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Barack Obama finds himself compromising his dedication to increasing environmental concerns after the Republican party took control of the House of Representatives this election.
The Democrats have not faced such a brutal defeat since the 1994 midterm during Bill Clinton’s term. As a result of this dramatic Republican ascendancy, Obama has had to re-evaluate the importance of environmental policy for the remainder of his term.
To please the conservatives, Obama has put the environment on the back burner; a movement which America cannot afford or tolerate.
Our dependency on nonrenewable sources will not wane without help, nor will our carbon footprint fade.
The improvement of the environment needs governmental involvement and support, which has just been negated.
Since the midterm election, Obama has been forced to shift his focus from climate change toward the current conservative obsessions with job creation and tax extensions from the Bush era.
Obama acknowledged this shift in a post-midterm press conference.
“I think there are a lot of Republicans that ran against the energy bill that passed in the House last year,” Obama said. “It’s doubtful that you could get the votes to pass that through the House this year or next year or the year after.”
Surely, improving employment and fiscal conditions soothes and tends to the depressed economy. But focusing solely upon just a sector of national problems could potentially lead America into an environmental trap.
While Republicans coerce Obama away from environmental awareness, new GOP members are spreading skepticism of the general concept of climate change throughout the House and nation.
The newly elected speaker of the House, John Boehner, is one of the top promoters of climate change skepticism. Boehner emphasizes the harmlessness of carbon dioxide, and views environmental movements as job-killing taxes.
“The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical,” Boehner said in a 2009 ABC interview.
The potential harm that has ensued from environmental abuse by human activity is hardly a joke.
Other Republicans in the house endeavor to eradicate the Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, as Congress deliberately seeks lawmakers who don’t believe in any connection between global warming and human action.
Obama has reworked and minimized his climate policy because of the GOP’s efforts to stifle discussion of climate change.
The president has expressed that despite his inability to follow-through with his initial climate-agenda, he strives toward smaller efforts.
He believes he will establish bipartisanship in work towards electric vehicles, natural gas, efficient buildings and the broadening of nuclear power.
Problematically, such efforts will prove partially moot over the remainder of Obama’s term. Encouraging use of natural gas, for example, still derives from our heavy dependence upon nonrenewable sources.
The current governmental approach is wrought with ignorance. Regardless of whether an individual believes in global warming and climate change, such controversies are supported by facts that deserve attention.
According to NASA, “the current warming trend is of particular significant because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.”
Additional facts calculated by NASA show the rising sea level, temperature-related natural disasters, glacial retreat, and so forth.
The increasing frequency of data and statistics is evidence of at least a suspicion of global warming, and it deserves the government attention that Obama strived for before the midterm election.
Instead, conservatives obsess over materialistic, monetary concerns, pushing the environment further and further down on the priority list.
The environment composes the foundation of everyday life. It emanates genuine beauty and provides the truest form of reliability we know.
But regardless of its natural magnanimity, the environment is constantly taken advantage of in the face of the economy and politics.
Climate change and global warming now add to the list of environmental tragedies that Americans cruelly ignore, alongside deforestation, species extinction, overpopulation and more.
In a poor economy and alarming environmental times, a solution exists in the connection between the two.
Green-collar jobs are occupations that focus on inventing and producing environmentally-safe products and services.
Environmental innovation creates green-collar jobs, which in turn increases the employment while bettering the environment.
Focusing on creating green collar jobs satiates the fervid concerns of both conservatives and liberals. It is a true bipartisan movement.
Doubtlessly, the economy and the environment occupy the minds of American people. Obama’s best option is to take an equal approach to both dilemmas.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Devon Barrow at Devon.barrow@colorado.edu.
