Sen. Whitehouse was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2006. As Rhode Island Attorney General, Sheldon argued before the U.S. Supreme Court to protect public wetlands from development, and sued to block Bush administration efforts to weaken the Clean Air Act. He also launched the first-ever attempt by a state—eventually successful—to hold paint companies responsible for allowing toxic levels of lead to accumulate in Rhode Island homes.

As Rhode Island’s new U. S. senator, what is your top environmental priority?

The threat posed by global warming is serious and demands immediate action. Left unchecked, climate change will affect every community in every nation on earth, especially in our Ocean State.

I serve on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), and she’s promised to be relentless on this issue. We have a lot of lost time to make up for—in the Republican- controlled Congress, the chair of the EPW committee dismissed global warming as a hoax. We have real work to do on this subject and we have to start now.

What role do you hope to play in the debate on global warming?

A significant one, I hope. Jack Reed and I are co sponsoring legislation Sen. Boxer put in with Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) that calls for an 80 percent reduction in global warming pollutants by 2050 and offers aggressive solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I did a presentation at the first EPW committee hearing—Environment Rhode Island actually helped put it together—on how climate change is affecting the stateof Rhode Island and what would happento cities like Providence and Newport if we were inundated with a 20-foot rise in sealevel, the nightmare scenario of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I’m going to keep speaking out andpushing as hard as I can to get something done on this.

What are the biggest challenges you see to passing comprehensive global warming
legislation in Congress?

I think we’ve started to see some real movement in terms of widespread public recognition that global warming is a real problem.

We still have a ways to go to convince some of the holdouts on the Republican side, not to mention the Bush administration, that we need to start investing in solutions. It will take some work, but I think the tideis turning.

How important is the role of organizations like Environment Rhode Island in the global warming debate?

The work you do is critically important because you help raise public awareness about the urgency of the problem. My colleagues on the committee and I have talked about how hard it is to take a situationwhose real crisis impacts won’t kickin until 20 or 50 or 100 years down the line, and make people understand that we have to act now, before it’s too late—or that it may already be too late.

How important is it that states like Rhode Island continue to adopt policies to reduce
their own emissions?

It helps immensely when individual states like Rhode Island take the initiative to change what they’re doing and lower emissions.

It won’t replace a national or international solution, but if states begin to look at this and try to find ways to lower their carbon load and cut other greenhouse gases, we might be able to generate a lot of creative ideas that other states and the federal government can draw upon for a broader fix. It gives Washington ideas, it gives Washington momentum, and it adds to the cumulative effect we all need to achieve together.

What can the average Rhode Islander do to help?

There are fairly straightforward things that I’m sure your members already know: keeping your car well-tuned to cut down on gas usage, recycling, lowering your thermostat and hot water heater, buying energy-efficient appliances, and replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.

You should also speak out in support of national legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and institute a 40 mpg fueleconomy standard.

If we work together, we have a very good chance of getting real change accomplished.

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