Cory Booker: ‘When It Comes to Environmental Issues, Climate Change, We Have 12 Years’

EXCERPT:

BOOKER: “I have come from a black and brown community. I’ve spent more years as a mayor of Newark, New Jersey, than I have in the United States Senate. And when it comes to environmental issues, climate change, we have 12 years. But the reality is, if you live in a community like mine, the environmental urgencies, the life or death issues are happening right now. And so whether it’s toxic water where we have a nation where children — millions of our children find it easier to find unleaded gasoline than unleaded water. Whether it’s asthma rates in communities like mine that are multiple times higher than suburbs of wealthy communities. Or even if it's just knowing that in communities like ours, even planting in your soil the EPA prevented us from doing. So we have an urgency right now to deal with these issues. It’s not something  that I focused on just as a presidential candidate. We’ve been fighting these battles for environmental justice since I was a mayor.”