State of the Union on Climate Change

In his inaugural State of the Union address in 2009, President Obama asked Congress to send him cap-and-trade legislation to

save our planet from the ravages of climate change

In his 2010 State of the Union, the President took credit for the United States going

from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change.

In 2011, climate disappeared from the SOTU, no longer worthy of mention as an issue facing the nation.

Last night, climate change made it back on the radar of the State of the Union, if still not on the agenda, as the President with some understatement acknowledged that

The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.

Well, at least the President did not find it necessary as a matter of election year posturing to become a climate skeptic like every Republican primary candidate! On the other, hand, he did seem to give a full-throated endorsement of hydro-fracking, showing that he is not worried about winning New York States as the Department of Environmental Conservation goes through the some 40,000 comments opposing permitting fracking in the Marcellus shale.

12 Comments

klem on January 26, 2012 at 3:08 pm

That’s right, in order to win he needs support from those who support fracking and natural gas, which is trading at under $3 per million BTUs right now. As opposed to wind turbines which deliver just about nothing other than jobs to China.

Cheers

Spencer D on January 26, 2012 at 6:32 pm

Even if things have changed a bit over the years, I am glad to see he is still giving endorsement for hydro-fracking. I guess time will tell what happens.

Dan T. on February 23, 2012 at 11:18 pm

Last year we where afraid of global warming, but from what I seed that happened in Europe this winter, I think that we are heading to a new Ice Age than a global Warming.
Not climate change is ravaging the earth, but us, who are ‘working’ this planet so hard that it starts to hate us!

totallgreen on February 24, 2012 at 2:36 pm

this summer we get a lot less hot weather than last year …
and a lot less rain…

Majas Lapa on February 28, 2012 at 12:12 pm

US is one of the most developed countries in the world and gives big load of CO2 to atmosphere (not talking about other gases) and it should be standing in the first rows in fight against global warming, but it’s a shame, that such important questions are being targeted so late. If something had started 10-15 years faster, we would had much more results in this field (I mean cleaner energy, manufacturing etc)