Tag Archives: obama

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Say NO to oil drilling

07/17/2013 Nativegrl77

President Obama is deciding whether or not to open up even more of the Arctic for drilling with a new round of lease sales.

This lease sale will start any day now. Tell the president to follow through on the climate promise he delivered in his speech and cancel the sale.

Right now, President Obama is considering whether or not to open up more of the Alaskan Arctic for oil drilling by launching a new round of lease sales for the Chukchi Sea.
Despite Shell’s failures last summer, oil companies are desperate to secure the rights to drill in the Arctic. What’s at stake here isn’t just one of the most beautiful, unspoiled places on earth. But the future of our climate.
We have a real chance to throw a wrench in this Arctic lease sale process before it even begins. It’s expected to start any day, so the time is now to flood the White House with messages telling them to cancel the sale. It’s the perfect opportunity for the President to make good on the climate speech he made just a few weeks ago.
This Arctic lease sale will start any day now. Send an urgent message to President Obama right now telling him to cancel plans for the upcoming Arctic lease sale.
Last year Shell confirmed what experts have been saying all along — that drilling for oil in the Arctic will never be safe. A series of equipment, permit and weather related mishaps along with general incompetence caused the company to pack up and postpone its plans to drill.
There’s more at stake here than just the Arctic. Allowing companies like Shell to drill in the Arctic only deepens our dependence on fossil fuels and speeds up dangerous global climate change.
If the President is truly committed to limiting US carbon emissions, he will cancel this lease sale. This is his chance to back up his inspiring promise to address climate change with real action on the issue.
Tell President Obama that we can’t stop global climate change by opening up more of the Arctic for oil drilling.
A few weeks ago President Obama made a promise to the American people: “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing”.
We do not need to drill for Arctic oil. Wind and solar energy are becoming cheaper and more viable than fossil fuels by the day. And the people who are living in the polluted shadow of coal fired power plants and other dangerous fossil fuel projects are fighting back. Our climate movement is stronger than ever.
We need to make sure President Obama keeps his climate promise by opposing this lease sale and every other fossil fuel project including the Keystone XL pipeline that will only make this problem worse.
I want to be part of the generation that acted. I want our kids and grandkids to look back and be proud of all we accomplished. Fossil fuels played their part in helping to build our society, but their time is over.
Clean energy is here right now. We don’t need this oil. The climate can’t afford it. Join me today in opposing this new round of Arctic lease sales by taking action.
The clean energy revolution has started. We can do this. Our movement is stronger than ever before, and now we have the President on our side.
Sincerely,
Nicky Davies Greenpeace Campaigns Director
P.S. The Arctic lease sale could start any day now. Send President Obama your message today!

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Shouldn’t Government Be Easy to Use?

07/09/2013 Nativegrl77

Watch live to find out how a new management agenda is improving government.

Shouldn’t Government Be Easy to Use?

President Obama is devoted to making government smarter — improving disaster response, reducing waste, and opening up government data. We’ve made some big progress, but there’s more to do to make government user-friendly for Americans.

That’s why, today, President Obama is highlighting a new management agenda — directing his cabinet to continue to bring this government into the 21st century, and make it easier than ever for Americans to get the services they need from government.

Watch live at 11:50 AM ET to find out how a new management agenda is improving government.

David Simas, The White House

06/26/2013 Nativegrl77

The carbon pollution that causes climate change isn’t a distant threat, the risk to public health isn’t a hypothetical, and it’s clear we have a moral obligation to act.

The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15 years, and 2012 was the hottest one we’ve ever recorded. When carbon pollutes the air, the risk of asthma attacks increases. When the Earth’s atmosphere fundamentally changes, we see more heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods.

These events also create an economic imperative to act. When farms wash away and crops wilt, food prices go up. Last year, we saw 11 different weather disasters that each cost the United States more than $1 billion.

And confronting this challenge isn’t just about preventing disaster — it’s also about moving America forward in a way that creates hundreds of thousands of good, new, clean energy jobs. It’s about wasting less energy, which saves money for every business and every family in America.

So the debate’s over. It’s time for action.

Here’s what President Obama is announcing today. Check it out, then help to spread the word.

First, he’s laying out a plan to cut carbon pollution in America — by working to cut pollution from power plants, protect the health of our kids, boost clean energy, and revamp our transportation sector for the 21st century. Second, he’s preparing the United States for the impacts of these changes — by building stronger, safer communities and developing resources to make our country more resilient. And finally, he’s leading international efforts to combat global climate change.

