Twenty-two miles long and 12 miles wide, picturesque Lake Tahoe would cover all of California with more than a foot of water if it were emptied. Harry Reid and departing President Barack Obama.
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President Clinton attended the first Lake Tahoe summit in 1997, also at the invitation of Reid, bringing national and global attention to the fate of the lake, which is a popular resort area.
Earlier on Wednesday, Obama stopped in to a summit about the health of Lake Tahoe, the deep alpine lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the Nevada-California border whose average surface temperature reached an all-time recorded high past year.
It was Obama’s first and last visit to Tahoe as president. “You have to read or listen to scientists to know that the overwhelming body of science shows us that climate change is caused by human activity”.
Meanwhile, scientists have identified a new threat: climate change.
Obama used the event to announce more than $33 million in funding for ecosystem restoration and renewable energy projects. “Conservation is more than just putting up a plaque and calling something a park”, he said. “We can’t be complacent”.
“We are both skiers, so it has impacted us a lot”, said 14-year-olds Lacey Norris and Tallulah De Saint Phalle.
“This is really nice, I will be coming here more often”, he said.
The girls shared in the feeling that a conversation about what can be done to stop the impacts of climate change was greatly needed.
“… it’s not like I didn’t want to come”, he said.
“This place is spectacular because it is one of the highest, deepest, oldest and purest lakes in the world”, he said.
President Barack Obama plans to speak at the 20th annual environmental summit at Lake Tahoe, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016. “There is no contradiction between being smart on the environment and having a strong economy, and we got to keep it going”. “We are living it”.
The excitement was palpable as residents and local policymakers mingled with visitors, dignitaries, Secret Service and throngs of media in the blazing sun for the President’s visit. “It’s obviously a big deal”.
The White House earlier in the day also unveiled a strategy to boost private and philanthropic investment in USA conservation efforts, which it said have grown from $230 million a year when Obama took office in 2009 to about $1 billion a year today. This year, President Obama shared the stage with U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein as well as Governor Jerry Brown. “And the human imagination is so encouraged and nourished by it that Republicans and Democrats actually worked together to do good for Tahoe”.
Obama has been on environmental roll lately.
Obama acknowledged the importance of the Lake, not just for environmental reasons, but also for cultural reasons.
“For the Washoe people, it is the center of their world”, Obama says.
“No, it’s true”, Obama said. “Economies like this live or die by the health of our natural resources”.
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The president then quoted an unnamed former leader of the Washoe Tribe (which has called Lake Tahoe home for thousands of years): “The health of the land and the health of the people are tied together, and what happens to the land also happens to the people”.
