Obama Stunner: Climate Change Will Be A Campaign Issue, We Need to Do Much More To Combat It

[MindMover]

By Joe Romm on Apr 25, 2012 at 12:29 pm

In a Rolling Stone interview published today, President Obama broke out of his self-imposed silence on climate change. He made some remarkable statements, including his belief that the millions of dollars pouring into the anti-science disinformation campaign will drive climate change into the presidential campaign.

Earlier this year the President omitted any discussion of climate change from his State of the Union address. And he (or the White House communications team) edited it out of his Earth Day proclamation.

But in this interview, Obama was actually the first to bring up climate change, noting it was one of many big issues he’s had to deal with and then slamming the GOP for moving so far to the right on the issue.

The big news was that the President expects climate change to be a campaign issue:

Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people’s number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices. In that environment, it’s been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science. I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way. That there’s a way to do it that is entirely compatible with strong economic growth and job creation – that taking steps, for example, to retrofit buildings all across America with existing technologies will reduce our power usage by 15 or 20 percent. That’s an achievable goal, and we should be getting started now.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Yes, Romney etch-a-sketched himself to the far right on this issue in late October:

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.

But I doubt Romney will want to talk about climate change since that statement is a major flip-flop aimed at the Tea Party extremists who now help decide GOP primaries. Also Romney’s team presumably knows what team Obama doesn’t:

Every poll makes clear that in the general election, climate change, clean energy, and cutting pollution are some of the defining wedge issues of our time (see Democrats Taking “Green” Positions on Climate Change “Won Much More Often” Than Those Remaining Silent and links below).

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/25/470940/obama-stunner-climate-change-will-be-a-campaign-issue-we-need-to-do-much-more-to-combat-it/

[babylonsister]

1. What's not to like about this? Thanks, and rec'd. nt

[jimlup]

2. Better late than never I guess...

I'm just a bitter old environmentalist from way back I guess. Though I am pleased with Obama's play on Keystone XL but we will need to see dramatic real action in his second term for me to believe it is anything more than campaign rhetoric.

[Faraz26]

3. World Governments are using the same trick

It is true that world's leading nations and their allies are not taking climate changes seriously and are using media tactics to tackle the whistle blowers. Global warming awareness has spread all over the world and almost every developed and under developed country people have an idea that there is a major shift in the climate change. This is the best time to start a movement to save our planet and our selves from the impacts of climate change.