Bill McKibben: Obama and Climate Change: The Real Story

For all those who still believe that our deepest problems just began with Trump, this will dash some of those illusions. It is also my belief that the truth shall set us all free. That said, it was very painful for me to first come to see how compromised Obama was, and this after working to get him elected and so deeply believing in him and his message. As I recognized more and more of the truth of his betrayal, I became incredibly disillusioned, angry, and sad. AND this was also a huge and deeply important lesson for me. This article by Bill McKibben  highlights my concerns when I speak about neoliberalism and how it is that so many politicians from both major political parties have sold their souls to their corporate donors. This is why it is so essential to get the influence of the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street, the military industrial complex, and all large financial corporate interests out of our political and media systems. After squandering decades on "moderation" and the status quo, we are now at the 12th hour. Our species is threatened with extinction along with most of Earth's other inhabitants who we are taking with us over the cliff — unless we act NOW to radically change directions. There is truly no more time left to waste. And these dramatic and vital changes will not occur as long as we blindly continue to vote for and empower the same toxic corporate structures which have poisoned our nation and the planet. Another world is possible. Tag, we are all it! — Molly

By 

BILL MCKIBBEN

Two years ago, on a gorgeous November day, 12,000 activists surrounded the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Signs we carried featured quotes from Barack Obama in 2008: “Time to end the tyranny of oil”; “In my administration, the rise of the oceans will begin to slow.”

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

Our hope was that we could inspire him to keep those promises. Even then, there were plenty of cynics who said Obama and his insiders were too closely tied to the fossil-fuel industry to take climate change seriously. But in the two years since, it’s looked more and more like they were right – that in our hope for action we were willing ourselves to overlook the black-and-white proof of how he really feels.

If you want to understand how people will remember the Obama climate legacy, a few facts tell the tale: By the time Obama leaves office, the U.S. will pass Saudi Arabia as the planet’s biggest oil producer and Russia as the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas combined. In the same years, even as we’ve begun to burn less coal at home, our coal exports have climbed to record highs. We are, despite slight declines in our domestic emissions, a global-warming machine: At the moment when physics tell us we should be jamming on the carbon brakes, America is revving the engine.

Greenland Melting: Climate Change’s Disasterous Effects 

You could argue that private industry, not the White House, has driven that boom, and in part you’d be right. But that’s not what Obama himself would say. Here’s Obama speaking in Cushing, Oklahoma, last year, in a speech that historians will quote many generations hence. It is to energy what Mitt Romney’s secretly taped talk about the 47 percent was to inequality. Except that Obama was out in public, boasting for all the world to hear:

“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quad­rupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth, and then some. . . . In fact, the problem . . . is that we’re actually producing so much oil and gas . . . that we don’t have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it where it needs to go.”

Please continue this article here: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/obama-and-climate-change-the-real-story-104491/