President Obama's comprehensive Climate Action Plan is a turning point for the United States and global leadership on climate change solutions. The president is stepping up now with multifaceted executive actions to directly reduce carbon pollution and accelerate renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean vehicle solutions. The president's message advances the core principal: "There is no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth."
It's (past) time to aggressively advance common-sense solutions to counter the realities of climate change problems. Moving forward on pollution reduction standards for coal plants, spurring new wind and solar energy development, seizing opportunities to make buildings more energy efficient and advancing clean car and truck technologies will create jobs, grow the economy, avoid energy waste and protect our public health and environment. The power of technological innovation can and must be harnessed for climate change solutions.
As the president pointed out, history has shown that when the people have demanded environmental progress, our country has met the challenge at hand. We tackled smog in the '70s, acid rain in the '80s, and countless other American and global challenges. Plans, speeches and sound bites can provide a framework and momentum. The heavy lifting of implementation through regulatory processes and market mechanisms is vital to transform the promises and pledges into the reality of carbon pollution reduction that holds down the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Let's move forward.
Solving our global climate change problems is the moral, business, policy, political and technological challenge of our generation. The president's plan builds on successful approaches that many state and local governments and businesses are already advancing. He is advancing common-sense solutions that are good for jobs, good for economic growth and good for the environment.