Washington, December 20: The White House is trying to rally support for the contentious deal brokered by President Barack Obama at UN climate talks by listing prominent Americans who back the plan against global warming.
A statement released by the White House included quotes from environmentalists, captains of industry and leading elected officials from Obama’s Democratic Party praising the “breakthrough” that will “lay the foundation for international action in the years to come.”
Michael Eckhart, head of the American Council on Renewable Energy, applauded Obama’s “wisdom in achieving an agreement on the aspirational goal, limiting the outcome which we all care about, because this will stand to rule all else that comes in future negotiations.”
Hannah Jones, a senior official at sports equipment and apparel giant Nike, praised the president’s “sense of urgency and recognition that companies need certainty and a level playing field in order to move to a low-carbon economy which will unleash the next wave of jobs and prosperity.”
Larry Schweiger, head of the National Wildlife Federation, was more nuanced. “The deal is incomplete, and we’re not done yet,” he said.
“But at long last all of the top polluters of the world, including the United States and China, are putting numbers on the table to cut pollution in a transparent way.”
The 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, said that Obama’s “hands-on engagement broke through the bickering and sets the stage for a final deal and for Senate passage this spring of major legislation at home.”
For Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Obama “has secured a critical agreement that includes an achievable mitigation target, transparency measures and a financing mechanism.”
Others were not as charitable.
Bill McKibben, founder of the environmentalist group 350.org, said in a separate statement that the final declaration shows “that small and poor countries don’t matter, that international civil society doesn’t matter, and that serious limits on carbon don’t matter.”
Obama “has wrecked the UN and he’s wrecked the possibility of a tough plan to control global warming,” McKibben said in a statement.
“It may get Obama a reputation as a tough American leader but it’s at the expense of everything progressives have held dear. 189 countries have been left powerless, and the foxes now guard the carbon henhouse without any oversight.”
At the American Petroleum Institute – the oil and gas industry trade group – president Jack Gerard said in a statement on Friday that his group agrees with Obama “on the importance of addressing global climate change.”
However, the leading proposals in Congress to address the issue “could destroy millions of jobs, drive up fuel prices, and, by shifting much of our refining capacity abroad… substantially increase our reliance on foreign supplies of petrol, diesel and other petroleum fuels.”
Gerard called for “all stakeholders to come together to craft a fair, efficient, market-based climate change strategy that minimises the burden on consumers and jobs.”
——-Agencies