President Barack Obama’s chief science advisor, Professor John Holdren has stated that it is unlikely that congress will pass a bill that will put a tax on carbon emissions.
Speaking at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Holdren admitted that President Obama would have to focus his efforts on improving energy efficiency, increasing nuclear power and developing new technologies that could be used to limit the use of carbon emissions.
The chief science advisor to the President also admitted that the US would have to dramatically cut its emissions and that initiatives like energy efficiency, nuclear power and new technology would not be enough to curb the effects of global warming and climate change.
Professor Holdren conceded that the Obama administration had hoped to do more in relation to tackling carbon emissions.
Instead, the chief science advisor to the White House stated that the US would have to hope that the next Congress would try and reduce the country’s carbon emissions problem.
“Ultimately, we will have to look to a future Congress for the more comprehensive approach that climate change will require,” he said.
Professor Holdren was adamant that, “Any objective look at what science has to say about climate change ought to be sufficient to persuade reasonable people that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible for a substantial part of that and that these changes are doing harm and will continue to do more harm unless we start to reduce our emissions.”
Congress is expected to hold a number of meetings to look into the issue of climatic change and this is something that Professor Holdren welcomed.
“If Congress wants to have a series of hearings to illuminate these issues, they are going to get illuminated,” he said.
Addressing the audience, Holdren stated that he believed that the recent scandals that have had a negative impact on the issue on climate change did not mean that people were skeptical about whether climate change was taking place.
The chief advisor highlighted the record breaking temperatures and extreme weather patterns that were taking place over the past number of years as evidence that climate change was a serious problem and that people were well aware of.
“I’m not so sure there’s a lot of new skepticism in the climate change debate. People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heat waves and powerful storms. I think it is going to be very hard to persuade people that climate change is somehow a fraud,” he said.
Article by Ciaran Hogg, appearing courtesy Justmeans.
