President Barack Obama laid out a far-reaching set of proposals meant to address the driving causes of climate change, headlined by a new directive to begin limiting carbon emissions for new and existing power plants and the announcement of high environmental standards for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline to be met before his administration signs off on the project.
The president outlined a series of climate proposals he intended to advance through executive action, sidestepping a Congress mired in gridlock in its handling of most matters, let alone politically touchy energy and climate issues.
“The question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science, of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements, has put all that to rest,” Obama said in a major policy address at Georgetown University. “So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it's too late.”
While delivering a speech on climate change, President Obama tells the audience that how we choose to respond to climate change will have a profound effect on the world we leave to our children and grandchildren.
He later added, addressing those who deny climate change science: “We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat-earth society.”
To that end, Obama issued a presidential directive to the Environmental Protection Agency to begin drafting new rules governing carbon emissions from power plants.
