President Obama spent eight paragraphs on climate change Tuesday night in his State of the Union address. No surprise that this didn’t bring Republicans to their feet. This continued reordering of presidential priorities dating back to his June 2013 speech on climate change is welcome indeed. Most eco-activists are more optimistic than they were earlier in the president’s tenure. But our optimism is tempered with caution. Here’s Jamie Henn at Common Dreams:
The tests ahead are clear. In the coming months, the President will issue a new five year plan that will dictate how much offshore oil and gas reserves will be put up for auction to the fossil fuel industry. A bad deal could open up new parts of the Atlantic and Arctic to offshore drilling, a good one would put large chunks of the nation's oil and gas off limits to future development. Smaller federal auctions will continue to be a flash points across the country, as climate activists join with indigenous leaders, farmers, ranchers, students and youth to try and stop the government from selling off our public lands to an industry intent on exploiting them to wreck our common future. With a new bill in Congress and large coalitions coming together, the fight to keep fossil fuels underneath public lands in the ground is very much on.
The President will also be judged by the vigor in which he goes after fossil fuel criminals like ExxonMobil. New revelations show that the company has known about global warming for decades, but continued to fund front groups that spread denial and misinformation, and supported politicians intent on blocking any sort of action to address the crisis. If Exxon is found guilty of conspiring with other oil companies to lie to the public, their shareholders, and the government about the impact climate change would have on the planet and their business, they could face the same sorts of lawsuits that helped bring down Big Tobacco. The New York state Attorney General has already launched an investigation into the matter. Activists are now calling on President Obama to instruct the Department of Justice to do the same. [...]
Other tests will come outside of the traditional environmental policy realm. In his State of the Union, the President [promoted] the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a new trade deal that, among other problems, would give fossil fuel companies the right to sue governments that try and keep fossil fuel reserves off limits. Ironically, the Obama Administration itself is facing a lawsuit brought by TransCanada under a similar trade agreement, NAFTA, in which the company is looking for $15 billion worth of damages after the administration's "unfair" decision to block Keystone XL. There couldn't be a clearer example of how corporations are looking to use these agreements to push back on climate policies and regulations, or a stronger case for why the TPP needs to be tossed in the dustbin.
With Keystone XL rejected and the Paris agreement in his back pocket, President Obama may feel like his climate legacy is secured. But the coming months will be defining ones for his Presidency and the entire planet. Many of the fights ahead won't be in the Halls of Congress or in Washington, D.C. but out in places like [the oil pipeline hub of Cushing, Oklahoma] on the sharp edge between the fossil fuel era of the past and the clean energy economy of the future. The decisions about which coal, oil and gas reserves the administration intends to set off limits will determine the scorecard used by future historians in judging the President's record on the issue. Which is why the climate mantra for the rest of President Obama's term, and whoever succeeds him, is strikingly simple: keep it in the ground.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2014—Palin's defense: I'm a moron:
One of the many claims in Halperin and Heileman's new book Game Change is that during a briefing session, Sarah Palin said several times that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were behind the 9/11 attacks. Although this particularly story is new, we've already known for quite some time that Palin believed Iraq was behind 9/11.
As you'll see in this video, even though Palin now denies ever having made the connection, she made at on at least two occasions during the 2008 campaign, first on September 11 when she said Iraq was home to "the enemies who planned and carried out" 9/11 and again on September 25 when, standing at Ground Zero, she said we were fighting in Iraq "to not let them attempt again what they accomplished here, and that was some destruction, terrible destruction on that day".
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, on a show shortened by technical difficulties, we examined the Senate Republicans’ plans for additional filibuster reform, wasted some time on Bristol Palin being sued by her second baby’s father for child support, and wondered about our Saud-ish allies.
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