Quick guessing game. Who said this: “The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.”
Did you say Barack Obama in his State of the Union address in 2014?
Good for you!
Okay, who said this: “If there’s one thing I would like to see, it’d be for us to be able to price the cost of carbon emissions.”
Did you say Barack Obama in June, 2014?
Clever you.
How about this: “There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.”
Obama, September, 2014, you say.
Why, there’s no stumping you!
Well, then here’s a tough one: who flew this week on a private jet into Tuscany, Italy, surrounded by six additional military jets as he and his wife took a vacation?
You must be getting tired of the same answer.
But Obama’s not tired of his astonishing hypocrisy; not yet at least; as Heat Street points out, “In just his trip back and forth to Italy, for his presentation and his vacation, Barack Obama has emitted more than 16 metric tons of carbon – just shy of what an average American emits in a year. Add to that the motorcade, the internal travel in Italy, and, of course, the villa, and Obama and his wife have easily emitted more carbon in one single week than most Americans will in 2017.”
Well, we’ll just have to take him at his word that he cares, as when he asserted last week at his IIPS keynote, “When it comes to climate change, the hour is almost upon us. I do not believe that this planet is condemned to ever-rising temperatures. I believe these are problems that were caused by man and can be solved by man.”
Just don’t ask him to personally contribute to the solution.