Obama's Environmental Promises

By Jesus Santos   

The National Geographic posted on its Daily News online a review of President Barrack Obama’s promise of helping the environment in his State of the Union address in 2013. The article by Dan Stone titled “Has Obama Kept Promises on Climate Since Last State of the Union?” portrayed the slow movement of his promise. 

For example,  people who wrote a letter to Obama “argue that Obama has pursued a policy that simply encourages all forms of energy production, expanding oil and natural gas drilling just as aggressively as he has promoted solar and wind power and electric cars,” which has caused many of the environmentalists to be frustrated with Obama. The President said that he will stop at nothing to move forward with his promise even if Congress does not agree because his priority is the health concerns of the future, including the children that will have to grow up with a bad life because of the environmental damage we did today.

The problem that people have the most with Obama’s promises is that he says he plans on doing something but then it is never addressed again. For instance, one of his first promises was “the creation of an Energy Security Trust, which over the next decade would steer $2 billion in oil and natural gas royalties to fund research into biofuels, fuel cells, and advanced batteries,” Stone wrote, and then he never mentioned the movement or advancement of this promise. This causes people to think that Obama only promises things in order to get the audience on his side and then he gives up on it because it requires too much money on behalf of the government in this unstable society.

However, not all of Obama’s hard work has gone unnoticed, which is why I believe that it does not take a man to change the world, that we all have to try in order for the world to be a better place. For example, “Obama has said he wants the federal government—the nation's largest energy user—to set an example on energy efficiency and pollution reduction,” wrote Stone, and he has set the example by saving “$65 million in energy costs last year.”

Therefore, what Obama and the government need to realize is that they are a team and they need to work together in order to have a happier nation.

There are both positives and negatives about the way that President Obama has led the country for the past 5 years; however, this article focuses more on the negative because it is easier to see the glass half empty. Instead of putting so much pressure on Obama and forgetting the rest of the government as part of the team, we need to realize these problems were already on the horizon way before he took the presidency. President Obama has only taken this into his own hands, but what I do agree with the critics is that he should stop making promises he cannot keep.