Mr. President, use your bully pulpit on climate change!
To slow global warming, the president must use his speaking platform to foster a movement that drives climate change deniers out of office - by 2014.
Mr. President, use your bully pulpit on climate change!
By Michael Yudell
“We will respond to the threat of climate change knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” an emboldened President Obama declared in his inaugural address Monday. Following the disconcerting absence of climate change from campaign 2012 and limited climate policy action during his first term, the president has finally told us that not only will he act, but that we (and he) have an obligation to do so. What could be more important, after all, than acting on behalf of our children and future generations?
But the New York Times is already reporting that, even in the wake of the president’s eloquence on the imperative to act now, his path forward will be a restricted one. Instead of focusing on comprehensive legislative change, Obama will use the power of his office to administratively “reduce emissions from power plants, increase the efficiency of home appliances, and have the federal government itself produce less carbon pollution.” He can do this by directing the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, to issue regulations to decrease coal power plant emission, a move likely to face a litany of court challenges.
These types of actions build on Obama’s important but limited success on climate change from his first term. The rise in fuel standards for cars and trucks will help reduce the amount of carbon and other climate-warming pollutants spewed into the atmosphere. And the United States is on track to reduce, over the next seven years, its carbon pollution by 17% (from 2005 levels), just as Obama promised at the Copenhagen climate talks four years ago.
All of this is well and good. But it is barely a beginning, and likely isn’t enough action to avert what many scientists expect to be between a 2- and 11.5-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperatures globally by 2100, depending on the level of future greenhouse gas emissions, and the outcomes from various climate models. The effects of warming are already with us — sea levels are rising, economies are suffering, and people are dying from changing climate.
Obama’s new policy approach seems to accept both the limitations of his office and recognize the intransigence of his current opposition.
With the Neanderthal science caucus firmly entrenched in the 113th Congress, the president’s Congressional options are limited. Prodded by climate change deniers like the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity, the House is likely to reject any climate change legislation.
At Monday’s inaugural, Obama called out the deniers: “[S]ome may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.” If that’s true, then the president must do more than act at the margins. Although polling indicates that a vast majority of Americans now accept that the planet has warmed the past 100 years, only 49% believe that climate change is a “very serious” problem “if nothing is done to reduce global warming in the future.”
Perhaps, then, the president’s most important job between now and the 2014 mid-term elections is to raise that number — to foster a movement that will chase the climate change deniers from office. There is one important and thus far underused tool in the president’s arsenal that can help move the public on this urgent matter: the bully pulpit.
At his inauguration, Obama seemed keenly aware of this power. His desire to be remembered as a transformational president will be for naught if he is first remembered as the leader who had the last great chance to do something meaningful about climate change and failed.
Read more about The Public's Health.
- I don't know. I can pose the same hypothetical argument towards those who deny anthropogenic climate change. I would rather focus on science than hypothetical rhetoric that ignore evidence.
— joeronimo - Climate change? Oh, the weather! I think the annointed one is much too busy destroying the foundation of our republic to spend much time on the weather.— fentonhardy
- Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Man Made Climate Change, Easter Bunny....do not spend a single minute dealing with this fairy tale.— kelprod2-freemarket
- Cattleprod, don't forget to add Rush to your list of charactors.— teddybear415
- @climatedeniers - Thank you for helping me choose the topic for a future blog - the desperate need for science education in the United States.— publicshealth
- @publicshealth - Perhaps you could also do a blog entry addressing the delusional nature of some of our nation's educators who believe that the President's most important job between now and the 2014 midterm elections is increasing the number of people who think climate change is a problem.
Sensible thinkers would likely prefer the president find a way to create a sustainable job market and economy (without further subsidizing more foundering green industries) before he makes China and India's CO2 footprints his top priority.— JCrooklyn - @ joeronimo. I would rather focus on science than hypothetical rhetoric that ignores evidence.
I think that science has already proven that the Earth’s climate has changed many times during the course of its existence? Long before, and most likely, long after people are gone it will continue along the same path.
— jackwants2no - I am not denying that the Earth's climate has changed many times, independent of human activity. I am saying that human-caused climate change is also happening.
To some up your argument, you are saying that: The Earth's climate has changed without humans, and therefore human activity cannot possibly change the climate. That is simply faulty logic.— joeronimo - Mr President, make it warmer today. And also make it sunny on the 4th of July.— pic man
- @joeronimo
To some up your argument, you are saying that: The Earth's climate has changed without humans, and therefore human activity cannot possibly change the climate. That is simply faulty logic.
Can you please show me where exactly in any of my posts do I state your above assumption. I’m sure you can’t because that was never said by me; therefore the only faulty logic is you trying to twist my words to fit your purpose, and support your beliefs.
I said and continue to say that the Earth’s climate has changed and will continue to change with and/or without human intervention. The people who have a vested interest
in saying the sky is falling are people who live off of the fear and panic they drum up.
This of course requires more money for further studies to identify the problem and implement the fix; of course we are oh so close, so pony up more cash.
— jackwants2no - Again, the same argument can be made for the other side. The people who have a vested interest in ignoring scientific evidence of climate change are people who reap the most profits from destructive industry. This argument completely ignores all meaningful evidence.
If you would like to take issue with a particular principle of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, then please do.— joeronimo - This is getting insane. the science that proves there is very little if any human influence on climate is overwhelming but is being ignored. Just today we have this headline 'There is no convincing physical evidence to support the man-made climate change hypothesis' by a team of former NASA scientists who refused to tote the line. Please stop this insanity. Climate change is very real. Man has little to do with it, cold or warm. Print all of the evidence...there is absolutely ZERO scientific evidence that proves AGW. It is a scientific hypothesis that is not observed in the real world created by faulty computer models that neglect the activities of the sun and the impact of cloud cover. Print the truth. Use your brain power. Al Gore's movie was debunked further embarrassing the noble Prize people. What a scam.— voice1
- Monday, January 21, 2013
New paper shows Greenland has cooled ~2.5C over past 8,000 years
A paper published today in Quaternary Science Reviews reconstructs temperatures from ice cores and finds the Greenland ice sheet has cooled about 2.5C over the past 8,000 years. Needless to say, no "tipping point" was triggered as claimed by climate alarmists when Greenland was more than 2C warmer than the present.
— voice1 - The lie that 97% of climate scientists concur with the computer model findings has been debunked over and over again. It's a number derived from a poorly worded 2 question poll. Do not believe what your are being told and force fed by the 4th estate. Do your own homework.— voice1
- @climatedeniers & @voice1 - which anti-climate change front organization do you represent?— publicshealth
