Shane Smith interviews President Obama.
In a
relaxed interview with President Obama aired Monday, Vice founder Shane Smith used the opportunity to focus some attention on a subject the news outlet has focused considerable attention on: climate change.
Sen. James Inhofe—the Oklahoma senator who recently tossed a snowball in the Senate chambers in an effort to prove that global warming isn't happening—may or may not believe climate change is real. But he has nevertheless transformed his claims that it is a "hoax" into bad comedy. And yet he is now chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
"That's disturbing," Obama said. But he had a warning for the Republican Party, more than one-third of whose members join Inhofe in denying that climate change is happening or concede that it may be happening but not as a result of human activity:
Smith: So, you have a very sane and rational plan, but we're not acting in a sane and rational way.
Obama: Well, I'll tell you. Climate change is an example of the hardest problems to solve. The hardest thing to do in politics and in goverment is to make sacrifices now for a long-term pay-off. But here's what keeps me optimistic ... is, you talk to Malia and Sasha—16 and 13—and the sophistication and awareness that they have about environmental issues compared to my generation or yours, they're way ahead of the game. There's always going to be resistance to change, and some of that is going to be generational.
I guarantee you that the Republican Party will have to change its approach to climate change because voters will insist upon it. The challenge on something like climate change is, there comes a point of no return, and you do have to make sure that we get at this thing quick enough and with enough force to be able to make a difference.
Smith: Why is the resistance so strong?
Obama: Well, some of it's economic. If you poll folks, they're concerned about climate change, but they're even more concerned about gas prices. You can't fault somebody for being concerned about paying the bills or being able to fill up your tank to get to your job. In some cases though, you have elected officials who are shills for the oil companies or the fossil-fuel industry, and there's a lot of money involved. Typically in Congress, the committees of jurisdiction like the energy committees are populated by folks from places that pump a lot of oil and pump a lot of gas.
Read below the fold for one proposal that would deal with climate change and jobs.
The obstacles to getting the Republican Party to change its stubborn approach to global warming may be ended because voters will demand it. But, as we have seen, consistently turning out younger voters to enforce those demands by knocking politicians who resist change is no simple matter. One of the contributors to this is the fact that Democrats have not yet presented a united front with a good package of legislation on climate change.
A key element of such a package—although certainly not the only one—should deal both with climate change and those economic concerns the president took note of. We need to build an extensive new energy infrastructure. And we need to do so fast. After decades of foot-dragging, change is now happening in this regard, partly as a result of legislation in a few states. But progress is slow and haphazard.
Global warming is a severe crisis. Almost 75 years ago, the world also faced a crisis: World War II. The U.S. met that crisis head on. It retooled its industries and turned out incredible amounts of war machinery, going hugely into debt to do so. And when the war was over, it came up with more money for the GI Bill and later, an interstate highway system that transformed the economy.
As a nation, we need to take climate change as seriously as we did World War II.
Currently, when everything is accounted for, we are spending about $1 trillion a year on the military-industrial complex—war machinery, personnel, paying off the cost of previous wars, caring for the health of veterans of previous wars. We need to invest the same amount every year to restore our crumbling infrastructure and innovate it so that it is no longer founded on fossil fuel.
That's $1 trillion a year for at least a decade to build a renewable energy infrastructure, including mass transit.
Some will say: That's ridiculous. It's too much. Where will the money come from? The simple answer is the same place it came from in World War II.
This $1 trillion-a-year investment in our future would not just work to ameliorate some of the damage from climate change and help keep it from getting worse, it would address our continuing jobs problem.
But how can we get such a program through Congress given the resistance?
By having Democrats promote the idea every time they return to their home turf, every time they make a campaign stop.
Saying this can't be done because Republicans will stand in the way is a prescription for nothing ever happening. Giving disenchanted or disinformed Americans a good reason to vote is an important step on the way to climbing out of the gridlock. Forcefully offering a program for what Democrats would do in this regard if they had the clout in Congress is the best way to replace those politicians who stand in the way of making the changes we desperately need. To get the political clout needed, give voters reasons to provide that clout.