Barack Obama Addresses Congress on Climate Change Bill

Barack Obama made a few brief notes on energy and climate change in his state of the union address. However, this seemed to be enough to deliver the point to Congress and much of the world that the White House is now ready to throw itself into the efforts to pass this climate change bill.

Obama went on to say that this year he is very eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate. He did go on to say that this means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in the United States. It also means tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. This also means the continued investment in advanced bio fuels and clean coal technologies.

The only problem is that the endorsement for offshore drilling and nuclear power could be a hard bill for some Democratic voters to swallow. Overall, the instant reaction to the speech on environmental groups was positive. However, a few commented directly to Obama’s support of drilling and nuclear power.

The Center of Biological Diversity was not happy with the speech at all. They pointed out that a clean energy economy does not include the continued used of dirty coal and further risky drilling for oil in offshore areas. They said that the president’s speech failed, as he has failed to address this problem over the past twelve months.

The new climate change bill just narrowly passed the house last June. However, it has becomes bogged down while trying to past the Senate. Obama did take this time to take a shot at climate change deniers. He said that he knows that there are some who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. However, even if they doubt the evidence, providing clean energy is still the right thing to do for the future.