President Obama had good reason to stand tall as he touted his commitment to clean energy and to environmental and public health protections in his Jan. 24 State-of-the-Union address and as he unveiled his 2013 budget on Monday.
During his administration, America has made historic progress toward curbing harmful pollutions that contaminate our air, water, lands and wildlife -- and contribute to asthma attacks, heart attacks and even premature deaths.
These achievements are all the more noteworthy because the president faced down polluters and a hostile House of Representatives that, led by Tea Party extremists, cast almost 200 anti-environment votes last year. We and our supporters all across the country have stood with him in this fight and we will continue to do so.
In December, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the first-ever national standards to reduce mercury, lead, and other dangerous pollution from coal- and oil-burning power plants. These safeguards are likely to be among the Obama Administration's most significant environmental accomplishments.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that damages developing brains in children and fetuses. Prenatal exposure to even low levels of mercury can cause life-long problems with language skills, fine motor function, and the ability to pay attention.
Coal-fired power plants are the largest industrial source of mercury emissions, yet they have dodged mercury and other air toxics rules for decades. Virtually every other major industrial sector in the United States has been subject to such standards for more than 10 years.
Thanks to the new standards, these polluters will finally have to clean up their act. As a result, the standards will prevent 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks every year.
While cracking down on polluters, the Obama Administration also has been promoting clean energy solutions that will create jobs and unleash innovation.
In July, the president proposed a new round of fuel-efficiency standards for cars, SUVs, and pick-up trucks that will almost double vehicle miles per gallon to 54.5 mpg by 2025.
Such improvements to automobiles within 20 years will reduce carbon pollution by 280 million metric tons -- the equivalent of shutting 70 coal-fired power plants for a year. And by 2030, the fuel efficiency standards will also cut our oil use by more than we imported from Saudi Arabia and Iraq in 2010 and save drivers more than $80 billion a year at the pump.
Building more efficient vehicles has already put Americans to work. More than 150,000 Americans currently have jobs making parts for and assembling clean cars -- hybrids, electric cars, and other advanced vehicles that weren't available 10 years ago. That's why the car industry, labor unions, and the environmental community are united in supporting the president's clean car standards.
To be sure, the Obama Administration also has ceded ground on some issues to polluters. Its decisions to postpone smog standards and leave the door open to offshore drilling in the Arctic will benefit dirty industries and make it harder for Americans to protect our health and resources. So our work goes on. And we're in this for the long haul.
In the meantime, all Americans benefit from having cleaner skies and more home-grown clean energy.
Even in the face of a year of unprecedented and unrelenting congressional assault on the environment, President Obama has proven that prosperity fits hand-in-hand with clean air and clean water, and strong public health protections.
We have a shared responsibility to protect our environment and health. Future generations deserve nothing less. Let's keep building on this progress.
(Frances Beinecke is president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Margie Alt is executive director of Environment America.)
http://chinauseealliance.org/blog/?p=14
I understand NIMBY environmentalist think of pollution only in their backyard but somehow you would have thought you would expanded your horizons with climate change. I suppose you think that climate change is only caused by the U.S. also. I've heard your arguments before about the wonderful insulating powers that fast developing nations have with per capita and historic usage.
I have watched government agencies attack problems before. Take smog in L.A. - the number 1 source is LAX, the number 2 source is the ports authority, the number 3 source is transpiration, the number 4 source is manufacturing. Guess which one the GOVERNMENT AGENCY concentrated on?
Very little manufacturing going on in L.A. anymore!
Yea - congratulate YOURSELVES for improving the 3rd or 4th cause of a problem and declare victory. It's the GOVERNMENT WAY!
Why not the local Gov.
Shut them down - they are the enemy! Corportist Repubs! Facists! More public funding for our special intersts until all those dirty polluters - including the unwashed Public! They pollute the most!
Dirty little corpratist drones! Who cares if its our form of government - The House of Representatives has been taken over by people who do not give the right people money! Time to get rid of the House of Representatives! They are polluters and the problem!
We have a long way to go - get rid of all polluters until we become stone age vegans.
Consider the difference, after you calm down a little.
Most here are hell bent on nshutting them down.
Dont use electricity
Dont drive a car
Or
You are the poluter.
