank you for the thank you. Thank you for the celebration. But more importantly, thank you for the work that you're doing and the work that we have in front of us. I don't think I have to tell any of you what a serious concern this is and it is a great piece of legislation and it is a bipartisan piece of legislation and a very good idea in terms of how we solve some of the problems in front of us and I'm going to be continuing to do my best to see that we move it forward. I was just talking to somebody in the room and I first came to Maine in the 1970s so I was a back to the lander in that era I had a copy of Helen and Scott Nearing's Living the Good Life for those of you who remember that critical piece of literature and I came to Maine because I had this idea like a lot of people did in the early 70s that we should live a more sustainable life but that you could grow your own food and you could live and use less of the Earth's resources and I was lucky enough to be a student at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor in one of the first classes I was there during the first Earth Day and it's kind of shocking, a little bit depressing and greatly concerning to think that it was that long ago that we had this idea to start an Earth Day that we was in that era that Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House by the way, Ronald Reagan took them off and they ended up at Unity College right here in Maine so they've been preserved but just this notion that we knew we needed to change some of the things that were going on back then and then we had Al Gore talking to us about climate change but we've spent so much time frankly we've frittered away so much time when we could have been ahead of renewable energy development and electric cars and more sustainable agricultural practices all kinds of things that would have changed our lives in positive ways that would have created lots of green jobs and healthier lifestyles and a whole variety of things but we've had to fight so hard to even get the conversation going and I tell my colleagues in Congress who are all very happy even though this is a white partisan bill we're just very happy that the Democrats are controlled in the House so we can actually go back to having those climate change hearings and discussing these things we've kind of had eight years in the wilderness of not being able to bring up the topic one of the last bills we had before we took over Congress was the one bill that said we will never impose any tax on carbon for any reason whether it's good or bad or distributed to the entire country that was the Republicans last bill before they left and shut the place down so we had eight years in the wilderness and now the great thing of this last year is that we have finally been able to have hearings again and it's not a partisan thing as you know this bill has Republican cosponsors I have lots of Republican colleagues who talk to me frequently about the solar panels they're putting on their house or the heat pump that they just installed or their belief that we need to do something about climate change but it's a tough administration to work with and they have been slowly dismantling many of the things that the previous administration built whether it's renewable energy investigation grants to states you know just a whole variety of things so it's just critically important now you kind of you know you match that with this moment we are in time where you know day after day we have unexpected weather events all around the country people are having farmers are still dealing with flooded fields in the Midwest and there will be places where no crops will go in because of what's going on with the weather we had an extremely hot weekend in Maine that made all of us feel like you know what is going on with the weather and then we have this sense of urgency that we need to act as fast as we possibly can so I take heart from the fact that we've been able to have hearings again and get people back into the conversation one of the things that I think is so important and many of you are doing this every single day but that's to kind of re-educate the public about the urgencies, about the positive things that we can do with renewable energy the fact that this building could be currently powered completely by renewable energy we have a new administration here in Maine and the first thing that our governor did was to have a climate council and to start thinking about how can we invest more here in our state and put ourselves back on the right track just like so many other states that are having to lead the way while Congress hadn't been getting enough done but I can see even with my colleagues after eight years of not debating the kinds of bills not having good policy before us not trying to sort out many of these challenges that we have to deal with even my colleagues kind of lost the vocabulary and now that we finally put some legislation back on the floor I've had the good fortune of having one of my bills taken up on ocean acidification already passed we all know in Maine and we hear about it all the time that the Gulf of Maine is warming at a rate 99% faster than anywhere else on earth and if you're reading and studying a lot about climate change you know the important role the ocean plays in cooling this down and absorbing carbon and the problem is by absorbing the carbon that it's currently taking in we're getting a much more acidic ocean which is already having an impact on our shellfish industry and could have lots of very challenging impacts going forward the warmer waters we don't know how they're going to continue to affect our fisheries but there's a very good chance that the lobsters are just going to keep moving north and a lot of other fisheries are moving north one of the challenges with the right whales today is that their food supply has disappeared and some of it is just too warm once those things start melting and moving you don't change this overnight so the sense of urgency of getting this done is critically important I serve on that agriculture committee and a lot of my focus this year has been on creating more sustainable opportunities in agriculture agriculture can be a big part of our problem producing methane gas not using the soil to sequester carbon but I've put together a proposal and I'm working on a bill to make our agriculture system more sustainable to reward farmers for sequestering carbon in the soil it's an extremely good way to go about doing it and using the right practices organic farming, increasing the organic matter in the soil no-till cover crops a lot of things that some farmers are already doing are increasingly doing it not only makes their land more resilient it holds water better it helps to deal with the drought and the flooding it also just will do a lot more to sustain our planet and will do a lot to sequester carbon so it's an important part of what we do mainly we're the most forested state in the country and our forest plays a huge role today in sequestering carbon all these things have to be done and we all have to be producing so much less and that's really the focus of this bill very easy to understand the amount of carbon we put in our atmosphere and that is done by using renewable power I happen to just be lucky enough that I live in a net zero house myself and people when I explain it to them or I tell my colleagues in Washington they think I'm talking about some scientific experiment and I actually say mayors we hate paying our power bill we hate seeing the oil truck pull up to our house and you give people a chance just the right tax credit just the right technology and engineering and the prices of solar panels have gone down so much you tell people you put these solar panels on the roof of your house and you don't have to pay an electric bill again people are anxious to go about doing it and in my house I'm able to produce enough power basically with super insulated walls and triple glazed windows it's a pretty nice feeling not to ever pay the electric company again or to plug in your car when you get home and think you know that's all coming from my room by the way I should give a shout out it's a geologic house from Belfast, Maine they're wonderful mayors and they're developing their own insulation and hoping to retrofit one of the mills in northern Maine to make a wood fiber based insulation product that comes right here from Maine no chemicals, no toxins, nothing else so good for them, geologic, don't worry and in case you never lose faith that we're not going to get enough Republicans on board and I will say our biggest roadblock is the administration, not necessarily Congress there are plenty of Republicans in Congress but this administration is doing everything they can to undermine every effort but my closest colleague on the renewable energy front is representative Massey from Kentucky he also lives in a net-zero house he's a conservative Republican he lives completely off the grid and in order to store the electricity in his house he found a junked Tesla a Tesla that had been in a car accident he drove two states away, hauled it home on a trailer and because he has a degree from MIT he reconfigured it and now he stores all the energy in his house in a Tesla battery in a Republican home, so go figure but when I really need to geek out and get some confidence on this stuff I take my phone app about how much power I'm producing that day over and look at his phone app and we talk about who's making more electricity that day so it gives us a little bit of confidence but I think we have to go into this having hope but knowing we have a lot of work in front of us because as I said we've had a long time to fix this problem and unfortunately because of a lot of bad politics because of the pressure from the fossil fuel industry we've frittered away so much that depending on what report you read we are losing time fast and have to get this done people need to learn as fast as they can about what they can do to make a difference people, as you said, need to lobby their members of Congress and you have to call your cousins in other states and tell them, you know, make sure your member of Congress is getting on board because we can't waste any more time we need some big, bold pieces of legislation I will say that my party in the house we set the agenda for two years and we're holding hearings around the country we're doing everything we can to educate our members and we plan to come out with a proposal early next year to move forward and I'm doing everything I can to make sure that this bill is a part of it so again, thank you so much thank you for thanking me but thank you really for the great work you're all doing in enabling me to go down and fight for all of you thanks so much