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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (98120)	7/27/2011 8:02:15 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 149317

Not sure that Perry gets better than an F, either. His "pray for rain" backfired. Grading Obama on the Environment: F By Joe Romm on Jul 25, 2011 at 4:02 pm When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, environmentalists were optimistic that their issues would finally become a priority at the White House. So how is Obama doing? Yale Environment 360 asked a group of environmentalists and energy experts for their verdicts on the president’s performance. Yale e360 asked for my verdict. I always try to take a science-based perspective, one focused on what future generations will say: Obama’s overall record on energy and the environment deserves an F. Fundamentally he let die our best chance to preserve a livable climate and restore U.S. leadership in clean energy — without a serious fight. Future generations are thus still headed toward a world of 10 degrees F warming, widespread Dust-Bowl-ification, ever-worsening extreme weather, seas several feet higher and rising several inches a decade, and a hot, acidified ocean filled with ever-worsening dead zones. It bears repeating that most of the blame for this failure should go to the anti-science, pro-pollution ideologues. They have spread disinformation and poisoned the debate so that is no longer even recognizable. But the growing power of those ideologues is precisely why the country can only contemplate serious environmental or clean energy legislation when we have a Democratic president and large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Obama not only failed to seize this one brief shining moment, but his own inactions have ensured such a moment won’t return for a generation. In particular, by failing to defend climate science from the disinformation campaign, he has made it that much harder to develop the political consensus for action. Obama’s great accomplishments are the big boost to the clean energy economy in the stimulus, the boost to fuel economy standards, and the EPA’s endangerment finding — although the jury is out on whether that finding will actually lead to any significant change in our emissions trajectory. But these all pale in comparison to the failure to get a climate and clean energy bill and his silence on climate science. This should come as no surprise to regular readers (see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2“). Or to climate hawks. Assuming we fail to act to quickly cut emissions – a tragic outcome that is increasingly likely — future generations will not care in the least about all of his other great “accomplishments.” Quite the reverse — the fact that he did so much, such as health care reform, will merely confirm to them that he could have had a serious climate and clean energy bill, but he simply had other priorities. I do think Obama may get one other shot at redemption on climate if he is reelected — through a grand budget deal that includes a high and rising carbon price. But I see no evidence right now that he is interested in another shot. He certainly is not laying the groundwork for any serious post-election climate action what with his misguided all-in focus on deficit reduction. But his first-term grade is certainly an F. I don’t share the perspective of most of the other people that Yale e360 asked, but here is the redoubtable Bill McKibben, author, scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and founder of 350.org“: thinkprogress.org