News / Obama Pledges to help the planet
As President Obama took to the podium for his inauguration speech, he made history in more ways than one. His first address made several pointed references to the environment, signalling a new, greener direction for the USA.
Their current energy policies, he declared, "strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet" -- linking the nation's future security to its ability to harness green energy.
Slogans aside, could this mean -- finally -- that the US is taking global warming seriously? It sounds like it. Obama pledged to "harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories," an unequivocal promise to deliver real, sustainable change.
Science, long sidelined by the Bush administration, would be "restored to its rightful place," and so with it the overwhelming opinions regarding global warming. "With old friends and former foes," he went on, "we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the spectre of a warming planet." His intentions couldn't be made clearer.
we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the spectre of a warming planet
Now he's in office, what can we expect? Well, it's all laid out in full in
Obama's New Energy For America plan. An 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. 10% of electricity from renewables by 2012. 1 million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015. $150bn investment in green industries. It's ambitious and unprecedented.
Will it be enough? Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was critical about Obama's plan to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, saying that it "falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change."
Having stated his plans so firmly, Obama is committed to change. Although experts may disagree on the content, the direction is finally a real policy. Whether the USA now takes the lead in helping save the world is down to the people who have helped put President Obama in the White House.
