President Obama Calls for Faster Action to Curb Arctic Warming and Climate Change

President Obama arrived in Anchorage, Alaska Monday evening to start a three-day sojourn around the state dedicated to spotlighting the disruptive, and in some cases devastating, effects of climate change in Alaska and the Arctic.  President Obama opened his visit with a forceful speech at a climate conference hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry for foreign ministers and other luminaries from 20 countries and the European Union, including members of the U.S. Congress, Native leaders, mayors, and experts.
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During his powerful closing speech, President Obama described a worrying future for Alaska: temperature hikes of six to twelve degrees by the end of the century, which are expected to trigger “more melting, more fires, more thawing of the permafrost, a negative feedback loop, a cycle — warming leading to more warming — that we do not want to be a part of.”

The president pointed to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan — which aims to cut carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 — as, “the single most important step America has ever taken on climate change.”

Obama noted that, “America’s economy has grown more than 60 percent over the last 20 years, but our carbon emissions are roughly back to where they were 20 years ago.  So we know how to use less dirty fuel and grow our economy at the same time.”

The president made clear that, “the time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers is past… Those who want to ignore the science, they are increasingly alone.  They’re on their own shrinking island.”

The president warned that if we allow climate change to continue unchecked, “entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems.  More drought; more floods; rising sea levels; greater migration; more refugees; more scarcity; more conflict.”  He said that, “any leader willing to take a gamble on a future like that — any so-called leader who does not take this issue seriously or treats it like a joke — is not fit to lead.”

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