US

Environmental groups hail Obama’s promise for action on climate change

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
Font Size:

In the wake of President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, environmental groups hailed the president’s promise to respond to climate change and continue to support green energy sources during his second term.

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” Obama said in his speech on Monday.

“This is a call to action against the climate chaos that is sweeping our nation and threatening our future,” said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement, adding that the president should look to cutting carbon emissions from power plants. “Now it’s time to act.”

“We at EDF share the sense of urgency President Obama described,” Fred Krupp, President of Environmental Defense Fund. “We are fully focused on working with him and many others to achieve climate security and American clean energy innovation.”

Environmental groups have been pressing Obama to make climate change a top priority during his second term and have even urged him to act unilaterally to address the issue.

Earlier this month, 70 environmental groups sent a letter to Obama that urged him to use his executive authority to address curb carbon emissions.

“You have the authority under existing law to achieve urgently needed reductions in the carbon pollution that is disrupting our climate and damaging our health,” reads the letter released by the Natural Resources Defense Council and signed by prominent environmental groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club.

“The Sierra Club is heartened by President Obama’s remarks today in his second inauguration and his renewed vow to respond to the threat of climate disruption,” said Sierra Club director Michael Brune, hailing Obama’s inaugural remarks on climate change. “We will work tirelessly to ensure the transition to safe, clean energy sources to fight the most pressing challenge of our time.”

Environmental groups have also been upping their pressure on the administration to block oil and gas drilling in the arctic, particularly after the beaching of a Royal Dutch Shell drilling rig, and to block the Keystone XL pipeline.

A recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which found that 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, brought increased urgency in the calls from environmental groups for the U.S. to address climate change.

Shortly after his re-election, Obama said that he would create a climate change agenda, but indicated that the idea of a carbon tax would be a political non-starter. Since few things are likely to pass the Republican-controlled House, the president may try to act through the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I always have hope, but it is sometimes hard to see how real progress, substantial progress, is going to be made with the fact that the Congress is so polarized,” Travis Franck, a policy analyst for Climate Interactive, told LiveScience.

Related:

Follow Michael on Twitter

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel