{"id":9832,"date":"2014-01-29T18:09:42","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T23:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=9832"},"modified":"2014-01-29T18:09:42","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T23:09:42","slug":"president-presses-for-action-on-climate-research-in-2014-sotu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2014\/01\/29\/president-presses-for-action-on-climate-research-in-2014-sotu\/","title":{"rendered":"President presses for action on climate, research in 2014 SOTU"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SOTU\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This post contributed by Terence Houston, Policy Analyst and Liza Lester, Communications Officer<\/em><\/p>\n

President Obama\u2019s 5th<\/sup> State of the Union address came after a year where Congress experienced an unprecedented amount of partisan gridlock and the first lengthy government shutdown in nearly 18 years. Consequently, the theme of President Obama\u2019s most recent State of the Union address was a call to action on numerous legislative fronts.<\/p>\n

The president made clear that 2014 will be a year of action, in not from the legislature, than certainly from the executive. \u201cAmerica does not stand still \u2013 and neither will I.\u00a0 So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do,\u201d said President Obama.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s with-you-or-without-you tone received mixed reviews in Congress, currently enjoying a 19 percent approval rating. Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) commented that he doesn\u2019t like it, and as a former governor, \u201cI don\u2019t think it works,\u201d at a Wednesday morning debrief, cosponsored by The Atlantic<\/i> and the National Journal<\/i>. \u201cWatch this debt ceiling issue\u201d to see how the President\u2019s strategy plays out, he said.<\/p>\n

But Congressman Aaron Shock (R-IL) saw opportunities to work with the president on transportation infrastructure, tax and immigration reforms, and on fast-tracking international trade agreements. Shock is not in favor of debt ceiling brinksmanship. He challenged his own leadership in the House to recognize a need for bipartisan legislation. \u201cIt behooves us to work with pragmatic, centrist Democrats,\u201d he said, during the Wednesday debrief.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s call to get the economy moving included a request for Congress to increase funding for scientific research. \u201cWe know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow,\u201d said Obama.\u00a0 \u201cThis is an edge America cannot surrender.\u00a0 Federally-funded research helped lead to the ideas and inventions behind Google and smart phones.\u00a0 That\u2019s why Congress should undo the damage done by last year\u2019s cuts to basic research so we can unleash the next great American discovery \u2013 whether it\u2019s vaccines that stay ahead of drug-resistant bacteria, or paper-thin material that\u2019s stronger than steel.\u201d<\/p>\n

A representative of Research America asked Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO) this morning about the climate in Congress for working with the President to \u201cfix the damage\u201d to research funding, noting the impact of the sequester on top of several years of stagnant federal science budgets. \u00a0DeGette echoed the president\u2019s statement that federally-supported science is a job creator necessary to keep the US at the forefront of science and technology. She feels hopeful that science funding will receive bipartisan support as our economy improves.<\/p>\n

DeGette, a representative from a swing state with powerful energy interests, supports natural gas as a \u201ctransition fuel.\u201d She also supports hydraulic fracking, but wants greater transparency from the industry, and stricter regulations. She would like to see the president take on comprehensive energy policy (she has co-sponsored legislation in this vein with Rep. David McKinley (R-WV)).<\/p>\n

Hoeven expressed disappointment that the president did not address the Keystone XL pipeline in his speech. Hoeven said that the pipeline has been needlessly delayed, arguing that business reforms during his governorship in North Dakota led to a surge in fossil fuel, biofuel, and wind energy development, and a corresponding rise in employment.<\/p>\n

The president touted the United States\u2019 energy successes, such as higher fuel efficiency standards for cars and investments in solar. While noting that these efforts have led to a \u201ccleaner, safer planet,\u201d he maintained that more needs to be done to tackle the issue of climate change. \u201cOver the past eight years, the United States has reduced our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth,\u201d said President Obama.\u00a0 \u201cBut we have to act with more urgency \u2013 because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I directed my administration to work with states, utilities, and others to set new standards on the amount of carbon pollution our power plants are allowed to dump into the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Obama also took the opportunity to address climate change skeptics.\u00a0 \u201cClimate change is a fact,\u201d said the president.\u00a0 \u201cAnd when our children\u2019s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

The full address is available for listening and reading here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photo Credit: The White House<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post contributed by Terence Houston, Policy Analyst and Liza Lester, Communications Officer President Obama\u2019s 5th State of the Union address came after a year where Congress experienced an unprecedented amount of partisan gridlock and the first lengthy government shutdown in nearly 18 years. Consequently, the theme of President Obama\u2019s most recent State of the Union address was a call…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":9833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[60,134,135,1218,114,70,179,715],"class_list":["post-9832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","tag-climate-change","tag-congress","tag-economy","tag-energy-development","tag-obama","tag-policy","tag-president-obama","tag-science-funding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}