Yesterday, President Obama announced his new Climate Action Plan in a nationally televised speech.<\/p>\n
He described the emerging climate crisis and its impacts\u2013both past, present and future, while be suffered the heat of an abnormally warm June day in Washington, DC. His arguments for climate action were compelling and hard to argue with. Unfortunately his actions do not match his words.<\/p>\n
Unlike Bill McKibben, I do not believe that \u201cthe solutions agenda [Obama has] begun to advance moves the country in a sane direction.\u201d (Did you read the actual Climate Action Plan, Bill?!?) No, what I read in Obama\u2019s Action Plan was a rehashing of the same old dangerous false solutions that many of us have been fighting for years and years. But what\u2019s really criminal is that even though Obama clearly understands both the science and implications of climate change, he still pushes an agenda that will drive us all over the climate cliff.<\/p>\n
First the plan\u2019s \u201cCase for Action\u201d reiterates Obama\u2019s pledge to decrease carbon emissions by a paltry 17% below 2005 levels by 2020\u2013but only if all other major economies agree to do so as well. Climate scientists are not calling for 17% reductions by 2020. In fact, countries like the US need to reduce our emissions by 80-90%. And not in seven years, but immediately. Last year preferably.<\/p>\n
The main takeaway from Obama\u2019s horrific bit of greenwashed nonsense? We can continue our unsustainable way of life indefinitely with just a few key tweaks.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeploy clean energy.\u201d Ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 clean about this. Obama\u2019s \u201cclean energy\u201d plan includes more fracking, more oil, more nukes, more biofuels and \u201cclean coal.\u201d Yes, Obama wants to stop climate change by screwing over rural communities through promotion of more hydrofracking and increased natural gas exports; expanding domestic oil production\u2013including the hellish Bakken shale oil fields (but don\u2019t worry, it will be clean Bakken oil\u00ad\u2013no really, that\u2019s in there); devoting more land to growing feedstocks for plant-based liquid fuels (i.e. less land for biodiversity, growing food or for peasant communities to survive on); protecting forests that store carbon while cutting down trees to burn for electricity production; building more nuclear power plants (apparently never heard of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima); and maintaining the fantasy of that wonderful oxymoron \u201cclean coal.\u201d Sane direction?<\/p>\n