Obama on climate – this is big

More details: The President’s Climate Action Plan

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

14 thoughts on “Obama on climate – this is big”

  1. “Nobody has a monopoly on what is a very hard problem, but I don’t have patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm. Ultimately, we will be judged as a people and as a society and as a country on where we go from here.

    Someday our children and our children’s children will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us: “Did we do all we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner and safer and more stable world?”

    What we need in this fight are citizens who will stand up and speak up and compel us to do what this moment demands. Understand, this is not just a job for politicians, so I am going to need all of you to educate your classmates, your colleagues, your parents, your friends. Tell them what’s at stake. Speak up at town halls, church groups, PTA meetings. Push back on misinformation. Speak up for the facts. Broaden the circle of those who are willing to stand up for our future. Convince those in power to reduce our carbon pollution. Push your own communities to adopt smarter practices. Invest, divest, remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth, and remind everyone who represents you at every level of government that sheltering future generations against the ravages of climate change is a prerequisite for your vote. Make yourself heard on this issue.”

    -Barack Obama, 25 June 2013

  2. Nature | Editorial
    More than hot air

    US President Barack Obama gave a fine speech on global warming, but now he must deliver on regulations for coal power and greater fuel economy.

    03 July 2013

    But the United States still has a long way to go if it is to fulfil its international commitment — a 17% reduction by 2020 — and pursue deep emissions reductions as the century wears on. Having secured historic fuel-economy regulations across the vehicle sector, Obama now has the opportunity to lay down an aggressive set of regulations for the power sector. It will be up to the EPA, working with states, businesses and environmentalists, to determine how to structure the regulations. Rather than focusing purely on technological upgrades such as requiring more efficient boilers, the EPA may be able to improve on broader incentives that would require deeper reductions while, for example, allowing utilities to work with customers to curb electricity demand.

  3. Some Appalachians, however, see a different villain behind coal’s woes: Barack Obama and his overreaching Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Four days after the James River closures, the EPA released a proposed rule limiting emissions from new fossil-fuel-fired power stations to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour—far less than the average coal plant emits. To meet this standard new coal plants would have to capture and store much of their carbon emissions. Critics complain that the technology enabling carbon capture and storage (CCS) is too expensive and works far better in theory than in commercial practice.

    In recent years the EPA has also promulgated rules limiting the release of mercury and other toxins from power plants, and tried to limit interstate air pollution (a federal court struck down the latter rule; the Supreme Court will hear the EPA’s appeal in its next term). Gina McCarthy, who heads the EPA, told the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power that her agency would release emission guidelines for existing plants in June 2014. Jim Cauley, a Democratic political consultant from Pikeville, says that Appalachians used to fear “revenuers coming for their moonshine. Now it’s the EPA-ers coming for coal.”

  4. Here’s Obama speaking in Cushing, Oklahoma, last year, in a speech that historians will quote many generations hence. It is to energy what Mitt Romney’s secretly taped talk about the 47 percent was to inequality. Except that Obama was out in public, boasting for all the world to hear:

    “Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some… In fact, the problem … is that we’re actually producing so much oil and gas …. that we don’t have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it where it needs to go.”

    Actually, of course, “the problem” is that climate change is spiraling out of control.

  5. The proposed rule — and the importance of this cannot be overstated — signals the end of an era in which polluters could dump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere without penalty. It would set new emissions standards for America’s existing power plants, which generate 38 percent of the emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, and one-third of overall greenhouse gas emissions. The broad goal is to cut these emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. This means that many of the nation’s roughly 550 coal-fired power plants, which are much dirtier than plants powered by natural gas, will have to close or undergo expensive upgrades.

  6. Today August 3, 2015 seems a significant day in the fight against climate change. Obama plan to require the states to reduce carbon emissions by 32% by 2030 coupled with increased reliance on renewable energy is significant .

    I see this as part of Obama’s legacy for the future .

    What do other readers think?

    Oleh

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