Delivered as an obvious rebuke to the flippant dismissal that Romney gave the topic of
climate change during the GOP convention, President Obama had this to say about a warming planet during his acceptance speech.
Well, three cheers!
It’s good to hear a note of reality during a party convention speech. But as
Obama talks the talk, please excuse me for being skeptical about our president
walking the walk.
When
he ran for president in 2008, Obama and his campaign promised “swift and
comprehensive action to combat global climate change.”[i]
Yet the tack on global warming that the administration took after gaining
office was often tepid and cautious. During those first hundred days of the new
administration, when Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Oval Office,
the administration more or less threw cold water on comprehensive legislation
introduced to the House that would have capped greenhouse gasses.[ii]
Also, for the International Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Obama waited until
the last day to show up.[iii]
Perhaps
I have been expecting too much. After all, it’s impossible to describe the
opposition that the GOP has presented to advancing any progress on reducing
greenhouse gasses. And opposition on this issue also extends to the president’s
own party.[iv]
In his favor I do have to give Obama credit for raising standards
for gas mileage for American cars. He didn’t need Congress for that.
Obviously,
I can have no truck with a candidate who is dismissive of the dangers of rising
seas and a planet that is wrapping itself more thickly in the thermal
insulation of CO2, as Governor Romney did last week. I just wish that, campaign
speeches and acceptance speeches aside, I could vote to reelect a president who
had done more to keep the globe from getting hotter and hotter.
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