Air Force One, carrying Barack Obama, flies over the island village of Kivalina, an Alaska native community of 400 people already receding into the ocean as a result of rising sea levels. “Think about that. If another country tried to do wipe out an entire town, we’d do everything in our power to protect it”.
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Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility released its petition on August. 31, the day that President Barack Obama delivered a major speech on climate change in Anchorage.
This was indeed a long-standing demand by the Native Alaskan people and their supporters, who have long rejected the name “Mount McKinley”.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell explained the reasoning behind the change.
Following the announcement, several members of Congress from the Buckeye State, including House Speaker John Boehner, expressed their dismay, writing in a letter to the president that McKinley’s “legacy has been tarnished by a political stunt to promote a partisan agenda”.
Global warming, he said, is occurring twice as fast in Alaska as in the bottom 48 states.
The community was plastered with signs like “Mines and fish don’t co-exist” protesting against the Pebble Mine copper and gold project proposed by Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.
While Obama trekked the Alaskan wilderness to highlight the impacts of climate change, Palin pointed out the President did not visit with the oil industry in the state or seriously address the presence of Russian and Chinese military and oil exploration activity off Alaska’s coast.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump said this via Twitter: “President Obama wants to change the name of Mount McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years”.
Kerry said scientists are largely unified in their assertion that humankind is contributing to climate change, and it is something he said the president believes is the most important issue of the day on many fronts.
Mr. Obama has inspired many dumb and racist memes during his seven years as commander-in-chief. “But that is the future for all of us if we don’t take care”.
With younger Americans in mind, he taped an episode of the NBC reality TV show “Running Wild with Bear Grylls” while in Kenai Fjords National Park. The second salmon that he picked up suddenly began squirting towards his shoes. “Something got on my shoes”, Obama called to the press.
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Obama trekked as much as the glacier with photographers in tow in a rigorously choreographed tour aimed toward calling consideration to the methods human exercise is degrading cherished pure wonders. He said, despite progress in reducing greenhouse gases, the planet is already warming and the US isn’t doing enough to stop it.
