Quote

Five states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina - have been identified by the EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks - stacks over 500 feet - were operating in the United States: needles injecting poison into the atmosphere.

Many environmental advocates argue that agricultural pollution will be reduced only through stronger federal laws.

We look back at the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, where people screamed and hollered it's going to be too expensive, they couldn't afford it, and it wouldn't work. And it worked. It worked faster than people expected, at much less cost.

It's all about the choices we make as a society. We can choose to have poor schools and parks and higher tuition at Rhode Island's colleges. But we should make an active choice.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of really bringing pollution under control.

I am very concerned that federal and state air quality programs do not consider public health in regulating certain classes of industrial air emissions.

Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.

Electric cars aren't pollution-free; they have to get their energy from somewhere.

We've sued out-of-state power plants that are polluting our air and led a coalition of attorneys general from Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts against efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives to remove critical environmental regulations that protect New York communities from toxic pollution.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.