"Clinton wants 'mass movement' on climate change"

[hatrack]

32. It's not that his actions so far are bad on climate per se . . .

Last edited Sun Mar 23, 2014, 01:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Especially fuel economy rules, and ULSD changes have substantially helped air quality, if not climate in a huge way.

A lot of the ARRA funding for alternative energy, especially in solar, and support for NREL and so on - again, all good stuff.

It's just that the scale of what he's done to date, and the scale of what needs to be done if we're going to have a reasonable chance of even blunting the worst climate impacts, are so far out of proportion to one another that it's not even funny.

We briefly broke 400 ppm CO2 last year, we're going to be above 400 this year for about six weeks, maybe longer, and by about 2016, 400 is going to be permanently in the rear-view mirror. That's what no one is talking about at the top, and that's why we get talk of "mass movements" with lots of photogenic young people, and speeches. And websites.

President Obama's best on this issue isn't nearly good enough for the reality of what we're facing - though to be fair, there isn't a single leader of an industrialized economy about whom you could say that it has been good enough. I mean, Tony Abbott? Stephen Harper? Shinzo Abe? The only one I can of who has at least started to move is Merkel, and she's a bit distracted at the moment.