Headlines
Immediate steps needed to mitigate climate change impact: Obama
Washington, April 23
US President Barack Obama
said on Wednesday that climate change "can no longer be denied" and
immediate measures are needed to mitigate its effects.
Obama said
during his Earth Day address on Wednesday at the Everglades National
Park -- the largest subtropical wilderness in the US -- that global
warming threatened the 600,000-hectare (1.5-million-acre) park and the
communities that depended on it, posing a risk to the $82 billion
tourist industry of the state of Florida, according to the Spanish news
agency Efe.
Obama said climate change was a problem that could
not be left for future generations to address and urged the US Congress
to approve new funds for environmental protection.
"This is a
problem now. It has serious implications for the way we live right now.
Stronger storms. Deeper droughts. Longer wildfire seasons," Obama said,
adding that the Pentagon also viewed climate change as posing an
"increasing set of risks to our national security".
The US
president said that $2.2 billion had already been spent on restoration
efforts in the Everglades and that this year he had proposed an
additional $240 million for that South Florida wetland system to restore
its natural water flow. Obama noted that the wetland system was "one of
the best defences against climate change and rising sea levels".
The
president also announced $25 million in public and private funding for
restoration projects at the US national parks, making a note of a recent
report that "every dollar invested in the National Park Service
generates $10 for the economy."
Obama said climate change was
"not some impossible problem that we cannot solve" and noted that five
years ago local Republicans and Democrats formed the Southeast Florida
Regional Climate Change Compact -- "an agreement to work together to
fight climate change" that has become a "model not just for the country
but for the world".
But despite Obama's appeals to
bipartisanship, the White House said Florida Governor Rick Scott, a
Republican who had repeatedly said that he was not convinced by the
science of climate change, declined a formal invitation to attend
Obama's speech.
"Simply refusing to say the words 'climate
change' doesn't mean that climate change isn't happening. If you've got a
coming storm, you don't stick your head in the sand; you prepare for
the storm. You make sure our communities are prepared for climate
change. And that's an economic imperative," Obama said.