Weekly Address: Climate Change Can No Longer Be Ignored

[cal04]

Source: White House

In this week’s address, the President spoke about his commitment to combatting the threat of climate change and to keeping ourselves and future generations safe. The effects of climate change can no longer be denied or ignored – 2014 was the planet’s warmest year recorded, and 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened this century.

Climate change poses risks to our national security, our economy, and our public health. The President has already taken historic steps to address climate change, but there’s more that the United States and the international community can do. That’s why next Wednesday, on Earth Day, in the latest part of his effort to call attention to and act on the threat of climate change, the President will visit the Florida Everglades and speak about the threat that climate change poses to our economy and to the world.

Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/18/weekly-address-climate-change-can-no-longer-be-ignored

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Wednesday is Earth Day, a day to appreciate and protect this precious planet we call home. And today, there’s no greater threat to our planet than climate change.

2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century. This winter was cold in parts of our country – as some folks in Congress like to point out – but around the world, it was the warmest ever recorded.

And the fact that the climate is changing has very serious implications for the way we live now. Stronger storms. Deeper droughts. Longer wildfire seasons. The world’s top climate scientists are warning us that a changing climate already affects the air our kids breathe. Last week, the Surgeon General and I spoke with public experts about how climate change is already affecting patients across the country. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security.

And on Earth Day, I’m going to visit the Florida Everglades to talk about the way that climate change threatens our economy. The Everglades is one of the most special places in our country. But it’s also one of the most fragile. Rising sea levels are putting a national treasure – and an economic engine for the South Florida tourism industry – at risk.

So climate change can no longer be denied – or ignored. The world is looking to the United States – to us – to lead. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re using more clean energy than ever before. America is number one in wind power, and every three weeks, we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008. We’re taking steps to waste less energy, with more fuel-efficient cars that save us money at the pump, and more energy-efficient buildings that save us money on our electricity bills.

So thanks in part to these actions, our carbon pollution has fallen by 10 percent since 2007, even as we’ve grown our economy and seen the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record. We’ve committed to doubling the pace at which we cut carbon pollution, and China has committed, for the first time, to limiting their emissions. And because the world’s two largest economies came together, there’s new hope that, with American leadership, this year, the world will finally reach an agreement to prevent the worst impacts of climate change before it’s too late.

This is an issue that’s bigger and longer-lasting than my presidency. It’s about protecting our God-given natural wonders, and the good jobs that rely on them. It’s about shielding our cities and our families from disaster and harm. It’s about keeping our kids healthy and safe. This is the only planet we’ve got. And years from now, I want to be able to look our children and grandchildren in the eye and tell them that we did everything we could to protect it.



Transcript
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/17/weekly-address-climate-change-can-no-longer-be-ignored-0

[Cha]

1. Mahalo cal! thanks Obama~

[cal04]

3. Mahalo Cha!

[hatrack]

2. Oh, that's NOTHING! George W. Bush had his picture taken next to a TREE for Earth Day!

Top that, you Kenyan Usurper!!!

[cal04]

4. LOL hatrack

[newfie11]

6. Lol nt

[valerief]

5. Wanna bet? Billionaires don't like that kind of talk. nt

[littlemissmartypants]

7. I am glad to be

Able to say that I love my president.

I do hope that he will get in touch with his inner mother bear one good time before he goes, however.

~ lmsp

[agent46]

8. They waited long enough to allow the deniers

They waited long enough to allow the deniers to muddy up the public dialog about climate change. Because of (intentional) sandbaggery by world and corporate leaders, the outcomes now will be drastic in our lifetime. Some large corporations are jockeying for supremacy in the coming economy of environmental collapse. They will be exploiting evolving climate tragedies all over the world - business as usual. Quality of life will diminish for all. Desertification, drought, food shortages, water shortages, extreme weather of many kinds, sea rise along the coasts, massive refugee migrations will all disrupt world society. But lets definitely plant some trees, broadcast a photo op and say some eloquent words to "deal" with it. By all accounts, it's too late to do much of anything that will matter. Our ability to impact the runaway effects of climate change, already in motion, are drastically diminished. Survival of an integrated society is a matter of faith now.

Am I being extreme in my prognostications? I don't think so.

People who didn't allow themselves to be bludgeoned and converted to some flavor of obscurantist climate change denial have seen this coming for over a decade. You don't see these things evolving outside the scope of the media frame if you're still intellectually trapped as an habitual consumer of the corporate world view. Of course, the answer isn't on YouTube. It's in finding the scientists who actually have something to say about the crisis and studying their reasoning on the subject.

It's mostly too late though. This is a palliative gesture at best. As time goes on, they'll just spin the horrendous changes and normalize it all for the next generation. Growing up in it, most people will believe life has always been this way. That's the preferred corporate outcome.

[daleanime]

9. kick, kick, kick....

[GliderGuider]

10. Not exactly a day late and a dollar short...

More like 50 years late and a few trillion dollars short.

Too bad so sad.

[asiliveandbreathe]

11. Recent congressional hearing w/cruzbaby and the NASA

guru regarding funding for this - that - or another thing - that cruz baby was crying about -" funding seems to be lopsided within the priorities of NASA" (not exact quote) cruz laments - when in fact, funding WAS appropriate "to make sure we KNOW when all our water has been depleted below the surface - in order to have a launch site - like KENNEDY space station...without a launch site - space station would disappear - like the sand disappearing under our feet - seems a fair observation to me....

Cruz is so ignorant.....

I wish the Prez would open the weekly address to public questions - pick a topic - henny topic....

And Texass legislators voted to take away local control of fracking... all that keep big gubment out....

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Thanks for posting!

As usual, caught the radio broadcast locally here early this morning.

This part cracked me up -

This winter was cold in parts of our country – as some folks in Congress like to point out – but around the world, it was the warmest ever recorded.

When you look at the temperature anomaly maps, you do see the NE/MidAtlantic colored below normal, with the rest of the world (except for some areas over the oceans, Northwest Africa, and India) as well above normal. And since the seat of our government was in the below-normal category, the congressional climate-change deniers ran around like rabid dogs "denying"...



Yet they didn't bother to ask their colleagues in Alaska about what happened there this winter (basically the state's warmest on record)... And won't even get into the extraordinary drought in the western U.S..

[Overseas]

13. If climate disruption cannot be ignored, then the TPP should be defeated.

I'm glad our president would like the USA to take the lead on curbing climate disruption, but I'm very sad that he doesn't seem to agree that trade agreements that give multinational corporations more power than local governments will seriously undercut that aspiration.

The TPP seems to have provisions like NAFTA, that give multinational corporations' investors' groups the right to sue local governments that may have banned fracking or provided financial incentives to promote alternative energy.

If we are serious about curbing or slowing climate disruption, we need local governments around the world to have more power to protect their citizens and our planet, not less.

TAKE A LOOK AT the Investor State Dispute Settlement:

One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/02/25/ec7705a2-bd1e-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html