President Obama: "Some in Congress are ‘Shills for the Fossil Fuel Industry’
President Obama sat down with Vice founder Shane Smith recently and talked candidly about a range of issues including Iran, gridlock in DC, ISIL, marijuana and climate change. And on climate change, he emphasized the urgency of action—and the short-sightedness of Republican opposition.
“Climate change is an example of the hardest problems to solve,” said Obama. “The hardest thing to do in politics and in government is to make sacrifices now for a long-term payoff.”
He asserted his determination to push in the right direction, given the influence his office offers him.
“I can have as much of an impact on the things that are important to people as anybody on the planet,” said Obama. “If I can change how the country thinks about [climate change] as a serious immediate threat, not some distant vague thing, if I can encourage and gain commitments from the Chinese to put forward a serious plan to start curbing their greenhouse gases, and that allows us to leverage the entire world for the conference that will be taking place later this year in Paris, and if I’m able to double fuel efficiency standards and if I’m able to make appliances more efficient and to double the production of clean energy—if I’m able to do all those things now, when I’m done, we’re still going to have a heck of a problem. But we will have made enough progress that the next President and the next generation can start building on it and you start getting some momentum.”
When Smith brought up Sen. James Inhofe’s recent stunt of throwing a snowball on the floor of the Senate to “prove” climate change isn’t happening, saying “that would be funny if he were’t the chairman of the environment committee,” Obama responded, “That’s disturbing.”
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