Obama Not Happy With US Climate Policy, Promises More Reform

In a rather lengthy interview with Rolling Stone, President Obama spilled the beans about how he feels about the US government’s current climate and energy policy and the good news is that he’s just as unhappy with it as we are. In a talk that covered the most pressing issues that have come to his desk in the first two years of his presidency — from Guantanamo bay, to the war in Iraq, to the climate debate and the BP oil spill — he spoke candidly about what he believes is a failing in Congress to pass comprehensive legislative climate policy. Then he promised that the buck hasn’t stopped here and that change is coming.

“Climate change has the potential to have devastating effects on people around the globe, and we’ve got to do something about it. In order to do something about it, we’re going to have to mobilize domestically, and we’re going to have to mobilize internationally,” Obama said when asked by Rolling Stone if climate change was the major moral issue of the 21st century. He went on to note that his administration has “not made as much progress as I wanted to make when I was sworn into office. It is very hard to make progress on these issues in the midst of a huge economic crisis, because the natural inclination around the world is to say, ‘You know what? That may be a huge problem, but right now what’s a really big problem is 10 percent unemployment.’”

He continued by saying that the bill that has currently passed is only the beginning and starting next year he’s going to go full steam ahead putting together a set of policies that really matter. “One of my top priorities next year is to have an energy policy that begins to address all facets of our overreliance on fossil fuels. We may end up having to do it in chunks, as opposed to some sort of comprehensive omnibus legislation,” he noted.

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