STEPHANIE RUHLE (HOST): Bill Nye, you don't have to be a climate change denier to say maybe the Paris agreement doesn't work for us. Why is it so important for us to stay in?
BILL NYE: To be a world leader. When you talk about leadership and the future, the future is in renewable energy, what Mr. Norquist called green energy. It's not in fossil fuels. And so you want the United States to be the world leader in those technologies and it's a big idea. Is the climate important to you? Is sea level rise important to you? Is the quality of life of billions of people around the world as the world's population goes from 7.4 to 9 and 10 billion, is that important to you? Or do you want to reckon your policy decisions based on certain statistics captured with respect to keeping current jobs current. In my opinion, Mr. Norquist's analysis ignores completely the 3 million, at least, new jobs that will be created in renewable energy here in the United States. And when you look even at conservative states, Oklahoma gets 20 percent of its energy from the wind, Texas gets 10 percent, Iowa is now getting 25 percent of its electricity from the wind. That's the future. And that's where we want the United States to lead. And then further more, in a bigger idea, Mr. Norquist lumped dictatorships with people who are concerned about the climate. I think that's a false comparison.
[...]
NYE: Climate change affects us tomorrow. Climate change affects everyone in the world because we all share the air. You can't build a border wall against carbon dioxide emissions. The time to get to work on this is right now.
