Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story

[mitty14u2]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by pinto (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Rolling Stone

The president has said the right things about climate change – and has taken some positive steps. But we're drilling for more oil and digging up more carbon than ever

By Bill McKibben December 17, 2013 9:00 AM

Two years ago, on a gorgeous November day, 12,000 activists surrounded the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Signs we carried featured quotes from Barack Obama in 2008: "Time to end the tyranny of oil"; "In my administration, the rise of the oceans will begin to slow."

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Our hope was that we could inspire him to keep those promises. Even then, there were plenty of cynics who said Obama and his insiders were too closely tied to the fossil-fuel industry to take climate change seriously. But in the two years since, it's looked more and more like they were right – that in our hope for action we were willing ourselves to overlook the black-and-white proof of how he really feels.

If you want to understand how people will remember the Obama climate legacy, a few facts tell the tale: By the time Obama leaves office, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the planet's biggest oil producer and Russia as the world's biggest producer of oil and gas combined. In the same years, even as we've begun to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a global-warming machine: At the moment when physics tell us we should be jamming on the carbon brakes, America is revving the engine







Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-and-climate-change-the-real-story-20131217

[MannyGoldstein]

1. "Make No Mistake™... only by ruining the Earth can we save the Earth..." nt

[Dr Hobbitstein]

2. An honest question...

I am naive on this subject. But does the president have any power over where we drill?

[radiclib]

3. Maybe not

but should he be bragging about it?

[Dr Hobbitstein]

4. What was he bragging about?

He gave his position on policy he wanted during his administration. Doesn't mean it's gonna happen.

[psiman]

6. I'm with you

Don't let the leftier-than-thou types bring you down, they are more interested in bragging on their own self-styled moral superiourity than they are interested in actually moving the program forward.

In other words it feels better to whine over Obama's incessant betrayals than to analyze the politics and the power structure and to find a way that we can act together and influence the process. That would be work.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

7. [phone]. You are so right

In other words it feels better to whine over Obama's incessant betrayals than to analyze the politics and the power structure and to find a way that we can act together and influence the process. That would be work.

Oh...and when can we, as a society and a world, start talking about human overpopulation?

[progressoid]

8. Yes.

For example, offshore drilling.

In the wake of the largest oil spill in U.S. history the Obama Administration put in place important new standards that ensured that drilling continued, but that the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill were recognized, and guided future production. Today drilling and production continues, but in line with these important new standards. In fact, since new standards were put into place last year, the administration has approved hundreds of permits for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, including:

* 308 permits for deep water drilling activities for 94 unique wells in the Gulf of Mexico and;
* 113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/02/29/fact-check-all-above-approach-american-energy

[Dr Hobbitstein]

10. Thank you. NT

[stupidicus]

5. I've long thought this isue is his greatest failure

and will most tarnish his legacy if he doesn't act quickly

[progressoid]

9. Not surprised.

Candidate Obama was a big supporter of "clean coal".

[RobertEarl]

11. Dig, Drill and Pump.

If Obama said: "That's it, we will deny any permits to dig, drill and pump any more reserves of the US",... prices would rise and alternatives would become competitive.

Seems pretty simple to me.

[pinto]

12. Hi mitty14u2,

Good piece from Rolling Stone, yet we feel it's background / analysis. Not latest breaking news. Suggest a re-post in one of DU's other forums.

Locking.