After listening to this speech, it is obvious that President Obama is woefully lacking in his understanding of the immediate menace of climate change. Every politician and citizen must read James Hansen's compelling book, Storms of Our Grandchildren, in order to begin to fathom just how serious this problem is. We are not going to be able to simply stop rising temperatures when we finally have bi-partisan support for climate change remediation. It will take many decades to undue the harm we have already done. Obama like the rest of this nation's leadership is negligently uniformed about the most important issue facing our species today. Mr. President look your children in the eye and tell them that economic growth and national consensus are more important than the very different world they will soon be living in. In 1994 when I ran for Lt. Governor of RI as a member of the Green Party, climate change was one of the our major concerns. I remember saying during a debate on our local PBS television outlet, that politics was no longer about merely getting elected; it was about saving the planet from us. That assertion did not go over well as you can imagine, but it was just as true then as it is now. However, because of our political cowardice and science illiteracy our planet is now warmer, our climate more unstable, and impacts of a rapidly warming planet are causing great human suffering around the world. In addition, the unfolding tragedy of earth's sixth great mass extinction continues while we passively look on. E. O. Wilson, among others, estimates that between 40 and 200 species disappear each day, but we must wait for James Inhoffe to be convinced that the impending ecological collapse of our life support system is not just some liberal, hippie, commie, enviro-whacko plot.
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