TheGreenFront presents: This Day in Climate History (hat tip to Joseph Romm) January 25, 1984: In his State of the Union Address, President Ronald Reagan says something that would be considered highly controversial by the right wing today: ...[L]et us remember our responsibility to preserve our older resources here on Earth. Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, its common sense. (21:52--22:08) youtu.be/TdMTTlpfNP4 presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40205 January 25, 2007: The Washington Post reports on a fundamentalist Christian parents crusade to have An Inconvenient Truth restricted from being shown in a suburban Seattle middle school: Frosty E. Hardison is neither impressed nor surprised that An Inconvenient Truth, the global-warming movie narrated by former vice president Al Gore, received an Oscar nomination this week for best documentary. Liberal left is all over Hollywood, he grumbled a few hours after the nomination was announced. Hardison, a parent of seven here in the southern suburbs of Seattle, has himself roiled the global-warming waters. It happened early this month when he learned that one of his daughters would be watching An Inconvenient Truth in her seventh-grade science class. No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming, Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is one of the signs of Jesus Christs imminent return for Judgment Day. His angry e-mail (along with complaints from a few other parents) stopped the film from being shown to Hardisons daughter. The teacher in that science class, Kay Walls, says that after Hardisons e-mail she was told by her principal that she would receive a disciplinary letter for not following school board rules that require her to seek written permission to present controversial materials in class. The e-mail also pressured the school board to impose a ban on screenings of the film for the districts 22,500 students. The ban, which the school board says was merely a moratorium, was lifted Tuesday night, subject to rigorous conditions. Still, the action has appalled the films producers and triggered a ferocious national backlash. Members of the school board say they have been bombarded by thousands of e-mails and phone calls, many of them hurtful and obscene, accusing them of scientific ignorance, pandering to religion and imposing prior restraint on free speech. (On April 19, 2007, The Daily Show features a segment on the controversy.) washingtonpost/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501387_pf.html thedailyshow/watch/thu-april-19-2007/apocalypse-how- January 25, 2011: In his State of the Union address, President Obama declares: This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology, an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people... At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if -- I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s. Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen. m.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address youtu.be/9ZdEmjtF6HE thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/01/25/207403/obama-sputnik-clean-energy-standard-climate-change-global-warming/ January 25, 2014: The New York Times reports on how the Keystone XL pipeline became a crucial battle in the war to avert the worst consequences of human-induced climate change. nytimes/2014/01/25/us/keystone-xl-pipeline-fight-lifts-environmental-movement.html
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 11:16:50 +0000
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