While I have
criticized the president before for his lack of action on global warming, I
applaud the speech he made yesterday. It is a stance on climate change that I
can believe in. While the GOP has delivered to the moneyed interests exactly
what they want, a Congress that is legislatively stalled during a Democratic
presidency, this speech, and the resulting actions that Obama promises by his administration, is all the president can do.
He
gave us what the second Bush administration denied us, an unequivocal statement
on what the science is telling us about CO2 and our warming world. It’s a sad
comment on our politics and a testament to the power of the energy companies and their ability to
obfuscate the facts at hand, that long after the science has been concluded we
have to wait years, decades really, for our president to make such a statement. But I guess it always
works that way. “Separate is note equal” is a pretty simple and obvious
observation, but it took generations after Emancipation before the Supreme
Court made that ruling on civil rights.
Mostly
by restricting emissions from power plants, president Obama’s proposed set
of rules and regulations could reduce our country’s greenhouse gas emissions in
the next seven years by close to 20 percent of 2005 levels.
Of
course, the coal companies don’t like it. Fox News is, predictably, not pleased. And Mitch McConnell has said that the president’s proposed course of
action on the climate is a “war on jobs” and “tantamount to kicking the ladder
out from beneath the feet of many Americans struggling in today’s economy.”
What I’d like to know from Mitch McConnell is why, if he is so concerned about
American’s having and keeping jobs, has he gotten in the way of any effort to
help the economy recover after the worst financial disaster since the Great
Depression?
Over
at Appalachian Voices, they rightly applaud the president, even urging him to
do more. Executive Director Tom Cormons had this to say:
The president’s plan
represents a good first step toward a 21st Century climate and energy policy
for America. It’s essential that his administration implement one of the
centerpieces of that plan–strong controls on power plant emissions.
Beyond what he spoke
of today, there’s more the president must do to build a robust clean energy
economy and ensure that heavily impacted areas like Appalachia don’t get left
behind.
The devastating
practice of mountaintop removal coal mining has no place in a 21st Century
energy plan, nor in a positive environmental legacy for this president.
President Obama must
stop industry from pushing the costs of doing business off on communities and
our environment, while doing more to invest in energy efficiency and renewable
sources particularly in Appalachia and other regions that have borne the brunt
of a fossil-fuel economy.
For example, the
administration’s plan to provide up to $250 million in loan guarantees to rural
utilities to finance job-creating energy efficiency and renewable energy
investments is a great start. Compare this to the $8 billion in the president’s
plan for loan guarantees supporting fossil fuel projects, and its clear that we
need to see a much stronger commitment.
Such investments will
go far to create the jobs, economic security, and environmental health for
these areas, consistent with President Obama’s goal of fulfilling a moral
obligation to future generations.
Cormons is correct,
and the warming of the planet and the devastation of Appalachia from
out-of-control surface coal mining are most certainly linked. I’m willing,
however, at least for now, to cheer president Obama for his actions on the
climate.
