To the disappointment of many in the environmental movement, President Obama failed to match his strong words on climate change to the appropriate policies in his State of the Union address Tuesday.
The president remained silent on any action on the Keystone XL pipeline, although both the environmental community and climate deniers had pressured the president to deliver a long-awaited statement on the pipeline in his speech Tuesday. Republican senators addressed a letter urging President Obama to issue a response in pipeline’s favor in his State of the Union speech
At the same time, major grassroots environmental groups rallied outside of the White House before the address Tuesday, urging the president to use his power to say no to the Keystone XL pipeline.
In the introduction to his address, the president set a tone of executive strength, stating that he would take action ?wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families.? This promise to use executive power could have been translated into action most notably by denying the Keystone XL pipeline, yet the president continues to stall.
The president began his remarks on climate by cheering ?more oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world, the first time that’s happened in nearly twenty years,? ignoring the inherent unsustainability of oil. He later applauded successful solar and clean car legislation. These strong policies, however, were overshadowed by the larger and unaddressed threats of fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline.
He touched on trade, ignoring an opportunity to take a stance against the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
?And when 98 percent of our exporters are small businesses, new trade partnerships with Europe and the Asia-Pacific will help them create even more jobs. We need to work together on tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers, protect our environment and open new markets to new goods stamped ?Made in the USA.? ?
The president’s vagueness could not in any way be interpreted as a condemnation of the TPP. The agreement, which President Obama is seeking to pass with ?fast-track authority,? would enable corporations to sue the American government over environmental and other regulations.
This is unsurprising, however, when the special interests who wrote the TPP into a wishlist that would allow corporations to ignore environmental protections are some of the biggest lobbyists in Washington.
Most disappointing was Obama’s glorification of the virtues of natural gas.
?If extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change. (Applause.) Businesses plan to invest almost a hundred billion dollars in new factories that use natural gas. I’ll cut red tape to help states get those factories built and put folks to work, and this Congress can help by putting people to work building fueling stations that shift more cars and trucks from foreign oil to American natural gas.?
This not the leadership that the current state of our climate demands. The president could take steps to both stop the creation of new natural gas plants that would extract and export natural gas and to combat the myth that natural gas is cleaner than coal, yet he has failed to act.
The president ended his statement on climate with another reiteration of the truth of climate change.
?But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. (Applause.) And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did. (Cheers, applause.)?
350.org’s Executive Director May Boeve described the contradiction between the president’s actions and words, saying,
?You can’t say you care about ending cancer and then go buy a carton of cigarettes?and you can’t say you care about the climate and then go dig up more fossil fuels. We need real leadership from this President, not more lip service. Rejecting Keystone XL would be the perfect place to start.?
In spite of this disappointing address, the president cannot ignore the pipeline forever. It’s now more important than ever that individuals and groups across the country pressure the president into policies as strong as his words.
Edited/Published by: SB
