Obama: Climate is changing faster than efforts to address it
Addressing the U.N. Climate Summit on Tuesday, President Barack Obama said the United States accepts responsibility for its part in climate change and will lead the way in doing something about...
By: PBS NewsHour
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Obama: Climate is changing faster than efforts to address it - Video
Obama speaks to U.N. on climate change
President Obama is expected to give a speech at the Climate Change Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
By: Washington Post
President Obama on Tuesday called on both emerging economies and world powers to take more aggressive steps to slow climate change, saying "nobody gets a pass on addressing the foremost challenge of the century.
In brief remarks at the U.N. during a summit on climate change, the president acknowledged the many crises facing world leaders, but argued none will match the potential damage of small shifts in the temperature already causing extreme drought, hurricanes and wildfires across the globe.
Theres one issue that will define the contours of this century more than any other, Obama said. That is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.
Obama aimed his remarks at both developing nations whose rapid growth has exacerbated the problem and the industrial Western economies, whose growth in the past century created it.
We recognize our role in creating this problem; we embrace responsibility to help combat it, Obama said. Nobody gets a pass.
But in a speech aimed at inspiring the world to take action, Obama offered no new major initiatives to cut carbon. He instead told of two smaller steps the U.S. would take: a new executive order that requires federal agencies to consider climate resilience in international development work and investments, and an initiative among U.S. agencies to make data used in predicting weather shifts more easily available.
The U.N. climate summit is a launch pad for the work of crafting an international agreement that could reduce emissions enough to mute the predicted painful blows of climate change. Negotiators aim to adopt an agreement in Paris next year.
The president spoke amid a backdrop of an all-time high for global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gas. On Sunday, scientists announced that the world's emissions had grown 2.3% last year to 39.8 billion tons their highest level ever largely because of China, the U.S. and India.
Over the last few weeks, independent analysts and advocates for action on climate change have focused on the economic risks of global warming and the rewards of timely action. The cost to the U.S. economy of doing nothing on climate change will be 2.2% to 5.2% of GDP by 2100, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services recently estimated.
In addition, key administration officials have warned of the domestic economic consequences of climate change. More damaging storms, flooding and drought would stunt the countrys gross domestic product, said Shaun Donovan, director of the Office of Management and Budget. As a result, his office has begun to review regulations and standards to ensure that we are appropriately pricing risk over time, he said.
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Obama calls for more aggressive fight against climate change
For President Barack Obama, the participation of five Arab nations in airstrikes against militants in Syria marked an unexpected foreign policy victory as he plunges the U.S. deeper into a military conflict in the Middle East that he has reluctantly embraced.
The U.S. announced the strikes hours before Obama arrived in New York for three days of talks with foreign leaders at the annual United Nations General Assembly. The cooperation by Arab partners provided a significant boost to Obama's efforts to build an international coalition to take on the Islamic State militants who have moved freely across the border between Iraq and Syria.
U.S. officials said Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates participated in the strikes against Islamic State targets, as Obama significantly ramped up U.S. military involvement in Syria, a country that has been mired in a brutal three-year civil war.
"America is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with these nations," Obama said during remarks from the White House shortly before departing for New York. "This is not America's fight alone."
The president planned to meet with the leaders of the nations that participated in the airstrikes Tuesday afternoon.
While in New York for the U.N. meetings, Obama will also be facing other crises that highlight the extraordinary range of challenges demanding U.S. attention across multiple continents. He'll speak at a high-level U.N. meeting on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and meet with other leaders to discuss Russia's provocations in Ukraine.
Along with the fight against the Islamic State, the trio of crises has raised questions about the effectiveness of Obama's foreign policy and negatively affected the American public's views of his handling of world affairs.
Obama also spoke Tuesday at a U.N. meeting on climate change and addressed the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual gathering hosted by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, where he praised the role civil society plays in holding governments accountable.
But the bulk of the president's agenda in New York will focus on bolstering the coalition that will take on the Islamic State militants. While the U.S. has been carrying out strikes against militant targets in Iraq, Monday's strikes were the first in Syria.
Obama has insisted the U.S. would not be alone in trying to root out the Islamic State group, but the public commitments from allies had been few and far between. Before Monday night's strikes, only France had committed to airstrikes in Iraq, and Saudi Arabia had volunteered to host U.S.-led training missions for Syrian rebels.
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Obama Scores Coalition Victory With Arab Strikes
In a forceful appeal for international cooperation on limiting carbon pollution, President Barack Obama warned starkly on Tuesday that the globe's climate is changing faster than efforts to address it. "Nobody gets a pass," he declared. "We have to raise our collective ambition."
Speaking at a United Nations summit, Obama said the United States is doing its part and that it will meet its goal to cut carbon pollution 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. He also announced modest new U.S. commitments to address climate change overseas. The summit aims to galvanize support for a global climate treaty to be finalized next year.
But Obama's strongest comments came as he sought to unify the international conclave behind actions to reduce global warming.
"The alarm bells keep ringing, our citizens keep marching," he said. "We can't pretend we can't hear them. We need to answer the call. We need to cut carbon emission in our countries to prevent worse effects, adapt and work together as global community to tackle this global threat before it is too late."
He said the U.S. and China as the largest polluters have a responsibility to lead. But, Obama added, "No nation can meet this global threat alone."
More than 120 world leaders gathered on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to organize support for a global climate treaty to be finalized next year in Paris. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the summit's host, asked representatives of nations to come to New York with specific pledges in hand to mitigate climate change, as a way to show they're serious about ambitious emissions reductions in the treaty.
Obama's goals at the summit: to convince other nations that the U.S. is doing its part to curb greenhouse gases, and make the case that other major polluters should step up, too.
"It's very clear to the international community that the president is extending considerable political capital at home in order to implement his climate plan, and that's true," said Nigel Purvis, a U.S. climate negotiator in the administrations of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. "The hope is that when we take action, others will do so as well."
Some of the tools the U.S. will offer developing nations were developed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey and are intended to help communities use data modeling, forecasting and science to anticipate the effects of climate change and make decisions about the best way to deal with it. Secretary of State John Kerry also announced that the U.S. would contribute $15 million to a World Bank program designed to stimulate funding for projects that reduce methane pollution.
But the commitments were modest compared to what some had hoped the U.S. would put forth to show its commitment. By mid-morning, other nations attending the summit had pledged at least $5 billion to help the world become more sustainable. And the development organization Oxfam argued that the U.S. Agency for International Development already incorporates climate change resiliency in its programs.
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Obama: No Nation Has 'Free Pass' on Climate Change