Has Obama Given Up on Climate Change? (New Yorker)

[wtmusic]

"The budget released this week by the White House is by far Obama’s most ambitious statement of his legislative priorities since 2009, when, as a newly elected President, he produced a plan brimming over with initiatives like Obamacare, education reform, new spending to aid the depressed economy, and a cap-and-trade régime to curb carbon pollution. Obama’s 2009 budget presaged two years in office that were so legislatively far-reaching that, in Washington policy circles, the document was sometimes called the Big Bang.

This new budget approaches the ambitions of 2009—with one glaring omission. There are sections aimed at consolidating Obama’s first-term successes: the mundane but crucial details of implementing health-care and Wall Street reforms. He asks Congress to reform immigration, pass gun-control measures, overhaul the tax code, make pre-school universal, boost American manufacturing, and cut defense spending—an aggressive second-term agenda. And in the section of the two-hundred-and-forty-four-page document that has received the most attention, he details his offer—or rather, re-offer—to Republicans of a long-term deficit-reduction deal: cuts to Social Security and Medicare in return for more revenue. Like the 2009 document, the new budget is more or less the prose version of Obama’s campaign poetry.

<>

But the budget released this week makes it clear that Obama’s surprising appeal to Congress was an empty piece of rhetoric. The phrase “climate change” appears twenty-nine times in the new budget, but there is no new plan for Congress to take up in Obama’s otherwise ambitious legislative blueprint. There are some worthy energy initiatives that could achieve modest reductions in emissions, but the budget is silent on what Obama will do to aggressively reduce carbon pollution by the biggest emitters, like power plants and automobiles."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/04/climate-change-out-of-obama-budget.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true

[Buzz Clik]

1. This administration has been a bit less than serious about environmental initiatives.

Climate change is nowhere.

Environmental research funding is still next to nothing.

EPA is underfunded to adequately fulfill its mission.

[pscot]

2. No surprise, really

He never meant it.

[XemaSab]

3. "Given up"

implies having expressed an interest in the first place.

[hatrack]

4. *snort*

Can't wait to see what decision he'll make on Keystone. I mean, gosh, the suspense is just killing me!

[Viking12]

5. that was my reaction as well

[Nihil]

6. Saves on typing ...

"Given up on XYZ" = "Given up pretending that he cares about XYZ as he'll never be a candidate again."