RFK, Jr. & Bill McKibben: Time For Obama To Act On Climate Change

[limpyhobbler]

New reports have come out this week, showing us that 2012 was officially the hottest year on record. North America alone was plagued with hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, blizzards, and numerous other forms of weather that have almost all been linked back to anthropogenic climate change. Earlier this week, Ring of Fire’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke with 350.org founder Bill McKibben about the threat of climate change and what President Obama needs to do during his second term to address the problem. The transcript of that conversation follows, and the interview will run this weekend on Ring of Fire:

Robert: Welcome to Ring of Fire. I’m Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Few sitting US presidents have faced more environmental disasters than President Obama. Some of those disasters like the BP oil spill were clearly man made while others came in the form of hurricanes, blizzards, droughts and floods that have a more attenuated connection to anthropogenic activity. The natural disasters that have been plaguing this country for the last few years and the world should provide more than enough indication that catastrophic climate change is real and is a serious threat to our planet yet we’ve seen very little action from the President on climate change and an active and aggressive antagonism from the business community and from the Republican Party towards any steps towards controlling our carbon emissions. In his second term Obama hopefully will handle things differently and joining me now to talk about what needs to be done is Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org and one of my personal heroes. Welcome to the show Bill.

Bill: What a pleasure to be with you as always.

Robert: Let’s start talking about numbers. You gave intellectual clarity to this issue by reducing it to a series of numbers in a Rolling Stones article, very influential article that you published last summer and essentially what you say in that article is that there’s a global consensus that we have to maintain the climate below 2 degrees Fahrenheit and you point out that the two degrees which is a number that was developed back in very, very early probably 1995 that based upon what we’re seeing today that most scientists are saying that’s way too high because we’ve had a 0.8 degree rise already and we’re seeing desertification all over, great floods, hurricanes, etc.

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from http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2013/01/09/rfk-jr-bill-mckibben-time-for-obama-to-act-on-climate-change/

[pscot]

1. Amen