President Obama invoked Pope Francis’s call for strong stewardship of the environment, a few weeks after his historic visit to Washington.
“As Pope Francis reminds us so eloquently, this planet is a gift from God — and our common home,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio address. “We should leave it to our kids in better shape than we found it.”
The president used the occasion to highlight his international efforts on the environment, but also to criticize Republicans in Congress for holding up his climate change agenda.
“America is leading on the environment. And because America is leading by example, 150 countries, representing over 85 percent of global emissions, have now laid out plans to reduce their levels of the harmful carbon pollution that warms our planet,” Obama said.
“This month, even as Republicans in Congress barely managed to keep our government open, they shut down something called the Land and Water Conservation Fund,” he said. “Republicans in Congress should reauthorize and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund without delay.”
The address will likely be seen as a prelude to the upcoming environmental talks in December in Paris, “where the world needs to come together and build on these individual commitments with an ambitious, long-term agreement to protect,” Obama said.
