{"id":34598,"date":"2021-05-06T16:37:34","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T20:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=34598"},"modified":"2021-05-20T23:59:08","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T03:59:08","slug":"obama-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/obama-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama: Climate Change Beliefs and Policies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What did President Obama believe about climate change? Did this lead to any policy changes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For President Obama, climate change was an urgent issue. Obama wanted to ensure that on a political level, the U.S. took global warming seriously and was prepared to take measures to stop it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more about Obama, climate change, and his key policy plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Obama and Climate Change<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Growing up, Barack was raised by his mother Ann to believe that humans had a responsibility to safeguard the natural environment and protect the planet that they all shared. Growing up in Hawaii, where he could freely surf the waves and explore the islands in all their natural beauty, <strong>young Barack recognized that the Earth was humanity\u2019s birthright, belonging to no one and available to everyone.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As he launched his political career, his outlook continued to be generally pro-environment. Environmentalism, however, was not central to his politics in the way that other issues were. That would change, however, once he became president and had to deal with environmental concerns on a truly global scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this chapter, we\u2019ll examine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/existential-threats-to-humanity\/\">existential threat<\/a> posed by global warming<\/li><li>The administration\u2019s plans for dealing with it through tighter regulation of greenhouse gas emissions<\/li><li>The effort to secure an international commitment to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/addressing-climate-change\/\">tackling climate change<\/a> at the 2009 United Nations <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/un-climate-change-conference\/\">Climate Change Conference<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Stakes of Global Warming<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The issue of global warming changed the way Obama viewed environmentalism. It was not just about protecting scenic views or saving endangered species\u2014it was a matter of existential concern for humanity.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The alarming rise in average temperatures carried the prospect of frequent and catastrophic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/is-the-weather-getting-more-extreme\/\">extreme weather<\/a> events like hurricanes and droughts. The extreme weather brought about by global warming would also devastate much of the planet\u2019s food supply; lead to mass economic, political, and social upheaval; and create a more violent and chaotic world as governments fought over increasingly scarce resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a terrifying vision of a not-too-distant future\u2014one that Obama was determined not to leave for future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Harsh Politics of Climate Change<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the terrifying consequences of inaction on global warming, <strong>Obama knew that the politics of passing the major Obama climate change bill were exceedingly difficult. <\/strong>Global warming entails the rise in <em>average <\/em>temperatures of a degree or two over a century. Even such seemingly minor rises in temperature, however, would have catastrophic consequences for life on the planet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But because the temperature changes are so slow, most people would never <em>notice <\/em>them, even in the course of a lifetime. Thus, global warming seemed abstract or unreal to many people. <strong>The general public was unwilling to make sacrifices <\/strong><strong><em>now <\/em><\/strong><strong>that would only benefit <\/strong><strong><em>future <\/em><\/strong><strong>generations, <\/strong>all in service of a problem they couldn\u2019t see or directly experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even among <em>Democrats<\/em>, there was lukewarm enthusiasm for tackling the issue. Key constituencies like labor unions were fearful of the economic impact of climate legislation, and rank-and-file Democratic voters generally unmotivated by the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But things were far worse on the Republican side. The GOP was outright hostile to the very idea of climate legislation, with prominent voices within the party denying that global warming even existed. This was a mix of knee-jerk partisanship, spite toward Obama, a commitment to extreme free-market ideology (which would oppose any meaningful regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions), and a disturbing rise of anti-intellectualism within the party that led many GOP politicians to be suspicious of science when it ran counter to their ideology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What did President Obama believe about climate change? Did this lead to any policy changes? For President Obama, climate change was an urgent issue. Obama wanted to ensure that on a political level, the U.S. took global warming seriously and was prepared to take measures to stop it. Read more about Obama, climate change, and his key policy plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":34603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[275,160,24],"tags":[274],"class_list":["post-34598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-science","category-society","tag-a-promised-land","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Obama: Climate Change Beliefs and Policies - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"During his first term as president, Obama worried about the effects of climate change and introduced measures to help. Read more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/obama-climate-change\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama: Climate Change Beliefs and Policies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"During his first term as president, Obama worried about the effects of climate change and introduced measures to help. 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