President Barack Obama says the amount of money poured into fighting the scientific consensus on climate change will push the issue into the presidential campaign.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published Wednesday, Obama also says he's worried about the lack of international progress to address global warming and believes that is tied to frustration with the Keystone XL pipeline.
"Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people's number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices," Obama said. "In that environment, it's been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science.
"I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we're going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way," he added.
Obama didn't mention Mitt Romney by name, but sought to contrast the GOP of today with 2008 standard-bearer John McCain, who for years sponsored cap-and-trade legislation with Sen. Joe Lieberman.
"Here's a guy who not only believed in climate change, but co-sponsored a cap-and-trade bill that got 43 votes in the Senate just a few years ago, somebody who thought banning torture was the right thing to do, somebody who co-sponsored immigration reform with Ted Kennedy," Obama said of McCain. "That's the most recent Republican candidate, and that gives you some sense of how profoundly that party has shifted."
Romney ran to the right in the Republican primary on global warming, saying in October that the causes of climate change are unknown.
"My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet," Romney said at a fundraiser last fall. "And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us."
Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner asked Obama about NASA climate scientist James Hansen's statement that building the Keystone XL pipeline is "game over" for the planet, and while the president didn't say he disagreed with that assessment, he suggested the lack of climate action is behind the anger over Keystone.
"The reason that Keystone got so much attention is not because that particular pipeline is a make-or-break issue for climate change, but because those who have looked at the science of climate change are scared and concerned about a general lack of sufficient movement to deal with the problem," Obama said.
"Frankly, I'm deeply concerned that internationally, we have not made as much progress as we need to make," he added.
Credit: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75590.html
