March 6, 2019 –Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Tuesday said climate change is “directly impacting” her home state’s way of life.
“It’s impacting subsistence. It’s impacting food security. It’s certainly impacting our economy with our fisheries,” Murkowski, the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said at the panel’s first hearing this year devoted to climate change.
“Clearly the effort here is to get a bipartisan conversation going,” she added. “I think that the rhetoric surrounding the issue of climate and climate change can be so heated and so animated and so, often times, just a very toxic discussion that you can’t get to focusing on the solutions.”
The Senate panel heard from experts on how climate change was impacting the electricity sector. Murkowski and the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), highlighted their energy-producing states in their remarks, though.
Murkowski said her state is seeing diminishing sea ice and a change in wildlife migration patterns. And she expressed concerns that rural communities throughout her state aren’t using green energy.
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