We’ve put together a graphic that breaks this all down — from the effects we’re already seeing to the specific actions we’re going to take to lead this fight.

No single step can reverse the effects of climate change, but that’s no excuse for inaction. We have a moral obligation to leave our kids a planet that’s not broken and polluted.

So here’s what we’re going to do:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan

Share President Obama’s plan to make sure people in your community understand why we’re taking these steps and what comes next.

Thanks!

David

David Simas Deputy Senior Advisor White House

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

the Fight for Climate Change

06/26/2013 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

Today, President Obama announced his plan to combat climate change. The plan isn’t perfect (nuclear power isn’t part of a responsible solution, and “clean coal” is a myth), but it contains many important steps.

Most importantly, the plan calls for the regulation of carbon emissions from U.S. power plants and an end to U.S. support for new coal plants overseas. These are monumental steps in the right direction.

CLICK HERE TO TELL THE PRESIDENT YOU SUPPORT THESE STEPS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

With the president’s leadership—and our support—we can continue to develop solutions that will protect our health, create jobs, cut energy costs for families and businesses, and give us cleaner, safer energy.

So, we need your help. Send a letter to the president today!

-The Earth Day Network Team

CLICK HERE TO TELL THE PRESIDENT YOU SUPPORT THESE STEPS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

So, we need your help. Send a letter to the president today!

-The Earth Day Network Team

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Weekly Address

06/23/2013 Nativegrl77

Time for Congress to Pass Commonsense Immigration Reform

President Obama discusses the bipartisan legislation in the United States Senate that would take important steps towards fixing our broken immigration system, while growing our economy and reducing the deficit.

Watch this week’s Weekly Address.

Watch the West Wing Week here.

Indiana Fever: The 2012 WNBA champion Indiana Fever was in Washington, D.C., on Friday to visit the White House. President Obama congratulated the team on their winning season and thanked them for their service to communities across the country.

Father’s Day: President Obama celebrated an early Father’s Day last Friday with high school students from Chicago’s Becoming a Man program. During a lunch in the East Room of the White House, the President spoke of the importance of fatherhood and mentorship. President Obama met with students in the program, which is based in low-income public schools, earlier this year to reaffirm the importance of education.

Moving Toward Peace: After crossing the Atlantic Ocean Sunday night, President Obama spoke to the people of Northern Ireland from the Belfast waterfront on Monday, praising them for their efforts toward peace and encouraging them to continue to persist.

“From the start, no one was naïve enough to believe that peace would be anything but a long journey. Yeats once wrote ‘Peace comes dropping slow.’ But that doesn’t mean our efforts to forge a real and lasting peace should come dropping slow. This work is as urgent now as it has ever been, because there’s more to lose now than there has ever been.”

Trade Agreement: President Obama met with leaders from the European Union on Tuesday to discuss the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Together with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, President Obama announced that the EU and the U.S. will begin negotiations on the trade agreement next month. The agreement will increase economic growth in the United States and the European Union.

“[T]he U.S.-EU relationship is the largest in the world. It makes up nearly half of global GDP. We trade about $1 trillion in goods and services each year. We invest nearly $4 trillion in each other’s economies. And all that supports around 13 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. And this potentially groundbreaking partnership would deepen those ties. It would increase exports, decrease barriers to trade and investment. As part of broader growth strategies in both our economies, it would support hundreds of thousands of jobs on both sides of the ocean.”

G-8 Summit: On Tuesday, President Obama joined leaders from all over the world in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland for this year’s G-8 Summit. During plenary sessions, the President and the other G-8 leaders discussed the global economy and President Obama announced increased humanitarian assistance for Syria. The President also held meetings with President Vladmir Putin of Russia, Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President François Hollande of France, Prime Minister Enrico Letta of Italy and Prime Minister Ali Zeidan of Libya.

German Ties: The people of Berlin gathered on the east side of the Brandenburg Gate on Wednesday, almost 50 years after President Kennedy spoke to the Cold War-divided city, to hear President Obama speak about the strong bond between Germany and the United States.

In his speech, President Obama announced new measurements to reduce our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third. He also praised the Germans for their progress since the fall of the Berlin Wall, he acknowledged that the struggle for freedom, security, and human dignity still persists.

“When Europe and America lead with our hopes instead of our fears, we do things that no other nations can do, no other nations will do. So we have to lift up our eyes today and consider the day of peace with justice that our generation wants for this world.”