The past week has marked Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address, where the president traditionally outlines his agenda and priorities for the coming year, as well as reporting on the condition of the United States. As far as climate change is concerned, Obama seems to be continuing the approach we have seen him taking in the past months – while it is probably important to him, there are apparently many other issues that are more pressing and deserve a larger share of his attention.
In fact, he did not even mention climate change per se, other than referring to the (energy and) climate bill that was passed in the House over the summer, and even that, only as it relates to clean energy. Clean energy by the way – as far as Obama is concerned – is apparently nuclear (Obama’s proposed budget for 2011, to be sent to Congress on Monday, contains a tripling of government loan guarantees for nuclear power), offshore oil and gas, biofuels and clean coal. There was no mention of solar nor of wind, and the word ‘renewable’ was never used throughout the 71 minutes speech.
Once again, Obama skirts around the issue of climate change, referring only to clean energy, energy security and jobs. High speed rail is not a matter of moving away from dirty fuels used in planes and cars, but rather a way to create jobs. And it does not seem to take higher priority than building new highways. Apparently the Recovery Act should be enough to prevent “Europe or China [from] hav[ing] the fastest trains” (it’s not), as there was no mention of continuing investing in rail infrastructure beyond the one off investment in the Act.
Obama continues not to show strong leadership when it comes to climate change. He says he is grateful to the House for passing its bill last summer and that he is eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate, yet he does not mention what he would like to see in such a bill, he does not use this rare platform to move the discussion forward.
This was not the case in other issues – he used the SOTU to give quite a talking to to Republicans, especially in the Senate, for being continually obstructive and for focusing only on the next election rather than on governing the country. He made a gentle veto threat “if the [financial reform] bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform”. Why then didn’t Obama even mention what a good climate bill should contain in his opinion? Why is there no mention of cap-and-trade or some other mechanism to reduce carbon emissions? Pandering to wavering Democrats and potential Republican allies is all very well, but what about showing the way? What about using this opportunity to outline his plans and his vision, as he has done with financial reform or Afghanistan?
Already, in the aftermath of the SOTU, business leaders such as Tom Donahue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a well known antagonist to the House climate bill, and John Rice, a vice chairman of General Electric Co. pointed to the fact that America has a lot on its plate, and therefore a cap and trade bill is not likely to be passed in the coming year.
This is how momentum is brought to a halt…
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1 February 2010
While I agree that Obama did not tackle the climate change issues head on in his State of the Union Address, I have to say that the address itself was not meant to take on such a task. The purpose of the address was meant to appeal to detractors and fans alike to try to bring confidence back into the party and the direction of his administration.
Following the battle over health care in the Senate, I don’t think that climate change has been at the forefront of the public’s mind, so critiquing it’s absence from the State of the Union address is not where the focus should lie. Rather, perhaps we should see where the American public opinion lies, try to gauge their feelings, and find a way to move toward the best scenario possible within these conditions.
Perhaps, discussion of jobs and job creation is exactly what the administration was lacking when discussing the climate change debate. Sure, it is not the focus of the UNFCCC debates and strays from the seriousness of the issue and those most affected by greenhouse emissions. However, whatever can pull the American support (who is leaning more and more to the right following the health care debates and media criticism of science no matter how off the mark it is) is, in fact, crucial to the ultimate success of climate legislation in the United States.
Rather than criticize the lack of discussion of renewable energy and climate legislation in Obama’s discussion, I think we should take pride in Obama’s talk of common sense and overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue of climate change. He spoke of the US’s need to tackle the economic issue of climate change as a matter of being a market leader rather than a laggard. While this steeps in simplistic bottom-line matters, it is perhaps the most effective way to help motivate both Republicans and Democrats on passing the necessary legislation to lower our emissions and ultimately become the leader we need to be to bring emissions to the goal of 350ppm.
People relate to the need for job creation and suffer from cognitive dissonance of their burning of fossil fuels. If you need to change the way that you speak of an issue to bring the necessary changes, than so be it. I was proud to hear Obama speak and it made me shout “Yes! Finally!” when he spoke of the need for common sense in the matter of climate change legislation. For this I am proud.