Often time’s issues plaguing the environment are looked over in mainstream media, unless there is a major crisis. Unfortunately that type of nonchalance about the environment carries over to politics as well, things like immigration, reproductive rights and wars overshadow climate change. We are reaching a critical threshold, and we have reached a point where I feel safe to say “how bad do you want the future to be?” because we have overstepped the point of return, and our only hope now is to improve things before our future begins to look even worse. President Barak Obama has made some positive steps towards slowing down climate change and aiding the environment, but some scientists and environmentalists believe he has not done nearly enough.
Obama currently has a bill proposed that would force a reduction of greenhouse emissions by 2% every year until the year 2025. According to the New York Times “The bill has no chance of passage in the Republican-controlled Congress, but Democrats say they believe that forcefully pushing for climate change policies could help them win control of the Senate in 2016.”(Davenport) The issue with this is the longer we wait to take action the harder taking action becomes. It is also difficult to pass important issues through all forms of government when the different parties are hell-bent on disagreeing with each other. Despite issues with-in his own government “Obama will meet with President Xi Jinping of China at the White House, and they are expected to discuss their joint efforts to cut emissions” (Davenport) on this Thursday (9/24/2015) and Friday (9/25/2015).
The President recently made a trip to Alaska, being that they are the part of the country that will see the effects of climate change the soonest (and already have been seeing it). During his trip he did a conference, where he spoke about climate change he “sought to underscore his message that fixing climate change is an urgent cause” (Silverstein), it is also notable that Obama has brought the issue of global climate change further than any of his predecessors. Climate change is often times something that is more of a concern for more liberal people and that may be the reason it has become a focus of Obama’s recent administration.
Obama faces a lot of criticisms surrounding his approach on climate change, often by people within his own party. Bill McKibben, The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College and the 2013 winner of the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, was highly critical of the President in his 2013 article for Rolling Stone. “We’ve seen the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and the largest wind field ever measured, both from Hurricane Sandy. We’ve watched the Arctic melt, losing three quarters of its summer sea ice. We’ve seen some of the largest fires ever recorded in the mountains of California, Colorado and New Mexico”, writes McKibben.
Discussing Obama and climate change can be difficult because some people accredit him with doing exceptional work based on the environment and other say he has not helped in the slightest, and if anything has made things worse. The thing most necessary at this juncture is not a party issue, their has to be a unifying motion to end climate change and global destruction.
Works Cited:
Davenport, Coral. “Senate Democrats to Unveil Climate Change Bill.” New York Times [New Work] 22 Sept. 2015: n. pag. Print.
Mckibben, Bill. “Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story.” Rollingstone.com. Rolling Stone, 17 Dec. 2013. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.
Silverstein, Ken. “Obama Puts Alaska at Epicenter of Climate Change With Big Oils Blessing.” Www.forbes.com. Forbes, 4 Sept. 2015. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.