Kerry expected to elevate climate change as secretary of state

[AgingAmerican]

Secretary of State nominee John Kerry, with 20 years of concern about climate change, is expected to push the issue to center stage as a slow-motion crisis in need of a global solution.

When he sought to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts made a point of challenging the Bush administration's backtracking on the issue and rejection of climate science. In contrast, he told the nation, he “believes in science.”

Kerry has been pushing for action on global warming since he attended the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. He has since attended multiple United Nations climate-change negotiations, including helping Obama with some preliminary discussions with India and China at the U.N. talks in Copenhagen in 2009.

...

A clue to his current thinking came in August when he spoke on the Senate floor, saying that planetary warming was “as dangerous as any sort of the real crises that we talk about.”

“Today we had a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee on the subject of Syria, and we all know what’s happening with respect to Iran, and nuclear weapons and the possibility even of a war,” Kerry said. “Well, this issue actually is of as significant a level of importance, because it affects life itself on the planet, because it affects ecosystems on which the oceans and the land depend for the relationship of the warmth of our earth and the amount of moisture that there is and all of the interactions that occur as a consequence of our climate.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-kerry-expected-to-elevate-climate-change-as-secretary-of-state-20121224,0,6445247.story?track=rss

It is about time that the Obama administration address this crisis. The silence on climate change dumps this onto future generations, who will suffer the consequences of our indifference. Let us hope this issue finally comes front and center where it should have been a long time ago.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I'll bet John McCain and Lindsay Graham didn't see that coming . . . .

The law of inintended consequences

[Jackpine Radical]

2. EVERYTHING pales in comparison to our looming ecological catastrophe.

It isn't gonna matter what your SocSec increases are pegged to if you can't breathe the air, drink the water, and avoid famines due to environmentally-driven, massive crop failures.

[ananda]

3. Good for him..

.. but I wonder exactly how much or what he can do in light of the obstructionism, propaganda, media manipulation, and false studies and science put out by the PTB that want to keep people dependent on fossil fuels.

[DanTex]

4. That would be great. Climate change is maybe the single most important issue we face.