Dont use electricity
Dont turn on the heating systems
Thatll teach em
Since the 60's, the Ecology Now, the deep green of the science of ecology and the ecology of Earth, have diluted to a darkening brown of planetary death by killing ecosystems for dead fields of ecosystem devouring solar panels and planet consuming windmills, as dead and brown as the rocks on Mars. Countless species of biodiversity, whose habitat/homes, food, shelter, nurseries and cover are being raped for the "green" energies. Plant and animal biodiversity are the strands in the web of all life, the energy, the creation and the job-holders of all ecosystems! Science compares the extinctions of biodiversity as causing a danger to man, right up there with thermonuclear war, and man is "suicidal" when he kills ecosystems for any reason.
How is it so-called greenies are clueless as to the only green that matters above all other considerations, and the fate of Earth and mankind rest with this green, Leopold's green mountain, green wolf. "In wildness is the salvation of the Earth!"
This is a non religious posting.
Many scientists are profoundly concerned, Earth is losing the ability to sequester the heat trapping gases, and what naturally takes care of C02 and methane, Earth's ecosystems, currently being devoured for all the new, green energies. And, when the soil is disturbed for the construction of those solar panels mined for a precious earth, mineral, more ecosystem death, the sequestered heat trapping gases are released back into the atmosphere. When they slice away the native plant biodiversity, more climate warming gases are released!
If man is destroying the natural sequestration of these gases or ecosystems and their plant and animal biodiversity, how are these green energies green?
But preventing x number of asthma and heart attacks, is more of a stretch, but I'll grant you them, because Mercury is BAD.
Now if we can just get rid of the coming standards that requiring mercury bulbs in every light fixture
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf
Did you read down to where you have to air the house out, turn off the AC/Heat for hours while your windows are open.
...Sure as heck hope it's not a bitter cold-snap!
Oh, and by the way, don't throw the bulbs (Broken or intact) in with the trash, you need to take them to your city/county toxic waste facility
Its good for you in your home
At least somebody in the mainstream has some integrity...PHIL RADFORD, executive director of Greenpeace USA:
President Obama’s record on the environment and energy policy has been lackluster. He took office promising to lead the fight against global warming, and yet stood silently by as polluters and their lobbyists took over the legislative process. Without the president’s leadership, we ended up with a disastrously compromised climate bill in the House, and efforts died in the Senate. Some have noted the president’s “bad luck” with energy policy; just weeks after Obama opened our coasts to increased offshore oil drilling, BP’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reminded Americans of the dangers of offshore drilling. And soon after calling for more nuclear power plants, the Fukushima nuclear disaster showed just how dangerous nuclear reactors and their radioactive waste can be."
People have no shame to even suggest this revisionist history.
Thtll teach them.
My grandmother knew a world without cars and more oxygen and vital ecosystem services; she lived a long life. Her mother knew a world without electricity and survived to a ripe old age. It wasn't the contrivances or expediences of the brainwashed, modern man that kept man alive for thousands of years; it was the natural, real Earth that seeded all life and maintains all life, Earth's natural, wild landscapes or ecosystems and the plant and animal biodiversity that creates the whole, ecosystems/Earth.
"The human economy, social structure and the well-being of our species rest on the bedrock of the health and welfare of integrated global ecological systems. Every breath we take, every bit of sustenance we consume daily are totally dependent on the interrelationships between the atmosphere, soil and water and the diversity of species that inhabit the planet with us." Science of Ecology
Where he lied
Its along list.
Re:Historic Regress on the Economy Under President Obama -
Gas prices up 83% and rapidly climbing, with food costs up proportionally.
Health care costs up 25-30% thanks to Obamacare (when they lied and told us it would go down)
Domestic oil/gas production down 40%.
Number of people living in poverty...number of people on food stamps..unemployed, underemployed...
Check it out. A spike for a short period is not equivalent to long-term high prices. It's all about the area under the graph - which represents YOUR $ and mine.
None of this addresses the corresponding cost of transporting goods and necessities (food). Freedom = Disposable income. Do you have more or less now than in 2010?
He managed to increase BP's 2011 net profit by roughly $7 Billion with his handling of the spill.
What a guy ...
"The natural ecosystems [like our desert systems] of the Earth are like the life-support system of a spacecraft..Natural ecosystems are the life support systems of spaceship Earth." ICPB
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/06/oil-spill-foreign-help-and-the-jones-act/
Did you bother to read the article in the link you posted? More to the point did you comprehend that fatcheck is a liberal fact twisting hack site that like the article takes things out of context and leaves out information or states things in a way to help their opinion? The article itself admits the boats were allowed inot U.S. waters but does not mention that they were not allowed to work.
:-)
What is your point?
:-)