Abby L. Harvey
GHG Daily
1/13/2016
It is long past the time for debating the reality of climate change, President Barack Obama said Tuesday night in his final State of the Union address. Instead, he said, the nation should focus on harnessing the potential for innovation the problem presents. “Even if the planet wasn’t at stake, even if 2014 wasn’t the warmest year on record until 2015 turned out even hotter — why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future?” he posited.
Obama did not limit his speech to what he intends to do in the last year of his presidency, but extended it to what he hopes will occur in the next administration, stating that one of the “big questions that I believe we as a country have to answer – regardless of who the next president is, or who controls the next Congress. … [is] how do we make technology work for us, and not against us, especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change?”
Short term, Obama said, he would spend the remainder of his time in the White House trying to transition the country from fossil fuels to cleaner forms of energy. “Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future, especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. We do them no favor when we don’t show them where the trends are going. And that’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet,” Obama said.
Unsurprisingly, the president took the event as a chance to tout the global climate agreement finalized in Paris late last year. As the world’s largest economy and second largest carbon emitter, the United States played a key role in negotiating the agreement, which reflects the climate commitments of 187 countries. “Leadership means … rallying the world behind causes that are right It means seeing our foreign assistance as part of our national security, not something separate, not charity. When we lead nearly 200 nations to the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change, yes, that helps vulnerable countries, but it also protects our kids,” Obama said. “That’s American strength. That’s American leadership. And that kind of leadership depends on the power of our example,” Obama said of the Paris Agreement.
With several climate change deniers occupying Republican seats of Congress and a slew currently competing for the Republican presidential nomination, the president also took a few shots at those still insistent on debating climate science. “Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You will be pretty lonely because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it,” he said.
In one of Obama’s pithier moments, he took a more subtle at jab at those denying scientific consensus. “Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and 12 years later, we were walking on the moon,” he said.
In the official GOP response to the State of the Union, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley did not acknowledge Obama’s comments on climate, instead focusing much of her speech on immigration and terrorism.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) however, did not elect to remain silent on the topic of climate. McConnell’s guest for the evening, Howard Abshire, is an unemployed coal worker, who owes his current situation to the Obama administration’s efforts to shift the country away from coal. “We have a depression in central Appalachia, eastern Kentucky, and West Virginia as a result of the president’s policies, not as a result of any legislation that Congress passed. And so I brought this unemployed coal miner here to see the person who put him out of work,” McConnell said in his response to the State of the Union.
