Oceana Reacts: President Obama Announces New Climate Action Plan - Oceana USA

Oceana Reacts: President Obama Announces New Climate Action Plan

Press Release Date: June 25, 2013

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Contact:

Dustin Cranor, APR | email: dcranor@oceana.org | tel: 954.348.1314

 

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Obama released his Climate Action Plan, which aims to decrease carbon pollution and address the global threat of climate change.

Oceana released the following statement from Deputy Vice President for U.S. Campaigns, Jacqueline Savitz, regarding President Obama’s Climate Action Plan:

“The climate action plan announced by President Obama today takes many important, common sense steps that begin the work needed to address runaway climate change.  Reducing carbon emissions from power plants and expanding energy efficiency programs will help to cut carbon emissions, which are changing our climate and making our oceans more acidic. Without major reductions, carbon dioxide emissions will lead to mass extinctions on coral reefs, resulting in marine ecosystem collapse. 

The President’s leadership today is a breath of fresh air, and we hope it is a first step to setting more comprehensive goals for ending our reliance on fossil fuels and building a broad and lucrative clean energy sector.  President Obama is taking steps to be the first president to address this catastrophe-in-waiting.  For that we should support him—while also crying ‘More! More!’

There are many additional opportunities for the U.S. to lead on climate, while at the same time creating jobs and stimulating the economy. For example, Oceana has shown that the U.S. could alleviate the need for Gulf drilling and Persian Gulf oil by 2023, and be fully independent from foreign oil by 2030, by developing clean energy solutions that create jobs and stimulate the economy.  For example, the United States has a tremendous amount of offshore wind that has the potential to power the entire country four times over according to the Department of Energy.  This could ultimately displace a tremendous amount of fossil fuels and nearly eliminate carbon emissions. 

We were also encouraged by the President’s prior decision to stop the expansion of offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, leaving some carbon safely underground until at least 2017. However, allowing oil and gas companies to conduct harmful seismic airgun activities in the Atlantic could enable future oil and gas development that has no place in a climate-sensitive energy policy. 

The plan announced today takes some important steps forward, and is a good start on a comprehensive road-map for making the energy transition needed to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. There is still much work to be done.”