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Progress Illinois: Quigley Goes On Climate Change Tour, Hopes Increased Awareness Can Result In Legislative Action

May 1, 2013
In the News

This article originally appeared on the Progress Illinois on May 1, 2013. A copy of the article can be found here.


By: Ashlee Rezin

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Too few congressional delegates fully grasp — or even believe in — the adverse effects of climate change on the environment, according to U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D, IL-5).

In the hopes of broadening his understanding and equipping himself to translate the message of climate change adaptation strategies, Quigley hosted a two day Climate Tour across Chicago this week.

“I serve with a lot of climate change doubters, one of them [is] the Speaker of the House,” said Quigley in reference to U.S. Rep. John Boehner (R, OH-8) during an interview with Progress Illinois.

Quigley said the tour provided him a firsthand glimpse of global warming's effect on the Chicagoland area.

“If they came to the lakefront of Chicago, which has reached record low levels, [doubters would] see this isn’t theory anymore and should be a priority for our children’s children.”

Intending to confront Congress with information from the Climate Tour, Quigley said he hopes to raise consciousness on the issue and work toward a nationwide energy policy that is “sustainable on every level.”

“I need ammunition to address folks,” he said.

As an example of sustainable energy policies, he advocated pushing for increased public transportation as a method of reducing carbon emissions from vehicle exhaust. He would also like to promote the use of wind and solar energy as an alterantive to drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

“We are not thinking enough about this and implementing green ideas quickly enough,” he said. “It’s scary.”

"Understandable” topics such as national security and the economic depression continue to garner a majority of the attention of both legislators and the general public, according to Quigley, while issues like climate change fall to the wayside.

He said he plans to “inform, advocate and educate” his colleagues and constituents.

On Monday, Quigley visited the Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago Botanic Garden, a community garden in Pilsen, and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County’s Bunker Hill restoration site. He visited the Field Museum of Natural History on Tuesday.

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At the Field Museum, Quigley went on a tour of specimen collections that could clearly indicate the existence of climate change.

“The collections here at the museum allow us to document change over time,” said Bill Stanley, director of collections for the Field Museum.

Through bird, plant, fossil and anthropological specimens, the museum aimed to show Quigley how samples collected over time illustrate climate change as well as other environmental phenomena.

“You can wave your arms a lot and say ‘the sky is falling, the sky is falling’, but you can come to the Field Museum and actually prove the sky is falling; these specimens allow us to do that,” Stanley said.

Quigley’s Climate Tour ended on Tuesday with an expert roundtable discussion at the Shedd Aquarium.

The two-hour discussion covered topics ranging from Lake Michigan’s low water levels to how heat waves, as a result of global warming, affect mental health and crime.

“Too many in Congress, especially in the House, are attacking science and resorting to slogans and partisanship, but this may be the most important issue facing our civilization,” said Jack Darin, director of the Sierra Club, Illinois Chapter, who attended yesterday's roundtable.

Darin said it’s important that Quigley and members of Congress pay more attention to what climate change is already doing to America’s ecosystem.

For example, Lake Michigan hit record lows in January, plunging six feet below the record high.

The main contributor to this is warmer climate temperatures, according to Philip Willink, senior research biologist at the Daniel P. Haerther Center for Conservation and Research of the John G. Shedd Aquarium.

“The climate in general is warming up, and the Great Lakes are warming up,” he said during his Climate Tour roundtable presentation.

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Willink said that as the lakes warm up, the bodies of water see less ice during the winter. Ice, he said, serves as a blanket and traps water vapor, consequently preventing excessive evaporation during the dry summer months.

So as rising climate temperatures cause lake temperatures to escalate, water levels go down due to the lack of ice during the winter months that would typically stymie evaporation during the summer, according to Willink.

“If Lake Michigan were to drop another two feet or 10 feet ... Near shore wetlands could dry up,” he said.

Harbors could also get shallower, he added, affecting accessibility for shipping boats and translating to a higher cost of goods for consumers.

“Nature is changing,” Willink said, noting there are a lot of unknowns. “We have to have a better idea of how nature is changing and incorporate this into our future vision for various conservation projects, management and civic planning.”

According to Alaka Wali, curator of North American Anthropology at the Field Museum, it’s up to humans to respond to climate change.

“Changes in nature — that’s what nature is all about,” she said. “The question is how have humans themselves responded to those changes and how do we shape those changes.”

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She said a strategic plan is necessary in order to communicate the potential impacts of climate change.

“We need to spur community engagement and spur action for adaptation to the changing climate,” Wali said.

But Quigley said translating the urgency of addressing climate change to lawmakers and the public is quite difficult.

“Telling people they need an urgency-of-now for something that they often think won’t impact them for 20 of 40 years is a real challenge,” Quigley said, noting climate change is “underrepresented” in public policy.

“This isn’t an issue to put off for 20 to 40 years, we should’ve done more 20 to 40 years ago.”

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