Mr President: Time to stop spinning and fibbing about the climate crisis

Sorry Jan, but if you haven't figured it out yet, Obama is not a leader. He is a community organizer who likes to talk about all the things wrong with our world, rally people to come together, then walk away from it all saying, "It's not my fault it's not getting better. I can only do so much."

America was duped.

Ah the great myth of global warming.

I am so dissapointed in the inaction of our president, although with all of the major issues on his plate, financial crisis, two wars and health care, I can see how doing anything major regarding climate change would be a task in itself. Especially with the Republicans working against him without any regard for the welfare of our country.

I get the feeling or maybe I am just hopeful that President Obama will take major concrete steps regarding climate change during his term(s) in office. I mean he has only been in office for a year and has done or at least attempted to take on some of our most serious issues, so while encouraging him to act is perfect, acting as though he is a failure at this early juncture is simply not fair.

No doubt, which was why I voted for Nader. So if you don't have anything to say about this seriously because you think Obama is Jesus, be gone.

hmm, wonder if hillary would have been better... nawwwt. she was on wal mart's payroll once upon a time.

Time to stop letting poll numbers determine your actions.

TIme to stop letting denialists set the debate for profit.

Time to keep your promises.

Time for that change you spoke about.

Excerpt:

By Bill McKibben:

Two caveats. First, early in the primary season, when I was asked to join Environmentalists for Obama, I signed on immediately. I knocked on doors, made phone calls, gave money, and celebrated his victory-I think he's the best president of my lifetime.

Second, Obama has done much that's right about climate, including surround himself with a stellar staff of advisers. From auto mileage to green stimulus spending, he's done more to deal with global warming than all of the presidents combined in the 20 years that it's been an issue.

But that's a pretty low bar. And the announcement yesterday from the APEC meeting in Singapore that next month's Copenhagen climate talks will be nothing more than a glorified talking session makes it clear that he has, at least for now, punted on the hard questions around climate. The world won't be able to get started on solving our climate problem, and the obstacle is-as it has been for the last two decades-the United States.

And in fact none of this should come as a surprise to anyone paying attention. For a year now it's been clear that the president is not particularly focused on applying the political pressure that would have been necessary to reach any kind of pact, much less one that approaches what the science demands. Despite the deadline of the Copenhagen conference, Obama placed energy second on his priority list, guaranteeing that health care would occupy most of the year. He talked very little about climate, tending instead to talk about green jobs and energy security, and in the process left the door open for climate deniers to have a field day. And then-as with health care-he left it pretty much entirely up to Congress to write the necessary legislation. That kept him from having to bear the blame for a byzantine bill, but it also meant that the Senate-the body from which he came, and whose culture he had to know-could work in its usual style, without White House pressure. Which at the moment means that Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are essentially rewriting the legislation, to what end no one really knows.

The real tip-off of Obama's unwillingness to lead, however, has been the endless spinning of his climate negotiators. For 12 months they have been fibbing about the science-reiterating over and over again that their goal is the "scientific standard" of 450 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. That's no longer scientifically accurate-in the last two years, since the rapid Arctic melt in the summer of 2007, scientists have made it clear that a treaty that aimed at 450 ppm would be a treaty that left the planet free of ice, a planet where many current nations would disappear beneath the waves. We're at 390 now-we're already too high. The 450 number came from the various graphs and tables of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-but Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the IPCC, has said repeatedly in the last year that that science is out of date. Recently, asked why he'd endorsed a 350 target instead, he said, "As a human being, I just couldn't keep quiet in the face of all this overwhelming evidence. I know it's probably not right for me to take a position such as this, but on the other hand, I think it would be totally immoral on my part not to take a position, so I came out and said so."

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