During the State of the Union Tuesday night President Barack Obama vowed to champion the former Vice President’s pet project – global warming.
“The good news is we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago,” President Obama said during his speech. “But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”
Obama’s reference to climate change was unexpected, as it was not a focus of his campaign last fall and hasn’t been a high priority to the President since the beginning of his first term.
“But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change,” President Obama continued. “The fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense.”
President Obama wants Americans to believe that Superstorm Sandy, severe droughts the Midwest and wildfires on the West Coast are not mere coincidences, but are intricately intertwined in some sort of climate connection. However, Obama’s claim that the world is getting hotter is debatable. According to the Met Office’s Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, earth is roughly the same temperature as it was roughly 16 years ago.
The Commander in Chief said the country must “act before it’s too late,” a sentiment that was swiftly echoed by Gore on twitter.
The President’s call to put a price on carbon pollution and solve the climate crisis was bold and meaningful. We must act now. #sotu
— Al Gore (@algore) February 13, 2013
However, as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) noted in an interview last week, even if the U.S. actually does act on global warming legislation, unless it convinces China and India to better regulate their countries’ emissions, changes in U.S. policy will be pointless.
Molly Braswell contributed to this article.
